I’m curious what people’s reactions are to tragedies like this morning’s shooting at Va Tech, and why they feel that way.
I acknowledge that I am not very compassionate. Objectively assessing my personality that might well be the greatest of my many shortcomings. But I admit that this news doesn’t really affect me too much, and I’m interested in hearing why so many others apparently experience such strong emotions in response to such news.
Intellectually, I know that this is a terribly tragic event for the people involved. And I think it reflects poorly on something about our current society. But emotionally, it doesn’t affect me too strongly.
I don’t know if I have been hardened by past events or what. But when I hear new like this I’m not surprised. It doesn’t seem to me that anything significant has changed since the last several senseless shootings to make future events less likely. And unless this event is going to spur drastic changes of some kind, I expect more of the same in the future. My only hope is that the laws of large numbers insulate me from being wherever the next manic decides to go off.
Am I alone in not being tremendously moved by such tragic news?
(I put this in the Pit because I anticipated folks’ emotions might run high on this, and didn’t want anyone to be constrained from saying whatever they wanted.)
I reacted strongly because I went to college about two hours away from there, and considering that I graduated less than a year ago, there are still a number of people at that school that I know.
I would say my feeling are kind of detached horror and sadness. It doesn’t strike me emotionally very deep either, but it does at some level. It’s hard to explain. I think for me it is a more macro level kind of sadness, like something horrible is happening to our society, as opposed to more personal one that thinks about the indivdual lives that have been lost.
It’s shocking. I’m moved by the tragic senselessness of it. Dozens, if not hundreds, of lives will be forever scarred by this guys’ rampage. The victims are innocent bystanders.
It bothers me because I imagine how sad everyone who lost someone must be. I think of the families and friends of the dead students and how horrified they will be to learn that their friend or family member is dead, far too young, because some moron with a gun and an anger issue had to take down a bunch of people with him.
I’m almost three years out of college, but for some reason I was struck by what it might’ve felt like if it had happened at my alma mater when I was in school.
I’m from virginia, I can name a bunch of people off the top of my head who go to VT I know from HS and some of whom I still talk to on a regular basis, and who luckily, have so far been alright.
Well, I think proximity be it physical, mental, whatever has something to do with it. Certainly if a person lived in Vait would be shocking and horrible on a much grander scale than if you lived in, say White Horse. Further, if a person was a college student they might feel connected on that level.
And then there are people who get really upset about EVERYTHING. A bit like recreational outrage, I guess.
Personally, I’m horrified that this happened and very sad for the friends and families of the people involved, as well as the students of Va Tech and the residents of Va, because the next few weeks are gonna suck. However, I’m pretty removed from things there - I don’t think I’ll lose sleep the way I would if this had happened locally.
To be honest, I don’t care. Never have when it comes to mass shootings and probably never will. And no, it’s not because my generation has been desensitized to violence or any stupid idea like that. As the OP says, it has nothing to do with me. I don’t know anyone at VT, I don’t know anyone who knows anyone at VT, and I’d still rather take my chances on a college campus than, say, Baghdad and I’ll bet that if I watch the news tonight, the death toll, of American and Iraqi combined, out of Iraq will be higher than whatever the casualty count winds up being at VT.
The only way this can affect me personally is if there’s a trickle-down effect that makes it this far west with the university administration massively overreacting in terms of both policy and actual actions. Quite frankly, I’m expecting that to happen (I have little regard for any administration of anything and have already seen it happen both as a middle school/high school student and then at college in the middle of Nowhere, PA after 9/11 and the subsequent anthrax thing) and to get about four dozen emails in the next week detailing both policy changes and at least one overreaction to an absolutely nothing event (here at NMSU I mean, not that what has happened at VT isn’t a tragedy.)
All of my friends at VT are accounted for…except for one, Jacob, the engineer (the majority of the shootings occured in Norman Hall, an engineering building). For the time being, I’m assuming he’s still on the phone with other friends and family, and will get to me in due time. I refuse to think the worst unless I don’t hear from him by tomorrow.
I can understand feelings of detachment from those whose friends and family aren’t involved. I’ve expressed similar feelings about past tragedies, I’m sure I’ll do so again in the future, and I don’t fault anyone else for feeling that way about the VT shootings. For me, though, this one hits (literally and figuratively) a little too close to home.
