DEAR EDITOR:

Physical violence does not just appear out of nowhere. It begins with ideas. It begins with words. It’s a whole lot easier to kill and eat an animal if we call it “livestock” rather than a “pet.”

How we talk and think about others directly influences how we treat those people. Believing that someone does not have worth, that someone is less than yourself — these ideas are inherently un-American; that is, if you truly believe that all men are created equal. But we are at a point in our history where we need to accept that that idea of equality is not what we collectively believe.

For a country founded on exploitative labor and devaluing classes of people, this should not come as a shock but as the logical conclusion. In a garden, if you don’t take care of your soil, it doesn’t matter how much you tend to the crops planted — your plants won’t thrive, and eventually nothing will grow. You have to address the root issue. To keep pretending there isn’t any problem is like an alcoholic not wanting to admit they need help or like an indignant teenager thinking they know everything.

Unless we move toward a mindset and a culture of reconciliation, we will stay on this path until it ends (and it will end — it is not designed to be sustainable). But we have to collectively choose to admit our faults. To ask for forgiveness. To say we’re sorry. To truly see one another as ourselves, as our neighbors, as our friends. To love each other. To see a stranger and have our first thought be, “I love you. I never want to see any harm done to you.”

We must abide no slaughter, whether it is in thought, speech or action.

Peace is truth. Conflict resolution is a simple matter of telling the truth. Not living in denial. Not spreading lies about someone else. Not accepting that what someone is saying about you is true. Usually our discomfort with walking into these truths is reflective of a discomfort in ourselves, not someone else. But most times it’s easier to place that discomfort on someone else, which ultimately manifests itself in some sort of harm towards others.

The issue is never “self defense”…”I feared for my life”…”they had a weapon”… . Those are excuses. We have to zoom out. We have to accept that we have been falling short emotionally. It’s possible to create an environment where that type of escalation is unfathomable. It’s possible only if we move from a culture of retaliation to a culture of reconciliation.

ANTHONY LaMARCA

Youngstown