The Cure for Murder on Campus
Injy Tawa
Do you even remember school? What it was really like? The silent competition: underhanded comments when your top marks are returned to you in full view of the rest of the class; the shallow friendships and familial expectations?
How can we live and live well in that teaming, hormonal, compulsory environment? In buildings designed by institutional architects, the same ones that design prisons, hospitals and factories.
At least in Australia, where I'm from, guns aren't a constitutional right. Something written on paper so long ago by different men living in different times. No, guns are rare and functional there. The odd farner might have a bunch, or a bank robber and now and then a serial killer, if he isn't more partial to knives.
So, Americans are brought up in a gun-loving, pistol-wielding society, a culture that reveres and romanticizes the weapon to the point that it's become a trendy accessory, hidden under the bed, or stashed in your walk-in closet in its glass case, specially made for viewing. La di da America . . . So you gave your citizens the right to bear arms and then you cry empty tears about how could this have happened. How could our youth be doing this: killing one another; shooting haphazardly into crowds; hating themselves, their god-fearing families, their peers?
I know. I'm asking a lot of questions and where are the answers, right?
Wrong. The answer is here in Scottsdale. A rather sophisticated group of people has cracked the code of death. They've been talking about what it takes to outwit physical death. They're living it. They're dedicated to interrupting death's course in each individual's body.
This one perishes with cancer, that one in a terrible accident on the ruthless war zone known as "freeway". Someone dies of a broken heart from a lifetime of humanly caused pain. There's AIDS, pneumonia, syphilis, drug addiction and more, all underlined by malnutrition. But no one says that because, after all, we're living in the "first" world. A world of privilege where food comes in packages and lasts a lifetime; where the pharmaceuticals call their toxic drugs "medicine" and the people believe it; where the flesh of our bodies is last in every instant because, after all, there's a heaven to go to. There's God and the angels waiting; there's our dead boyfriend somewhere, our mothers and fathers who all somehow made it throught the pearly gates because at the point of expiration, all was finally forgiven by the almighty male in the sky. And wouldn't you know, none of them were alive to see it!
People Unlimited is building a world within a world. This world makes the human being more important than anything else. No issue worth fighting over. No commodity to die for. The structures of society serve the people. No one sacrifices their life for the company store. People in this world are learning to function intimately and honestly. They are excited about changing old patterns that in the past have led them to disease, discomfort and isolation. They care about one another, they notice if something is wrong. They talk about it, they approach and ask if help is needed, or, they themselves ask for help. Taking responsibility is easy and has become an organic movement of the heart and soul.
In this environment guns make no sense. Addiction is banished forever. Long lasting health is desired and aquired. Love is true and not the be-all and end-all. If love leaves, the people still have each other. There's no war over love, money, what someone said, did or didn't do. We talk about and face it all. And if we don't always do this, we're aiming for it and we have each other to make sure we do.
Lonliness cannot survive in this environment where nourishment is natural. We can't help but thrill each other with our excitement for life. Automatically by our passion and words and actions, we feed each other the nutrients that raise the immune system, keep the blood pumping, allow the body to detoxify easily, help the brain and conscious awareness make intelligent decisions on a moment by moment basis.
Sarcasm, cynicism, pessimism may rear their heads but are always banished. Not from some kind of law enforcement but from pure joy, the joy of being alive that's an ever-flowing fountain. It never dries up because we're alive, we want to be alive and we know how to stay alive.
In this world, who thinks about guns and killing and torture and sadism? That man is gone forever. He found a new life to live or he died and went into the ground. He could not survive in a physically immortal environment. The people would not allow it. No flesh can be sacrificed. No heart broken.
It's an easy answer to the question, "What is the cure for campus massacres?" It is the cure for death - a disease of the human spirit and body that has always existed, until now. Our people are banishing that happening. No more physical death. Let it fade from the memory of humanity. Watch as religion, addiction, corruption, separation, betrayal, depression and illness leave the Earth.
We become unrecognizable to the history books. We soar and we don't have wings. We truly care for each other. Our lives are a balm and a constant river of joy. This is the cure.
The Cure for Campus Massacres
In order to prevent further campus massacres across the colleges and universities of the United States the following policies need to be considered and introduced.
A new criterion for acceptance into schools, colleges and universities focusing on the individual’s emotional health, along with stringent face to face interviews with the family of the student. Following through with these interviews would give administrative and teaching staff a comprehensive knowledge and understanding of the student and his familial environment.
Wherever long-term conflict and unresolved issues are observed, family therapy practices would be offered and entered into in order to make sense of the student’s place in her/his family and to ascertain the health of that family system in order to have a clear sense of the student’s capacity to integrate with others during her/his future years of study.
The benefits of Family Therapy practices are well documented in the psychological literature and would be fully researched beforehand so that those college professionals in charge of relating to potential students and their families are confident and well versed in what needs to be implemented.
Potential students and their families need to accept their involvement in a series of therapies and interviews prior to, just after, and at some time during the first year of the student being accepted and attending college. A support system would be built to encourage troubled families to open up and change together, in the presence and with the help of experienced therapists.
Authorities need to know beforehand who may have problems integrating and why that is. They need to be able to offer the individual, from the start, a support system to express themselves safely. And to make the changes they need to make to become socially confident, relaxed with others, and capable of dealing with their emotional life without taking it out on others.
Along with a focus on family therapy, compulsory attendance at interactive classes, designed specifically for intimacy and family issues, would be required. The student and her/his family would attend 3 - 6 months of one weekly 2 - 3 hour classes.
These classes would focus on the physical and societal realities of human separation. Why and how they come about, what can be done to change them, and practical ways to build a closeness with each other that’s lasting and real.
Attendance at and completion of these classes would go towards final year marks for the student.
These classes would help to build a togetherness of all first year students and their families. An environment would be experienced where they become close and observe each other being vulnerable and real about their families’ issues. People would become sensitized to one another and start to feel a responsibility for each other. They would experience how taking total responsibility for themselves and their actions brings them closer to others who are at the same time, doing the same thing.
In such an intimate experience over time, loners, disenfranchised individuals, will stick out like a sore thumb and will be required to come out and express themselves. Not only express, but change. Those who refuse to or cannot make the changes will be released from the college.
They will be given an opportunity to return at any time when they are ready for the changes.
The goal here of course is a 100% success rate. That such individuals will experience the safety they are being offered and will open up to make the changes, together with the group and therapist.
The use of both options, family therapy and interactive classes would intensify peoples’ awareness of themselves and each other, promote an ease and user friendly method for change, and ultimately make loneliness, separation, suppression and hatred visible to everyone involved, as well as very uncomfortable for the individual to harbor and maintain.
Human beings need one another and thrive together in agreement of their common purpose. The purpose here is to end campus massacres, free individuals from long held pain and isolation, and foster trust and safety of human beings with each other.
Achieving these things would have the further impact of beginning to reverse entrenched belief systems in people concerning not being able to trust one another and having to be wary and protective in human interactions
The objective is an open world where everything can be resolved, all feelings shared and expressed in a healthy manner, and where people can grow and live and become everything they are capable of becoming.
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