re: Shootings -- when are we going to talk about the need to restructure our society?

There is just too much stress and anger out there. These shooters definitely have their issues but I am starting to think that we have a much bigger issue out there in the way we treat each other. How did people get so disconnected and so angry? What's happening with our basic economics? The guy was failing in school --- a school to which his immigrant parents were working so hard to get him into. What would have happened to Cho if he didnt cut it at Virginia Polytechnic? Would that have meant working in his family's dry cleaning business for the rest of his life? What happens to the people who arent "winners" in our society?

How much sibling competition was going on with his sister at Princeton? Were the parents uninvolved and emotionally distant from their kid? Why?

There is a huge Korean community in Northern Virginia where Cho grew up? What is the nature of their responsibility to him? Or is it heavily involved in "saving face" where you cant acknowledge weakness?

How do kids interact with each other? Is the meanness and over-competitiveness of their parents being transmitted to their children? Do parents encourage bullying? Is their shunning involved?

What has happened to kindness, and, yes, Christian charity? His parents were Christians. Roanoke is Falwell country. There are huge billboards about being saved. Where are the billboards about Hope, Faith, and Love? Where are the Christians on this? Where is the preaching about being loving and kind to each other?

Where is the gentleness in our society?

There is no tolerance for weakness in our society? If you are weak, you are cast out. What happened to the notion that there is a place for everyone? That there are events where everyone is invited? And not just the "in crowd"? I am just wondering if there were more social connections, we wouldn't have mass violence.

Even though VT is a good school, it's possibly a "Who gets the most love" thing going on.

I don't think any amount of gentleness or niceness on the part of society would have helped this kid. I think he had problems going back a ways. We know he was on "medications." It might be he hated his father, if his writing is any indication. His roommates are calling him 'angry, withdrawn, rarely spoke.'

Who knows if his rampage was connected to his home life? His parents and sister will have to open up in order for us to know. Don't know how likely that is.

Centerville, where he grew up, is light years away from Roanoke, though, psychologically. Northern Virginia is just different from the rest of the state...more transient, more sophisticated, more blue, reallly. And to top it off, he's on an enormous college campus that is like a city unto itself.

We are living in a behavioral sink, where the piling on of everyday stresses and strains continue to push people over the edge. Societal violence, work pressures, family pressures, little or no societal support, cut throat, winner takes all capitalism, on and on the litany of our society goes. Hell, people are breaking down right and left, some in quiet desperation, some going down in a blaze of gunfire. It is these underlying issues of our society that we need to address, not the band aid solutions of banning guns and such. For if you ban guns, you're simply going to have people resorting to other means of acting out their bloody psychosis.

That violent response is becoming acceptable is underscored by our larger acceptance of Bush's* military response to nearly every international crisis for more than six years. After 911, those who questioned the "whys" and "predictors" of attitudes in the ME that would lead to such terror were roundly excoriated. No need to understand.. Vengeance was called for, consequences be damned!
:sarcasm:

I am fed up with all the posts that compare the MSM attention to VT as somehow being the same kind of excess as Anna Nicole Smith, Michael Jackson, or any of the other obsessions in the past. While we all agree that Iraq has and continues to be poorly reported and emphasized, that does not mean that VT is not a similarly important story.

Even from the vantage point of school violence--ignoring any wider societal implications-- this is such an important story to fully investigate and understand. Iraqi deaths are important. But, we do not honor their deaths nor those of our lost troops by consciously (and insensitively) deriding those who wish to commemorate and understand the deaths from the violent episode at VT.

We must start understanding what is going on within our own society, if we ever want to stop further "Iraqs" from happening.

If crime rates are any indictation, we have actually become slightly less violent since 9/11 (or - at least - we have stabilized):

http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm

and over time, we have seen that balance tip towards the segments of society that promote violent "solutions" to problems. We have been in one of those "tipped" cycles for some time now. It is time to tip it back.


As to violent crime statistics, it has been reported on previously that the Bushies* have on this (and all other controversial issues) found a way to "cook the numbers" a bit. Nonetheless, violent crime is increasing in some areas of the country, reflective of economic downturns I would predict, more than any other factor.

America would never have existed without violence.

a foreign policy solution is what I am saying. See my other post above. I agree that America has always had cycles of violence in its history.

with violence. Name a decade where we haven't bombed a country. Name a decade where we haven't overthrown a government, elected or not. Name a decade where we haven't used economic violence to make sure people understand who owns this planet. This particular administration is just more overt about it. They don't care if they look good doing it.

