Monday, April 16, 2007

What is WRONG with the world?!?!? - Another shooting...

Why is it that people think the way to deal with their stressful situations is to go on a shooting rampage? In case you haven't read the news yet, a 20-something guy went on a rampage at Virginia Tech this morning in dorms and classrooms killing ~30 and injuring more before finally killing himself.

I was discussing this sort of thing last night with my family. About two months ago, we had a similar mindless shooting 'locally' at the Trolley Square Mall in Salt Lake (I used to work ~5 blocks north of Trolley and I drive past there a couple of times a week on my way to/from school).

What possesses these people to think that their actions will make anything better? If they are trying to make a statement, they generally fail because most of the time, the event will be looked at only as a psychotic episode and any social statement they intend to make is displaced by the senseless violence of the action.

A favorite author of mine, Terry Brooks, has a series of novels in which demons working for "the Void" whisper into people's minds and get them to undertake such senseless acts of destruction. In these cases, the human is not physically aware of the demon...just the whisperings of this evil spirit. As humans, we can hear such whispers...but we need to be strong enough to withstand their suggestions. That's the way life goes. I suppose these gunmen may have heard these suggestions but they didn't have the upbringing or strong enough beliefs in social injustice to withstand the crazy suggestions and do the right thing.

How do we as a society ensure that people know the difference between right and wrong ways of resolving a problem?

1 comment:

Sarkie said...

Finally some common sense, I think the only thing we can do is teach people right and wrong, and hope that they understand it and take it in.

Anything more forceful and we risk people lashing out.

Apart from the obvious I don't see how Jack Thompson had any right in saying what he said after the shooting, with no evidence or anything.

Sarkie.