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Separate We Are One...

Dr. Bionicle

Entry posted by Dr. Bionicle

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Musical Stimulus - Lonely Nation by Switchfoot.

 

Some of the things I say here may be frightening, so I would not recommend that those who are easily scared, especially little kids, read this. This is a serious, scary issue.

 

As I'm sure most of you are aware, there was a tragedy that occurred on the campus of Virginia Tech University. A single gunman killed, I believe the number was thirty-two, people in a single shooting.

 

The media, of course, has been all over the stories. Some stations are more rash than others, and certain controversies spring up. I heard over a radio talk show yesterday over the issue of NBC playing a video of the shooter's rants. Other stations have said that they will not play the video or pictures of the incident or its relations.

 

It's no doubt that this is one of those incidents where America is taken into shock.

 

I'd like to say first and foremost that my heart goes out to every victim, their family and friends, and also the parents of the gunman. The case of victims are simply horrifying and a sad day in American history. I hope for strength in the family and friends of these victims, in their sudden loss of someone they care and love. And I especially would like to give my heart out to the parents of this gunman, who have to now live with this burden that their son has left them.

 

I am no cynic about this situation, as there are literal tears in my eyes as I write this.

 

So often we watch the news and look at the terror going on in the world. We will tolerantly ignore the fact that five people died in a car bomb, and we will usually overlook any personal murder of some sort. Unfortunately, we live in a society where we put up filters of indifference to this sort of thing.

 

My guess is that there were probably around thirty-two people across the country that died of murder the day of the Virginia Tech Shooting, and those are so commonly overlooked. It's when these huge, massive events happen (like Hurricane Katrina) where you just see the pain and the sadness.

 

We get a realization of how unsafe the world is and how unpredictable our lives are. Not a single one of the victims at that school was expecting to die. You wouldn't pick up their PDAs or day planners and see in there "10-11:30 AM - Die". No.

 

Freshman were going to classes. Professors were ready to give lectures. Students were preparing themselves to take notes. Janitors were expecting to clean the campus like any other day. It was a perfectly normal day. Then...

 

Bang.

 

The whole world of that entire campus turned upside down in one day.

 

There is no word better than horror to describe the thought of being an innocent victim of one of these attacks. To play no important part in someone else's life and then be shot by them. The fear of walking in the hallways of your school and imagining the kid at the water fountain pulling out a gun or the freshman at his locker withdrawing a knife. And we aren't aware of that. We all just assume that happens to somebody else.

 

But we're all somebody else...to someone else.

 

Believe me, I'm not trying to scare anyone here. I'm not trying to puff up this whole idea and making it into some horror story it isn't. The problem is, it already is a horror story. And it scares the heck out of all of us that it actually happened.

 

There are things to be learned, and sometimes we can only learn from these terrible events. What you take from these events is your own business.

 

My personal thoughts are that Life is temporary, and we need to make the most of it to us and those around us. You need to hang onto what you have, stick to what you believe, and live.

 

A whole nation united in mourning under one tragedy.

 

But...we'll soon forget about this as an earth-shattering event. It will be a historic tragedy...something that doesn't affect us anymore.

 

The families and friends of these victims and the parents of the gunman will always have this issue, and for that I truly am saddened.

 

Eventually, we'll drift back to our normal lives. We won't think about it anymore. It won't spring into our minds. And we'll feel secure...till the next tragedy.

 

Desparate, we are young.

 

Separate, we are one.

 

I want more than my desperation.

 

I want more than my lonely nation.

 

 

Sorrowfully,

Dr. Bionicle

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Drexer

I actually have your blog subscribed; more for the enjoyement of some of your small but relaxing(and occasional) narrations more than everything. As so, I usually never have the time to reply in any of your entrys, but this one in my opinion deserves a comment.

 

I ain't a hypocrite, a sadistic person, nor a violent person. I'm not a violence lover or anything like that. Yet, there's oen thing that I sometimes do that might surprise or even make some of those that read this consider what I say before a lie; usually, on my spare time, or on some situations(like when I cannot sleep), I go into the web and read stories about school shootings, stories like this later one.

 

I do it not because of liking horror stories(although I like the genre), not in some weird kind of mourning ritual for the lost ones in those cases; but to see, to visualize and to learn more about the shooters. On the rare occasions when I discuss this with my colleagues they call me strange because while they are quick to classify them as suffering from some kind of weird mental condition, I'm more reluctant, more hesitant you might say; I have a extreme difficulty in considering any human being lesser than other in the ways of the mind, and the facts about those cases usually support me; they aren't psychologically portrayed as mentally defective people, but instead as normal people whose ways of thought are just different.

 

I only talked about this because I thought it was necessary to give an explanation before explaining the part that most concerns your post. Almost a year ago I bought and read the book We Need To Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver; I'm not going to say that its real because its fiction, yet I cannot possibly recommend any other book that you might want to read more than this one, not only because of that so called psychological analysis that I usually do, but because it perfectly shows how such an accident is unexpected, sudden, blunt and quick in the life of others, and how deep and long can the scars go tho those that are near and to those that are far. How indifference is created, how despite and anger is born; how, above all, we are humans and not oblivious to 'someone else'.

 

I'm Portuguese and as such some of those who read this might think that not living in the US I cannot possibly do such a evaluation of such cases and give such an opinion; specially since Dr.B. so many times wrote in the terms of country. The fact is, that across the ocean, your culture is infiltrating into my generation of ours, and this phenomenon that was born so big over there might become as big over here. In that perspective, it's a much your problem as it's mine; we're citizens of the world above all other things.

 

Just my two cents.

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