World Gone Mad(der)

I think the Virginia Tech shooting really highlights what the American government should be focusing on. Rather than expending effort, manpower and billions of dollars on liberating the Iraqi people (from their oil) they should be focusing on issues closer to home.

Why is it that the country with the highest rate of gun crime in the world continues to fail to do anything about it? George W. Bush continues to deny that there is a gun control problem and does not want to touch the issue. Although we have all come to expect utter idiocy from Bush, this certainly takes the cake. Certainly 33 people killed and many others injured in one firearm incident could be considered to be an isolated example of madness. But this sort of thing happens in the USA far too often for it to be dismissed as a mere tragedy. How many more innocent people must die before the government finally gets the message?


What is the world coming to when a 23 year old university student can get his hands on firearms and then proceeds to use them to vent out his frustrations? Who is to blame for this? As always, family groups and conservatives will blame the media for this. They will say that he was brainwashed by violent films. That his notion of reality was skewed by graphic videogames. That goth rock and Marilyn Manson promote aggression (okay, maybe Marilyn Manson does incite a bit of murderous rage but more because his music is extremely irritating than influential). Remember that these are the same people who want to enforce their Christian beliefs upon others (not that they'd ever admit to it). Should we trust the opinion of people who want abortion and gay marriages banned on the basis that it defies God's will?

Certainly, the shooter must take a large share of the blame as the person undertaking the wrong action. I am in no way denying this. But it is not his fault alone. Blame must also be placed upon the firearm dealer. Despite his claims that the shooter seemed normal and that he would not have sold guns to someone if he knew they were going to do something of this nature, we have to question what it is a 23 year old could possibly need a gun for in the first place. That the guns used were registered and legally obtained should be of particular concern. A large portion must be placed on the government. Not because they did not ban firearms but because they have still not banned firearms after countless similar tragedies.

But the greatest tragedy of all is the Bush administration's apparent apathy towards its own people possessing weapons while breathing fire when it comes to the people of other nations possessing the same firearms on the basis that these people are 'radicalists' and 'terrorists'. Yet it would seem that they are allowing a different form of terror to spread in their own backyard and are behaving more like terrorists than the ones they are allegedly trying to stop. The phrase 'collateral damage' has been used so often by the US military it has become something of a cliche.

From their violent beginning to the assassination of political figures to the countless wars they have instigated to the Virginia Tech shooting, the USA just seems to have a history of violence. I dare go so far as to call it a culture of violence.

Everybody is incensed.

The world is mad but not mad enough.

Nobody wants to do anything about it.

World Gone Mad

We seem to live in a time in which everything is topsy turvy. When what's right is often wrong and what's wrong is often right. And there is nothing at all right about this. I blame this mostly on the post-modern movement in which there can be such a thing as pluralistic truths; that is, that there can be many 'truths' co-existing at the same time and that they are all equally correct even if some of them may be utter contradictions of each other. For example, the neverending creation versus evolution debate seems to have reached a sort of standstill because people have come to the conclusion that neither side has anyr eal solid evidence supporting their theory and so have come to an unwritten and unspoken agreement that they are both equally right (or wrong if you happen to be a glass-half-empty sort of person).

The greatest issue with this is that it is human nature to show a certain degree of distaste for the things we do not believe in and, to a lesser extent, disgust towards the people who hold these beliefs. An example of such behaviour: I was on the train a few days back and there was a woman breastfeeding a child in the carriage that I was in. Now, this woman was being very decent about it and had as much of her breasts covered as possible while breastfeeding (i.e. she was not using the child as an excuse to do a Lady Godiva). Several people of about 20 years old were also in the carriage and having a converastion with the woman (as train commuters do). Nothing out of the ordinary, just things that were in the news recently, the joys and otherwise of having children and other fat chewing topics. Upon reaching the next station, a couple boarded the train and they would have been about 50 years old (give or take five years because I'm not a particularly good judge of age). Several seats were available and the elderly gentleman proceeded to sit down and and begin to converse with everyone else. his wife (I am assuming it was his wife) however walked towards the vacant seats and upon spotting the breastfeeding mother uttered something which sounded like disgust, gave everyone in the carriage a filthy glare and then left her husband and went to another carriage. Her husband remained and continued to converse as if ignoring his wife's rather rude gesture.

Is this what happens when we think we can all be right? People do not talk to each other to try to figure out who really is right and why they are right and/or wrong. Instead, we're quite content to just accept that we can both be right. What happens is a total breakdown in communication. People not only do not understand each other's point of view, people no longer care to find out what it is or even why others hold particular views. I sometimes think it was better when people were a bit more confrontational and would argue about things until they were blue in the face. I would have rathered the woman stay and ask the breastfeeding woman to stop because she was uncomfortable rather than utter curses and march off in something of a lukewarm rage. In either case, I fail to see why she had to make such a great deal of it anyway. As a woman of her age, she must surely have given birth to children before and offered her breasts to them as nourishment. If a 50 year old male and a group of 20 year olds can accept such things despite not having any sort of similar experience, surely a woman who has had these experiences would be able to muster up some degree of emapthy? Or perhaps she was one of those frigid mothers who fed her child nothing but that powdered junk they sell in pharmacies.

I suppose what this example really illustrates is how post-modernism has enlargened the gap between generations and between the sexes. It promotes a culture of agreement rather than argument, which sounds like a favourable outcome. But it comes at the cost of understanding. Ceratinly it allows everyone to believe what they want to believe but it fails to challeneg people to really think about why they believe in what they do. It promotes ignorance in one's own causes because nobody has to argue their point to anyone else and this in turn leads to apathy.

And if we do not believe in our own beliefs, what is left?

When?

When is someone ready to die?