Individual Responsibility

In a discussion with a friend after the Virginia Tech shootings, the topic of personal responsibility cropped up. The line of thought (filtered and expanded upon, of course, through my own interpretation) was something like this: This is a school ensconced in a part of the country where individualism is a part of the heritage. What, I think, is meant by this, is that rural people in this country have a more pro-active response to taking care of situations, taking care of themselves in back to the basics sort of way. Resources can be limited, people learn to improvise. People have a more realistic relationship with nature, in some ways, with life and death, as a part of nature, than intensely urban environments. How this directly fits into this situation is such: Guns are a part of southerners life. Hunters start hunting in elementary school. They learn a healthy respect for weapons. They have good aim. They don't back down. They know how to survive. So, the question emerged, why didn't any one of those students in those school buildings, why didn't they fight back? Why didn't they throw a desk in the madman's way? Didn't anyone have a gun on them? This is Virginia! And thinking back on conversations regarding the legal (or illegal) possession and carrying of guns I have over heard from people in a similar demographic . . . she's got a point. So ultimately, the question was this: Why, in a part of the country where people are not unarmed, where people are primed for protecting their territory, why were the students so cowed? Why didn't anybody fight back? The question was raised, then we went to brunch and drank mimosas and coffee and that was that.

Then, I picked up a few books while wandering through the streets of Brooklyn, walking my beloved dog. Someone had very thoughtfully left a stack of books for me to sort through. I find that people in this town are very conscientious about their no longer needed goods. I have been devoutly reading one called "To Live" by Yu Hua. It has been translated from it's original Chinese. It's a strange book. The basic idea is that this guy, Fugui, has suffered heart breaking and continuous calamity all throughout his life, yet he smiles and holds tenaciously to it, even as a old man blackened by the sun, stooped by physical labor, alone because all of his family and friends have died in very creative ways, he cackles joyously as he describes his heartbreak, because it is life. Don't get me wrong, he doesn't seem to enjoy the horrible things that happen, but he continues to see the good in people and the joy that is inherent in life. It is spell binding. How it fits into this discussion is this: It also describes a man who lets life happen to him. There are several instances throughout this book where it is obvious that the man did not prevent the calamity from happening. It screams from the text, though it is also written in a way that the reader can't be sure it occurred to the author to allow the character to even THINK about the prevention. It describes a man absolutely controlled by the governmental and societal upheavals of modern China. It seems to be an illustration of how ever changing regimes take away the individual's ability to react to situations in self-defense, rather they act in deference to the powers that be, no matter how ludicrous and obviously detrimental those powers may be to the individual.

I'm not sure if there is a connection between these two thoughts, but I do wonder if we, somehow, as a society have become cowed. Maybe it's the exact opposite, maybe it's complacency . . .we are a superpower, we are the best country ever, we are safe, we don't have to worry. In any case, back to the virginia tech shooting, what is going on in our country that these exact types of domestic terrorism keep happening? Why are we allowing this to happen?