Violent solutions in foreign policy is the ONLY policy for this administration. They truly are the "one trick pony" and the fact it took six years for the public to vocally turn against this, does suggest a far more accepting attitude towards violence committed in our name than in most previous violent cycles.

They don't even care if anyone knows. That PNAC document is still out there, for all to see.

As to the accepting attitude, we're too distant. More and more aspects of our lives are based on distance. You don't have to be next to a person to talk to them. They can be anywhere, 1000 miles away, and at any time you can talk to them. Our jobs are further away from where we live every day. We're all in our own worlds. We all have specialized careers, and nobody needs to know how anything works outside of their own place on the wheel. It's no longer our job to worry about who dies in our name, that's why we elect career politicians. That's their job. Our job may be to teach, make this or maybe that, sit at a desk, that's our job. That's how we keep the economy working, and production is paramount. Without production, we have nothing. We have no food for our children, no medical care, no money for the bills. That's also because of distance, since, for example, we don't own our food. Even though most people are now against the war, the war hasn't stopped. Why? I'd say it's because there aren't hundreds of millions of people stopping the economic engine by being in Washington on the White House lawn. Why? It would take money to do it, and most people don't live near Washington.

In fact, one might theorize (from previous violent cycles) that only when it spews into the US civilian population, do we respond sufficiently to force change at all levels and move into a more quiescent period (even if we still have an underying lower level of violent actions being committed, aka those described in Central/South America and in the amazing book "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man"

it's the way people have been taught (or NOT taught) to deal with that anger and disappointment. Why do so many instantly turn to guns and killing when things don't go the way they feel it should?

I had a long conversation with a relative last night about this. Her husband is a psychologist, and I asked her to get his opinion of why our culture instantly turns to violence and murder?

My opinion is that we have a culture of cowards! It's much easier to pull out a gun and shoot someone, sometimes at quite a distance, than it is to verbaly win an argument, or even use violence of punching them out, or even stabbing someone. All of that requires physical contact, and very personal involvement. It's so much cleaner and easier to stay your distance and simply pull a trigger, isn't it?

I wonder how how these macho guys would feel being called cowards for their methods????

Did the two kids from Columbine?

It just strikes me as an expression of bottomless, senseless rage.

That's my question: where does the rage come from?

alive, I BET you he would tell you he is! So would the teens from Columbine. It's all attitude, and how people are taught to deal with anger and disappointment. Somewhere, of someone is teaching that the way to deal with these emotions is get a gun and kill! I suppose it could be unintentional, but it's sure being learned somewhere!

This was an incredibly troubled young man. It seems that a lot of people knew he was troubled. It seems that a fair number of people tried to help him.

None of us really knows anything about him right now. But I don't know if Koreans in Fairfax County or Christians in Blacksburg or Atheists on the moon could have connected with this guy if he did not want to be connected with.

I guess that is my question: can you force someone to be happy against their will?

the one who is suffering it FIRST- with the help of a medical professional, of course. The family also needs to be involved, and the accompanying feelings of shame or failure need to be addressed as part of the illness. Religion alone won't cure it..in fact, that could make it worse.

...beginning in elementary school. Many schools pay lip service to it, but I don't think enough is being done to examine why it happens, and how kids who are bullied can cope.

My kid went through hell in a primary school that supposedly had "zero tolerance" for bullying and strove to teach "respect for self and others." I got so pissed one day after YET AGAIN talking to the principal and other administrators that I actually said, "And we wonder why Columbines happen." No answer to that.

Bullying is just a VERY small part of the problem, but if you're on the receiving end of it, it's a BIG problem.

(And yes, bullyng IS different from back in the day. It's along racial lines, class lines, you name it. Some kids can take it with no apparent harm done. But that by no means implies that it should be tolerated at all.)

This anger has been going on in the black community as well, with kids killing each other. No one gave that adequate attention or resources. Thus, the hip-hop generation is calling for social justice. I am wondering if we are "noticing" the violence now because it has hit the white middle class.

and heart felt, I can tell.

I agree with most of your points, but I see another huge elephant in the room that we really aren't addressing and that is the media.

