Reality

As I hit here on a Sunday afternoon, coffee getting cold by my side, I think about reality. The definition has become skewed over the years.  We have something called Reality TV, which ironically is so far removed from reality, it's become lifelike cartoon characters.  What has happened to us?  We have movies with simulated violence, sex and every other function a human can do.  We've become numb to what reality really is.  I fear that this trend, is no longer a trend, but an irreversible sin that we can not come back from.

This is not to mock any one's beliefs, but if one is to read the testaments, old or new, or the Quran, or whatever holy book, you will see much of the same, but back then, it was a given, that these were in many ways, metaphors the points we are making.  Sadly, today's world takes things as they see them and just as Sodom and Gomorrah, we live in a world of Transformers and Batman.  A world that is so unreal, we have lost reality on what is.  

Two days, maybe it was three, a lone gunman, whose touch with reality was obviously off, went into a movie theater and killed a group of people. He injured four times as many.  Reports say his semi-automatic weapon, which he obtained legally, jammed and he had to use a less efficient weapon.  A less efficient instrument of violence.  We are all saddened about the tragedy and the lives that were lost.  Facebook and Twitter blew up with debates over gun control.  The arguments were heated. Some were intelligent and some were a little less so.  I feel for those families, but I'm angered by what society and the media has done with this story in such a short time.  

A group of people lay dead in a morgue.  Is it really important that we know what the shooter did for a living, when we know nothing about the victims?  Is it important to know what kind of gun he used, but not know what kind of people the dead were?  Is it important for us to speculate on why, when the real question is how?  Regardless of your feelings on gun control, the Constitution and politics, you  feel for the victims.  We all do.  This, on some level hurts every one of us.

The reality is that these were deaths that could have been prevented.  A simple law.  A credit card flag when this young man had bought 6000 rounds of ammunition.  We wire tap people to find out if they are cheating on their wives, but not when they buy enough bullets to kill a small town.  We bash Romney for not admitting how rich his is and how he got that way, but we don't care or question how an assuming young man bought enough armor and weapons to shoot 71 people.  We live in a world where the reality, even the word reality, means something made up.  

We all love to lose ourselves in make believe, but when we sit down  in front of the tube or enter a theater, we want, if even for two hours, to lose ourselves in a make believe fantasy. We want to bury our hands in a buttery tub of popcorn and drink a cold watered down soda the size of our head.  We want to jump, laugh and scream at the screen.  We want to be shocked.  When it's over, we leave the darkened theater and reenter our lives.  Back to a reality that we don't necessarily love.  The mundane existence that most of us sleepwalk through.  We get back to our homes, lay in bed and arise to the sun.  A bowl of cereal and a cup of coffee.  We half heartily smile at our families or loved ones.  We take it for granted.  Twelve families will have that no longer.  That count might rise.  I know that as the week goes on, I won't consider some moronic housewives, or a pathetic loser looking for a date or even a dozen people locked in a house to be reality.  That is fantasy and maybe we should call it fantasy TV.  As I watched the news and saw the tears and the anguish, I felt the emotion.  That is reality. A sad sad reality.