Murder/Suicide in America - Where is the Hope?

Over the past two weeks, you may have noticed in the news an increasing level of murder/suicides. In fact, it has become so common it actually has stopped making news. There have been several right here in Ohio within families, the workplace, schools, and social settings. These stories have moved from the front page of the papers and the leads on national news, to blurbs on the various online news services that may or may not make the evening television news. To quote the lady addressing President Obama at the CNBC town hall, is this the new normal? What is going on? The blame lies in several places with the additions and subtractions to what people my age would consider normal America.

1) Start with technology. We are bombarded constantly with telephone calls, text messages, emails, and instant messages. There is no break. There is no respite. Go into a store and talk to a young clerk. The only human contact these days is filtered through some digital gizmo. The lack of ability to relate to other human beings for those who are younger increases their sense of isolation and destroys empathy. At the other end of the spectrum, the frustration of those over sixty to keep up with technology causes depression and feelings of worthlessness. Put a person over sixty in a story with a clerk under twenty five…life is reduced to “have a good one.”

2) Life is nonstop without breaks. Instant solutions from television to modern day communication. It has destroyed our ability to understand that life has a pace of its own. There are no instant solutions. When one’s problems can't be resolved like a laundry stain in a Tide commerical, people start to think there is something wrong with them. They must be doing something wrong if a problem can’t be solved now.

3) People have become nothing more than a digital number. We are so technologized and bureaucratized that the frustration of dealing with daily life has become unbearable. Phone trees and Indian call centers; punch this; punch that; what is your password; what is your PIN number…it is unending. Quite frankly it is depressing. When one has been wronged with no resolution, be it a warranty on a computer, trying to resolve a cell phone billing issue, or being fired from a job with no one to turn to, what does one do?

4) Secularization has robbed our society of needed support systems. Churches are empty. Families are now “non-traditional;” and most likely spread out all over the country. Divorce is fast and cheap. Single parent households are on the rise. Friends are defined by packs rather than close relationships. One doesn't date. One hooks up. Where does one go for love, comfort and support?

Life in America is becoming harder by the day for more and more people. President Obama talked about “hope.” Good luck with that. It’s hope that is being destroyed in this country. As hope decreases along with the ever growing frustrations of life, as we adjust to the new normal of “Hope and Change” in the form of expansive and onerous government and the destruction of our traditional values and support systems, the wonder isn’t that there are so many murder/suicides. The wonder is there aren’t more.