Daily Connect: Gunsights Galore and REsensitizing Ourselves to Violence

Hi Jerry. You make a lot of good comments about the map and its consequences within our civil discourse. I am wondering though, how do we know it actually led to vandalizing her office? Did someone give testimony?

My point with the earlier post here was not that I want to focus "solely on the needs" of someone this mentally ill, but that it seems like the true issues of the massacre in Tucson are being set aside. The more we are learning, the more it strikes me as hasty and careless to run straight to Sarah Palin with the blame.

From the NYTimes, quoting a friend of Jared Loughner on Tuesday:

“He was a nihilist and loves causing chaos, and that is probably why he did the shooting, along with the fact he was sick in the head,” said Zane Gutierrez, 21, who was living in a trailer outside Tucson and met Mr. Loughner sometimes to shoot at cans for target practice.

The salient feature of Jared Loughner is that he is very, very sick. And not even a Tea-Partier.

I hope there is enough compassion being directed towards this guy. But in the media, I haven't heard all that much. In fact, I've heard that 1. He should get the death penalty and 2. The mentally ill should be re-institutionalized (!)

I don't have the answers to how our culture should attend to mental illness more effectively; the earlier posting here about being close to someone with schizophrenia relates the poignant and complicated nature of this problem.

But can't we just stop giving Palin our attention? She's full of sleazy techniques and nasty rhetoric, sure. But I think her power is being overestimated. Furthermore, the more heedlessly and aggressively she is blamed, the more entrenched and defensive she is. That's not a way to promote sanity.

My half-brother, who i am very close to, is schizophrenic, and when he is "down" he can say some scary, anti-government, anti-authority paranoid things. he lives outside the bounds of acceptable reality by most anyone's standards (most recently he was squatting in an abandoned house, until he disappeared for a month... just resurfaced yesterday in a psych ward, having gone through jail again to get there). I love him deeply, and am very close to him. Though he is classic schizophrenic, he can also be one of the kindest, most compassionate people i know. and i'm not just saying that to be pc or "nice."
But it is inconceivably difficult to know when he is just whirling around in his head, or when the things he says are based in some reality... or when they begin to pose a threat to himself or others. There have been suicide attempts, and there have been times he has hurt other people. He has had a rough life, most of it on the streets - alcoholism, drugs, turning tricks when he was desperate enough for money. I stay close to him. I love him. But when someone you know is that mentally ill, you do everything you can to protect their right to be a free individual, and at the same time protect the safety of others (and protect them from themself). I've written a lot about this, just to process it, day to day, just never quite had the heart to post it up here... maybe will do so now.
My sister and I called the police on my brother for the first time in our lives last month. We were worried he would starve himself or freeze to death in his squat. And somewhere in the back of my mind, i worried about the neighbors, and what might happen if he broke into a house while delusional (which he has done a lot of in the past).
it's easy to lay blame on people for not being proactive, when they know someone who is "whacky" or paranoid, but when you are in that situation, it is SO HARD to know when to act. And i mean beyond just expressing concern or offering a compassionate (and often ineffectual) gesture of support.

When does compassion become doing the hard thing? This keeps me up night after night. I hold it at the heart of my practice right now. Trying to distinguish between compassion and idiot compassion. I teach a lot of kids who have serious issues. What do we do for them? We love them, we set boundaries... and sometimes you just feel helpless watching them head for the cliff, despite everything you try to do. And sometimes you make a connection, and they start to figure it all out. As teachers we are all frightened. When do you make difficult, life-changing decisions to intervene on someone's behalf in a way that may seem harsh? And do you even have the right? (there is little you CAN do, legally, even when you suspect danger).

What a horrific, sad event in Tuscon... i hear people blaming the right-wing vitrilic rhetoric (me included), i hear people blaming the music he listened to, and his godless, anarchic tendencies... i feel overwhelmed with anger, a desire for vengeance, sadness for those who have lost loved ones... holy sh*t, how do you respond with equanimity?

After the midterm elections, a woman in my sangha expressed helplessness, anger, futility during a darshan meeting... the teacher said something i think about often: "When you go from a feeling of victimhood to a felling of vulnerability, that is a profound shift."
Vulnerability, not victimhood. I am trying. Two days ago i was seething with anger and violent thoughts. but just keep trying to breathe, trying to stay open, and not go into that cycle of victimhood, righteousness, vengeance. The house of vulnerability and broken-heartedness offers space for everyone, and for everyone's pain. Even the killer...