Although you’ll be reading this afterwards, today is the 75th anniversary of D-Day, the Allied invasion, retaliation, really, an answer to Adolph Hitler’s Nazi occupation of France, Europe, an his psycho aspirations to rule the world with an Aryan Nation of a superior race. Well, we gave him our answer, and he got the message loud and clear.
But it wasn’t cheap, and it wasn’t easy.
That past generation of Americans, and Europeans ...and Russians on the Eastern Front (they were an ally then), sacrificed their lives and futures so that we can have the life and future we enjoy now. Don’t ever take their role in history and in your life for granted. Millions died. Over a million Red Army soldiers were killed, wounded, missing or captured at the battle of Stalingrad and over 400,000 civilians died. It was one of the bloodiest battles in the history of mankind. 4,500 Allied soldiers were killed on the beaches and cliffs at Normandy on D-Day.
It’s almost unfathomable, hard to get your head around, the gravity and implications of the world situation during the time between 1938 and 1945. This history is captured in several great films: ‘The Longest Day’, ‘Saving Private Ryan’, ‘Stalingrad’, and ‘Dunkirk‘ (the original and the remake) ...all worth watching.
Better yet, ask your father and grandfather. Listen between the lines, if they even talk about it at all. Look into their eyes. Cherish them and their memory. You owe them.
But this is not what this op-ed is about. It’s about the age-old question of heredity or environment. Which is the dominant force in our patterns of behavior? Or is there a WTF factor that fluctuates somewhere in the etherial universe between randomness and fate? Maybe the answer is a simple as ‘parenting’.
The men and women of that “Greatest Generation” were motivated by heredity and environment, and maybe parenting, to lean into the wind of a common cause, focused and unselfish, to do what they simply considered to be the right thing. Collectively, as a nation, we and our leaders identified the problem, discussed the reactive options, considered the consequences, and acted collectively to solve the problem.
Today, we are seemingly absent the ability to take the actions necessary to solve our collective common problems. Whether it be our current presidential crisis with a loose cannon in the White House, or an ineffective Congress and getting worse, or our society’s disproportionate tendency toward a political correctness we impose upon one another under in the name of personal “rights”. We have reduced ourselves to a fumbling, bumbling wasteland of free individuals and organizations following their weakest instincts and acting out accordingly on them.
We are free to do and say whatever we want. Our free and unabashed media shows and tells us what we would never dare actually do. But some, the few, do act out these barbarous fantasies of maleficence. Movies and television, specifically ...video games, critically, are our societies ‘wet paint‘ signs. Meaning ...what do you do, what is your instinct, when you see a wet paint sign? You touch it.
I think the media, all media, contributes to the ‘WTF‘ in the heredity vs. environment equation. The free floating randomness that becomes fate. Why do we do the things we do? Behavioral Science needs to step up its game and get ahead of the curve before we completely destroy ourselves from the inside out.
School shootings, mass shootings, murder, rape, are all on the rise. WTF? Why so many these days? Copycat? Celebrity, make a splash and get on TV? This recent uptick of a dark psychological phenomenon, these unspeakable atrocities, are plaguing us and pushing us to the brink of mass hysteria. We can easily identify the problem, discuss the horror and ramifications, exchange sentiments and talk the issue into the ground ...but we never act and solve the problem. Maybe that’s because there is no solution.
We live in a media-fed, sedated, hypnotized society that has become infected with a perverse tendency toward rage.
There was recently a grizzly murder here in our small town in northern Utah. The worst of the worst. A five-year old girl was abducted, apparently sexually molested, and murdered by her 21-year old uncle who was “visiting” the home of his sister, the victim’s mother. It happened in the late evening and dark early morning hours of a Saturday night where the mother and her live-in boyfriend had been drinking and playing video games with the uncle. Details are sketchy but apparently after everyone went to bed the uncle committed this unspeakable act of perversion and murder and hid the body in a shallow grave just a block from the home. He used a knife from the mother’s kitchen.
There will be a trial. The death penalty was removed in a plea for telling authorities where he hid the body after an extensive five day search of the area.
What happens to the 21-year old uncle doesn’t matter. The girl is gone from this world and she isn’t coming back. She’ll never experience her junior prom, love, or find the cure for cancer or walk on another planet. Her mother will never again hold her in her arms or make her a peanut butter & jelly sandwich. Punishment is irrelevant. Dispose of him like a rabid dog? ...imprison him for life? ...study him in an effort to understand? ...whatever. It’s a tough one.
The community reaction was predictable. Midnight vigils, candles, balloons, stuffed animals, ribbons, rainbows and bows. Headlines in the local paper depicting a Disneylandish atmosphere of people coming out of the woodwork with heartfelt, solemn curiosity in an over-the-top almost circus-like hoopla all capped off with a funeral that rivaled JFK’s.
Maybe I’m being too hard, but to me the public showing of support and affection would be appreciated but not appropriate under the circumstances. This would be deeply personal, and a critical family matter that I would not want exploited.
Heredity or Environment ...or WTF? We need to look closer at this family, especially, this kid, the 21-year old uncle. What is in his DNA ...what family environment was he exposed to growing up? He didn’t appear to have many friends, so his family was his base model for behavior ...heredity and environment. Add alcohol, add video games, add recent news of school and mass shootings, add other media influence, add WTF, and you may have a start in identifying someone who may ‘snap‘. But in reality, when do you step in? What do you say and to whom? ...‘That guy over there seems weird to me’ ...’Well, what has he done?’ ...‘Nothing he’s just acting suspiciously weird and he should be watched‘ ...‘Okay, but we can’t do anything until he does something‘ ...
Catch-22 (a dilemma or difficult circumstance from which there is no escape because of mutually conflicting or dependent conditions).
Our current dominant generation is three generations back from the generation of youngsters who stormed the beaches of Normandy. Those youngsters then are all but gone now, they’re in their late nineties and going fast. My advice to today’s youngsters is to find one of these men or women. Thank them. Ask them what you should do with your life and how you should view life.
Honor them and cherish their memory. They have answers.
John Kushma is a communication consultant and lives in Logan, Utah.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-george-kushma-379a5762
http://newsbout.com/a/John+Kushma
