(no subject)
Today's shooting in Montreal saddens me. Imagining the phsyical pain of the victims, the emotional pain of their families and the trauma of those who witnessed the events make me sad. But if I'm honest with myself it's an abstract sadness. I feel sad because I assume that's an appropriate reaction to the events of today. The fact that my sympathy is manufactured rather than authentic...that it was truly makes me sad.
I expect that in the days to come, there will be a swell of analysis as to how such a horrendous thing could happen and what might be done to prevent it. Likely some will call for stricter gun legislation. Others might point to our increasingly commercialized, corporatized and isolating social fabric. An abused or neglectful childhood. Too much violence on television. People will seek to identify whatever evil led a man to unleash on a crowd of unsuspecting college students. Which I don't necessarily see as a bad thing. I support gun control and have no particular problem with less blood during prime time. But in a case such as this, I don't think pointing fingers bring us any closer to a solution...because there is none.
Why does a man pick up a gun and try to blow away as many fellow humans as possible, before taking his own life? I don't know. But I suspect that the answer is something more complicated than one or a combination of the commonly cited reasons people often consider. The same profile always surfaces in the aftermath of these sorts of massacres. The shooter was anti or asocial. The shooter harboured a great deal of anger (duh!) The shooter had few friends. In cases such as these, I believe these traits are symptomatic but not the cause of the violence we saw today. I think some people -- today's gunman, Marc Lepine, Eric Harris, Dylan Klebold and other like them -- have a kind of rage that most rational people cannot begin to comprehend.
Perhaps the gun laws gave them easier access to weapons. Perhaps media violence gave form to their need for vengance. Perhaps a lack of community and companionship meant that no one was around to see it coming. But we all live in these circumstances. I've seen violent images on my TV screen. I'm smart enpough that I could get a gun if I wanted to. And there have been times in my life when I've felt isolated, persecuted and angry enough to want to hurt someone. As have most people I know. And yet, no one I know has blown anyone away. And why didn't I? I don't know. No more than I understand where someone crosses the line from simply wishing he could show them, to actually picking up a gun and doing it.
There have always been people who unleash their anger, hurt, desparation on those around them. People ask why, how, what's gone wrong that something like this could happen? When did things like this NOT happen? At what point in history did people not inexplicably and unexpectedly lash out and kill, rape or assault? Of course there is value in trying to understand what may have motivated a particular persons actions. And I'm definitely not suggesting there is nothing to be learned here. At the very least, let us learn something from this horror.
I was fourteen years old when Marc Lepine walked into a classroom at the Ecole Polytechnique and murdered fourteen women. I was sad. The real kind of sad that made me cry. I was scared. Scared by the idea that simply going to school could get you killed. But mostly I was shocked. Because I hadn't thought that anything so randomly horrible would happen in real life. But it does. It happens all the time. And almost seventeen years later, I'm no longer shocked. What happened today is a part of life. And so I'll have a moment of sadness, because it feels right to empathize with the suffering of another human soul, anonymous though they may be. Tonight I'll say a prayer of thanks that it wasn't my life that got blown to bits today. Tomorrow I will put as much good stuff in the world as I can hopeful that in some small way, it will make a difference.