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This episode of Living Myth begins with a review of gun culture and gun violence in the United States, which Michael Meade laments continuously put us all in life and death circumstances. “We are in the kind of crisis where it becomes necessary to recognize the growing presence of death in the middle of life; in the middle of what we call public policing and in the middle of political culture wars.”
Part of the agony involves realizing how a culture that develops wealth and power, but does not develop psychologically, must increasingly suffer more from self-inflicted wounds than from attacks by outside forces. One of the most perverse areas of self-inflicted wounds comes from the militarization of, and excessive use of deadly force, by police forces throughout the country.
At the same time, states like Texas consider legislation that would allow anyone over 21 to carry a gun without a license and without having to pass a background check. In order to demonstrate the increasingly deadly outcomes that must result from the tragic path of modern gun culture, Meade traces the origin of guns back to a dramatic mistake that happened over a thousand years ago.
In one of the greatest ironies of history, gunpowder was invented during an alchemical experiment intending to produce an elixir to prolong life. Instead of enhancing life there was a literal backfire, an explosion that threatened the lives of those handling the volatile mixture. Ten centuries later, there is no magic elixir and people keep making the mistake of not realizing how having weapons with great firepower can only lead to a greater presence of death and a greater loss of life.
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