Do you remember the girl in Arizona who was learning how to use an uzi, lost control and shot the instructor dead?

No doubt you forgot in the noise of the more than daily mass gun shootings in the US.

This is pretty much a second amendment right debate I am not going to have here, but that poor girl in Arizona must now live with this for the rest of her life. The instructor won his Darwin award, and fortunately the girl was physically unharmed but I can't imagine the deep psychological scars that girl must have gotten from this. And then the legal system swoop in because every accident is a good chance to punish someone and send them to jail, but fortunately, they too decided it was an accident.

What were her parents and the moronic instructor thinking? Presumably the parents thought the instructor knew what he was doing - still the girl has to be deeply traumatized by this and will likely need therapy to recover from the experience, possibly for years.  It is a horrible accident that will likely scar the girl for life but she is lost and forgotten in this stupid second amendment debate.

Some people will demand laws, others will just go on about gun rights - but where is the commonsense? - the adults in this tragic story - the instructor and the parents - should have considered consequences beyond "a kid could possibly have a cool experience."

Accidentally killing someone has to be an extremely traumatic experience. But I am sure there are many who think the coolest experience is killing someone without having to be punished, in other words, going to jail for it.

But this is only one instance, and there are numerous instances like this. Parents leaving their guns around and little kids playing with them thinking they were water pistols or whatever. How many kids will need therapy and even if the kid was too young to remember (although you have to wonder about the subconscious scaring the kid may get) older siblings may remember and remind and blame their sibling for killing their parents or other kids...

But we are so numb to death and guns I think it's because it's so commonplace in movies and TV shows and our lives are so dull by comparison to those on the screen - many, I am sure, want a gun to live the fantasy. I know in "Bowling for Columbine", Michael Moore pointed out other countries have guns but don't kill so many of it's citizens but guns and shooting is part of the US National identity. That's what we do here in the US, and people in other countries point and laugh.

We are numb and we don't care, it's not immediate enough for us until someone we know or love is involved with a mass shooting, because we like to live in our own fantasy that things like this just don't happen around here. In an ironic twist Jeb Bush responded to yesterday's (yes we have had more mass shootings than days in this year) massacre that 'stuff happens'. Not precisely the response his brother made after 9/11 which turned the world upside down.

But kids are the pawns in this meaningless debate. Many parents are careless and stupid with their guns and it only takes one careless, irresponsible parent to destroy a child's life.

In a society that idealizes childhood, those that more cherish the innocence of children completely ignore the impact of their actions upon those beloved children all because of the fantasy worlds they live in in their head.

A long time ago I repeated a creation myth I once heard, that 'god' was so lonely that s/he tore him/herself in half so s/he could have someone else to hold; and thus creation.

Of all the creation myths I've heard this is the one that resonates most deeply.

I often think about the time when the entirety of our society has destroyed itself (most likely with carbon emissions), what will future civilizations say of ours, as archaeologists do of the ruins they study. I think that it'll be probably that our civilization is one that could not control itself.  We have no controls on those who are most powerful despite our attempts with the law supposedly applying itself equally to everyone.

The problem with our out-of-control society is the rich who have everything are off in-search of a new way to quench the pain of existence. Most of us have felt this pain as achievement: and now what? Some are so lucky they have enough money to buy all the shiny baubles that are glittery and fun but when they actually get them there is nothing but disappointment, or there are new problems to solve - bags full of new toys are opened and once the packaging is discarded, there is just another thing that needs to be found room for so it can be put away, emptiness conquers all physical things.

Constant distraction, whether it is TV, a movie, a party, noise, work, chasing money to pay off the cost of living in our shiny shiny world, the reality is we are hiding from the pain of how meaningless the whole thing is.

The only thing I've found that isn't meaningless is the connection to another human being, someone I have a connection with.

In some sense we can empathize with everyone to some extent, you can feel anyone's humanity if you have a mind to, but we have all trained ourselves to block the experience of another human's humanity as well. I am sure we've all experienced the emotional overload of ads from charities on TV. There is only so much sensationalism we can endure before it becomes overwhelming, so overwhelming that we feel literally powerless to do anything about it. TV makes everything so big and by comparison the individual feels small.

But the connection to another human being is a fragile thing. There is so much someone can throw at others before they turn around and say 'I cannot deal with this anymore'; when in reality all they want is to feel a connection. It's been found the best way to make people give up drugs is by giving them a meaningful connection to other human beings where they are welcomed, useful and necessary; a relationship based on equality, where things can't happen without them.

The connection we all seek is based on love but it doesn't mean it is sexual, all friendship is based on love. It is hard to care deeply for all people because it is based on forgiveness for all those things that we have to deal with with each other.

I hate quoting the Bible and especially St Paul, but he got I Corinthians 13:4-8 right:

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.  It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.  Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.  It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.  Love never fails...

Love (and probably information or knowledge) is the only thing that quenches the needs of the soul. And only someone who has all they need can say that. The poor have to keep their head above the water to stop themselves from drowning in our society. One missed payment and their lives come tumbling down, whether they have love or not. Meanwhile the rich run about the planet searching for something to ease their pain - the only thing is money won't stop their loneliness or their pain. The rich think that if they are rich they will eventually find someone to satisfy their pain but the only people they find will be searching through all the shiny baubles too.

