ARE WE OVER Reacting?

There is only so much the human heart and mind can take. Even just in the United States in the past few years, collectively we have had to process scores of US school shootings: 70 in 2019, 110 in 2018, about 40 every year from 2014 to 2017. Hundreds of mass shootings: 417 in 2019, 337 in 2018, 346 in 2017, 382 in 2016, on and on, the pitiless numbers receding into the past like tombstones. Opioid death after opioid death, tens of thousands every recent year, and, as of publication, more than 200,000 deaths from COVID-19 (in the US alone). And this doesn’t even begin to account for the human and environmental crises that are unfolding internationally.

While some turn their anguish and anger into action, many others are unable to even acknowledge that there’s a problem. Call it what you like: Habituation. Outrage