A thought....
Yesterday, I heard someone mention that the horrific events at Virginia Tech was just an act of pure evil. That the person who did it was purely...evil.
I countered that having no information as yet, it was dangerous to just assign the title of "evil" to the person who committed this heinous act. The ACT...was heinous. Frankly, the person who did it, could have been severely mentally ill. Not one soul has the ability/right to judge any of that at this time.
He scoffed at that (as I find some narrow minded "scoffy" stereotypical Texans will do) and said that was an excuse for evil.
You ever want to taste my anger fully revealed? Say stupid shit like that. If you've never had your life touched by the impact of mental illness within your family, then I think to speak so outrageously is appalling. If you've never watched someone ravaged by the inability to control behaviors, impulses or watch them being "haunted" by things you have never experienced...then how could you possibly discern "evil" from illness? You might as well stick plugs in someone's neck and chase them with a fucking fiery stick. We know nothing, and we may know nothing for a very long time. Until we do know something (which may be never) why not refrain from judgement and castigation regarding things we do not understand?
I wonder when we will stop making assumptions about what mental illness is and isn't. I wonder when we will stop using race and culture to demean everything that is wonderful and beautiful about being alive, unique and distinct. I wonder...
...when we are all going to wake up.
Comments
I hope that they do figure out what was behind the whole shooting. It's not so much evil as it is sad.
Still, you have to remember not everyone has the ability to understand there are things in the world we don't have answers to, just like that. To not give that person the benefit of the doubt, that he/she meant well with the statement, is tantamount to making an assumption about her/him that may or may not be true as well.
Food for thought. People usually make statements without thinking. Your experiences created a need in you to protect your family member. However nice of you to do that the other person may have circumstances in their lives that put them in a different position.
You're a smart girl. You are also very kind and loving. You are the kind of friend I always prefer to have. The one who will have your back, as they say.
Amen! Making black and white distinctions (like good and evil) is never an accurate assessment; circumstances, conditions and especially people are more a thousand times more complex than any simple statement like "he's evil" or "she's a saint" can convey.
To label people (as opposed to their actions) as evil just dehumanizes them and makes it harder to find the true and necessary compassion for their pain and suffering and the pain and suffering brought about by their actions; it makes it harder to find our own humanity, which is the only thing that will change the world for the betterment of everyone.
@DeWitte: I do remember that story about your neighbor. It's heartbreaking. And my heart and love goes out of those family members mourning the lost lives of the innocent. I can't begin to touch their pain. I just get nervous, uneasy when I feel the surges of hate coming up from the masses. It's blind...and it misses the point, and it makes me scared of what we are becoming.
@Sheryl: ((hugs)) thank you Sheryl. I struggle with understanding sometimes what some people may not have the ability to understand. I've had people try to coax me along with that my entire life. Sometimes, it feels like my heart is too big for me. And that want to feel compassion can sometimes put me at risk. I suppose too much of anything is never good. In many ways, I still feel so much like a child. I suppose we all doo sometimes, eh?
@Patty: Patty, as usual, you tied it all together beautifully.
thank you so much for this post.
I've said the same thing when I was reading an article about a 17 years old girl who stabbed her new born baby probably because of panic.
As horrible as a situation can be, I force myself to never judge people, because we never know what can happen to us as well.
you took the words right out of my mouth. I have come to wait and gather as much information as possible. I'm just watching CNN, MSNBC, FOX and it just amazes me how these "professionals" jump to conclusions with waiting on all of the facts. I know it's a business and some may have concerns about these students who were slain but already I have heard, "this is just as close to a suicide bomber in Iraq." I have heard from every freakin' profiler about "he was a loner". I have even heard how video games may play a factor in this hiddeous act...
*sigh*
I am really trying to hold my tongue at this point with these news organizations. I know we get news 24/7 but sometimes they should slow their roll instead of going down every freakin' rabbit hole.
Your post hits the nail on the head and to be honest from what I have seen, most of us bloggers are keeping the facts straight more so than the news organizations.
Keep up the great work sister.
