With this recent mass shooting, the most destructive in Australia in decades, I’ve been thinking about how we see freedom here in America. The way our different countries handle civil liberties is rooted in our history, and rooted in the types of Europeans who ended up where.
Personalities
There seems to have not been many times in history where personality meant anything.
Imagine you are an individual in history: For the most part, there might have been differences between you and your peers, but they would be largely canceled out by the average culture, and even more than that, by logic found in years of efforts of trying to survive. Logic kept ingrained as “the way you have to live” of your culture. More than anything, we were all just trying to survive. We had to work together to do that, or die trying. We couldn’t prove ourselves as individuals. We had to prove ourselves as worthwhile to the group, in a much more literal way than today.
And save for the few geographies on the planet (at times with the right technology) where travelers could survive and settle elsewhere regularly in a single lifetime, our personalities as individuals would just melt into the culture. None of us could be exceptional alone. There was no “New World”, and there was no old either. We would be right next to our parents for the rest of our life.
And then something changed.
The Journey
The New World was discovered. A faraway journey was, pretty suddenly in human history, available to all. Europeans for the most part first, which is who I’m focusing on today. This time was the opening of the New World… and later, Australia. You could suddenly, as a European, if you were materially able enough, go away and start a new life and be completely freed from the constraints of your parents, your culture, your Old World, the past in its entirety. And something we forget: In this journey, we cut ourselves off from cultural knowledge that kept us alive for hundreds to thousands of years back there. We then tried to rewrite it for ourselves.
In America, since it’s where I grew up, I’ll say that I can see the results of this journey in every aspect of our culture. I don’t know about any good sides, so I’ll just speak on the bad. I’m going through a personal-level consequence of this journey right now, but everyone in the world is dealing with consequences of this in a general sense. Because this journey shaped our culture, and since America became big, America has shaped a lot of our world. For worse.
So what did this journey give our American culture? What do I actually mean? What do I see in American culture overall? And how does it affect our gun control laws today?
American Culture
Imagine again you’re an individual in the past. You travel to America, you’re young and brash and your parents will never again tell you what to do, tell you how to live your life. You married already, and this applies to men or women. You’re adventurous, brave, and inclined towards “making your own way in the world”. Never again will you be held by your old culture, your parents’ way of doing things. You think you’re smarter than them. You got this. And after you and your group are there for a little while, you learn survival skills that your Old World family “could never”. You made your own way in the world, despite the hardships, and now you really think you know it all. And that’s what you tell your kids, too. And suddenly, a new, brash, childish culture is born. A culture that took in a bunch of excited, arrogant, violence-prone young people and nothing else. And yes, with their guns and technologies they could survive, and that was enough to prove to ourselves that this way of living was worthwhile. Basically, we could… but we really shouldn’t. But we marched on anyways. And it became our culture. Freedom and all.
Oh, and when our parents came back… we didn’t like that one bit. There was that whole war about it. And we would have lost if not for Britain being a bit busy at that moment! While our neighbors in Canada didn’t throw such a fit, we did. We were our own nation. Even if we won our independence based on circumstance, not on our own military ability against Britain. It was a joke. We didn’t win anything, we just got lucky, and we pretend like we are products of our ability and not of our environment. We’re liars.
We look at the state of our nation now, versus other countries, and America is crazy violent. Independent and stupid. Individuals can barely handle working together compared to elsewhere, can barely handle the thought of not everyone pulling their own weight. Can’t see the big picture. Very brash, very short-sighted, very selfish. We became the biggest imperial nation this planet has ever seen.
We are a culture based in a long string of accidents. America is a product of its founding environment. Killing natives to get what and where you want gave us a greater tendency for violence. Slavery gave us that terrible racial entitlement. A bunch of men with guns in a land where they could do whatever they want being our founders, certainly didn’t make women’s independence any closer. Running away from home led to running away from your problems further and further West too. All we do is fight, and it’s like we like it! We openly welcome violence as the cost of freedom. I have different morals than that.
Culture of the Other White British Colonies
This section is more fluid. I’m no expert, but if you compare America, Canada and Australia, America obviously stands out. Personally, I fit into the morals of the ones who didn’t fight a silly little war of independence, the ones who didn’t end up becoming a loose cannon that the world had to listen to out of military fear.
I’m not a person prone to accepting violence as the answer. I’m a person who would fight to keep stability, but wouldn’t throw my weight around at others. I’m not here to break things. I’m here to build things up. It’s a fundamentally different lifestyle than what you get in America. So let’s talk about what they have, and what they do right, and what we don’t.
First and foremost, neither Canada nor Australia is the violent imperialistic superpower that we are. They’re simply, literally, not as evil as us. Yes, we were all evil to the native populations and then some, but nobody seems to match what the American military does in the world anymore, and I see that sense of excessive violence rubbing off heavily on Americans, whereas other similar nations don’t seem to have as many violence-apologists in their midst.
