So this past week there have been many events involving the lives of individuals:

• a robbery in Moreno Valley, CA, whose perpetrators fled to Cal State Fullerton
• a massacre of elementary school children, nearly all aged 6, and adults in Connecticut by an unstable person who began by shooting his own mother—using her own guns
• a knife attack on at least 20 people in China
• the lethal shooting of a worker at Excalibur in Las Vegas, followed by the suicide of the shooter
• the firing of at least 50 rounds in a parking lot to the Fashion Island shopping mall in CA, apparently out of resentment towards life’s unfairness

It has been making me think about the condition of the world and how people should work to remedy these problems.

I am a humanist, and an idealist, possibly to the point of being a bit of a visionary. It has been said that the underlying cause, beneath gun control (which also should be stated, I believe), is the mental illness that compels these individuals to do what they do. But I do not believe pouring money into mental health support will curb the problem so much, because society is so large that a person can be socially invisible. Only those groups of people who are willing AND able to turn to such aid for support of reality-detached individuals will benefit from these mental health facilities.

So I am starting to think that this problem REALLY comes from the standardization of societies that are larger than they should be, which results in lack of attention to the individual. People can be completely invisible from other people if they want to; there are individuals who practically NO one knows exist. I believe that is the sign of a community that has grown too large, and is effectively no longer a “community.”

It makes me think that such “communities” (possibly up to as big as countries?) should have a certain maximum number of people. That way everyone can watch out for each other and pay attention to each other’s lives, even if those individuals don’t want it: at least check-ups. I think these kinds of incidents will always happen from time to time if society allows the possibility of people being able to remain detached from other people, and therefore from reality, for their whole lives. A greatly humane society will do its best to not let any such people exist.

So: countries, or some form of human community, should have a maximum ceiling count of individuals who comprise them. And if the population count grows too large, it should be split off into multiple communities, so everyone can be safely accounted for.

This is idealistic and probably cannot happen in reality… but is just a thought!