And we assume that the people in the war-torn countries are slightly more prepared, as well. Which doesn’t lessen the loss, but maybe blunts some of the desperate surprise of it.
More and more? You think we have more senseless shootings nowadays than in the past? What evidence do you have for that belief?
Anyway…
Frankly, I’m surprised this happens as infrequently as it does. When I think about all the times I’ve been really really angry, and how easy it would be for me to just start killing people. And I’m a very very very easygoing guy, I’m almost always calm and relaxed and lazy and mellowed out. And then I think about all the jumpy, impulsive, aggressive assholes I meet every day, and I can’t understand why the average person doesn’t have a couple of murders to his name by the time they reach 30 years old.
Wow…Sampiro, I’m struck by your words there. I think you’re on to something.
Echo that.
I care because it does affect people I know. Tech isn’t that far away from me.
Several of my co workers are Va Tech grads. They were in shock all day long. One poor guy has a daughter who was just accepted there and will be attending in the fall. He was absolutely shell shocked today. Also, a good friend of mine has a son who just graduated last year. He still has many close friends at Tech. My heart goes out to him as he waits for email and calls.
However, I think it would bother me even if I didn’t know people affected by it. It would still hit pretty close to home.
With many tragedies, it’s easy to think “that wouldn’t happen to me or someone I care about.” It may not always be correct, but it’s easy to do. That’s not the case here. Many of us went to college or are sending kids there. There’s nothing I know of at Va Tech that made it particularly vulnerable to this in a way other universities aren’t (e.g. it’s not in the middle of a war zone or anything). It happened at Va Tech, but it could have been any university.
I have to say that the shootings disturb me on a level of “What the fuck is humanity coming to?” But I can’t bring myself to actually care about the shootings. I have never been to Virginia, I don’t know anyone in Virginia. It bothers me on a level that I’m greatly disturbed that someone could take 32 lives and then their own, but I can’t actually care about the shootings themselves. On an intellectual level, I wonder why it’s always schools and post offices. I’ve been to both and I still don’t understand why no one shot up the Domino’s I worked at; it was just as high-stress (you try slapping out 100 pizzas in an hour and tell me it’s not). On a survival level I’ve resolved to visit as few schools and post offices as possible.
But I can’t honestly bring myself to care. I try. Really, I do. But it doesn’t shock me. Columbine didn’t shock me. Maybe it’s because I’m a product of this generation, but I almost expect it of kids these days. They’re under a lot of pressure; pressure to fit in, pressure to succeed. It just doesn’t surprise me. At all.
And that makes me even sadder, that I expect it. And still, I can’t bring myself to care.
~Tasha
Ditto. Strong and righteous.
I try to imagine what it would be like because I want to empathize. Speaking very specific for myself, you have to treasure your own life before treasuring others’ and I’m not in that place right now. The event that struck me most personally was the Zantop murders in Hanover a few years ago. That’s because I could so easily imagine the horror of their friend who dropped by and found them, because I drop by my friends’ unlocked house all the time. I didn’t know them but I could imagine the situation so clearly, and the senselessness was so stark.
It affects me because I went to school there and I lived in the shooter’s dorm for a few months.
That being said, It really only affects me on an intellectual level as opposed to a more emotional personal level.
I concur with Sampiro.
I dread the media orgy of feigned sorrow, while they gleefully watch their ratings soar. I hate the media mill this will turn into-and how it will further damage the grieving families.
I also hate that this media feeding frenzy will feed some other sad fuck’s dream of glorious revenge or whatever drives this shit. And I am so sick of the perp being killed-why can’t they just off themselves quietly? Why take out strangers? And why do the police not try harder to get the killer alive, so that we can try to figure out WHY this shit happens? Mental illness or original sin-both have treatments and solutions.
It’s very sad.
I wonder if the death toll might have been much less if the students and employees had had the right to be armed. Perhaps one of them might have returned fire and killed the SOB.
I used to be emotionally detached by such incidents. After all, they happened thousands of miles away and didn’t affect me directly. Then the Columbine shootings occurred in 1999. I lived in the Denver area at the time and the whole community became caught up in the same sense of outrage and grief, whether you were acquainted with the victims or not. It’s hard to remain detached when it happens just a few miles from you.
