FoolsCap

I think it’s well understood.

I wish I could take my own frustration and anger more seriously, but I realize what a. . .I dunno–failure? joke? stooge? creep?. . . it would make me if I took it seriously.  Hence the ironic distance btw what I think and feel.

A friend once asked me if I ever felt depressed because I always seemed so cheerful.  I laughed in her face; I’m hardly cheerful.  Life’s a bad joke with no punchline, no gag, no payoff.  The only response to the arrogant presumption that my life (or anyone’s really) has any significance beyond daily toil is to recognize the absurdity of human endeavor and take delight in it–to champion the absurd fact that we exist in the first place.  It’s not cheerfulness, see–it’s desperation.

Recently, someone was alarmed by a playful little cartoon about suicide I posted here.  Hm.  Why?  That is, what would it matter to that reader, or to anyone, if I were to snuff it?

Some admittedly melodramatically grim thoughts tonight in part due to frustration with the Erb paper, but also in light of the VTech shootings.

I hate to blog about them (it seems like a cliche’–much worried hand-wringing about how I’m supposed to treat students and their writing after recent horrors).  Yet it prompts writing nonetheless, though not of the sort I imagine is being posted on other blogs.

I sympathize with Cho Seung-Hui.  This is not to say I valorize him or think of him as some martyr, but at darker periods of my life, I’ve been prone to the sort of dissociation that his writings and video suggest (and, in younger days, wrote similarly gruesome things).  I like to think that I wouldn’t go to the extreme that Cho did, of course–but who’s to say that until some strange confluence of events Cho didn’t also think himself capable of those deeds he has since committed?  Why does Cho become a killer and I don’t?

Because:

• I recognize as I’m not really as tormented as I sometimes make myself out to be.
• My rampant ego would never let me do it knowing that the names of massacre killers like Cho are quickly forgotten.  In two years’ time we’ll ask: remember when that Asian kid shot up that school?  Hence the enduring appeal of such colorfully named killers like Son of Sam, the Boston Strangler, or Jack the Ripper (my personal favorite).  Although none of these matched Cho’s body count, their work seemed personal, driven, motivated, in a way Cho’s random kill-crazy rampage can’t replicate.  It’s quality, not quantity, folks.
• Although I gave up religion a decade ago and profess to be agnostic, I can’t surrender the idea that such actions would mean damnation for a soul I’m not sure I believe exists.
• As silly as this sounds–I wouldn’t want my mother to be ashamed of me for doing it.
• It seems so juvenile, as though one is so weak and possesses so little control of one’s emotion that there is ultimately only one violent choice left.

None of the points above simply says: "Because it’s wrong."  Why?  An intentional omission?  A sop to moral relativism?  I suppose that the third point implies a moral judgment, but it’s the punishment I’m afraid of, not the transgression itself.

There are already two wikipedia articles about the VA Tech shootings.  It already has an official name: "The Virginia Tech Massacre;" Cho has been dubbed "The Question Mark Killer"–which sounds like a particularly redundant Batman villain to me.  But, putting the scholar hat on for just a moment (which means removing the lonely, angry, heartbroken stooge one) there is something to think about here–but it’s not (just) the role/duty of comp or English or whatever profs to catch these people.  Rather, it’s a matter of the need to label something, to give it a title and impose a narrative.

This week’s tragedy (a word I’m sick of hearing (both in light of VTech and in general) because it has a very specific meaning in literary study that almost never applies to the way it’s used in the news) is insensible if it is left to be understood and puzzled over as raw fact: a man shot and killed 30+ other human beings on a college campus.  But with a title, with nomenclature–"A Massacre!"–it’s easier to digest; we can assign roles to heroes and villains ("Boo!  It’s Question Mark!") and then claim to have learned something from this little morality play ("Don’t ignore the crazy desperate loner!").  Really, though, what lesson is to be learned from Cho’s rampage (another representation–Cho as bloodthirsty, insatiable madman)?  Be nice to people?  Hug your students?

I’m sure that the students and faculty and staff at VTech have some long and troubling weeks ahead of them.  I refuse to end this little screed with any call for resolution, healing, or (god forbid) a coming together in a shared renewal of our sense of human brotherhood.  Let’s do something wild–let’s deny any effort to make this event a story, a parable, a fable.  Let’s not learn from it.  Let’s let it linger and fester in the back of our consciences until we can’t tolerate its stench anymore–then, we’ll have learned something.  I don’t know what it will be, but it won’t be the tidy moral platitude that I’m sure we’ll soon see being attached to these events.