Aurora Shooting, A Movie-Inspired Tragedy

Yes, there is something in the Joker character that magnetizes .  Things that he believe in, it just draws you in.

I never realized until the Aurora incident that that is what draws people into Joker's character:  indifference.  We can say so much about his character, but if you sum it all, its so big you wouldn't miss it:  INDIFFERENCE.

It is the absence of emotion.  The absence of  concern.  It is a void, an emptiness  within  a person. If hatred is an energy that can  be converted to another form of energy, that which is love, indifference is having no energy to convert to love at all.  

And somewhere deep inside us, in our struggle with  the difficulties in our lives, there's this little darkness within us that we may not easily realize or maybe have already realized but subconsciously fighting to admit its existence: our temptations to be indifferent to others.  The temptation to empty ourselves of any energy that consumes us, that which makes us 'feel free'.  Gives us a sense of 'freedom'.  In an easier,'cooler', but certainly evil way.

And that's what attracts us to Joker.  His letting go of  his internal battle and succumbing to complete indifference to others.  Along with the fact that it is science fiction.

 

I wonder how the writer of the movie feels when the character lines they write become a buzz, with a lot of people liking it, and even without them knowing, some internalize it.  It's such a great responsibility, to think of the worst that can happen to a movie fan after having been influenced by what one writes on the script.

But whatever influences a person to do something evil or good, it can always be countered by a bigger force:  US.

Its ALL OF US.  Us who are interconnected to each other.

We are all interconnected.  Strangers as we are.  Our link does not stop with our families, relatives, own chosen friends.  Even the strangers, we are interconnected with them.

You remember seeing a student in a  corner of your canteen, sitting alone while you and your friends had a great time laughing and talking about stuff?  That student is linked to you, to your friends.  Someday, in the future, he can be the doctor treating your parents.  Or he can be that lunatic shooting mercilessly people inside a theater where your friends would be, years from now.

You remember that little boy knocking on your car window, begging for loose coins, as you waited for the green light?  That boy is connected to us all.  He might have been blessed with several car drivers that day, maybe even with foods and more than he asked for, that few years after, he would be motivated to do more and strive to be out of the 'beggar society' and become a town volunteer for peace or something.  And it started with you sharing that concrete act of love that day, lowering your window and giving him big sincere smile as you hand over to him that bag containing the crackers and chocolates you singled out from the rest of the  goods  you just bought from the mall,  One day, an officemate of yours will tell you how she have been saved by that peace volunteer from a robbery, and that person she would be talking about is the boy you smiled at, years ago.  You may never know it, the boy may never know it, but the fact remains:  we are all interconnected.

The love that circles only our chosen friends, our families, our coworkers ---if  we continue limiting it there, bounded by the people we choose to love, we create a missing link for ourselves . And that missing link are the people outside of that circle we created.  Somehow, somewhere, someone out there would settle for a smile of a stranger, a word or two from a stranger---just because that person has totally got nobody to make his or her existence felt.  That stranger he needed could have been you or could be you in the future.

The CNN news on  Aurora incident numbed me for few hours today. Its just so numbing.  To think that it was not even done by terrorists.  To think that it was simply inspired by a  villain character in a movie.

Even if guns are given for free to all of us, if we are getting enough love from others, that love will be sufficient to protect us from even entertaining the thought of using that gun to deliberately harm others.  In the same light, no matter how much evil we may see in a movie, if we are getting sufficient love from others, that love will protect us from absorbing that evil wanting to influence us.

Those victims, they have paid the price of other people's coldness, other people's  indifference in the past --- to the shooter.   I wonder how much indifference and coldness has been thrown to that shooter before he finally decided to embody the Joker character, and bring science fiction into reality.

If we really love the people we have in our lives, we have to protect them by loving those who are not in our lives.

With the Aurora incident in mind, instead of saying "let's spend longer minutes with our loved ones", I would rather we start saying "Let's start sharing kindness even to those we don't know who come to our path, one way or the other, however casual it may seem.  We are all interconnected.  Nothing by chance.  NO MORE INDIFFERENCE."