This isn't the post I had planned for today. I had written some nonsense vaguely related to the Don Imus story, but suddenly nobody is talking about that any more. Funny how quickly our idea of what's truly offensive can change so quickly.
There aren't many things more offensive than a red-hot chunk of metal the size of your smallest knuckle traveling 800 feet per second. I was thinking about this a few days ago as I was firing a 9mm Glock semi-automatic pistol into a target. Well, near a target. If you're a bad guy, you don't have much to fear from me. But if you're the bad guy's dwarf henchman standing to the left of the bad guy's leg, watch out. Apparently my "grouping" is excellent, which is a nice way of saying that I miss the target in an extremely precise way.
It had been a while since I fired a gun, and I was struck by how incredibly powerful those things are. First of all, guns are LOUD. My neighbor came over after firing a few rounds to ask if I minded the noise. His house is about 200 yards away, but even inside my house I could have easily heard the sound over the TV. "Not if you let me shoot," I told him in all seriousness. Which is how I got invited to this little target practice outing. He handed me the gun and gave me some basic instructions. There's no safety on a gun like that, which means that it's about 16 times easier to release a barrage of bullets than to open a bottle of children's vitamins. Point and shoot. BANG! It was loud even with a headset on. Without it my ears would have been ringing after three shots.
After every shot the gun recoils. I couldn't hit the target even on the first shot, and without taking five seconds to re-level after every round my aim would have gotten wilder and wilder. After emptying two clips my index finger felt raw. Imagine holding a heavy metal rod in your hand. Then imagine someone whacking at the rod with a hammer. Over and over and over. That's what it feels like to fire a gun. BANG! BANG! BANG!
My point is this: When you fire a gun, you feel it. It's not like the movies, where the hero sails through the air, gun in each hand, firing round after round as the bad guys fall. I can hardly imagine directing that power at another human being. Even a human being that I really, really didn't like. Even a human being who was stealing my TV. I'd rather let him have my car and my wallet and whatever else he wanted rather than feel that explosion in my hand and know that I had directed that force at another person.
Now imagine directing that kind of force at a person, taking a moment to level the gun -- calmly, deliberately -- and taking aim again. And again. And again. Over and over, until the gun is empty and your ears ring and your hand starts to hurt. Then reloading, and doing it all over again. Not at bad people, not at people who are taking your stuff or hurting your children. Just people. Young, intelligent people with loving parents and their whole lives ahead of them. This is not a tragedy. A tragedy is a plane crash or an earthquake. This is something far worse. The only word that comes to mind is atrocity, and even that word has been cheapened by atrocious overuse.
"It was like something out of a movie," the witness says. Survivors said the same thing after 9/11. And so we come full circle, the reality of the horror overwhelming our ability to take it in. To those in the middle of it, trying to make sense of what is going on, the only point of reference is something completely unreal: the movies.
Ironically, it does not seem at all like a movie to those of us on the outside. I was in the waiting room at the doctor's office with my 7 year old son shortly after it happened. He was supposed to be getting a cast put on to replace the temporary splint they had given him after his treehouse fall, but the doctor was apparently a little backed up. Funny how scheduling appointments every seven minutes has that effect.
CNN was playing on the TV. We sat there for two hours -- the length of a movie -- listening to the same repeated sketchy accounts. I bet I heard the phrase "at least 22 dead" fifty times. And we were trapped there, listening to this soundtrack over and over. Sartre's No Exit came to mind. Hell is CNN Headline News, I thought.
This is an admittedly self-centered way of looking at these events. My suffering was hardly on the same level as that of the students and professors in the middle of it. And yet, as anyone who has lived through a tragedy knows, the worst part is what happens afterward, when you try to go on with life. Everything is the same, yet completely different. You feel like you're living a pantomime, a kind of cheap mockery of your previous life. All the little details are the same, but you've somehow lost the thread of the story. Life has become a tiresome sequence of events without meaning.
