I think the future is now.
The news outlets have moved from reporting the actual event of the tragedy to attempting to understand the psyche of Cho Seung-hui, the 23 year old South Korean undergraduate responsible for the carnage at Virginia Tech. Most reports describe this kid as a ‘loner’, an ‘outsider’ and ‘clearly disturbed. There are a bunch of clearly disturbed people in this world who will NEVER shoot and kill 32 people and injure a number of others. This kid had a clear mean streak in him.
Its unfortunate, but he isn’t alone. Many of us are flat-out mean and don’t even realize it.
But how did this happen?
We've developed a culture of meanness and somehow it’s become less reprehensible and garners less reaction than ever before. Common decency seems to have fallen nearly completely off most people's radar. We don't say hello when we pass each other on the streets or standing next to each other on the Metro. Hell, I’ve been jogging along the same route for nearly a year and have seen the same lady every single day and never even say hello. I often look pass the homeless solicitors while walking down the street or waiting at the stop light in my car without giving a single thought to his/her situation.
We've somehow lost our way and the truly disparaging thing is nobody seems to be enraged by it.
Think about you're emotions when you watch your local news reports. Local news sucks primarily because producers rarely have time to report anything other than the murders and violent crime that seemingly occurs daily. We hear it so often that it doesn’t even bother us anymore. We may be upset or disappointed by it, but how many of us are truly incensed enough to actually do something other than grumble? Many of us don't even skip a beat, bat an eyelash or break stride. We've been desensitized and that’s unfortunate. An unscrupulous and sometimes just plain mean nature has somehow woven itself into our social fabric.
I wonder when this happened…
0 comments:
Post a Comment
It's no fun if you don't say anything.