When something happens like the tragic killings at Virginia Tech, most of us want to make sense of it-- somehow. If we happen to be ones who write a blog, we wonder whether to comment on it, and then but what would I say? Everytime it has come along, I have tried to understand why but there is no answer as best I know it anyway.
Random violence, terrorist attacks, striking out at those we don't even know, none of it is sensible to the logical mind. We can't, won't ever, find logic in it because there isn't any, and the more we try, the more frustrated we will be. Right blames left. Rich blame poor or reverse. Everybody blames somebody because we want to believe if we can find the culprit, we will be able to fix the problem.
On a practical level, there are two things we can do. One is personal. Think what will I do the next time it happens if I'm the one standing there and someone with a gun just starts shooting? We, as individuals, can have plans in place in our own minds if we are approached in a mall, if shooting starts in a restaurant. Whether it's our home, our church, our school, we can have thought what would I do if it was me there? What would I try to do?
We can go so far as to take some training to learn how to react. At one time the experts encouraged the sheep approach. We have seen way too many times where that doesn't work. In this most recent event, there were examples where some saved the lives of others through heroic effort, times where people had no time to react even if they had been trained. When the event begins, it's too late to do anything but react. Our reaction can be helped if we have had some training. Nobody wants to think we have to prepare for such horrendous events, but time after time we have seen examples of how that is exactly what we, as individuals, need to do.
We can ask our governing bodies to do their part. Unfortunately, no matter what corporate or government plans are put in place (some of them can be improved), in the end, I don't believe citizens can be totally protected from the kind of sudden senseless attack where the perpetrator wants to die. It can come too many ways. Government should try though. It should have rules set up for what it will do when the first violent attack happens-- before they know if more is coming.
If that student had not had guns, which some have always said he should not have been able to buy, he still could have used bombs as people have done all over the world. As terrible as this event has been, possibly the worst part is our awareness it has been done before and will be again.
The problem we face, those of us who consider life to be a sacred gift, is how carelessly some regard it. I don't think we can stop the kind of mindset that is so self-serving in how they view others that they don't care if they take innocents with them. In fact they want to take others with them. They don't care but we do.
I won't write about the actual event because I don't know enough about it yet, but also because these kinds of things can come so many ways. The one thing it does say for me on a personal level is don't assume you will get tomorrow. Live life fully and deeply for where you are.
Despite my wanting to think I am in control, and I do what I can to be in control, in the end, things can come along that tear that control away. Live for the moment, cherish the moment as sometimes for you and those you love, it might be all you have. Tell others you love them frequently. Don't put off the I am sorry moments.
Terrible tragedies could put our own mostly trivial problems in perspective. They could...
11 comments:
Another fine post. We discussed this issue this morning at Starbucks. There are 300 million people in the US and we have freedom. If some wacko walked in and started shooting there is no way to completely stop it. Although there was cop in there while we were talking about it, but they could shoot the cop first and then have even more guns and ammo. Even if you had a guard with an uzi at each building on that campus the guy still would have been able to kill several people. Maybe if the professors had guns they could have saved some lives. There are far more questions than answers and always will be. If this guy had such a rough life why didn't he just shoot himself, why did he take so many people with him and why did he pick the engineering building, he was an English major.
Let me be the first to say that I think it is all George Bush's fault. He should have done more to prevent something like this from happening. Sorry, a little gallows humor there.
The whole thing is beyond my comprehension at this moment. I've had NPR on my iTunes at work, but I'm just not up to seeing anymore at this time. This kind of mass violence is so alien to me. Is this an aberration of the human brain that causes this kind of rage to get out of hand--or is it born out of a lifetime of feeling inferior and lonely?
I just know that I am not willing to stop going out in public places, although I sure would stay indoors if I were living in Iraq. I used to be all over L.A. in my younger years, but as an older woman now, I am anxious (and avoid) certain parts of the city at night, particularly. There's no use asking for trouble. But--this VT thing is so random. People are often alienated from one another--and it's this alienation that allows depersonalization to seep in, I guess. And yeah, ingineer66, I haven't figured out how to put responsibility on Bush, but I actually would rather blame Karl Rove. Very dark humor in return.
So, we lost many of our young men and women--and their brilliant research scientist teachers, one who had survived the Holocaust. As the late Kurt Vonnegut often said, "And so it goes." Only, I can't quite be that lackadaisacal. But, it's such an illusion that we have control over hardly anything, isn't it?
Interesting point, rain. We really do think we are in control, and these random acts of violence tend to show us how we are not. It is very hard to take these horrific acts and try to make sense, learn a lesson, determine a cause. Of course a gun should never end up in the hands of a lunatic. Other than that, I'll just always be amazed how one person can inflict so much pain on others.