The question facing all of us, whether we are on the inside or the outside, is this: Is life a movie, complete with a central theme, problems that must be overcome, and a satisfying resolution? Or is it simply CNN Headline News, endlessly repeating the same horrific and meaningless events, without context or explanation? Or is it somehow both? Is the horror and meaninglessness the very thing that we are here to overcome?
Kurt Vonnegut, one of my literary heroes, just died. I'm glad he didn't live to see this, because it would have been more evidence for his theory that mankind is "evolution's greatest mistake." Vonnegut saw life as a pointless succession of events. His characters were forever being yanked around by forces so far beyond their understanding and control that even their most valiant attempts to determine their own destiny were rendered absurdly comical. Vonnegut insisted that his writing was not motivated by any great artistic yearning, but simply by his need to make a living. And in case you are thinking, "Aha! So at least he valued living. He must not have thought life was completely pointless!" -- remember that he once tried to kill himself with booze and alcohol and continued to smoke unfiltered cigarettes right up to the end, not caring -- and probably hoping -- that they would hasten his demise.
And yet... I don't think that Vonnegut really believed to his core that life was hopeless. Implicit in the word "mistake" is the idea that things should be different than they are, and perhaps could be different than they are. Vonnegut obviously believed in the value of humor, which is the sentient being's way of simultaneously acknowledging one's powerlessness in the face of circumstances beyond one's control and of claiming mastery over them. It's like Vonnegut was saying, "Look, I know the universe is beyond my control, but the universe can't stop me from being pissed off about that fact."
When something like this happens, it's an unmistakable reminder of just how much is beyond our control. But that doesn't mean we have to simply sit back and let the death toll wash over us. Life isn't a movie, with a tidy resolution, but it doesn't have to be CNN Headline News either. If I believed that life was a meaningless sequence of events, I'd be no different from that gun-toting loser (I refuse to use the word "gunman"), trying to at least make it into the news before my time is up. There is meaning in life, and it can't be eradicated by one sociopath with a handgun.
I believe that, and the universe can't stop me.
There aren't many things more offensive than a red-hot chunk of metal the size of your smallest knuckle traveling 800 feet per second. I was thinking about this a few days ago as I was firing a 9mm Glock semi-automatic pistol into a target. Well, near a target. If you're a bad guy, you don't have much to fear from me. But if you're the bad guy's dwarf henchman standing to the left of the bad guy's leg, watch out. Apparently my "grouping" is excellent, which is a nice way of saying that I miss the target in an extremely precise way.
It had been a while since I fired a gun, and I was struck by how incredibly powerful those things are. First of all, guns are LOUD. My neighbor came over after firing a few rounds to ask if I minded the noise. His house is about 200 yards away, but even inside my house I could have easily heard the sound over the TV. "Not if you let me shoot," I told him in all seriousness. Which is how I got invited to this little target practice outing. He handed me the gun and gave me some basic instructions. There's no safety on a gun like that, which means that it's about 16 times easier to release a barrage of bullets than to open a bottle of children's vitamins. Point and shoot. BANG! It was loud even with a headset on. Without it my ears would have been ringing after three shots.
After every shot the gun recoils. I couldn't hit the target even on the first shot, and without taking five seconds to re-level after every round my aim would have gotten wilder and wilder. After emptying two clips my index finger felt raw. Imagine holding a heavy metal rod in your hand. Then imagine someone whacking at the rod with a hammer. Over and over and over. That's what it feels like to fire a gun. BANG! BANG! BANG!
My point is this: When you fire a gun, you feel it. It's not like the movies, where the hero sails through the air, gun in each hand, firing round after round as the bad guys fall. I can hardly imagine directing that power at another human being. Even a human being that I really, really didn't like. Even a human being who was stealing my TV. I'd rather let him have my car and my wallet and whatever else he wanted rather than feel that explosion in my hand and know that I had directed that force at another person.
