Amazing..
Today, in Minnesota, 6 students, a security guard, and a teacher were gunned down by a teenager.
This guy killed his Grandparents before and killed himself during.
Whats not amazing is his rampage, the tragedy of the victims, the use of legal guns, the environment of the school.. whats amazing is how I kind of don’t care as much… and I’m mad at myself for it.
Since 9-11, I kind of look at this sort of thing and say, “Well, its only 10, look at the WTC (or the Russian school, or the Iraqi car bombs.. or heck, even Columbine). This is the worst school shooting since Harris and Klebold became household names, and unlike that day where I followed intensely, today I’m just, well, not that upset.
I should be.. I should be outraged.. I should be looking up the family members names.. trying to write songs.. watching CNN… but I’m not. I’m just sort of, “wow.. too bad.” And I’m ashamed of myself.
What has happened to me.. what has happened to the country that this is about the same as a right to die case or Michael jackson coming to court with a Doctor.. are we that desensitized?
I try not to be. Tonight, i will make myself pray for those horrrified families, those shattered lives.. and maybe I’ll throw one more at the Big Guy for myself and my country.. not because its is as bad as it is.. but that we’re used to it.
amen
I am with you, when I read the headlines, I was like oh great here we go again. It is way to bad that this kinda thing happens so much we are all just like, oh that was just small and move on.
Rubella
Yet, on the other hand, the US Center for Disease Control announced today that Rubella has been extinguished.
For comparison,
I know people will disagree with me, but I say the world is getting better, not worse.
And yet, our health and prosperity has brought us to an interesting challenge: controlling our own birth rate. We are alone in the solar system, our tiny planet its own Easter Island, being slowly divested of natural resources to support our ever-burgeoning population.
And incidents like this one? Well, it’s a tiny, rural town. You can’t blame it on overpopulation. Humans — particularly teenage humans — have been violent, vicious and cruel to each other since the dawn of mankind. This latest horror is just the latest repeat in a history of pervasive, omnipresent violence and homicide.
I often find myself agreeing with George Carlin: “The human species is totally f—– and has been for a long time.” It’s quite possible we’re simply an evolutionary dead-end, and our more egregious abuses of our environment will simply bring about our end in a few hundred years, or at least a fairly massive correction in the amount of human beings the planet can sustain.
I probably won’t be around to see it, but this latest “atrocity”, to me, is just one more small mark in the murderous history of mankind:
I’m going to stop there; it’s just too depressing, and even if you exclude wars, the death toll is staggering. Human history is one long string of murders. I just try to be an equal-opportunity offender in showing who killed who when.
But I still think we’re better now than we’ve ever been. We have missteps, but we’re learning how to kill less indiscriminately.
I don’t think we’ll learn fast enough.
—
Matthew P. Barnson
Exactly
The human species has the same animalistic tendencies as other animals, however, we have evolved (or are created, don’t want that debate) to be able to control those urges for the most part.
Ask yourself what it must have been like to be in Rome when the Vandals sacked it. Or to be left in South Vietname when the Americans pulled out. Think about the Holocaust. Yes, those deaths in Minn were horrible, but on the scale of horror the human race has displayed before, they are just a blip. Not to the families involved, but in the grand sense.
The difference between now and then is that when something like this happens, it ALL OVER THE PLACE! 24/7 coverage, behind-the-scenes details, shock reactions, over and over and over again. One death is horible when you get that much information, because you start to relate to the person. I doubt you can find statistics, but I bet there have been shootings in schools before, but they were probably kept under wraps in deference to the people involved, instead of splayed over the web pages, TVs, and radios of America and the world.
20 years ago, you got cancer, you died. Now, you have a fighting shot. In another 10 years, if we allow the researchers the tools to do their research correctly, we’ll have the entire genome mapped and replacing bad genes with good ones. If we can perfect that, we may be on the way to wiping out a whole host of diseases. Maybe even being able to battle viruses.
Society is becoming more civilized, but there will always be instances of us reverting to our more animalistic selves. It’s a very incremental process.
My $.02 Weed
Here’s The Sad Part
The day before the gun shooting, a different kind of shot occurred in another Minnesota school that resulted in a similar national media blitz.
In a state high school basketball championship, a player swished this amazing shot from his back, on the floor, to send the playoff game into double overtime. The difficulty of the shot, combined with the stakes of the game, were enough to warrant a spot on national news. I saw video replay on the Today show, NPR, ESPN and others. The kid who took the shot got interviewed everywhere.
Here’s the sad part: I thought that something bad HAD to happen, because in this country, we don’t get feel-good education stories. It doesn’t happen. The world doesn’t allow for it. No room for warm and fuzzy news dealing with education. There was going to be backlash for the disruption in the force.
Kind of messed up the way my mind works these days.
Education
Well, forgive me for this, but what exactly does basketball have to do with education?
— Ben
Nothing
Basketball has nothing to do with education, of course! I meant that it was a feel-good story taking place in a school, education-related kind of thing.