Call Me Oedipus

The Virginia Tech shooting that transpired on Monday, April 16th 2007 is as tragic as any the Greek poets left us. A greater tragedy is the response it has evoked across the country. Blaming the availability of guns or the exposure to violence are the whipping boys of the demagogues crying out for quick action. The urge to 'do something' overwhelms society's psyche, and we search for solutions to the ever-present questions events like this one force us to face.

We have a need to make sense of the world. When a senseless thing happens such as a school shooting, we have no rational way to respond, so we respond irrationally.

Society asks rhetorical questions seeking answers to the unknown; "Why me?", "Why did this happen?", and others find their way to our lips. The questions that are the most telling, to me, are "What can we do to prevent this from happening again?" and "What drove this person to commit such a heinous act?" They are not the same question. The former asks us to focus on the symptom while the latter asks us to focus on the cause. Neither is easily answered and when our leaders are judged by the perception of action, they'll gravitate to the the easiest and quickest cure available. (aside- It's as if amputating the offending limb will cure the leprosy patient. It might but how many 'cures' will they withstand?)

We fear that which we can not control and thus we seek to control that which we fear using logic that would make Möbius proud. Real control, like over human-nature, is like unrefined gold ore; it's difficult to find, takes a lot of work to produce, and comes with a large price-tag. The appearance of control is like fools-gold; plentiful, cheap, and available right now.

Politicians become like snake-oil peddlers. They don't know or even care if their product will do what they claim, only that their marks believe it will. When we go looking for gold, maybe the sticker-shock convinces us to compromise, maybe we rationalize, "The nice guy gave me a deal and sold it to me for 10-cents on the dollar!". Whatever the reason, when we keep paying full-price for fools-gold, not only do we deserve what get, we'll never run out of people willing to separate us from our money.

How we respond is a great measure of the change engendered by society in itself.