Now imagine directing that kind of force at a person, taking a moment to level the gun -- calmly, deliberately -- and taking aim again. And again. And again. Over and over, until the gun is empty and your ears ring and your hand starts to hurt. Then reloading, and doing it all over again. Not at bad people, not at people who are taking your stuff or hurting your children. Just people. Young, intelligent people with loving parents and their whole lives ahead of them. This is not a tragedy. A tragedy is a plane crash or an earthquake. This is something far worse. The only word that comes to mind is atrocity, and even that word has been cheapened by atrocious overuse.
"It was like something out of a movie," the witness says. Survivors said the same thing after 9/11. And so we come full circle, the reality of the horror overwhelming our ability to take it in. To those in the middle of it, trying to make sense of what is going on, the only point of reference is something completely unreal: the movies.
Ironically, it does not seem at all like a movie to those of us on the outside. I was in the waiting room at the doctor's office with my 7 year old son shortly after it happened. He was supposed to be getting a cast put on to replace the temporary splint they had given him after his treehouse fall, but the doctor was apparently a little backed up. Funny how scheduling appointments every seven minutes has that effect.
CNN was playing on the TV. We sat there for two hours -- the length of a movie -- listening to the same repeated sketchy accounts. I bet I heard the phrase "at least 22 dead" fifty times. And we were trapped there, listening to this soundtrack over and over. Sartre's No Exit came to mind. Hell is CNN Headline News, I thought.
This is an admittedly self-centered way of looking at these events. My suffering was hardly on the same level as that of the students and professors in the middle of it. And yet, as anyone who has lived through a tragedy knows, the worst part is what happens afterward, when you try to go on with life. Everything is the same, yet completely different. You feel like you're living a pantomime, a kind of cheap mockery of your previous life. All the little details are the same, but you've somehow lost the thread of the story. Life has become a tiresome sequence of events without meaning.
The question facing all of us, whether we are on the inside or the outside, is this: Is life a movie, complete with a central theme, problems that must be overcome, and a satisfying resolution? Or is it simply CNN Headline News, endlessly repeating the same horrific and meaningless events, without context or explanation? Or is it somehow both? Is the horror and meaninglessness the very thing that we are here to overcome?
Kurt Vonnegut, one of my literary heroes, just died. I'm glad he didn't live to see this, because it would have been more evidence for his theory that mankind is "evolution's greatest mistake." Vonnegut saw life as a pointless succession of events. His characters were forever being yanked around by forces so far beyond their understanding and control that even their most valiant attempts to determine their own destiny were rendered absurdly comical. Vonnegut insisted that his writing was not motivated by any great artistic yearning, but simply by his need to make a living. And in case you are thinking, "Aha! So at least he valued living. He must not have thought life was completely pointless!" -- remember that he once tried to kill himself with booze and alcohol and continued to smoke unfiltered cigarettes right up to the end, not caring -- and probably hoping -- that they would hasten his demise.
And yet... I don't think that Vonnegut really believed to his core that life was hopeless. Implicit in the word "mistake" is the idea that things should be different than they are, and perhaps could be different than they are. Vonnegut obviously believed in the value of humor, which is the sentient being's way of simultaneously acknowledging one's powerlessness in the face of circumstances beyond one's control and of claiming mastery over them. It's like Vonnegut was saying, "Look, I know the universe is beyond my control, but the universe can't stop me from being pissed off about that fact."
When something like this happens, it's an unmistakable reminder of just how much is beyond our control. But that doesn't mean we have to simply sit back and let the death toll wash over us. Life isn't a movie, with a tidy resolution, but it doesn't have to be CNN Headline News either. If I believed that life was a meaningless sequence of events, I'd be no different from that gun-toting loser (I refuse to use the word "gunman"), trying to at least make it into the news before my time is up. There is meaning in life, and it can't be eradicated by one sociopath with a handgun.
I believe that, and the universe can't stop me.
Labels: Current Events, Serious Stuff
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because it would have been more evidence for his theory that mankind is "evolution's greatest mistake".
