Normal is pregnant with awful.
- Brian Doyle, One Long River of Song
The late Oregon author, Brian Doyle, had a way of condensing complexity into a few short, pithy words, or crafting a parable of society to fit within a small coastal community; perhaps even a fishing boat.
Normal has always held the potential for joy, while quietly gestating awful. Modern science and societal institutions have done wonders in reducing or eliminating many sources of awful, through advancements in medical care, education, and vastly improved communications.
But progress has been uneven, and many of the consequences unanticipated. We enjoy highly-effective medical interventions, which can mitigate a broad range of illnesses and injuries. But, for many in our society, this healing often comes at the cost of a lifetime's savings, and a descent into inescapable debt. Our abandonment of governmental support means that those who seek a better life through higher educational also often find themselves saddled with years of debt. Advancements in medicine, food production, and technology have allowed hundreds of millions of people a chance to attain the lifestyles previously available to only those in the most affluent of countries. But the material goods they now seek accelerate the depletion of natural resources, and generation of waste, including greenhouse gases that are changing climates worldwide.
In our country, we have an uniquely dreadful version of awful that lurks within the quotidian. An assortment of weapons that have been developed to defend our country are now sold indiscriminately to consumers, with no regard for the very real devastation they routinely wreak upon innocents. Church-goers, shoppers, high school, and even grade school students and their families so often now have normal days punctuated by incomprehensible butchery, that we risk becoming numb to it. Though the individual manifestations are random, the industry that markets the weapons targets troubled young men, who fantasize about the glory of battle - only to live out and impose their fantasies on unarmed, helpless strangers. Of all the versions of awful that emerge regularly from the normal, this is the most preventable and the least forgivable.
