What WOULD make a difference?

Yesterday I went to St.Hilda-St.Patrick's church in Edmonds to take down my Contemplative Photographer's Alphabet exhibit, then continued on up to Shaw for the night, then over to Orcas in the morning to visit my daughter, and then home.

I'd been looking forward to a full night's sleep, away from our scratching dog. But as most anyone could see, looking at this gorgeous photo I shot at Squaw Bay last night, we were in for some significant thunderstorms. So I lost a few hours. Again.  No peaceful night for me.

I keep thinking of Shakespeare's phrase -- "and it must follow, as the night the day." See a thundercloud, no matter how gorgeous -- thunder is likely to follow. And for some reason it makes me think of the whole mess at Penn State: put that much money and power behind something, no matter how wonderful it is, and it's inevitable, as night follows day, that people are going to do their best to protect that power, that money, that status quo.

And, as my husband points out, as long as we insist on punishing bad behavior instead of treating it, the likelihood of coverup is going to continue to be high.  About the only good I see coming out of this whole mess is the possibility that people will finally get that "macho" and "homosexual" are not necessarily antonyms.

So then I thought, well -- okay -- I'm horrified by what went on at Penn State. But I wish this level of investigative attention could be brought to the decision made back in the Bush administration to invade Iraq. Where did all THAT false information come from? How did that happen? How did we get sucked into believing? What about all the lives that were affected by THOSE lies?

I even thought about publishing that last paragraph on Facebook. But the last time I posted something political on Facebook it touched off such a firestorm that now I'm really wary. I mean, what happened at Penn State is serious. But is closing down the school the answer? (Although maybe they should consider closing down -- or at least eviscerating -- the athletic program.) And aren't there some other horrific things in the world that deserve this level of media attention?  And isn't almost anything I say about this offensive to SOMEONE?

What I do think is that making an example of Penn State doesn't really solve the problem.  Do we really think Penn State is the only place stuff like this happens? That would be like saying Clinton was the only president who ever had a little something going on the side. Or that we should close down a whole mess of Catholic churches. And the Boy Scouts.  And, hello -- I can't help noticing folks seem to be getting WAY more upset about the rape of these young men than they generally do about the rape of young women...   I'm just sayin...

But none of that lessens the magnitude of the Penn State situation.  The problem is that we really need some serious societal change here. And I honestly don't think scapegoating and punishment are the answer; they just seem to drive stuff underground.  I mean, has the war on drugs stopped drugs?

But what does it say when I'm not even comfortable talking about this on Facebook? All I could think of were all the ways anything I said could be attacked.  Every piece of this -- rape, drugs, war, punishment, athletic programs, the Bush administration -- pushes someone's buttons.  And I'm not wanting to push buttons, or minimize ANY of these problems.  I just wish we could find a better way of solving them -- because I think they're all rooted in some of the same dirt.

I don't know. I really don't have any answers. All I know is that, as Einstein says, "insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." We've been punishing people for this stuff for years, and it doesn't seem to have made a difference.

Einstein also said, "Intellectuals solve problems, geniuses prevent them." We've got some incredible geniuses in the world.  Couldn't we put them to work on this problem? What WOULD make a difference?