this is an incoherent rant.
Hours after the Virginia Tech massacre, before the killer’s identity is even known, we already have a reason for the killings: Violent video games and movies, too many guns, too few guns/gun-free zones. I’m sure it will get worse as the days continue and pundits continue to politically mine this tragedy. I’m glad these things have quick fixes, all we have to do is censor, regulate guns, or join the NRA. It’s nice to know what causes problems a priori, and not waste time looking at empirical data. Or have to really question if these things happening far too frequently is inevitable consequence of modern American society. 24-hour news is saturation. I am glad that Jon Stewart spends so much of his time deconstructing the ‘hyper-real’.
In completely related news, they found a body in a pool near campus, it’s been there for quite some time now. They won’t release the identity but the general consensus it probably is the student who went missing in September.
Right now I am trying to figure out what is worse, having no solution or all the wrong ones. I completely agree with George Bush’s comment that when the sanctuary of our schools is violated we all feel that violation. Of course, he also said today that he still believed it was the right of all Americans to own a gun.
Sorry, I felt I had to type something so I could go do my homework. Also I am concerned why these things seem to happen more frequently in Engineering/Physics departments. If it is that stressful it makes me want to reconsider grad school.
Tim wrote:
Interestingly, I had the same reaction when Katie told me about the kid in the pool (in that it was the missing student from september), howerver my initial reaction was “Why don’t people go swimming more often?” I didn’t mean it as a joke, I meant it in that, why at a country club, would people ignore a dead body in a pool for that long. It seems crazy to me.
I read about the incident on the BBC. Watching as they updated, the body count kept going up. Apathy took over what shock there was. In many other places arround the world, this sort of thing is a week to week deal. It’s naive to think it can’t happen here.
Posted on 17-Apr-07 at 9:33 am | Permalink
patrick wrote:
Yeah i guess the pool was winterized and covered. The worker who found the body described it as a college-aged male although the police department will not release the sex of the body.
Posted on 17-Apr-07 at 9:53 am | Permalink
Sam wrote:
It’s weirder now that we know that he was an english major. I have never felt the kind of stress that I hear hard science majors talk about, of course I am a slacker.
I think the part that is so disturbing and disconcerting Tim, is the fact that we don’t have any kind of motivation. I mean, this stuff happens all the time in the rest of the world, it’s true. But I think you’re referring to mass killings by suicide bomb in war torn regions, where people have a very specific cultural and political ideology that pushes them to commit mass murder. This was just one guy who decided that he would rather kill as many people as he could, and then himself rather than continue his own life.
To me, it’s more puzzling than columbine, but maybe that is just because we know so little at this point. I mean, those two killers gave very specific reasons for what they did. And given the nature of what the social culture of columbine high school is, it is not entirely surprising that two of it’s students went nuts.
Posted on 17-Apr-07 at 11:29 am | Permalink
Katie (Jones) wrote:
Sort of related to what Tim said, when I read about it on the BBC, I was initially shocked, but then, when I thought about it, kind of upset with myself for being so much more distressed by these 33 deaths in the US then the other deaths that frequently headline the BBC from elsewhere in the world, often times with an even higher body count. I’m sure a large part of it is that it’s easier for me to relate to someone who is also a college student and being on a college campus and everything… but also part of it must be that it just feels much more close to home, even though in reality I should be just as disturbed by 100 people dying in a car bomb in Iraq or wherever, you know?
Also, as for Columbine, I read this article on Columbine that argued that one of the kids that did the shooting was a true psychopath and had anti-social personality disorder–right from the beginning (torturing pets as a little kid and stuff)–and that the bullying and stuff that went on at Columbine were not good explinations/reasons for what happened… the other kid, this article argued however, was severely depressed and was sort of indoctrinated by the psychopathic one. I’m not sure how true that is, particularly considering it seems like most everyone agrees that the harrassment those students went through at least parcially caused them to do that, sometimes I feel like maybe there isn’t always a logical reason for people just… shooting other people. With school shootings or shootings in general, it does quickly turn into a debate over the effectiveness of gun control laws. One professor at Virginia Tech said, “Two years ago, all universities came out saying they didn’t want people to carry their guns on campus. It just makes me think, what if I were the professor in that class and I had my firearm. Might there have been less damage? I don’t know.” I think it’s important to try and figure out these things– are gun laws effective? Would more restrictions be harmful or beneficial? But for people to instantly start making connections between the shooting and the political hot-topic issue of gun control–or whether or not videogames are to blame–when it’s still the day of the shooting and people are still trying to figure out exactly what happened… I think that’s pretty inappropriate.
sorry this is so long
Posted on 17-Apr-07 at 12:48 pm | Permalink