Next, unlike us, the other two’s citizens get a pretty great deal on life (considering we’re all countries financially well-off). Some of these “quality of life” standards can be debated and are a matter of personal preference, like how I personally don’t consider amassing money by itself to mean a high quality of life: Americans are very rich on this planet, but that doesn’t necessarily make us happy! But other standards of quality of life are less debatable, and pretty openly known by most in America to be lower here than elsewhere. Infrastructure, healthcare, education over time… We are the richest country on the planet, and apparently none of it reaches the citizens themselves!
I see and point out this great distinction between our nations as a result of our respective histories. To me, it is important to remember how much we are all products of our environments, and how impossible and delusional it is to be completely “individual”.
Independency Delusion
Hundreds of years ago, the colonists of what would become America came here, and readily forgot their own history, and were almost completely shut off from the land from which they came from. Land that, had they all been made to stay, I believe they would have cared for much better. Cities maybe would have gotten less disgusting on their own, if only our ancestors were made to sit in a pool of their own filth for just a little while longer with no escape route in sight. But instead, they arrived here, saw something clean and pristine and beautiful, and were too violent and young and stupid to do anything good with it. They would just kill those who got in their way. Even if it wasn’t that way for every colonising group from day one, the violence soon became a piece of our culture, a way of life. It never left. It got stronger.
Maybe if women had already figured out how to get themselves educated, as the violence-averse side of our species (on average), we would’ve had a better shot. But it had not been possible yet, because they were too uneducated to see this big problem, let alone solve it. They were workers for someone else every day first and foremost.
One day, there was a chance for a war of independence, and our founders took it. And equally by chance, they actually won. This victory was our first delusion: That such a victory actually meant we were strong. But in reality, we had won because our opponents were distracted.
So now our cultural backbone was built: That we were free, independent, and strong. Regardless of how it was just a happy accident. And these traits were idolized on the individual level; I don’t know when it started, but I know the adoption of these cultural traits follows the snowball effect.
The 1950s in America grew that snowball exponentially. Before then, the Manifest Destiny era of westward expansion toted that cultural pride of independence, and also a bunch of media used effectively as propaganda. Media about the “wild west”, media about the joys of a homestead out there. Little stories that made us individualism-craving maniacs happy, and told a nice story that perfectly agreed with the way our culture was snowballing into desiring independence above all else. Made us feel important in the way our culture was heading more and more towards: Being important as an individual, and not as a member of a group. As a leader when everyone else is a follower. More important than the group, more important than the rest. (What happens when we’re ALL supposed to be leaders..?)
To finish this off, let’s think about what happens when everyone wants to be independent, and how stupid that would look. I’m a little tired of being funny, so I’ll say it straight up: If humans were capable of being independent, and that change happened today, then one very special person would have to hurry the fuck up and somehow make sure they themselves had the ability and technology and number of hands and space in their brain to create a truly test-tube baby all by themself, and make sure that little shit would come out fully equipped to forage and hunt and crawl and not get its little soft spot pushed in out there. A purely independent creature. And then oh wait oops since it’s so independent even if it does mate one day it’s gonna abandon its offspring, because they don’t need it and it doesn’t need them. Except offspring does need us, and then humanity just died. Or if we’re being real literal here, a truly independent creature like itself (not born of another human) would only be able to reproduce to completion if it was male and there was a woman around who wasn’t so delusional towards independence as him, because if the perfectly independent creature was female and pregnant she’d get rid of that thing while it was still bothering her insides. (Let’s be honest, the delusion of independence being a functional way of life only works if you’re a man, and also only if you forget you were ever born. And forget you were raised. And forget women are people in your society too. Very, very silly delusion, but that part goes even further back, way before even America was born, back towards the dawn of Christianity, back towards the agricultural revolution itself in some ways too). I know this isn’t a comprehensive logical tear-down, and I could go a lot further, but that wasn’t what the point of this article was supposed to be.
A life spent fighting for independence is one of the stupidest things I’ve ever heard. All it does it pit you against one another until the whole damn society self-destructs.
Let’s go back again to the other two countries I keep referencing, Canada and Australia. They didn’t have the same history as us. Those two stayed with the Monarchy, which was really the logical choice. Not that the British Monarchy was a great, moral partner, but America did not leave all dramatically to be a good nation on this planet either, so since morals are all cast aside, America was the stupid one here. It was young, and needed more time to grow, but its people were itching for a fight, and so fight they did. Couldn’t just play nice. The founding generation’s ancestors had already ran away from their problems in Europe generations ago, and now they wanted to seal the deal, prove once and for all that they could live without remembering their history or being nice to it. But when they got the itch for national independence, Canada and Australia did not run and hide. They stuck around with the Monarchy and kept living peacefully with one another just fine.