Excellent post Diesel. When things like this happen, I have to remind myself that even though we are capable of such awful things, we're also capable of some amazingly beautiful things. I think of Gandhi and Mother Theresa and Brahms, Chopin and Picasso. Oh ... and the Marx Brothers and W. C. Fields.
These terrible events throw crap at us, making it more difficult to see the beauty out there (and in us). But it's still out there. No crap changes that. So during times like these, instead of getting more cynical, I get out my lens wipes and wipe those lenses clean.
So there!
*standing ovation*
Well said, friend.
Very well said...
some days, being in the media makes me feel dirty. Then I realize that I haven't washed in a few days.
Dave
Nice work, Diesel.
Is life a movie, complete with a central theme, problems that must be overcome, and a satisfying resolution? Or is it simply CNN Headline News, endlessly repeating the same horrific and meaningless events, without context or explanation? Or is it somehow both?
I think it's neither. Life is linear, but not scripted. There appear to be cyclic elements, but they are more like sine waves - and ones that are easily shifted, or even disrupted, by events that occur along the line.
Nor do I think life is meaningless. God aside. I bristle when I hear people associated with atheism or agnosticism come up with that old chestnut. We are social beings, and it is that sociality that provides the meaning, the context. We pass on our lives, our experiences, to our children both actual and virtual. The one who lives life in a bubble might live in vain - but probably not even he, as others observe the bubble and derive the lesson "don't go there". Human life is, I think, a dynamic between the selfish and the social - with the perpetrator of the VT massacre pinning the gauge on the "selfish" side. And even that serves to remind us of the value of community. Even when it costs me money and time.
D, thanks for this. You may not be in the middle of it, but I appreciate that someone on the entire opposite end of the country cares so much about what happened in my once-and-future home.
Amazing writing and thinking here, Diesel. I so much appreciate what you've done here and think it's the first genuinely thoughtful and articulate analysis of this event I've seen. Shop it around a little, eh? If I had a magazine, I'd grab it up.
On a different note, you did manage to include a reference to Imus after all: "the bad guy's dwarf henchman standing to the left of the bad guy's leg." I'm not sure who the bad guy is in this analogy, but Imus doesn't have enough in him to qualify.
I have to second Dan...especially the media focuses on the bad of any given society. Not that this shouldn´t have made the news, but not in such a striving for higher numbers of fatalities. The worst part for me is about now everybody blaming another, pointing fingers and continuing thereby to spread evil, a sense of hate and aggrevation.
dark sides are in all of us, and at the moment they see a gap to struggle to teh surface. I still think we shoudln´t let them!
Well done. A very serious post, that deserves a serious comment. I think you're right that life has a meaning, although sometimes it's hard to see with all the miserable things that go on in the world. And the media certainly doesn't help. What I did miss in your post is something along the lines of: This could have been avoided if people didn't have guns. I'm waiting for the day when America will wake up and realize that you don't need a gun to get through life. People in other countries get along just fine without them. There are just too many disturbed, trigger-happy people out there. Sorry, just my opinion
I don't think that Vonnegut really believed to his core that life was hopeless. Implicit in the word "mistake" is the idea that things should be different than they are, and perhaps could be different than they are. Vonnegut obviously believed in the value of humor, which is the sentient being's way of simultaneously acknowledgin\g one's powerlessness in the face of circumstances beyond one's control and of claiming mastery over them. It's like Vonnegut was saying, "Look, I know the universe is beyond my control, but the universe can't stop me from being pissed off about that fact."
Perhaps Vonnegut must stand on the extreme realist position in order for humanity to truly move forward toward the positive light. I want to believe that the balance of the universe does hold in account for our human appreciation of what is good and evil.
I also believe in gun control.
I'm glad that you wrote about this. I have purposely tried to avoid the news because I go into such blue funks over the senselessness and selfishness of it all. Thank you for your thoughtfulness with this post, and my personal wishes that "climber" continues to heal well. My heart goes out to every parent, friend and lover who lost someone the other day.
