Commentary: It doesn't take a village if we all just stay home

In light of the recent mass shootings, I have a modest proposal. What if we stop going outside?

We are already halfway there. Most of our public functions can be performed in the comfort and safety of our own homes. We can be educated online. We can shop, date and many of us can work online. We have online meetings already. Work, school and even church meetings can be rearranged so that it all happens at home.

Utah already offers online school. Tutoring is also available online. Parents or babysitters would be required to stay home with children. If they wish, parents could form small groups to share the burden of watching and educating their children.

For those people who must work on such projects as maintenance and repair of our roads, they can be assigned an armed guard much as they are in Central and South America. Most of our dangerous and nasty work is already performed by immigrants who are used to such conditions.

Our roads wouldn’t need so much repair, anyway, if we just didn’t drive on them. We could stop using so much gas and oil just by driving less. It would surely cut down on pollution and those dreaded red alerts. Just stay inside.

Soon, we will have self-driving cars that will come to our door and drop us off where ever we want to go. Before entering such a car, each person would have to agree to hold the company non-liable in case someone shot them from an overpass, for example. Traffic accidents would become a thing of the past.

Our state and national parks would be protected if people would just stop visiting them.

Hospitals are already turning into fortresses. That would accelerate. Speaking of illness, medical institutions are currently working on diagnosing people wherever they happen to be. This can be expanded. If, in fact, we rarely leave home, there will much less communicable illness. Flu epidemics would be a thing of the past.

What about our public venues like sports stadiums, concert venues and zoos? We must give them up. Anyone can see it’s not safe to be in public. In the bombing at the Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, the bomber knew he could not enter. So, he waited outside for people to leave. It doesn’t make sense to attend such events. It’s just too dangerous.

In the special case of zoos, I think most of us would be happy to look at the animals, birds and reptiles online. We can maintain such areas as preserves to protect the animals and cameras can let us view them night and day, anytime we wish.

Nightclubs and bars will not be nearly as much fun, not to mention dances. But I have faith that the problems inherent in such public venues can be overcome. Soon, people will blanch at the idea of being together packed into a sweaty mass in such places. Drinking at home alone will become even more popular than it is now.

The more I think about this, the more it seems not only desirable but inevitable. Our homes will truly become our castles. We can outfit them any way we desire for our protection.

If we want to go somewhere in person where it’s free and safe to move around, we can always take a plane and fly to Norway.

Sherri Park, West Jordan, is an old person who stays home all the time anyway.