Be Blessed. ^_^
I have mental illness in my family, and I know that often times the ill will do things without thinking, without being able to control their actions, sometimes without even being fully aware of what they're doing. Does that make it right? Of course not. But you're absolutely correct in saying that at this point, there is no one fit to judge the person who did this. No one else knows what sort of private hell he was enduring.
Good post.
@Sujatin: Amen.
@Christie: Thanks, Sunshine. It hurts when you can feel the stings of misunderstanding in your own family.
@Carmel Complexion: Thank you for saying that. And thank you for sharing. I find it hard to ignore any torment. It all is horrific.
@Nikki: thanks Nikki. I just put the tv back on...not sure how long I'll be able to keep it on...
And who are you kidding? You have the ability already, woman. You do it all the time.
Cheers.
Not understanding, being heartless, thoughtless and down right ignorant is, unfortunately, just a trait of the human race that will probably never go away.
Equally as unfortunate is the ability for someone to go around and shoot random people at will with the intent to kill.
After listening to 12 straight hours of "experts" pushing their own interpretations as to why what happened, happened, I’ve come to realize that too many people don’t really care about changing the world but instead would rather be accredited as the one who figured out the problem.
When will people begin to realize the value of human life? Whether your picking on someone with a mental disability or you’re killing strangers out of blind rage, you’re desecrating someone’s life and I just can’t think of anything more sacred than life.
Ben...BRILLIANT.
I’ve come to realize that too many people don’t really care about changing the world but instead would rather be accredited as the one who figured out the problem.
Abject - truer words were never spoken.
I remember a few years there was the news story about the woman who drowned her five children in the bathtub. And they conducted psychological testing on her--to determine whether or not she was sane. Uhhhh...let's see...she may have already demonstrated her level of sanity.
Some people can perceive happenings, people, and information only in polarized terms: good/evil, black/white, right/wrong. Why? Because these people are stupid. A bright mind is nimble enough to reshape its understanding given new information, appreciate apparent contradictions and paradoxes, and thus develop the ability to generate more than two assessments for any particular situation. A dull mind can process only binaries.
Stupid people need things labeled for them, and will ignore new facts and other input to maintain their set of labels. Label the death of an embryo as “abortion” and it is evil. Label 100,000 deaths of children as “collateral damage” and it is OK.
Stupid people cause the most evil. They cause more evil than do the mentally ill. A mentally ill person, awash in really fucked-up brain chemicals, might gun down 33 innocent people one day. Stupid people, because of their sheer numbers, cause senseless tragedy on a far larger scale. How? Stupid people believe what advertisers and unscrupulous politicians tell them and yield to pressure from others to accept evil as good. See: 2004 presidential election. See: Abu Ghraib (thumbs up!), and Club Gitmo. See: any large-scale desecration of human dignity and life. Note that when a dictatorship comes into power, the intellectuals and artists are driven out or controlled as quickly as possible.
I grieve for those 33 students, for their parents, for all who loved them. And I grieve for the lost child of God who pulled the trigger, trapped as he was in a dark corner of his mind beyond the reach of love or reason.
thank you. That is so true. Luckily, no one has commented like that to me..and I hope never to hear it. You just never know what kinds of things people are dealing with. Who are we to throw stones?
You might as well stick plugs in someone's neck and chase them with a fucking fiery stick.
For that line and that line alone (and maybe also on account of the large bulbous-ness of my head) you get to keep the tiara in perpetuity.
You rawk... as the kids say.
I get to keep the tiara??? *looks around, feels eyes well*
You like me...you REALLY like me!! *weeps openly, while carefully ensuring tiara does not slip*
You're just too good to me man. (I'll pretend the fact that the tiara won't fit on your head was NOT mentioned)
Most people throw around the word "evil" without having any idea what it might mean to call someone that. What does it really mean to say that someone is evil? Are they unredeemably bad? Have they not a single good quality? I find that hard to believe--and I don't even really like most people. Still, most of them aren't so terrible through-and-through that you can just say they're evil.
