The Problem of Despair

The Problem of Despair

An opioid epidemic so severe that it has literally reduced the average life expectancy of our country. A suicide rate that continues to climb for almost all demographic groups. Children killing each other in schools. Why are these things happening? It’s not as if guns haven’t always been readily available. High school students used to take their guns to school so they could go hunting afterwards. In fact, there are more guns around than ever, and yet gun crime is at its lowest level in many decades. Given these facts, guns cannot be the causal factor. Similarly, suicide has always been an option and opioids have existed for many decades. So what is now going on? Why do so many of our fellow citizens embrace death? Over the last couple of decades something has changed in our culture, in our consciousness, in our circumstance, and how we respond to the world. Given what we are seeing in terms of mass killings, addiction and suicide, it is clear that there is a sickness of despair and hopelessness in our land. But why? I have my theories, but the point is that we need to collectively answer this question of hopelessness and despair.

We need a national dialogue on despair. Answering the question of despair gets us closer to solving the real problem we face as a nation. Answering the question of despair allows us to address the root cause so that we can potentially solve all of this; because these pathologies are all born of despair. I think many people intuitively understand this but are unwilling to talk about it in a meaningful way. Is it because they feel that despair is unsolvable and therefore not worth addressing? If that is so, then we are willing to accept that vast tracts of our nation now live in deep despair and hopelessness. And by not addressing the problem of despair, we therefore willingly condemn our fellow citizens to a painful and unbearable existence. An existence that they will either end quickly by their own hand, through the slow death of addiction, or by killing as many people as they can in an instant of defiant rage. Failure to address despair condemns many thousands of our fellow citizens, and indeed our children, to death.
If it is said that those politicians who do not address gun violence are cowards, then we are all cowards if we are unwilling to address our national problem of despair.

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