I was deeply touched by the message in the homily given by the assistant pastor in my church last week that I feel I should share it with my readers.
He told a story of two fierce animals in the jungle – a tiger and a lion – which got engaged in a fight. Both were strong, powerful and intent in annihilating each other. Both consumed with rage, they ferociously attacked each other. While the vicious turmoil was going on, they both became aware that they were being observed from above. They looked up and saw a flock of vultures, winging around ready to swoop down on the carcass of the loser. The two animals disengaged and went on separate ways.
The homilist saw the parallelism of the fable and the incident a few days ago wherein an altercation between a cyclist and the former Ontario Attorney General resulted in grim consequences for both parties. The cyclist died and the Attorney General has now to face a legal fight in the courts of law that he once supervised.
The homilist reminded the congregation how we could lose everything even our lives in a sudden surge of rage that dims our capacity to make the right choices; to avoid such grim consequences.
We hear and read about such incidents everyday. They happen in homes, in offices, in the streets, in dark alleys even in schools. In many cases, wounded pride, jealousy, family honour, revenge and rejection are the cited causes of violence. In all instances of violence, the perpetrators appear to forget the possible consequences of their acts, the Vultures that hover and are ready to sweep down and feast on the spoils.
If we would closely look at the various motivations that such individuals or even groups have to commit violence, we would realize that they all mount to just one thing – power. Once a person feels that power is slipping from his fingers, the tendency to fight for recovery occurs, most of the time, with violence.
The father who strangled his daughter who would not obey the family traditions was consumed by the fear of losing his power, his control over a member of his family and overlooked what would happen to him because of his decision. A jealous husband kills his wife. Jealousy is a feeling of inadequacy, a sense of a loss of grip over someone, whom one thinks is turning her interest to another man. Why do people commit violence in revenge? It is because of that feeling that something was taken from them – maybe physical objects or self-price. Amor propio!
Powerful individuals, groups or nations safeguard the maintenance of their positions through arming themselves. We have seen and heard of atrocities in nations triggered by dictators. Right in our midst, gangs fight with one another to maintain their hold on certain people or areas.
The development in technology has increased the need for fuel. Oil has become a very precious commodity. Possession of its sources is power. Control of this commodity is power. Nations that produce oil have now became powers that wage violence in order to secure their status.
In all these struggles for supremacy, the vultures are forgotten. The consequences, the end-results, the material, physical and emotional damage are set aside. Our penitentiaries are full. Our courts are overloaded with cases. In spite of the annual increase in police force, we seem not to have enough officers to tackle the cases of violence that occur daily. Stricter laws against possession of illegal firearms have been imposed but shootings seem not to have lessened. After the Second World War, when the long awaited peace finally came, many people thought that the last of such calamities had already been terminated, but not long after that, there were the Korean and Vietnamese conflicts.
The search for and maintenance of power have continued in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, Central and South America and Africa. In some places the downtrodden have united and fought the powers in their governments for share of those powers.
Another source of conflict for power has become prominent in recent years – drugs. The passion to control this evil in society has cost thousands of lives.
With all the progress in science and medicine, with the new discoveries that prolong life, our search for and maintenance of power have claimed thousands of lives.
For every act of violence, the casualties always go beyond the direct victim and perpetrator. In individual cases of violence, the impact on the family is far reaching. Orphaned children lose their protector, guide and support. The perpetrators’ family also suffers! He or she languishes in jail, while the children are left uncared for and with the stigma of a parent imprisoned. The general public indirectly gets affected by another member of its society to be supported in jail.
It will take volumes to inventory the physical material and emotional ravages of group violence. Gang wars create fear in the community. Civil wars destroy the economy, ruin lives and wreck property. International wars are great barriers to progress destroying stabilities of nations. This is not counting the change in individual’s lives brought about by war casualties. Every time the media announce a death of a Canadian soldier, we think of the parents, wife or husband, children and other relatives left behind. We mourn for a while over the loss and feel compassion for the family and then we forget. Until another death is again announced and we go over again mourning.
Where do we stand in these waves of events that seem to roll over us day after day without our control? Do we just let them happen and hope that we do not become direct victims of violence? Do we become like one of those children in school and watches how a bully taunt a wimpy child and moves back and hopes that he does not become the next target of this brawn power?
Or are we trying to put a dent to this burgeoning human tendency, with a cool head in approaching problems in our relationship with people? Let us make choices with the vultures in mind. Let us not allow ourselves or other people to be the carcass that the Vultures can feed on.
As the homilist last week pointed out- we do not know what actually had happened that precipitated the grim outcome of the encounter between the cyclist and the attorney general but it was clear that some wrong choices were made that delivered both of them to the vultures.