A Quick Rant
America again: our cultural traits have only grown inside us as individuals here over time. Since the 1950s, we have gone even further into believing the lie that we don’t need to respect where we came from. We feel no connection to this land, so we move around without care, and make everything in our cities look exactly the same from coast to coast. Families are shattered into tiny “nuclear” pieces, and both parent and child see no use in keeping their kin close by. Something in us as individuals is broken to make this all work. Even in our current single-family-household system, living with extended family makes everything much easier in life, if only we play nice. I have always believed that. But our parents don’t play nice, and they were the ones to show us how to act, how to never let anyone in because your individual self is just oh-so important, and we simply NEVER connect so deep with others and our mental health suffers and everything is wrong with all of us as a result. And we never get back together with our parents because they never got back together with theirs and all three generations here feel like something is wrong with them but hey, every other family is doing the same thing so it can’t be that bad right? But it is. It is that bad. Being cut off from family is that bad. We bounce around between being abused and being cut off/cutting them off first. We can’t just play nice, everyone is just so egotistical and thinks themselves too important to do so. Everyone has “boundaries” that can’t be crossed, and if you can’t cross someone’s boundaries then they never change, and that’s how we’re taught to live, and honestly it’s one of the only mentally possible ways to handle being kicked out before you’re ready, and almost all of us were kicked out or made to leave before we were ready, and the cycle of creating a permanently infantile nation continues. Snowball effect.
Clearly I hit a nerve in myself while writing.
Gun Laws
It’s not a big leap to say that a nation of individuals who are happy to accept violence is also happy to accept that everyone should have a gun. But I want to put my own spin on things here. I want to go back to talking about our history, and talking about the delusion of independence, and relating it all to the violence we do unto ourselves.
I like referencing the American Revolutionary War in this, because it is both the main reason we still have citizens with guns today, and it was a complete accident that we won at all. We won our independence from Britain not through our military prowess, but through the lucky little fact that Britain wasn’t doing so good domestically, and it was overwhelmed and didn’t have enough resources to stop us. And then we the people got to keep our guns for militia reasons via the Second Amendment, just in case we ever had to protect the country again.
It’s been a cute idea, that a bunch of random people (men) with guns could ever protect our country. Untrained civilians. Especially because now, the main reason people want to keep their guns is to theoretically fight the government itself. Or, you know, kill their neighbors if the apocalypse ever goes down, because we’re all high on independence, and killing your neighbors if the situation arises is totally a normal think to plan to do. Murder, if only you could. Anarchy, if only you could! I could talk about media and video games here but I really, really don’t need to, since we all know what they contain: Senseless violence, just like everyone seems to want.
This mass shooting at Bondi Beach in Australia was that nation’s worst in almost thirty years. And we here in America, the richest murder playground of the world, experience these mass shootings in the news almost on the daily.
Now I’ll talk about our respective countries’ more foundational histories. America got its independence through a fight that they shouldn’t have won but did and then got all high-and-mighty about it, as if they deserved the win at all. Meanwhile, Canada and Australia just sorta… asked nicely. Not literally asked, I understand, but come on, doesn’t it make sense that if you wanna prove you’re such a grown-up country who deserves independence (and you’re obviously not being the victim of racism here because you’re mostly the same damn race as your mother country), you should act civilly? Why in this whole wide world would you want to incite more senseless violence when you don’t have to? Violence should be something we avoid, and Canada and Australia are certainly leaning much more that way than America ever will. Their histories show it, and their current actions show it too.
We are all products of our environments. The people who founded each of these three nations had a choice in how to act. And before that, they had a choice in where to be. We are all products of our environments, but we also make our own environments. Especially true the further time has gone on, and the more we humans live in cities (built environment) and are completely removed from nature (natural environment). The results of choices in government, policy, and city-building too hundreds of years ago have snowballed everywhere they landed. We can see the safe countries getting safer and more civil, livable, and inviting. And we can see the country of the United States of America self-destructing, killing its own people with its own people with guns and keeping us here all scared while its government tries to kill the planet and everything good and sacred on this Earth in the background, on your land and mine.
Conclusion
History will always tell us what we need to know. As individuals, we have to navigate this world and realize how much bigger this environment is than us, but we also have to remember that the people who shaped our current environments were just people too. Especially in this countries where the old, native populations were replaced with new, colonial ones, and a new culture and government and everything was suddenly born all at once.
I want to reassure people that these countries are still very much growing. Very much so experimenting on how they can throw their own weight around… or not. Nothing has ever before been seen like the destructive forces some of the world’s governments and corporations have now. The planet is dying, do not forget. But these bouts of destruction will not last forever. Once things settle down one day, with the help of people making the right decisions and taking matters into their own hands for the good of everyone on the planet and not just one group or another especially, we’re gonna all have a good, fun time adapting to the bullshit weather we created for ourselves. The people who are going to have good lives going forward are the ones who do well to pick up the broken pieces that everyone else left behind, and make something beautiful with them. Even if the broken pieces are from violence, from the stripping down of once-beautiful nature, from war. And, this last part is a bit of a secret, but women instead of men are uniquely predisposed to handle that sort of stress and still come out on top.
Good luck…
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