mongolian hordes among us

Before they had gone to bed, all the men from every part of the city of Sodom – both young and old – surrounded the house.  They called to Lot, “Where are the men who came to you tonight?  Bring them out to us so that we can have sex with them.”  ~ Genesis 19

Society is only as strong as each and every member allows it to be.

So observed my friend Reuben with the following question: during an opera performance, why doesn’t anyone ever just stand up and scream at the top of their lungs? Why doesn’t this ever happen during a church service, or a movie? It could happen at any moment – anyone could decide to rupture the crowd’s precarious silence. But how many events have we attended in our lifetimes where it has never happened? Amazingly, civility maintains a steady sway over every audience member, allowing events to take place undisturbed. Civility wields that much power.

We’ve come a long way from the barbarism of the past. In our civil society today we don’t worry about Viking clans or Mongolian hordes sweeping down on our suburban cul-de-sacs to rape and pillage. In the past, that sort of thing was a real and ever-possible threat. In any season your family could be beaten, raped, and hauled off as slaves to another land by a stampede of marauders without conscience. Morals and law meant nothing in the face of club or mob. Disgusting accounts like the one in Genesis 19 (above) were an everyday concern in the sense that they could happen at any time.

Thank God we live in a civilized society where law rules above brute force.

Or does it? Rape occurs every night in every city across this land. So does murder – not just in the inner cities, in the suburbs as well. Kidnappings are so frequent, automakers have redesigned trunks to allow release from the inside. Even our children’s schools are the random targets of bombings and Terminator-style shootings.

I used to consider our society civilized. Perhaps the society of our parents was – ours is not. We may not be plagued by Mongolian hordes, but our lives are every bit as vulnerable to the lawless defilement and destruction that bedeviled our ancestors. The only difference is that now the incidents are on a smaller scale, happening under the cover of darkness, or in lonely places – one-on-one, three-on-two, occuring randomly yet daily across our land.

Of course, from a philosophical perspective, the security of any civilized society is in fact an illusion. Anything can happen anywhere at any time – this was as true for our parents’ generation as it is for ours. But watching the evening news these days attests to this fact in a way our parents never knew.

Reuben’s original question might be asked another way: why doesn’t anyone ever just walk into a school and start shooting students? It could happen at any time. But why doesn’t it ever happen?

The prevailing wisdom of a generation ago would have said, “You’re right – it never happens, even though at any moment anyone could do it. The power of civility is amazing.” But we are the generation that has seen this occur – frequently. We are the ones watching the most disgusting, random, satanic acts play a regular part in our evening news. Our social fabric is disintegrating.

Nothing is secure. It never was, but we’re realizing it in a whole new way.