We’re all good people, this means you reader. None more valuable than the next, we’re all made of the same stuff; scooped up from the primordial soup and given consciousness for a second before being rather quickly spit back into the broth for eternity.
Historically homo sapiens, primate, has been one of the most social animals in the kingdom. We have relied on one another for so long in fact that our species has evolved to both develop slower and live longer than most of the animals our size. We are hard wired to rely on our neighbor. What happens when a person is not able to develop those connections?
First, why aren’t these connections happening? It’s environmental and biological. There is generational trauma from past wars to blame; Vietnam and the war on drugs amongst countless others. There was the pandemic. There is the internet. There is capitalism and consumerism. There are the worlds leaders of religions and countries and corporations hunkered down in bunkers built so densely of ideology that there is no space for those that seek refuge. Institutions that historically provided us community just don’t exist currently as they once did.
Humans are able to do without the necessity of neighbor for only so long; indefinite isolation leads to death practically exclusively. Sometimes that death looks like obvious suicide but sometimes it’s a slower one, it’s failure to thrive, it’s addiction to things that make the moment more bearable and the future bleaker. Suffering is easier to bear when the end is in sight.
Incarceration isn’t a cure but warm beds and meals help. Harsher legal penalty will not solve our current crisis but kinder faces might.