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| Just a few thoughts about the Va Tech shootings...
There's been a lot of talk about blame. Who's responsible for the massacre? Students are angry. Parents are angry. America at large is angry, frustrated, and at a loss to explain why it happened. News media are devoting airtime to stories about the shooter. They're examining his writings, talking to classmates and professors - all in an attempt to answer the big questions: Why did he do it? Could we have prevented it from happening?
There's no denying that Cho had some issues. Serious issues. He was dealing with a lot of mental and emotional concerns and struggles. And everyone interviewed so far on TV has said pretty much the same thing: he was a loner, a little disturbed, and very closed off from personal interaction. And therein lies the key to answering the blame question.
Cho was 23 - a senior at a university of 25,000 students. Twenty-five thousand. And in the course of his troubled existence at the school, not one person got inside his world to understand him, accept him, and care for him. Maybe some tried to start conversations. Maybe a few made efforts at including him in activities. But there's an inescapable fact about this tragedy: Cho did not have a true friend in the world who knew what he was going through and cared enough to help. Saying that he had issues and recommending him to counseling is not what I'm talking about. That's easy. Spending daily time with a person - knowing them and being known by them is a different matter. It takes commitment and compassion. It means hard work - especially with someone who is as closed off to interaction as Cho apparently was.
The twenty-five thousand students at Virginia Tech need only look in the mirror to discover who's to blame for what happened last Monday. One of your own - a peer - was able to live alone in a sea of people. He was allowed to be on the fringe. He was allowed to be unknown, unloved, uncared for. And as horrible as the shootings were, it is this simple fact that a person can be allowed to exist without a soul to care for them that's the real tragedy. When one of us can slip through our relational net, it is unacceptable.
There are too many stories like Cho's. Too many like Dylan Klebold's and Eric Harris'. Too many like David Ludwig and Kara Beth Borden. When we, as a society, choose to hang out only with those we like, who are like us, we pay the price. And to blame it on society at large or the disturbed individual is to pass the buck. It is our culture of indifference and lack of compassion for the weak and disturbed among us that is to blame for tragedies like this. And it is our choice to care and our efforts to love that will become the solution.
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| For those of you familiar with YMI, we're putting together a little YMI promo pack and I'm looking for people who have worked with or benefited from YMI to say a few lines about their experience. So drop a comment if this applies, or send me a message.
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| hiatus: an interruption in the depositional record. This may be due to either nondeposition and/or erosion | | |
| It's official - I'm hosting a Velvet Elvis book club. If we hit a chapter each week, it will take a couple months. I vote for a Third Space as our meeting place.
I vote for Panera Bread - Lincoln Highway / Target Shopping Center. It's relatively close to most of you. We can grab a beverage (or more if you haven't had supper) and talk through the concepts of the book.
Day / Time: I'd like to keep my weekends free for family and other pursuits (movie nights, etc.). Weeknights that are good for me would be:
Mondays / Tuesdays / Thursdays. My first choice would be Tuesday night. Six or so. We can put an end time of 8 or 9 PM.
The book's not that expensive. I'd recommend using the amazon link.
Let's shoot to start the week of March 18th. Our first meeting can be to get to know each other and talk about our interest and expectations of the book.
Let me know what nights work for you and if you have any other location ideas.
Ed
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| It is my desire, if not my duty, to try to talk to you
journeymen with some candor about what is happening to radio and television. And if what I say is responsible, I alone am
responsible for the saying of it.
Our history will be what we make of it.
And if there are any historians about years from now and there should be preserved the
kinescopes of one week of all three networks, they will there find recorded in
black and white and in color evidence of decadence, escapism and insulation
from the realities of the world in which we live. We are currently wealthy, fat, comfortable,
and complacent. We have a built-in
allergy to unpleasant or disturbing information. Our mass media reflect this. But unless we get up off our fat surpluses and
recognize that television in the main is being used to distract, delude, amuse,
and insulate us, then television and those who finance it, those who look at it,
and those who work at it may see a totally different picture too late.
Edward R. Murrow, 1958
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