Not by the gun

There is a reason that pride, or more accurately the excess of it, is known as the deadliest of the seven deadly sins.

Pride is the great dehumanizer, but in elevating ourselves by denying the equal humanity of others, it dehumanizes us as well. Pride is the great isolator, that cuts us off from essential parts of our humanity – the ability to be a part of a true community, to empathize with other human beings, to admit our own fallibility and draw strength from others.

It is pride that cuts us off from society. It is pride that allows us to be so certain that our beliefs are not only true but sacrosanct, that our prejudices are not only accurate but above the need for verification. It is pride that takes refuge in the echo chambers of our egos, where only we know what is right and just, and when the mere suggestion of opposing or alternative views is seen as an attack not on our ideas but on our very selves.

It is pride that allows us to hate.

And it is hate that allows us to kill.

On July 24, before the scheduled graduation rights of the Ateneo Law School, an armed assailant shot and killed three people: Rose Furigay, Victor George Capistrano and Jeneven Bandiala, with two others wounded but alive at the time I write this. But even when these brazen murders were committed in the public eye, when the person that pulled the trigger is clear, still there are those that seek to muddy the perception of right and wrong. That they even attempt to do so is as clear an indication of any of the miasma that permeates what passes for online discourse.

The pride. The hate.

Whatever your ideological beliefs, whomever you place on a pedestal, there can be no justice nor justification to the act that took place on July 24. There will be much discussion of motive in the coming days, as we try to understand and make sense of why and how this happened, and while that is important in trying to find ways to prevent this from occurring in the future, there is no motive that can exonerate or excuse the pre-meditated killing of an unarmed civilian.

Not on a battlefield, not in an alleyway, not in what was supposed to be a joyous public gathering.

It doesn’t matter if the victim is a man or a woman, a saint or a sinner, old or young.

It doesn’t matter if the assailant was educated or not, famous or not, lived an otherwise charitable life or not.

The only right way we can behave as a society, as a nation, is if we loudly and clearly condemn those that would take the lives of others out of hatred, or anger, to make a point, or – even worse – simply because they were in the way.

We must find ways to prevent this from happening again. Ways to reduce the hatred that seethes behind the eyes of so many of our people, hatred that may stem from feelings of powerlessness, of alienation, and of misplaced pride. We must find ways to prevent people from isolating themselves, from speaking only to those who would encourage their worst tendencies, from being unable to reach out for help. Those in power must learn to listen to those at the margins, to seek to address root causes on the ground rather than depend on theory or tradition.

The companies that manage the spaces that have become our public fora must do a better job at deplatforming those that spread hateful rhetoric, at pursuing technologies and strategies that make for safer and healthier social media spaces rather than merely paying attention to user numbers or ad placements. Like it or not, these social media companies are imbued with a public character now, and must comport themselves appropriately.

The availability of deadly weapons must be revisited – yes the event occurred during a gun ban, so it is clear there is a limit to what regulations can do. But it is the tools that make violence fatal – the gun and the bullet that makes actions swiftly irrevocable – and the number of people who both need and are capable of possessing such tools is a short, short list.

Because the kind of power that corrupts is not only the institutional kind. The seductive call of the gun, of fatal violence, is that it promises to be able to solve problems with finality. For the desperate, for those unmoored from any bonds to society, it can seem to be the great equalizer.

But it is instead nothing more than the deadliest hubris. The idea that any individual – without a legal framework, without procedural checks, without due process – can determine with certainty whether another person should live or die is hubris of the highest order. The pride not of a moral human being, but of one that believes themselves to be equal to a god – to be able to weigh the value of a human life, to be judge and executioner.

But there is no god in the gun. No justice to be found in one convinced they could do no wrong. No glory in acts that endanger, that slaughter, those that just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

As a society we must stand against this. As a people we must condemn this. Motivation can explain murder but cannot exonerate it. Absolute certainty is pride in its purest form, not a virtue but a vice.

And at the opposite spectrum of such pride lies humility. Because human beings are weak. We are fallible and incomplete. We must depend on others, on friends, on strangers, on those very different from ourselves. It is only through the hard work of dialogue and compromise, empathy and cooperation that we can carry on as a nation.

It is in our collective efforts that we can find solutions – find salvation.

Not in the false certainty of the zealot.

And not in the barrel of a gun.