Thursday, April 19, 2007
Wake Up America: my response to VT
I feel like I should write something regarding the Virginia Tech shootings, but what’s to say that hasn’t already been said?We have:
1) Gun enthusiasts proclaiming their ‘right’ to carry around concealed weapons to defend themselves against ‘evil-doers’
2) Violent movies, videogames, television shows, and music taking blame
3) Anti-gun advocates declaring stiffer gun laws
* Plus an entire slew of other things I’m forgetting/neglecting to mention
We are being bombarded with a tornado of contradicting opinions; some downright retarded. While I remain a liberal on most (if not all social issues) I realize it’s not that hard for someone to kill another. Sure, they can make it more difficult to obtain weapons;
However, anyone with enough willpower shouldn’t have too much trouble eventually getting one. As for the red neck conceal and carry propaganda; if you believe that every hot-tempered American should wield a pistol to restore order, then, well, maybe you should have lived during the fucking wild-wild-west. So what’s our country’s problem? Why is there so much violence?
Living in the United States we often lose touch with the human experience. We live in a culture of one (ourselves). Whatever happened to “love thy neighbor” (sorry, last time you will ever see me use a biblical quote to make a point)? Our new mentality is “Screw the neighbor, I’ve got a bigger house!”
We have created artificial boundaries by competing with one another to achieve a feeling of superiority. In the end, this blind and faulty pursuit towards 'happiness' is stripping us bare of all the things that truly matter in life. We end up walking around like zombies, lost in our own shallow thoughts, breeding contempt, and envy for others; ultimately resulting in hopelessness, which is what this gunman was….hopeless.
Believing in an intrinsic goodness is sometimes a hard apple for me to swallow, but I surely believe we can be conditioned to THINK in a certain way. If our culture consistently stressed a compassionate view towards others (instead of the polar opposite), I think we’d live in a far more peaceful place. Sure we’d still have the occasional mass-murder, (as I’m not saying this specific incident wouldn’t have happened) but from a macro view we’d be a heck of a lot better off.
I’m not really sure where I’m getting with this. In fact, I’ve probably made a lot of vague statements made up of my own ridiculous opinions, but it's late and I'm tired of writing. Until next time kids.
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