A lot of the facts pouring in from Aurora, CO sound familiar. Neighbors say he kept to himself. Wasn't this true of the Virginia Tech gunman? And the Columbine gun-boys?
It's ironic that a group of total strangers gathered in a public space to share an entertainment experience were gunned down by a young man whose mental illness was most-likely amplified by his social isolation and subsequent alienation from others.
Sadly, shootings in public theatres may have a short-term effect of keeping people at home. And, yet, what ills us as a society is precisely this. Too many of us spend too many days hidden from view, behind the locked doors of our homes, not talking to or seeing another living human being for days on end. With this increased isolation and its ever increased prevalence on the American landscape, the mental health of the nation is slowly eroding.
The only antidote to such public acts of destruction is to pull ourselves out of ourselves and force ourselves up and out and back into the world to look, listen and talk to one another.
The alternative is too terrible to fathom.