...And Only Nixon Gets His Name On The Moon
"It'll be like the LA riots, the Oklahoma bombing, WWII, Vietnam, Duke and Doom all mixed together. ... I want to leave a lasting impression on the world," he wrote.
--CNN.com, quoting Columbine shooter Eric Harris in recently released documents.
My son will be 16 in October, which is astounding to me on any number of levels; he will be a sophomore in high school. Currently, he sports the longish bangs and occasional eyeliner of the emo / goth world of music, which bothers me not at all. A lot of the bands he listens to talk about death a lot and in a way that makes you think Death is a really hot girl who dumped them. This, too, bothers me not at all. He plays video games like Resident Evil, which allow you to blow up evil monsters or something (I've never quite grasped the storyline but that may not be the point.) He and I share a penchant for zombie movies, which of course largely consist of people trying to keep from being eaten by other people.
None of these things bother me, at least at present. Why? Because I know my son, at least I believe I do, and while he has had his struggles with grades and life in general I do not get a sense of need for actual destruction from him. Rock and roll and zombies and Resident Evil give him respite from stress, a virtual opportunity to kick butt and blow things up. Klebold and Harris did these sorts of things, too, but they crossed a line that I think the vast majority of kids will not; something in their wiring allowed them to step into that other world.
This is not to say that I naively or blindly think my son could not make bad decisions in this realm; if anything Columbine should have taught every parent in the United States that apathy is not an option. Children (and this includes everybody under 18 years of age and a good portion of people somewhat older than that) should been seen and heard, whether they want to be or not; they should be observed and questioned and challenged. Changes in mood should be noted and addressed. Granted, Ye Mole does this from a bit of a distance these days, but that doesnt make it any less important to me.
But Eric Harris's quote up there gnaws at me, a bit - as an adolescent, in my private thoughts, and even now as a nearly 40-year-old fat guy with long hair, I thought about what could anybody really do to make a lasting impression on the world? How does one make a mark that reverberates down through the ages? I used to imagine a story about a kid whose answer to that question is to use black magic to raise an enormous obelisk out of the earth that blots out the sun and changes the world's orbit forever. There, he says, I have made a change that will last a million years. But then everybody dies as a result and there's nobody to see or remember his change.
In a thousand years, I would guess only two or three people famous from this era will be familiar to the majority of people - Neil Armstrong, perhaps, and justly so; Adolf Hitler; Einstein; Gandhi. The other ten billion of us will be part of great cultural shifts and trends that historians and sociologists will interpret and our artifacts will be anonymously kept in museums. So, how then do we live?
In a world where God is generally seen as an oppressive dictator who wishes you to have no fun or a big guy who lives upstairs that gives Grammys to rap artists, where fame is measured in minutes and seconds, where 10 billion people struggle to find someplace to stand and then, standing, to get rich as quickly as possible, where everybody can be a "published" writer just by turning to www.blogger.com and starting to write -- what do we have to offer our children that can honestly make them feel that they are doing something with their lives that will reverberate through time in a positive way. Ultimately this planet and everything on it will be reduced to dust; ultimately everything we do (and I will not start quoting Dust in the Wind here, I promise) will go away. How can we give an answer that doesnt involve saying "Just be a nice person and after you die you will go to heaven"? How can we say "what you do today has meaning for the rest of your life" that doesnt necessarily involve people making lots of money? And how do we find the Harrises and Klebolds of the world before they have a chance to get their fame through destruction?
I am certain of only one thing, and that is I dont know the answers to those questions.
--CNN.com, quoting Columbine shooter Eric Harris in recently released documents.
My son will be 16 in October, which is astounding to me on any number of levels; he will be a sophomore in high school. Currently, he sports the longish bangs and occasional eyeliner of the emo / goth world of music, which bothers me not at all. A lot of the bands he listens to talk about death a lot and in a way that makes you think Death is a really hot girl who dumped them. This, too, bothers me not at all. He plays video games like Resident Evil, which allow you to blow up evil monsters or something (I've never quite grasped the storyline but that may not be the point.) He and I share a penchant for zombie movies, which of course largely consist of people trying to keep from being eaten by other people.
None of these things bother me, at least at present. Why? Because I know my son, at least I believe I do, and while he has had his struggles with grades and life in general I do not get a sense of need for actual destruction from him. Rock and roll and zombies and Resident Evil give him respite from stress, a virtual opportunity to kick butt and blow things up. Klebold and Harris did these sorts of things, too, but they crossed a line that I think the vast majority of kids will not; something in their wiring allowed them to step into that other world.
This is not to say that I naively or blindly think my son could not make bad decisions in this realm; if anything Columbine should have taught every parent in the United States that apathy is not an option. Children (and this includes everybody under 18 years of age and a good portion of people somewhat older than that) should been seen and heard, whether they want to be or not; they should be observed and questioned and challenged. Changes in mood should be noted and addressed. Granted, Ye Mole does this from a bit of a distance these days, but that doesnt make it any less important to me.
But Eric Harris's quote up there gnaws at me, a bit - as an adolescent, in my private thoughts, and even now as a nearly 40-year-old fat guy with long hair, I thought about what could anybody really do to make a lasting impression on the world? How does one make a mark that reverberates down through the ages? I used to imagine a story about a kid whose answer to that question is to use black magic to raise an enormous obelisk out of the earth that blots out the sun and changes the world's orbit forever. There, he says, I have made a change that will last a million years. But then everybody dies as a result and there's nobody to see or remember his change.
In a thousand years, I would guess only two or three people famous from this era will be familiar to the majority of people - Neil Armstrong, perhaps, and justly so; Adolf Hitler; Einstein; Gandhi. The other ten billion of us will be part of great cultural shifts and trends that historians and sociologists will interpret and our artifacts will be anonymously kept in museums. So, how then do we live?
In a world where God is generally seen as an oppressive dictator who wishes you to have no fun or a big guy who lives upstairs that gives Grammys to rap artists, where fame is measured in minutes and seconds, where 10 billion people struggle to find someplace to stand and then, standing, to get rich as quickly as possible, where everybody can be a "published" writer just by turning to www.blogger.com and starting to write -- what do we have to offer our children that can honestly make them feel that they are doing something with their lives that will reverberate through time in a positive way. Ultimately this planet and everything on it will be reduced to dust; ultimately everything we do (and I will not start quoting Dust in the Wind here, I promise) will go away. How can we give an answer that doesnt involve saying "Just be a nice person and after you die you will go to heaven"? How can we say "what you do today has meaning for the rest of your life" that doesnt necessarily involve people making lots of money? And how do we find the Harrises and Klebolds of the world before they have a chance to get their fame through destruction?
I am certain of only one thing, and that is I dont know the answers to those questions.
Brought to light by JTK at 6:04 AM
1 Comments:
haha i wonder who ur talking about in those first coupla sentences...hmmmMMM???
i especially liked your description of death being a girl that just dumped you...(i think i sense a song....o wait, Miss Murder, already taken, dammit)
ive really come out of my depression now, and Im becomming more political again (o happy happy joy joy)
but besides the descriptions of me with eyeliner, goth punk and stuff like that- it really proved that you really get me.
1 of about 5 that do.
(mom, yvette, brian,and my guidance counselor haha)
trust me, i have at certain points in the last few years wished pain, hurt, possibly even death on all them asshole that think there better than you, but i would never carry it out farthere than possibly a punch.
ill talk to ya later
peace, hefe (or however the hell you spell it)
andrew
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