I have to admit.  One of my favorite things about blogging is coming up with titles for my posts.  Unfortunately, I’m not often very insightful — and I’m quite out of the habit of really writing.  So, if this turns out to be another interestingly-titled piece of nonsense, I apologize.  You have been warned.

But, the fact of the matter is that the psychology of violence has been really pressing on my mind for quite some time.  I think it started when I spent an evening watching the two most recent Batman movies.  Why is it that we (myself included) cheer for someone who is, in his own words, NOT a hero?  Do we really care so much about the fact that the Dark Knight is bashing bad guys, or do we just want to see a good fight?  I have to tell you, it scared me a little when I found myself seeing the sense in the Joker’s mad grin — inwardly applauding the raw honesty behind his cash bonfire and his refusal to even attempt a justification of his actions.  He just wanted to watch the world burn.  In the months that followed, I tried to shake a growing understanding of how a sane person could feel the same way.

Today’s world has so many pointless causes that people devote their lives to.  I go to work, and I see people who have worked basically 60 hours a week (without getting paid overtime) for 30 years just to get a better job title and a pat on the back from management.  I go to school, and I see people living alone, with minimal sleep, and without proper nourishment for decades — just to get a couple of papers published in a journal that itself is only read by a few academic specialists.  I suppose you could say something about how society needs hard workers and specialists in order to preserve our way of life.  Heck, look at all the good these kind of people have done:  Life-saving medicines, worldwide and accessible communication, and freedom from primitive superstitions.

And that laid my fears to rest.  For a while.  That is, until the validity of “progress” itself was brought into question.  If our basic human needs and problems haven’t changed since the beginning of time, why on earth are we wasting our time making up new needs to fulfill and new problems to solve?  I know it sounds cruel, but if you really think about it, “saving lives” is nothing more than delaying the inevitable for a couple more years.  It’s great that we can have a real-time chat with an e-friend in China using Google’s translation bot, but why can’t we even nod at the neighbor we pass on the sidewalk?  Sometimes I have to wonder if the enormous all-consuming blind trust that people put in technology makes even less sense (and is more dangerous) than the superstitions that science has dispelled.  And then, I watched Fight Club.

Probably not a good idea, in hindsight.  But the fact was that now instead of a general feeling of disenchantment toward society, I felt sympathy and a strange sense of admiration for those who wanted to give our world a “clean slate.”  From a precarious perch atop our industrialist castles made of sand, taking our society “back to zero” sounded like a pretty good idea.  The violent extremists we call “terrorists” still seemed absolutely disgusting to me, since their goal was merely to replace the existing system with their own equally pointless one — be it religious, environmental, or socio-political.  But, the vandals, the arsonists, the crazies who roam the streets looking for a fight, the few instruments of pure chaos — seemed something akin to a cleansing storm that rips the garbage from our clinging hands and leaves us free to truly live.  With basic reasoning and observational skills, I had independently come to the same conclusions that finally drove one “mad” intellectual to randomly distribute the 16 hand-crafted bombs that cost 3 lives and brought on one of the most expensive FBI investigations in US history.

But, life — or I rather think, God — took me in a different direction:  Directly into a baby deer.  I was out running one evening, thinking to myself how pointless this modern world was, and how great it would be if I didn’t have the all troubles of a “career” before me.  Instead of being forced to force myself to stay in shape, what if physical exercise was merely a part of survival?  How refreshing it would be to live with your only worry being whether you would find food for the day!  Startling me out of my self-pity, the most frightened and absolutely adorable animal I have ever seen jumped directly into my path.  And right then and there all of my nihilistic musings seemed utterly ludicrous.  Despite all its problems, there IS beauty and goodness in today’s world — and I was closing my eyes to it.  We don’t need to blow up a credit card company or “hit bottom” to appreciate life, or to give others that opportunity.  You can laugh at the sun on your face or smile at a stranger whether you live in a society focusing on survival or one that is driven by a complicated mixture of sense and nonsense.  The world isn’t ever going to be “fixed.”  No amount of construction or destruction is going to create the perfect society.  And, finally, I’m OK with that.  God has a job for me to do.  It might be small, and it certainly won’t completely revolutionize the world.  But, quite honestly, changing the world isn’t what life is about.  It’s about stubbed toes and the sheer magic of each breath.  It’s about plans, disappointment, and fulfillment — sharing our love, tears, anger, and forgiveness — it’s about being there for someone else.  Life is relationships with God and other people.  And, I don’t want to miss out on that for anything.