I actually hate the words of this picture - and I think it's cruel. Indeed, I think the words should read instead:

If you are brave enough to suicide, are you brave enough to reach out? Because there is someone out there that needs you as much as you need them. Be brave you are needed.

We are taught from a young age to be distrustful of strangers and sometimes those who are closest to us can be selfish and the last person/people we'd like to reach out to. Reaching out and trust requires vulnerability. There is reason to be cautious about disclosing our vulnerability because people may take advantage of it, but they may not. Most people aren't sociopaths, although we do know they exist, but they are more likely to be CEOs rather than janitors and are no more than about 4% of the population. So we have to be brave enough to overcome those fears. This is a big problem because TV is constantly telling us about people being murdered by neighbors, friends and family all the time and this is not true. Child abduction is down and murder rates are down in general.

All of us feel lonely to some degree, we all need friends, we all need help, we all need to be useful, feel like we are contributing, we all need each other.

But there are different reasons for suicide, no one should blame someone living with a terminal disease for ending the pain.

"The only thing we've found to make the emptiness bearable is each other."

People trying to end it all, suddenly realize when they are jumping off the golden gate bridge that all that seemed unfixable could be fixed if only they hadn't jumped.

We all do need each other and TV teaches us not to trust anyone but we must make the effort to reach out to others who are alone and hurting whether it is simply to help elderly people with their garden or kids with their homework. Our brains are hardwired to search for human faces.

You're not alone and you are needed.

I became quite depressed the other day reading this article about suicide. The reasons people suicide are loneliness, feeling like a burden to others and fearlessness.

In my opinion, we've stopped knowing how to live with others because of television. We expect people to be pretty, solve their problems relatively easily and by the end of tonight's episode. Special problems may require two episodes. The people on TV are rich, have more than enough clothes to wear and a beautiful home. People on TV are interesting, they do interesting things, and have teams of writers making sure they make sense and what they say is funny. People on TV aren't annoying or if they are we just don't watch that show, we choose something else to watch.

If only real life people were so easy to manage.

More often than not we live by ourselves because, I think we compare the people on TV to the ones we deal with in real life. Real people are complicated, need too much attention, don't always make us laugh, can hurt us and can be unkind for many reasons. So instead we come home to television sets and an empty home.

Remember this article about facebook envy? Well how does your supposed facebook envy stack up compared to the lives that you see on television everynight?

Then we wish we had someone to love. If only we had someone to love and everything would be alright because thats what they do on TV - everyone falls in love and gets married. Then the marriage fails because its not like on TV. Marriages on TV are nearly always funny. Real life isn't very funny and when she's no longer as pretty as she was when she was younger or he's no longer as attentive as he used to be, the marriage fails.

Is there anything as glamorous as guns on TV? No wonder the second amendment is the most important. Owning a gun will make you just as cool as John McClane, as cool as Arnie/Kyle in Terminator and Neo/Trinity in The Matrix, right? I am a 100% certain that if Forrest Gump welded a gun, guns would NOT be so popular. But the movie of Forrest Gump with a gun is never gonna get the financing that The Matrix/Terminator or Die Hard are going to get. But if Forrest Gump with a gun is made, people will surrender their guns faster than a speeding bullet.

The third thing needed to suicide is the courage to do so. We're afraid of dying and we must overcome that urge to jump out of the way of oncoming vehicles. We can overcome the horror by becoming numb, and there again TV helps.

Television is the ride to suicide. They'll sell you the gun that you need, then help you pull the trigger.

We need each other, we need to be useful, helpful, we don't want to be a burden. As the article says mothers of new born children are the least likely group of people to suicide in the world, because they are totally depended upon by their new-born baby, whereas indigenous peoples are twice as likely to suicide.

We are hopeless by ourselves, we make a nice meal for a large predator, but together we are formidable.

The need to belong manifests itself in many ways. The need to belong can make us fiercely defend our group, as this article says lions will expose their throats to predators to save their pride. Part of this is genetic, and sometimes we chose to join families without any genetic connection. It can lead to devotion to football teams and political parties.

To paraphrase Donald Trump, its not whether your team wins or loses, its whether it wins. This can lead to blindness to the actions of the leaders of our teams. In the case of football, in general it doesn't matter much, but when it comes to politics the effect can be far more devastating. Some of the GOP steadfastly supported W's disastrous presidency as we see some democrats steadfastly support the current president.

Obviously the 1% are loyal to themselves and have little regard for the 99%. The American 1% are earning truckloads of money and could careless whether a large portion of Americans go hungry, are homeless and cannot get work. No doubt the 1% are afraid of us because we out number them 99:1. However this doesn't mean we can't learn from the rich. 67% of wealthy people watch 1 hour or less of TV every day vs. 23% for poor people and 6% of wealthy people watch reality TV vs. 78% for poor people. And apparently 79% of wealthy people network 5 hours or more each month vs. 16% for poor people. So the message is get away from the TV and socialize with real people!

As we wrest back some control over our lives from the 1% we must remember to stay together because together we are utterly formidable.