Tuesday, April 17, 2007
Va. Tech
I know it goes without saying but this thing at Virginia Tech is heart breaking......and I can already see that it will get entirely out of hand with the media.....I watched a NY attorney this morning...less than 24 hours after.....start setting up reasons for families to file law suits, it made me sick.
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2 comments:
i agree couldn't watch CNN to get any info because all they wanted to talk about was what went wrong...anyone that has a brain and has been to a college town knows that shutting down any small college town is not something that happens in 2 hours much less 12. obviously, nobody at CNN has ever been a college town or campus. We don't lock down the city of New York when there is shooting or even the buildings 1/2 block away. somehow in a matter of few hours CNN forgot that 32 people had been murdered
It's hard to figure out questions to stuff like this but I can think of a couple of things that offer pretty stong clues.
1. The more minor question of the way media, public react by finding blame, etc. In 9/11, this was at the forefront, in every case that makes the news of some woman's boyfriend doing something horrible to her children, and in the VT tragedy. It was Bush, the CIA's fault. It was DFCS fault. It was campus administration's fault. No, it was the guy who flew the plane, it was the guy who pulled the trigger. We can't determine right and wrong anymore, nor can we decide bad from worse (see my Imus rant), why should we be able to assign proper blame? Part of it is understandable, the guys in the plane, the guy who shot those kids, they're dead ... and so any recourse and the desire for justice is not met.
2. The second question is more complicated. Heather and I often remark that those right behind us in age (our youngest sisters to be blunt) have a more selfish, less communal, more assertive, less happy, and ultimately, a more cynical, narcissistic approach to life. And we're only talking about a few years' difference.
I'm sure the Boomers think the same things about us. When someone says something like, "this country doesn't have what it takes to do what was required in WWI, WWII." What they're really saying is, people today don't think in terms of sacrificing because they only think of themselves.
Data bears this out. http://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory?id=2909034
To summarize this link, American society has been trying to reverse how it rears children for years by preaching self-esteem and self-importance and resisting the urge to punish or to point out blunt truth. Research points to there being a marked increase in how students see themselves as more important and less and less, see community as a whole as being above self.
Children historically are additions to the family, in rural society, a financial burden until they can actually work and then they become a tremendous asset. Today, kids rule the home. They are the center. (I am not immune to this, I admit) We want so badly to give them everything we had and everything we wish we'd had and didn't, parents go too far.
Schools and psychologists don't help much, teaching against corporal punishment, only for positive reinforcement, and in short, produce a narcisstic "You are special" worldview.
Don't get me wrong, I am thankful we've opened up emotional doors where kids and parents are closer and are cognizant of protecting kids today, emotionally and physically. But the outcropping of this is staggering failure. Rather than uneducated kids, we have assertive kids with little value for the wisdom of their elders. Rather than punishing kids for doing wrong, we worry about their self-esteem (actually I could argue, we don't love them as much - we really want them to like us more because the relationship with our own parents may be strained, etc. It is self-love) We shield from reality to a fault where they have no true sense of cause/effect, no moral compass, only the overall conviction that I am the most important person in the world.
The problems are myriad. Relationships are affected, isolation sets in, confusion, and ironically, sometimes a lack of self-confidence when they are exposed to some reality.
I'm sure in the case of this poor soul, there was also a degree of chemical imbalance. Even if there wasn't, there will be much to say that there was, because being bad is not in our equation. Human beings are inherently good, aren't they? (Yes, this Augustinian had trouble typing that, even if it was sarcasm)
No, of course not. Humans are radically bent toward the opposite of good, and whether we see that in our forebears being abused and disregarded and living an unsophisticated existence, or whether we see the horrific results of a culture bent on preaching self-esteem, this principle will always prove correct.
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