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Wednesday, March 23, 2005

There Are No Reasons

I've been thinking about the school shootings up in northern Minnesota. I know, not a fun topic, but it's like I want to know why this happened. And There probably will never be any reasons why this boy killed so many people. Even if he hadn't taken his own life, how can there be reasons for such a tragedy? They said on the news that he smiled as he shot other students and the doctors said he was aiming for the heads of his victims--kill shots.

Out of the blue yesterday evening, I remembered a series of books I'd read by Mary Summer Rain. I don't recall much of what I read now, I read the books years back, but there was one part that jumped into my mind. She talked of a future world. A world where people would just snap and kill others, and when they were done, it was as if they'd never done anything out of the ordinary. I distinctly remember reading this and thinking, "how can we live in such a nightmare world?" It was beyond my comprehension how anyone could live in a society where such actions were commonplace.

Yesterday, I realized Mary Summer Rain's nightmare vision of the world was here, probably had been here for a while, only I hadn't thought of her books in so many years. I can't remember which specific book had the predictions of our future in it, but I want to reread that section now. And how do we survive in this world where such terrible things as school shootings happen? We adapt. Somehow, we as a society moved to a place where we function with these terrible events going on around us. It's human to survive, to continue our lives and we shouldn't live in fear. It's not healthy. But I can't help but wonder how our society reached this point. Why? When?

And there simply are no reasons.