Nothing Clever

The Common Man's off today, banished to the corner of my mind. My heavy heart goes out today to students and parents of students, and employees of Virginia Tech University. What a senseless and horrible tragedy. What a mockery of everything that is good and decent in this world. It makes me want to go find my son at his "school" and hug him until tomorrow.

We seem to try to insulate themselves from tragedy in every way possible in this society: by moving out of bad neighborhoods, by procuring constant care for their children, by not leaving the house. Yet, tragedy strikes everywhere and everyone. I hope the lesson taken from this tragedy isn't just that people need to find new and better ways to shelter themselves, but also that people need to find new and better ways to connect with one another in the hopes that tragedies like this can be avoided as much as possible. I believe strongly (and so does The Common Man, by the way) that, in a world where we continue to find ways to distance ourselves from other people (because of email, telecommuting, IM, expansion of the reaches of popular culture, and suburban sprawl, that we are constantly encouraged to think of ourselves as alone in a narcissistic bubble. Other people become, not people, but two-dimensional characters in our own little personal play. It is only by breaking down those barriers and connecting with our fellow men and women that we are encouraged to consider the lives and needs of others.

I've been listening to the media talk extensively about this for an hour or so, pouring over the actions of the university and wondering why more wasn't done to stop this gunman and to limit the damage he could do. I think those are the wrong things to be focusing on. Instead, we should be asking ourselves how someone could come to believe that his own life and the pain that he was in was more important than the lives and pain of two or three dozen more people. I don't know the answer to that, but I hope somebody starts trying to think of the answer.