"...16 times easier to release a barrage of bullets than to open a bottle of children's vitamins."
I was not even aware that there was such a thing as a semi-automatic handgun. What a hellish invention.
CNN Headline News does trivialize everything, and I hate and avoid it. Newspapers do a much better job.
Great post, Diesel! I'm glad Vonnegut didn't live to see this--and that my grandmother didn't either.
this was a completely beautiful, thoughtful, and powerful post, my friend. i applaud you -- and your words. *claps*
(yeah -- i'd say more, but with so many wonderful comments ahead of me, i don't need to) xox
Diesel thank you for verbalizing what so many of us feel and think. It is all so depressing. It is the price we pay for living in a free society. We get porn and Imus spouting crap and nutjobs on rampages. So many people knew he was weird, but nothing could be done about him. Evil is just out there and it takes advantage of an occassional deeply flawed human brain to do its dirty work. Then we all move on, as we must and so it goes...
Thanks, Diesel, for such a well written and insightful post.
When things like this happen it is really important for me to remember that human actions do not change who God is.
On a lighter note, I can't believe you would willingly shoot a gun if that is the impact it has on your body... Myself, I can't even be in the same room as a gun - they give me the willies.
Excellent post and angle. Those of us who have never shot a gun wouldn't think about that aspect of it. It only makes the event all the more chilling to think of the physicality of it.
I don't believe life is pointless at all. On the contrary, we can influence are world more than we think, especially through love and of course, humor.
Thank you diesel!!!
I'm just taking in everything you said and all of the equally uplifting comments from everyone and it brings me safely back to the realization that there are more good people in this world than bad. It's comforting to see so many people from all walks of life come together during an 'atrocity' like this and like 9/11, proving that no matter what race, religion, etc, we really have more in common with one another than we think. Unfortunately it seems like it's just the bad times that bring us together so dramatically. Then again I suppose these are some of the times that really count the most!
Thanks, everybody. I was very close to scrapping this post and just posting something funny instead. This is supposed to be a funny blog, after all. But it just didn't feel like time to laugh quite yet.
Oceallaigh, I especially appreciate your well-thought out insights. I don't really think that anyone, atheist or not, believes life is truly meaningless. We all crave and create meaning.
As for gun control... I believe this occurred in a gun-free zone, whatever that means. It seems that the gun didn't know it wasn't supposed to be there.
I have no problem with guns per se. But I don't have one and I certainly don't need one.
Those almost scrapped posts are often the best as is evident here.
There is meaning in life because we ascribe the meaning we want to it. I just don't know what meaning to assign to this tragedy. The killer was obviously a mentally distrubed individual in need of help that he never sought or received apparently. That is another angle - how many people in need of support just never get it.
A wonderful post, glad you kept it in.
What a powerful, well-written post, Diesel. There ismeaning in life, I totally agree. And it's larger and deeper than all the hate that's in this world.
So well written - fantastic tie in of Virginia Tech and Vonnegut.
And I love your "take" on Vonnegut's philosophy of life.
I used to do PR for the National Shooting Sports Foundation. I learned about gun control, straw purchasing and of course how to shoot.
Gun control can only go so far in keeping maniacs from getting their hands on firearms. Evil seems to find a way no matter what the obstacles.
But that doesn't mean we stop trying!
Thought provoking post.
Nice post Diesel and I agree. To those without a way, the objective of leaving a mark in this world is more easily met by leaving a stain.
Well said.
The universe can't stop us. I love that. I believe that.
Wonderful post, Diesel. Very thought provoking. It's so sad to think that human beings are capable of such atrocities. At the same time, humans are capable of creating so many beautiful things in life.