These events now have a ritual to them. A media ritual. First, the BREAKING NEWS and all the misinformation and the replaying of the same footage over and over again. It is a sort of brainwashing. Brought to you by..oh, Mr. Clean, Toyota, etc. Next the news conferences where the reporters get to play "INVESTIGATIVE REPORTER MAN" and hurl accusations rather than ask real questions. So we know they are big macho dudes and stuff. Not just girlie-men reporters. Then the obligatory first memorial with the government officials and the five clerics from all the faiths. All brought to you by Mr. Clean and Honda or whatever. And of course, the bimbos talk through the whole thing. You could have Luciano Pavaroti (or his equivalent in any other style of music) singing and rather than let you listen, they see it as their chance to repeat what they have already said five hundred times in the last six hours. Then of course come the real funerals, and thankfully by this time some personality has called somebody the N word and we are spared those details as the news cycle moves on.

These things are total media events from beginning to end. They aren't news, they have become entertainment. 9/11 was the Mother of all media events.

Don't get me wrong, I am in no way discounting the very real pain and anguish caused by these horrors, and I am not saying we should be kept from the news. But I firmly believe that if the media just reported and did not do this level of circus for every awful thing that happens, the awful things might just die down. But every loonie with a grudge and weapons knows that he will get his 15 minutes and maybe more. that knowledge is intoxicating.

And don't get me started on the gratuitious violence on prime time. For every CSI mystery and Law and Order episode, Cold Case, Without a Trace, yada, yada, some poor schmuck(s) dies a virtual death and we are all desensitized to it completely. So when it actually happens, the media has to put on a seven-day show so we can actually feel something, because we are so dead to it all.

Jumping off the soapbox. I ate a piece of cake with my coffee and I'm WIRED. Thanks for reading this far.

Sadly, I believe it's all too true, and I also think there has been a trend toward more "extreme" competitiveness in our culture for the last 20 years or so. A notable increase in the pressure to excel in some particular field -- or even in all arenas -- quite naturally results in a lot of individuals feeling stressed, anxious, overwhelmed, and at some point, utterly alienated.

How many parents in recent years have even bothered to correct, let alone punish, their own children when they are abusive and unkind, especially to their peers? I'm afraid the percentage of parents who do this has been shrinking for a good long while.

I see it all the time around me, just in the kids that come and go in the RV park where I've lived for the last four years. Some people stay here longer than others, and I've had a chance to get to know some of these kids real well and even to form strong bonds with about a half-dozen of them, aged from three to sixteen, mostly from two families who lived either next door or two doors down.

These two families I knew best were not necessarily representative of the larger culture, since one family's kids were home-schooled and very disciplined and polite and considerate of others. The other family had two teens (three on the weekends), and they were really great kids but were just reaching their teens and I could see their behavior changing. Even the ten-year-old, the oldest boy from the other family, was starting to change dramatically at about the time they moved on.

What I kept seeing that became so disturbing was that such behavior as taunting and tormenting each other seemed more the "norm" than being friendly and kind. Everything seems to revolve around being "cooler" than the next kid, puffing onesself up at the expense of others around you who may be weaker or slower or more timid. Verbal putdowns, namecalling, and shunning are increasingly common and increasingly intense.

I know this sort of thing has always gone on, but I swear the trend is toward much more negative behavior, and it's expressed much more freely and forcefully these days.

Yet I rarely saw parents say ONE DAMN WORD to the kids when they behaved this way. Parents I thought were otherwise good folks and good parents. It's like they just expect this sort of activity and are not surprised or put off by it one little bit.

To someone raised in the 50's like me, it's quite shocking and worrisome, to say the least.

From the games they play, both computer/video and real life activities such as traditional or "modern" sports, to the cliques and groups they choose to form, it's like being selfish and rude and directly abusive to others is not considered to be wrong at all anymore.

I think we can assume, without being racist, that in an Asian culture -- even Americanized ones -- there might be a little MORE pressure on children to compete well and perform at the top of their classes, as you indicated. "Saving face" is indeed a strong element of most Asian cultures, is it not? When students cannot make top grades or even passing ones, how are they made to feel about themselves? What sort of futures will they think they have?

I have said in one thread on this topic that I feel SUICIDE is at the heart of this whole problem of violent "explosions" that devastate communities and even the nation. Cho had been talking about suicide for some time, and his creative writing literally screamed out for help, out of the depths of his tormented soul. I know at least one professor and possibly some students or a counselor or two did reach out to Cho after reading his writings, but apparently there was no persistent and intense effort to HELP this young man and be sure the powderkeg of his psyche was defused.