Things like this actually bother me more than 9-11 (when I’ll admit I was irked with myself for not being more emotional). The 3,000 plus people who died that day most certainly did not deserve to die, but there was somehow a sort of logic to it- it was a terrorist strike, an act of war. Add to this that somehow for me the deaths of 32 are easier to sense than the deaths of 3200, or that the 9-11 deaths were all ages and walks of life, that those in the WTC and Pentagon died in the city where most of them lived and millions were there to help them mourn, and those in the planes were so random and besides there was the fury and the “what’s going to happen next and how do we prepare?” aspect.
The 32 students (though I’m assuming some were faculty members) were so young and had enough promise and ambition and drive to go to college (not to say it wouldn’t be a huge tragedy if 32 homeless people were killed, but still). 32 is a number I can feel- I know 32 people, I can name that many without trying that I’ve known well, I’ve had not much fewer than that in my house. And they were together in a false community- there will be garbage bags filled with clothing and personal effects gathered by 32 families in cities all over Virginia, all over the nation probably, probably at least one or two foreign countries. They had no chance to live their lives and it was just so fucking random and pointless and again, no possible good can come of it- it was for nothing and it had no meaning, a total victory of Nihilism and that’s terrifying. It could have been any of us or worse, it could have been the beloved of any one of us (for if it were us it’s over pretty quick, but for the families of these people it will destroy Christmases and bring tears at the end of funny stories for many many years, especially being so sudden; for some reason it makes me think of how many friends/siblings/parents/grandparents will years from now see something in a shop and think “Oh [] will love this!” or hear something and think “I can’t wait to tell []” and then it hits them again. (My mother died at 71 after battling terminal cancer for three months and I still have these moments, imagine how much worse when you had NO preparation and it was somebody who all logic dictated should have survived you by many years.)
Senseless, pointless, random, violent, unfair, fucking crazy gunman and fucking media vampires and just a fucking reminder that one well timed asteroid and all of human existence, all that went before Olduvai Gorge and on to the Assyrians to the Roman Empire to Henry VIII to Sanjaya, their accomplishments and emotions and sufferings, would all be as if they never were. (I’m not blaming Sanjaya, btw; I’m pretty sure he was in Hollywood.) All is vanity.
That said, if it’s all for nothing then learn to make the most of it. As some wit once said (and I paraphrase) there are worse things than life having no meaning, foremost among them life having a meaning of which you disapprove.
PS- I wish it were in my power to make the killer remain “an unidentified Asian male” and erase his name altogether, for it will be venerated upon its revelation. I also wish it was in my power to lose 30 pounds and gain perfect muscle tone by eating a bag of almond M&Ms everyday but the odds of one are roughly synonymous with the odds of the other.
Quartz wrote:
It’s very sad.
.
Good point. In the Luby’s massacre in Killeen, Texas, in a believe 1991, one of the people who was uninjured in the shooting (she happened to be a medical doctor) lost her parents to the madman. She legally owned a pistol but left it in her car that was parked outside of the cafeteria. She did not bring the pistol with her because at the time it was against Texas law. She subsequently lead an effort that resulted in Texas passing a law that made it legal for civilians to carry a concealed firearm with a proper permit. There are many facilities in the state of Texas that it remains unlawful for a civilian to carry a concealed firearm even when you possess a legal permit. I suspect that if VA has a concealed firearm law, it would have been illegal for a civilian to be in possession of a firearm in a government funded institution.
Arrrrrghhhh I wish people would stop saying this. The thought of students carrying loaded weapons in their backpacks on an every day basis scares the shit out of me. I have seen students who are depressed and over-wrought over bad grades, SO problems, abortions, family issues etc. on a routine basis. Loaded guns in the hands of said students is not a good idea by any stretch of the imagination. Oh wait, look what happened at VT.
Not to mention the fact that students come in to class every day and drop said backpacks on the floor and spill out all their crap; cell phones, calculaters, books, pens, pencils along with their latte’s and you want to add guns to the mix!!! We would have a recipe for disaster on a daily basis.
The reason we have this outpouring of emotion about what happened at VT is because the crazy gunman is not a daily phenomena. Please let’s not make it so and react as if it is so.
Thanks all for the responses.
lemur - I don’t know if shootings like this are more or less frequent than before, but I think most of us will say that it feels as tho they are. Do you have any stats?
Some people feel things would be safer if fewer people had guns, others think the opposite. I don’t know the answer, but I don’t think things are healthy the way they are going, and I don’t see the likelihood of significant change one way or the other anytime soon.
