As I sit here typing this, I am listening to a Diplo & Friends BBC podcast to somehow passionately enthrall me to finish typing this political piece that I naively signed up to write for the Garnet & Black blog.
While I am passionate about my country and its politics, I am in no way passionate about writing to an audience of 20-somethings that generally have no idea what is going on within our government and who decide to become strangely passionate about politics only when some legislation that might affect their care-free in some negative way, merely touches the possibility of being passed (most things take a couple years to actually go into effect). But writing to an audience of deaf and ignorant ears is inevitable and necessary to get to where you need to go so that isn’t my real issue. My real issue is writing an empirical piece on a grey subject.
The problem with that is driven intellectual passion can be very hard to muster when you are 21 years old. At this age we have so much talent but are way too good at mishandling it. Today, I intended to write on the issue of mental illness and gun control, in light of the Navy Yard tragedy in Washington last week. I was going to argue that the foundation of the gun control discussion should be founded in our approach to mental health relating to the issue. That background checks should be more extensive in order to catch red flags in one’s past, because more likely than not with these lost souls who have committed these horrific acts, there were noticeable warning signs early on. From family and friends mentioning their concerns for their loved one or colleagues and classmates voicing their troubled observations. And too many times have these clear signs of what needs to be done been thrown on the back-burner by the national newsfeed for the more “dramatic” superficial topic of our right to own a firearm.
For this shift to be made, however, there needs to be a shift in our culture from the superficial attractive issues that gain tons of drama through spirited discussion and direct our focus below the surface to the real issue which is mental illness.