There was a really interesting commentary by Lionel Shriver in the Sunday Independent on this subject - focusing the media coverage around the whole thing. She's an American writer who's lived in both Northern Ireland and now London for most of her adult life. She wrote We Need to Talk About Kevin, which is a fictional account of a school massacre (her character was a student who killed twelve students and a teacher). It was slow to get going, but absolutely riveting once you got into it and the sense of menace and dread just built. It was told from the point of view of the perpetrator's mother after the fact - as she went over events from the very beginning of her son's life - literally from her pregnancy with him through visiting him in prison after the event.
Anyway - she talks about the reasons Roberts gave for his anger, anguish and actions and states:
"By what emotional logic do any of these biographical scraps lead to shooting 11 little girls? The story doesn't add up and I don't care. Perhaps we oughtn't try so hard to square the narrative circle. The normal, instantaneous reaction to the news of this killing spree-incredulity, disgust, incomprehension-is morally sound. If we don't understand, maybe we shouldn't.
For both journalists and their audience, drawing larger conclusions from these fitful expplosions of spite is compulsive. There's a particular intellectual discipline required to repress the instinctive urge to interpret, for to find meaning where there is none is to distort. The impulse to derive "lessons" is an impulse to redeem the irredeemable. A deed beyond selfish and evil, Nickel Mines- like Columbine, Pearl, Jonesboro, Bailey; the list is sadly too long to cite in full-was purely bad. It should not have happened. To take any more than that from plain awfulness is to glorify the tawdry, the deranged, the insensible-and act that presents itself at first as pathetic and that we should endeavor at all costs to maintain as pathetic.
Nickel Mines means nothing. That is the ugly truth that the Amish of that benighted town have to live with, and the pure nihilism of this atrocity is both their burden and their salvation. To force that shooting to mean something is to do Charles Robert's dirty work for him. It is to do his bidding."
(In the beginning of her piece she talks about people who do these things having a childish need for attention, infamy and notoriety - as well as in a misguided effort for understanding- she thinks that all the publicity is just giving him what he was hoping for).
Farmerman - you mentioned the man who beat his children being shunned and it made me think. I know all humans are full of contradictions - but how do you think the Amish can live in a spirit of forgiveness, but condone a practice such as shunning? It'd be interesting to hear thoughts on that.
I forgot something - sorry - I think the way the Amish have responded have made this situation mean something - I disagree with Shriver that it has meant nothing. But I know she meant it shouldn't have had to happen to derive the lessons the Amish have taught the world through this.
Also Miller - an interesting story about the ability to forgive. There is a Church of England minister who resigned her job last October after her adult daughter was killed in the July 7 bombing in London. She said that she found herself unable to forgive the people who were responsible for her daughter's death and could no longer stand in the pulpit and preach forgiveness to others- so she quit preaching on Sundays - although she continued doing her charitable work in the community.
I don't think any of us can truly understand the loss anyone else suffers and how it might affect them - or us - if it were ever to happen to us.
Aidan, shunning is a discipline that is emposed by the community at large, and is met out by the group in total. There are strict rules involved that , if a case were severe, that shunning reinforces the rules . The man In NY had been counseled by his church elders and had a previous record of abuse and was unrepentent for a particularly long time. Shunning was a sort of administered punishment of "last resort". Its in perfect accord with their way of life. The shunning follows excommunication . The memeber who is shunned (called "social avoidance discipline") is still welcome to mend his ways and show true penance. If not, the shunning becomes severe and the community requires that the excommunicant must totally separate himself from the community.
Thanks Farmerman - that makes it clearer.
Owning guns doesn't make you free. It only gives the neighbors one more reason to fear you.
It's not uncommon for many people to be owned by their possessions.
David - I can't resist. How does a belief in freedom, beauty, individualism and hedonism automatically negate the "perverse left"?
I wouldn't call myself a leftist - but I definitely lean more to the left than to the right - and I think all of the things you say you choose are great- I choose them for myself as a matter of fact. (Hedonism means that happiness or pleasure is the chief good in life- I can accept that- we're all striving for happiness, aren't we? It's one of our inalienable rights under the US constitution - the pursuit of happiness). Does hedonism automatically infer one's own happiness at the expense of others' though? I don't think so - but I'm not too sure about that-that could present a problem.
Anyway - it would seem to me that it's more of a right-wing thing to conform to rigid criteria, follow a set agenda and deny creativity and beauty for beauty's sake in favor of responsibility or standards or adherence to a doctrine, thus inhibiting freedom, individualism, beauty, and hedonism.
And how does the gun fit into freedom, individualism, beauty and hedonism?
(And you don't have to yell at me- we can discuss this calmly).
Kudos for your optimism in communicating with this knuckle dragger, aidan.
It's more about curiosity Snood. I read his list of what he believed in and found myself saying, 'I believe in those concepts too" and it made me curious to see how two people who believe in the same ends can arrive at such different conclusions about how to get there. I'd like to kind of deconstruct both of our methodologies and see where our minds meet and diverge. (I edited that last part - I just realized that might have sounded different than I meant it to. What I meant to say is - I'm interested to see how someone could arrive at such interesting views as David apparently has - that's all.)
I'm only partially optimistic that he'll respond though
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Anyone who advocates for 8 yr olds to carry firearms to school is not mentally sane.