When you listen to what Cho's roommates say about the guy, it's clear beyond any question that this was a brooding, hurting, and imminently dangerous fellow who was getting worse as time went by. You can't make a weak stab at helping a person like this, giving up if he isn't responsive right away, and expect to prevent a future "explosion" of some kind.

Plenty of people KNEW Cho was in trouble, and the roommates' described him -- with respect to how little he spoke and how he crept about hardly letting others know he was present, taking sneak pictures and eavesdropping on classmates -- as "a ghost."

When will we learn that the more our culture encourages and permits the mistreatment, tormenting, and bullying of certain members, certain children in particular, among us, we'll continue to create more and more alienated, desperate, and potentially explosive, dangerous individuals who have lost hope and feel they have nothing to lose by committing violence on others and themselves.

I told the story in that other thread about my best friend and college roommate in 1969 who killed herself with a gun on-campus. If you're interested, you can read it here.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x669642

Like with Cho, others made some attempts to get Mary Pat treatment, but I consider that what she got instead was very POOR treatment -- in fact, she was made WORSE in some ways by what passed for "treatment" in her case.

After her first suicide threat (short of an attempt, really, but still it went pretty far), she was sent to court, appearing with her parents. She was released into the custody of her father (who was, though he didn't know it, the source of much of her mental distress), and she was court-ordered to receive regular (weekly) psych treatment after an initial three-week period of inpatient confinement.

Her dad picked a psychiatrist out of the Muskogee phone book and sent Mary Pat to him. He chose a MALE, which was absolutely insane, considering that she had a terrible problem in dealing with males at all and was completely unable to talk about her deep-seated fears and concerns about sex, dating and possible future marriage -- critical subjects for a young adult woman!

He gave her a book -- Masters and Johnson, of all things, their classic basic work on human sexuality! I guess he thought she could read this and "cure herself" of her discomfort and fears about sex!

Other than the long quiet talks Mary Pat and I had on many occasions -- we were roommates, remember, and best friends -- she received no other genuine therapy whatsoever, when it comes right down to it. And within a few months of that first suicide attempt, or "cry for help," she carried out her desperate act to end her pain and suffering.

When a person feels so much pain s/he simply cannot bear it any longer, and when s/he can find no reason to HOPE for relief anymore, at any point in the future, it is not so hard to imagine why s/he might decide to just END IT ALL.

And for those who experience deep anger, who have feelings of betrayal or abandonment, who feel vengeful toward others, it's not so hard to imagine how such a person could "take out" other people as they end their own lives.

We have enough examples of this in school shootings and other situations to recognize it as a PATTERN by now, I would think.

So YES, we do need to make some serious and sweeping changes in our culture to reduce or even eliminate, if possible, the constant tormenting and abuse of people by their peers. Children especially are so vulnerable, and they can find it impossible -- completely impossible -- to see far enough into the future to when they would have a different perspective on their prospects in life.

That one roommate of Cho's kept smiling in a weird way as he described Cho's "odd" behavior -- and the other one wasn't much better. I got the feeling the whole time that they had perhaps done a little taunting of him themselves, or at least certainly didn't try to truly help him much. Not condemning them, just going by what I saw of their behavior in the Gary Tuchman interview.

And then Tuckman himself, in the wrap-up comments to John King afterward, said he didn't really think he would have done anything differently if he were in their shoes!

Yep, there's a LOT wrong with our culture, but it won't be easily fixable, we can be sure of that. And I don't see the understanding or willingness to make that happen, so I expect things to just get worse -- especially with all the veterans we're having return from combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, with PTSD issues in abundance....

that "nice guys finish last". That even so-called "losers" have other very valuable talents. I think we have become too into "virtual relationships" that we have forgotten that "skin time matters". We humans need to brush our bodies and souls up against someone who cares who is in the immediate vicinity. We are so into "winner take all" and have forgotten that we should make sure that the basics are there for everyone.

Where were the schools and mental health programs for this kid at an early age? Why did no one see that this kind of behavior is risky at a much earlier stage?

My thoughts on remedying this behavior lead me to conclude that we need to disagreggate our larger institutions to make them more human. I think our schools should be organized into clusters no greater than 10 kids. Each cluster would have an adult who would watch out for the kids. Kids should understand that they need to bond with each other and take care of each other. The schools should sponsor non-competitive team building activities to get the clusters to gell. I think that fostering this type of connectivity would make the schools much safer than all the metal detectors and cops in the world ever could.

Give a copy of the Beatitudes to every RW Christian you know.