A shcool shooting in Finland
As most of my flist knows, there was a shcool shooting in Finland on 7th of November 2007. Lives of six young people and two adults were lost, several others were wounded. The 18 year old shooter killed himself, too.
Why did this happen? It seems that the young man prepared for the shooting for months. He was active on Internet sites where murderers were idolized and presented there his intentions. He was raported to have had no respect for human life, quite the contrary; he believed in the right of the stronger to survive. He wnted to kill weak ones. These thoughts are not common, but he wasn't alone with his thoughts either.
Did his parents notice nothing of what their son was doing? I don't know. So far, in media, I haven't seen anything about the parents.
One thing has been bothering me about this sorry incident: I have heard these attitudes before and from a man who has gotten quite a lot of media attention to his extremely wild ideas. I'm referring to Pentti Linkola, a radical Finnish environmentalist who has often been accused of ecofascism.
We tend to point our finger to the age of the young people that commit to stupid and dangerous crimes. We say that it's their age showing. However, the young ones quite often seem to get their ideas from us more mature ones. Their immaturity can be seen in their inability to critizice our ideas. Should we still, at our more advanced time, like in Victorian era, protect the young from the world of the adults by denying them access to much of texts in media? It might be that those parents who we tend to call overprotective of their young were right and we, with our more liberal ideas of upbringing, are wrong.
Ela 16/11/2007
Why did this happen? It seems that the young man prepared for the shooting for months. He was active on Internet sites where murderers were idolized and presented there his intentions. He was raported to have had no respect for human life, quite the contrary; he believed in the right of the stronger to survive. He wnted to kill weak ones. These thoughts are not common, but he wasn't alone with his thoughts either.
Did his parents notice nothing of what their son was doing? I don't know. So far, in media, I haven't seen anything about the parents.
One thing has been bothering me about this sorry incident: I have heard these attitudes before and from a man who has gotten quite a lot of media attention to his extremely wild ideas. I'm referring to Pentti Linkola, a radical Finnish environmentalist who has often been accused of ecofascism.
We tend to point our finger to the age of the young people that commit to stupid and dangerous crimes. We say that it's their age showing. However, the young ones quite often seem to get their ideas from us more mature ones. Their immaturity can be seen in their inability to critizice our ideas. Should we still, at our more advanced time, like in Victorian era, protect the young from the world of the adults by denying them access to much of texts in media? It might be that those parents who we tend to call overprotective of their young were right and we, with our more liberal ideas of upbringing, are wrong.
Ela 16/11/2007