The people who did it could have been mentally ill or even legally insane. Or they could have thought they had reasons (which doesn't excuse or justify the heinous crime, just so we're clear). The kids who shot all those other kids in Columbine thought they had reasons. They weren't insane, not legally and probably not by any psychiatric definition. To be insane you have to not really know what you're doing and lack ability to control yourself. I have no idea if the Virginia shooters were. Maybe they thought they had reasons, or perhaps they were insane.
But, Meaux, a woman who drowns her children may be insane or she may not be. The act is not proof of insanity. It never is, because people do heinous and terrible things to each other with clear premeditation and with as good an ability to control themselves as any "normal" adult all the time. Sometimes, a woman's acts towards her children are a result of insanity, and sometimes they are not. I don't know the extent of her malice aforethought, and I don't know enough about her circumstances to say either way. Perhaps she was mentally ill. Perhaps she had post-partum depression or psychosis. Perhaps she just temporarily "lost it." God knows motherhood has a way of pushing women to the edge of sanity and reason. But, just as the Virginia shootings don't tell us that the shooters were evil, neither do the drownings tell us she was insane.
I have been exposed to people with mental illness...however that does not excuse his behavior. Thirty three people are dead.
I believe the news said he had an arguement with his girlfriend, murdered her, and then proceeded to murder a bunch of people. He then murdered himself afterward. Signs of mental disfunction, but for how long, five minutes, five seconds? For him to pick up a gun and kill his girlfriend after a disturbing argument shows premedidation...and that can be argued as evil.
People may lean to sympathize with this sort of thing, because its in every human to go over the edge and snap. It's understandable. People are traumatized daily, life is stressful.
However, disablement is not an excuse, if he were alive I would charge him to be pressed to every last letter of the law. Those families need to be compensated some how...
Hope your week is blessed.
-D x0x
It's a tragedy. All the way around.
Sorry, but anyone who shoots and kills 33 innocent people is not anything more than evil. I'm glad he's gone and I hope he rots in hell. He is EVIL. "Good", kind-hearted, loving people don't shoot up a school and murder people. There is no other explanation for him other than EVIL and I am actually quite floored that you would suggest otherwise, mentally ill or NOT.
I think our society is too "scared" to use any type of judgement. I like judgement. My judgement would keep me from hiring Michael Jackson as my babysitter, ex-Enron CEOs as my accountants, and Osama Bin Laden as my religious guru.
What's wrong in saying that someone who commits MURDER is evil? Why the hesitation to pass a swift judgement against such a heinous action?
Our society has gotten too weak, too soft, and too scared to differentiate between right and wrong. We hesitate to put our foot down and demand that certain actions are unjustifyable, sickening, disgusting, backwards and wrong... perhaps because when we look in the mirror we may all realize we are hypocrites?
I have no sympahty for the gunman, I don't care what his problems were, other than the fact that if someone had the balls to use their JUDGEMENT to intervene in his life, deciding he was perhaps, "unstable", the whole incident may have been avoided.
Don't turn this shithead into a victim. He doesn't deserve sympathy, yet his actions deserve condemnation, no matter what his "problems" were.
According to you, other "victims" may have been: Ted Bundy, Hitler, The Green River Killer...??? I don't buy it.
I did not in any way condone or justify his actions. To do so would be absurd. I also don't believe I said his actions weren't evil. I am talking about judgement of people. Not behaviors. I said, we do not know enough to judge. I know I never suggested Ted Bundy or Hitler or anyone else that committed heinous acts - so I wouldn't say 'according to me." I don't need my theories simplified for me. I mentioned this instance. This situation. And I mentioned it within hours of the event, having about as much evidence to judge, as you have right now. I'm glad it's clear for you. Everything isn't so black and white to me. Perhaps if we followed your approach, the world would be a better, simpler place. I just don't know.
I grieve for loss of life. And I certainly would never assume I have the right to determine who is in hell and who isn't. I'll leave that to God.
That's a hard sell from my opinion. I've seen good people do whacked shit before, but I guess the argument you've given here would seem to suggest that anyone who kills a large number of innocents is an evil entity.
Enter the Government: How much "collatoral da