A student at the high school here was telling me about the movie "Babel" and how a shooting affects the lives of many people and how certain situations and series of events are interrelated. Your post made me think of that conversation I had with that 16 yr old student. It's refreshing to see that there are so many young people who make it a point to be socially aware and think of 'the bigger picture' and how they fit in it. Youth like that inspire me. Then I have students whose life mission seems to be to act as rebellious as possible.....
thank you for posting this. the feel of using a gun is really eye opening, something most people don't understand.
and your last sentence sums it all up. gives some hope. we all need that. thank you.
Yipes.
This is precisely why I don't read books. All these "ideas".
If it's not in USWeekly, I don't want to know it.
All you had to do was correctly spell Vonnegut for me to be impressed, but you did so much more. Now I'm just confused.
Nope, sorry. I meant drunk.
Well said. I can't imagine how irate someone would have to be to repeatedly pull the trigger, unleashing bullets into fellow humans. No sense of right or wrong, no remorse, no feelings at all. Just cold, lifeless, murder.
Well said and excellent. A former student (current student of Va. Tech)of the school where I teach was interviewed today by our school's radio station. I could still hear the disbelief in his voice. When asked about how he tries to process what happened, he states that it is all too surreal right now and that when he goes back to school this weekend, maybe it will sink in.
Events like this should make us want to live more fervently, no cower and hide. Hopefully, those who experienced this atrocity will be able to do so.
Diesel, this was a really well written post. I'm glad to see someone who can talk about their experience with guns and not devolve into bitching one way or the other about gun control. There's places for that all over the interstateosphere2.0, but it doesn't have to be everywhere.
The VT shootings where not about gun control.
I'm also glad you took the time to familiarize yourself with a gun. Just like fire and the light socket and sex, it's kind of something you should be familiar with, because it's usually so different from expectations. Dangerous in not just the hands of the wrong, but also the hands of the stupid.
I guess I should say "hands of the ignorant", not "hands of the stupid". They aren't the same thing.
This mentally deranged man, like all suicidal psycopaths, is unlikley to have been stopped from taking innocent lives out with his own. HOWEVER, the extent of his massacare may have been modified, if so had been his weapon of choice. I just don't get it. What is this "right to bear arms" crap? What about the right not to be murdered? Seems a no-brainer to me, but hell, what would I know?
excellent post. you're right- one mentally ill individual can not take away hope.
Diesel, Diesel, DIESEL! Time to take you for a little walk. First of all, my duty ammo is .45 caliber and it heads down the pike from the muzzle about about 900fps. If the sunlight is just right, you can actually see the bullet as it makes its way to the target. I don't know what the actual velocity of 9mm Ruger is, but it's a tab bit over at least 1,000fps, I think.
Question: Were you shooting the Model 17 (which holds 13 and 1) or the Model 19? Can't remember its capacity. But let me just say this---handguns don't have clips. They have magazines. I learned that one the hard way, out on the range. Magazines are more containers than clips. I have no idea what the difference beyond that is. Also, Glock will tell you that it has THREE safeties. Two are internal. One is that little lever on the trigger. But the gun behaves as though there were not one safety because, as you know, all you have to do is exert pressure on the trigger and bang. One of the safeties keeps it from discharging if dropped. Big deal.
This just in: I now carry a Colt Model 1991-A1 that was my first service gun when I worked for the City P.D. It DOES have a thumb safety that I keep forgetting to depress. Old habits are hard to re-learn. I am not into guns. At all. I just have to have one for work. I don't like to shoot. But I am a good shot, thanks to hours and hours of getting "front sight picture and smooth trigger pull" drilled into my skull. At 25 yards, I can put them all in the 5s. Sometimes.
Guess I'll have to have you down to the walnut orchard for tree climbing AND shooting now.
Oh, and good post. Someone asked me how I felt about gun control the other day. I hate that a nut got a gun and killed so many innocent people. But I can't help but wonder how many lives would have been saved had there been a gun there in the hands of a good guy. I don't like that scenario at all. But it's a hell of a lot better than the way it all went down. No one can argue that.
What more can be said than what has been said already? Great post which is proof of a great idea which is proof of a great guy!