12/15/2025
No murder is more significant than another.
The murder of children in Gaza.
The murder of Jews in Bondi.
The murders of students on college campuses.
The murder of beloved friends, artists, elders, and strangers whose names never make headlines.
Murder is the problem.
Violence as a solution is the problem.
Until we root out the eye-for-an-eye mentality and the gun accessibility that we have, we are doomed to repeat the very conditions that give rise to murder itself.
Until our education and reward systems valorize peace and connection over superiority, domination, and power, we will continue this moraleless slaughter.
Until mental health is valued more than material wealth, we will lose more than we can count.
The heart breaks the same for everyone.
Murder steals sanity.
It steals peace.
It steals time with our most precious beloveds.
It rips our faith in life itself.
And it does not stop with the dead.
The murderer, too, is cast into a kind of hell realm—one they do not return from in this lifetime. A life defined by the moment they crossed an irreversible line. Violence not only destroys the victim; it corrodes the soul of the perpetrator and the moral fabric of the society that rationalizes it.
The reason we have not vanquished murder is, at least in part, because we continue to justify it in some cases. We tell ourselves some killings are necessary, righteous, strategic, or inevitable. We convince ourselves that some lives are more grievable than others. When murder is politicized, it is a permanent stain on our souls.
If we truly want the hurt and hate to end, we must stand against the most primitive, reptilian parts of our brains. These parts crave revenge, punishment, retaliation, domination, and supremacy. These impulses feel powerful, but they are ancient reflexes, not evolved solutions.
Violence promises relief, yet it delivers inherited trauma, grief, and justification for the next act of violence.