avoid growing angry and bitter

white supremacist james von brunn walked into the holocaust museum and started shooting people, according to news reports.

how does someone get to that place? how do they become so angry and violent? i’ve heard many say that a gift of old age is that one does not have to care what others think anymore. i don’t think they were going as far as shooting people in that viewpoint.

i’m assuming few start off that way. are five year old children ever so angry and violent? maybe there is some genetic basis or mental illness that comes to play, and some people hide it better than others or are more passable or functional. but really to grow older and become as angry and fixed in our views in our final years as von brunn, that has to be cultivated which raises the question, how do we avoid ourselves evolving toward an extreme state of being as we age?

i guess this extreme example could be dementia. if our brain starts to dissolve, then anything is possible and i only hope that someone realizes if i start to go crazy as i get old, and puts me somewhere safe. may i be so lucky if i lose it completely.

but it sounds like in von brunn’s case that he just reinforced his anger and viewpoints over and over and over again until he was completely out of touch with an ethical viewpoint. so in the same way, do we as a society have a responsibility to catch extreme views early – in the same way that we would protect a dementia patient from hurting self and others – or is that against our sense of freedom?

i suspect meditation is an excellent approach to avoid getting more angry and disgruntled as one gets older, and to see one’s solidified viewpoints. but that only helps oneself not society in general, unless we make it more acceptable and hip to do… going to yoga is hip. going to the gym is recommended. i think going to a meditation class after work is just as useful, but it is certainly not hip.