How far have we gone?

I am saddened tonight at the thought of a six-year-old in an underground bunker.  And I'm not even over the Sandy Hook massacre yet.  How violent have we become?
  I've been reading an article in Smithsonian magazine by Ron Rosenbaum about Jaron Lanier. Lanier, the writer says, "was one of the creators of our current digital reality" and who "was an early advocate of making information absolutely free." Downloading artistic works, music sharing that bypasses the artist, for example, damages the whole economy which hurts the middle class in the main. He sees the direction that across-the-board freedom of all information combined with the anonymity that the internet enables allows us to escape responsibility for our words and actions.  Instead of a utopian ideal of the will of the masses lifting us above violence and individual hegemony, he sees a mob rule, "not an enabling of democracy, but an accretion of tribalism" and "slowly turning us into a nation of hate-filled trolls."
I am not intending to connect all the violence in our society to the internet, but the argument in this entire article (titled "The Spy Who Came In From The Cold 2.0") certainly sees some connection.
We have a great loosening of peer-control.  I am worried about how far we actually have gone in that direction.  Someone want to argue back with me?

Who am I?

I am actually several people -- all struggling to be the defining one.  I am a United Methodist minister, now retired.  Don't yawn and move on:  stay while.  I finished rearing my two daughters while learning to be a pastor and things got pretty interesting.  I have written a memoir about that which I hope you will read in the very near future.  But more about that later. 
I have many interests, love rock music, classical music as well as some of any kind of music you could mention.  I startled a mechanic at the dealership were I have my car serviced when he noticed a Led Zeppelen CD in the front seat of my car and came running into the waiting room shouting "here is a woman who loves Led Zeppelen!"  There I sat with my white hair and enjoyed the moment.
I love my new Kindle Fire, reading on different subjects and going out with friends.  And I loooove my four grandchildren (and, of course, also their parents).
I live together with my sister (a veritable fount of cynical observations) in the house that we grew up in.  Our home was built in 1931 and seems to have a personality of its own. 
Okay, that is rather who I am.  I will elaborate on the other people struggling within later.  Come back tomorrow!