This shooting does have every college campus on edge. Nothing new in Oregon. We just forget that we were on guard in middle schools and high schools where guards search the bags of all students every day before they enter.
Another strategy is to have school uniforms so everyone has the same clothes to prevent jealousy.
Great post, Rainy. I've been reading posts today that blame everything from Bush to the NRA for this tragedy. Refreshing to read something which is basically saying to treat each day as your last. We have little or no control over many things which happen around us.
With my daughter heading off to university in the fall it just hits home all the harder how scary it can be for all of us but in particular our kids who are there and the teachers/professors. I cannot fathom anyone doing something so horrific but it seems to happen time and time again. It isn't on a decline, quite the reverse, it is steadily getting more commonplace. Is there an answer to this particular "problem"?? The shooter almost always wants to die and for some, out of their mind reason, they want to take alot of people with them. It's just quite simply scary. I agree with you Rain, enjoy every single day and I also agree with Fran, you can't quit living ie: going out in public.
From having read more, and heard the gun control issue from both sides, my strongest feeling is it's about the young man, not the gun. We have to have more ways to get these young people before they kill. Whether they have chemical imbalance problems, social psychotic issues, whatever is seen by experts, and in this killer, they were seen, we have to have ways to hold them for help, work with them, detain or even imprison them before they kill. If you took away every gun in the country, which you won't, he could have still created a bomb and killed many people.
The professor who tried so hard to get help for him was stymied by insufficient rules in place to enable someone to be held before they did something violent or verbally said they would.
If this young man had been stopped from killing so many at once, would a knife have been his weapon and he'd have killed one vulnerable person after another as serial killers often do? The answer is identifying and having laws in place that are hard-nosed. We hear arguments about civil liberties being violated but if we don't do this, identify and treat or hold first, we will get more killings-- whether they all come at once or picked off one at a time.
The problem is in these killers and mostly they are identified ahead of time but our culture has been milquetoast on it and we haven't had the strength (I would've used another word but this is PG) to deal with it. We have to change or this is not going to stop. Authorities used to be able to hold someone on suspicion and force them to get treatment, those days are behind us and we have had increased violence from psychotics ever since.
Lives were lost because we were too afraid to be strong in dealing with those we can see have potential to hurt. Someone else got hurt Monday.... the bright future of tomorrow. Were their rights not violated? Nobody likes having to analyze people this way but if we don't, we can't protect innocent people from their eventual eruption of violence.
And if a few people who show psychotic tendencies, but never would have committed a murder, get treatment, will that be such a loss? When you wait until the crime has been committed, mostly somone has already died.
Excellent update Rain and right on. Because it is not politically correct or however you want to say it, we cannot do anything about these nut jobs until it is too late. We used to put them in institutions, but that was deemed inhumane by the namby pamby crowd. What this guy did is inhumane. And with all the people in this country abusing Meth the number of psychotic people is rising. I didn't put the two together until I read your new post, but we had a guy here a couple of months ago that the ER doctor tried to have him placed on a 72 hour hold at County Mental Health but they didn't want him because they said his behavior was drug induced. Well the next day he used a hammer to kill the owner of a general store in a small town in the foothills just above us. At Virginia Tech it was not the fault of the gun store owner, as some have said, it was the fault of the shooter and his accomplice was the system that didn't allow the authorities to deal with his mental illness.
I use to be for gun control. But I have changed my mind after reading SHANTARAM by Gregory Roberts. This novel took me places I never imagined in the world of organized crime and black markets to gun running. I see how controlled commodities from passports to illegal drugs finance gangsters who turn into rightious revolutionaries. The criminal turned revolutionary supplies and fuels war lords and terrorists.
As a good author, Roberts, presents this sad situation while leaving the reader hopeful for the good in mankind to out weigh the bad.
So how can we cure society? Probably not bad mouthing the president. Writing and networking like Rain does is part of the journey towards peace and safty for all. Medecin and psychology is another part. I suspect that there was an unrecognized and untreated chemical or physical component to Cho's behavior.
Perhaps his anger at the richer people was because he wasn't getting help.
All of this was so very well said. And I totally agree that each and every one of us has to be prepared for the tragic things we try not to think about.
I've always done that...if I'm in a hotel on a top floor, I want to know my escape route should there be a fire. Same thing on an airplane. I scope it out and then I can let it go and hope we'll all be safe. Shortly after 911, whenever I was in public in a large crowd....I most definitely had my eyes and ears open. Just in case.
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