Perspective
What a week! While the whole world has been focussing on the VTech massacre, I caught another piece of news from India that put things into perspective for me. I was referring to this. So Richard Gere kissed Shilpa Shetty! So what? She's neither the modicum of so-called 'Indian virtues' nor claims to be one. Who are these people who start demanding apologies and lodge police complaints when it is no business of theirs? Don't they have something better to do with their lives? I saw on TV all these guys burning effigies and dancing around them like illiterate morons. And these images were beamed all over the world. No wonder the westerners still think of India as a elephant-riding snake-charming country. While we are at it, can someone tell me if there is a effigy-making industry somewhere out there I'm unaware of? I mean, our junta keeps burning effigies of cricketers, movie stars and politicians all the time. So I would assume that manufacturing these effigies would be quite a lucrative business proposition. If there is no such effort going on currently, I would like to copyright it.
Coming back to the real story of the week, the Viriginia Tech incident is deeply saddening. But I don't really agree with those who say it is hard to understand what would push someone to commit a crime like this. There are 3 essential ingredients in making this potentially deadly mix:
1. The essential loner who doesn't fit anywhere, not really liked by anyone and hence seen as a freak.
2. A college campus that thrives on peer pressure, where people are either accepted or outsiders and where feelings of hostility and psychotic rage are free to foster and grow without being noticed by anyone
3. A country, that despite repeated demonstrations of the evils of guns, still refuses to bring a reasonable level of gun control. You can walk into a gas station and pick up a rifle and some bullets with an elementary background check.
I'm not trying to trivialize the problem or claim to have a blueprint for identifying potential psycho shooters. The human mind is complex. Though we would like to believe that humans are essentially good and moral, research has been showing us that this might not be always true. Infact, there might be no such thing as free will. And every decision we make is probably shaped by past events, our genes and our environment. When you consider all this, you will realize that any of us could turn into a mass killer if the other factors are right (or wrong!). And even if you identify such individuals, you can't really take any action against them unless a crime has actually been committed. This was the problem faced by VTech authorities. So the only way to stop these crimes is to make it hard for potential criminals to get hold of weapons that can enable them to wreak such havoc.
Ofcourse, the gun control lobby in the US is extremely powerful. If the Columbine shootings could not bring about a change, then I doubt if the VTech shootings are going to achieve anything. In the meantime, our hearts go out to all those innocent victims at Virginia Tech and their families.
Coming back to the real story of the week, the Viriginia Tech incident is deeply saddening. But I don't really agree with those who say it is hard to understand what would push someone to commit a crime like this. There are 3 essential ingredients in making this potentially deadly mix:
1. The essential loner who doesn't fit anywhere, not really liked by anyone and hence seen as a freak.
2. A college campus that thrives on peer pressure, where people are either accepted or outsiders and where feelings of hostility and psychotic rage are free to foster and grow without being noticed by anyone
3. A country, that despite repeated demonstrations of the evils of guns, still refuses to bring a reasonable level of gun control. You can walk into a gas station and pick up a rifle and some bullets with an elementary background check.
I'm not trying to trivialize the problem or claim to have a blueprint for identifying potential psycho shooters. The human mind is complex. Though we would like to believe that humans are essentially good and moral, research has been showing us that this might not be always true. Infact, there might be no such thing as free will. And every decision we make is probably shaped by past events, our genes and our environment. When you consider all this, you will realize that any of us could turn into a mass killer if the other factors are right (or wrong!). And even if you identify such individuals, you can't really take any action against them unless a crime has actually been committed. This was the problem faced by VTech authorities. So the only way to stop these crimes is to make it hard for potential criminals to get hold of weapons that can enable them to wreak such havoc.
Ofcourse, the gun control lobby in the US is extremely powerful. If the Columbine shootings could not bring about a change, then I doubt if the VTech shootings are going to achieve anything. In the meantime, our hearts go out to all those innocent victims at Virginia Tech and their families.
posted by c2c at Friday, April 20, 2007
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