Jacob…my thoughts are with you, and my other Blacksburg friends. Hope to hear from you soon. You give me a call, dinner’s on me this weekend…
Every time I read a newspaper article (subscription only, I’m afraid) about Rwandan women who are survivors of the war, I weep.
I read about little girls who have been raped so often that the wall between their vagina and their anus breaks down. For the rest of their lives they leak gross stuff so nobody wants them around, and they are likely to be HIV+.
Where in their lives do they fit the PTSD that any one of us would suffer after a single day of what they went through?
And yet they carry on, and raise their orphaned siblings and neighbours and do the work of all the men and women who weren’t lucky enough to survive the war, and they live alongside their rapists, and they smile, because there is nothing else they can do.
Yes, school shootings in North America are tragic. But not only do thousands of people die every day in worse circumstances, what is worse is that thousands of people SURVIVE more tragic circumstances, every day.
I know that the suffering of Rwandan girls and women doesn’t make the suffering of Virginians irrelevant. But when it comes to shedding tears and raging against the injustice of the world on behalf of people I don’t know, I only have a limited capacity for outrage. I do not mean to diminish the loss that so many Americans have felt today, but I am sorry to report that, even today, my sorrow is directed elsewhere.
I think I’m just numb to all stuff they put on the news. My reaction these days is to just sit there shaking my head, then change the channel.
And for what it’s worth, my brother was a student and groundskeeper at VA Tech for the last 15+ years. He left last year for another gig. He’d have been working across the street from one of the shooting sites. Still didn’t make me feel anything other than numb.
That might have been me - I’ve posted that link multiple times here because although it is an entertaining read, I think the psychology of it is spot on.
ETA: I have to go catch up on this horrible news I have totally missed today.
I hope your friend Jacob is OK. (I think you mean Norris Hall, btw. No biggie.)
This hits me because I was once a student there. I took classes in McBryde, two buildings over from Norris. It’s hard for me to imagine that Virginia Tech would be the scene of such carnage. I heard the news when I got back to my desk after an all-morning meeting, and have been stunned ever since.
I think the randomness of it makes us empathise. We can imagine what it might be like, going through the routine of everyday activity, and then for it to be shattered by such a cruel accident of fate. Or, we might be imagining what it feels like to be the families of students killed or injured.
I’m moved by it because I empathize, and I empathize because 1.) it’s my nature and 2.) my parents taught me empathy. Frankly, I think anyone unmoved by something like this is a bit defective.
I’m shocked and saddened and horrified, though not nearly to the extent that those closer to the tragedy are. I don’t know, I guess maybe it feels disrespectful to the people who were killed, and all the others whose lives were touched, to remain emotionally unmoved.
I have room in my heart to be sad about both this, and the death toll in Iraq.
Why shouldn’t I be sad? This is a hard thing to shrug off. I came home today to hear Dubya’s speech calling for prayer for the victims and their families. Reminded me of Adama leading the prayer for the dead in the BSG miniseries while Starbuck looked at the photo of her and Lee. I’m sure there are people right now who are looking at photos of their friends. Some are wondering if they’re okay. Some know they’re not. It affects them, and I don’t have it in me to say “Eh.”
I feel bad for these people largely because they could never have seen it coming. I’m not rating this on a tragedy scale. It’s just sad. So say we all.
Non sequitur: Everytime I see “VT”, I think “Vermont.”
This pretty much sums up my feelings. It’s not like, say, a tragic accident where 30 people are killed climbing Mt. Everest, something I’m not likely to ever attempt. That’s sad, but it doesn’t relate to me. On the other hand, we hear all the time about some former employee or school student going on a rampage and killing random people before taking himself out (actualy, I haven’t read any articles on this story yet, so I don’t know if the shooter is dead – I’m making an assumption).
We’ve all spent time on school campuses, and most of us have probably worked somewhere with a bitter coworker. It doesn’t take a great leap of imagination to put ourselves in the shoes of the victims – going about our daily lives and having someone blindly remove us from the living. I remember feeling similarly when the Beltway Sniper events were happening, and I live on the opposite coast.