When I was 18, I joined a cult and didn’t realize it. Alongside Catholic priests and parishioners, I helped organize and run a woodland weekend for high school students centered around bible teaching. It was always such a fun time — guitars, Frisbees, new friends. At the climax of the weekend, students would crack under guilt, shame and feelings of inadequacy that manifested through a long sequence of enclosed prayer and confession while passionate Christian rock jammed in the background. Teens, convinced that safe sex had left them in “sin” were emotionally broken. Many were literally brought to tears.
However, once they weathered this storm, they’d feel an unbridled high. They’d be overjoyed that they had been “saved.” A euphoric atmosphere would sweep the grounds. We’d ride the bus home, chanting and singing.
It seems so backwards. What were we cheering for? It was a false victory. We only felt the need to rejoice because we’d been manipulated to believe in some made-up vaccine.
I felt this same eerie backwardness as hordes of college students paraded around Boston, partying after the death of one suspect and the arrest of another had ended the marathon-bombing saga.
We were emotionally broken, so conditioned to failures of society — bombings, shootings and death — so as to think that the ugly end of a bloody mess warranted celebrating. We partied, this apparent blood lust poisoning our minds. “We got that bastard,” people shouted in the streets, taking pleasure in the ordeal. People exclaimed how it was one of the “most amazing experiences of their entire life.”
Why? Because murder suspects were tracked down after killing a police officer? Then, both were shot and one died. That’s nothing to celebrate. That’s just the sad end of a sad story.
The pair in question murdered and injured our fellow human beings, but death and arrest is never something to celebrate. To celebrate that is to celebrate a fundamental failure of society. You’re celebrating two lives wasted on evil and the ugly necessity that must ensue to stop them — justice. We need justice for societal order, but it’s not something to be celebrated. Justice ends a negative, but it’s not a positive.
Are we going to march down to the state prison and celebrate as murderers on death row are lethally injected? They were threats to society. Police took them off the street. They received justice. But you would never celebrate that. Would you?
My high school peers were made to believe that sex with their significant others and beer pong were things to feel guilty about. When given a fake remedy for their contrived wickedness, they rejoiced in it. In that same way, a pair of terrorists spent several days breaking us down emotionally until we had been brainwashed to believe that death and arrest were worth celebrating. We joined a cult without even realizing it.
Frank Marasco is a senior in the College of Communication. He can be reached at fcm820@bu.edu.
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