I’m a bit curious at the folk who identify a personal connection with the victims or the settings:
I am a college student; I was a college student; I know a college student; I worked there; I work at a college; etc.
I wonder if or how you draw lines as to which tragedies are related/meaningful to you. Do you feel badly for every victim of a drunk driver just because you have at some time been in a car? I’m serious. Really trying to figure out why some senseless tragedies affect some folk more than others.
When those Amish kids were killed did you empathize because they were little girls, or not because they were members or an odd religious sect?
A couple of months back a couple of lawyers were shot by an irate client in the office building in downtown Chicago that also houses my train station. Hey, I’m a lawyer working in an office building a couple of blocks away, and I pass through that building two times every work day! But my primary concern was what the police response would do to my commute home.
I think in some ways I have almost intentionally turned my empthy off, hardened myself. Because it seems there is so much ugliness all around, that if I get wrapped up in some of it, I risk being overcome by all of it.
I’m not going to say that media causes violence, but my personal feeling is that it is a sorry state of affairs that so many of our most popular TV shows have to do with what I consider twisted extreme violence. Yes, there have always been cop shows, but my impression is that they have increased the gore and perversion factor. If soceity exploits violence as entertainment, personally, I think it somewhat desensitizes me towards the real stuff.
And every night on the news I can hear of another horror story. Someone kills their family, kills a pregnant woman to steal her child, kills an ex, … Right now in Chicago a big story is the start of the trial for the Brown’s Chicken massacre how many years ago.
And yes, we are a society that IMO unnecessarily initiated a military action that has killed and maimed tens if not hundreds of thousands.
Yes, it is horrible that these people died. But a whole lot of people die every day who don’t deserve it. I find myself consciously hardening myself to all the ugliness I perceive, so I can use that energy appreciating the beauty of my family, friends, and home.
Like I said - thanks for the responses.
Have you ever been in a life-threatening situation? My friend was. A couple of armed guys broke into his apartment and held him and his friends up, demanding where “the shit” was. His quote; “pistols look small unless they’re pointed at you.” I read many years ago about a shooting at a school where the gunman only went after women. Afterwards some of the female students were complaining that the guys didn’t try hard enough, and that they ran away, but the police explained that the all-powerful survival instinct kicks in.
The generally accepted and followed practice on hijacking pre-9/11 was to not attempt to fight with the hijackers, since most hijackers could eventually be worn down, bought off or taken out while on the ground. Getting into fights could lead to events where the plane could go down. On one hijacking, passengers were trying to pass notes coming up with a plan, and the stewardess would tell them to wait until they landed. The 9/11 hijackers exploited this, of course, by telling people to be calm and that it would all be OK. It wasn’t until the final plane, where the passengers heard about the others planes, and realized that there was a new paradigm, that they fought back. I’m sure that it would be much harder to take planes over now with just knives.
Maybe military training would be the best, so that you would have something more than just fight, flight or freeze to go on.
The potential risk of not shooting killers in way too high. First, they need to protect others. The gunman can continue killing until stopped. Second, they need to protect themselves.
Original sin? WTF?
I can only speak for myself when I say “No, I don’t feel [personally] bad for every victim of a drunk driver” and as to why, I don’t know. I’m glad I don’t as I’d be in a fetal position. Some things I feel and some I don’t and I don’t know what turns it on or off. This one for some reason I feel and I can only speculate as to why; the Amish school shooting I didn’t beyond the “Jesus that sucks” level and I can only speculate as to why.
Desensitivity is a necessity as feeling too much would send us into total despair and make us unable to deal with rent and buying vegetables. On the otoh desensitivity is dangerous as the inability to feel a connection even to those not in our concentric circles, makes us, for lack of a better word, assholes who need to die. I can think of nothing more dangerous than being completely unmoved by the unjust suffering of another, whether it’s on the level of Josef Mengele or a Paris Hilton. No idea what the appropriate middle ground should be, so I’ll just blindly hope I’m within a standard deviation of it.
While this is a terrible tragedy, it’s too bad we as a society only express shock and sadness when this kind of thing happens to white people. Things like this (and worse) have been happening in places like Iraq, Sudan, and the Congo on a daily basis for years, and when it happens here once it’s like the end of the world. If anything good can come out of it, the Virginia shooting should remind us to be grateful of how lucky we actually are.