Michael Nagler is exactly right in his
commentary on “Beyond Ferguson”.
Without getting at the root cause of such
brutal incidents, the traumas and tragedies will never go away. Focusing on the
details of one incident or another as if a legal investigation would reveal some
sort of truth is like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. Also, an
essential part of getting at the root cause is “the shift from a
thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society,” as Nagler quotes Martin
Luther King, Jr., as saying with regard to the Vietnam War.
Violence, militarism, and materialism, I believe, are a
consequence of our cultural worldview of separation, fear, and thus the need
for protection from one another (and from nature, as well, by the way). On the
contrary, the best protection is connection, not separation.