Engineering a Murderer

Again the issue of school shootings and video games has been brought to my attention. Each and every time I am becoming less and less tolerant of such ignorant thinking. People are making assumptions, they are making false correlations, and worst of all, they are engineering actual murderers. Take a quick moment to reflect on this radical thought. The more you call somebody a murderer, the more they will relate with the title.

This came back into mind when I was watching a video of Penn Jillette discussing school shootings with three other mothers on a talk show(Wendy Williams Show). He must have had this convoluted train of thought to come to the conclusion that we should blame the actual murderers in these cases, because the other three would have none of that. What those women did honestly offended me. They blamed video games, movies, politicians, and just about everybody else because a precious little child could never do an act of evil. In their frantic debate they blamed me, people with aspergers, and just about anybody else with less than on par social skills. I get it, I am bad to socializing, don’t ostracize me for it. They are making bad correlations, blaming people who should not be blamed.

Their argument always rests on blaming something like video games. I’ll use this one because I am familiar with it and we have all heard it. Video games are the root cause of evil and corruption. That is a subjective view and you can believe it, I respect your right to believe it and I could believe there is some validity behind the point, but you cannot opt of taking responsibility for those claims. You are blaming somebody when you claim this. How do I feel when hearing this? Awful, no doubt. You are out there publicly calling me an evildoer. While it is not directly so, you are attack a pastime I enjoy. Then you gather more and more people behind your cause so that you can gripe about something that will never change. Next you are going get the torches ready and chase me down like they did to the monster in Frankenstein.

What did Frankenstein do wrong? What did I ever do wrong? There are certainly worse habits generated by video games. It’s not like I am playing Hitler’s favorite Holocaust Simulator 1940. I am playing a game—a work of art. I can recognize the boundary between reality and the virtual world. Do not assume that I believe they are the same. In reality, I have learned more helpful things from video games than I have bad things. Such as my multiples of eight, how economic systems function, and the history of our own world. It is all present in video games, do not assume they are brainwashing us to be evildoers. It is a select few of millions doing these acts, the rest of us are good people.

I’m sorry to say this, but these mothers are the ones engineering murderers. These are people that want to make a point and the more we discuss their actions the more it makes sense to shoot up a school. For weeks on the news they discuss school shootings, it only makes sense to commit one because the message will be heard loud and clear. Then people push the blame onto something else—video games, movies, comic books—and attack without mercy. They believe they are fighting for the right cause, but they are only pushing a group of people farther and farther into a corner, until another person snaps. They are wronging us, making us into what they call us.

If you don’t think that is how it works, look at the people who have caused school shootings. They have all been people pushed into a corner. Now they are labeling all of us and pushing us into a corner. I am strong of mind and will not fold so easily, but others will and what will we do then? Blame the same people because they are just as guilty. It is a dangerous cycle full of false conclusions and misplaced hatred. Blame the people actual doing this, not the people who want to enjoy their life doing what they love.

The Leaf's Fate

This is a little something I wrote about six months ago. It is short, but nice. Makes you think and it means something different to everybody. I've heard people relate it to the life of an orphan, though I wrote it with the image of somebody who had lost something dear. 

The leaf, dragged into the malevolent summer gale, was taken with no choice in the matter. It was plucked from the branch with which it had stood proudly; taken from that with which it stood for. It was stolen from it's sole reason, thus losing it's will for living. Without the tree, the leaf has nothing.

It was now stuck upon the endless breeze of adversity. The leaf has long become a mere existence. Without a reason for living, it was only existing. Not going anywhere, just resting in the breeze, waiting for the wind to reveal the next destination. The leaf cannot decide it's next destination, for it's greatest desire, a memory of the past, was long lost in the endless wind.

The merciless wind has handed the leaf it's final destruction. The pitiful existence of the leaf. It was dragged from that it cherished and left for the hounds to stomp upon. Unable to return and tormented with the wind's silent act. The leaf eventually withers, alone and far from that it had held dear. 

Such is the fate of the pitiful leaf.

How do we value the next generation?

Like everybody else on this planet, I get thirsty. So after speech practice one cold winter night, I go to the local gas station to buy a Pepsi to drink. I just wanted something to wake me up and my Mother will often times call Pepsi her ‘coffee’. I walk in and get my ‘coffee’. This gas station I visited for the sole reason it had a fountain. So my drink will only cost me a dollar and its convenient for me to get, as a convenience store should be.

This story goes south once I reach the register. The cashier held a short and nice exchange with the person in front of me. He goes outside and gets into his truck parked outside, which unless he moved it, he did not buy gas. I walk up to the register and receive this stink eye with a silent feral grow, the kind where they just lift up one edge of their mouth like, "What does this guy think he is doing?" I set my drink down and pay the lady, then I walk out. In a stuck up tone, all she had said was, "Dollar forty-nine.” Not a greeting and not a thank you.

Before I go on a tangent of proper customer service, I want to say this happened in a small, rural Iowa town. In rural Iowa, where I grew up, it is common courtesy to act nice with each other. Nicer than the experience I have had with people in the town I currently live in and that cashier. If I am cruising through the area I will give a wave to somebody because, at one time or another, they were likely my neighbor. This is what my parents did, what my grandparents did, and what I might as well do. It is a small gesture, but something I don’t get living in town. So, considering the area, it is not wrong of me to expect a ‘thank you’, which is also proper customer service.

My mind was confused by the look this lady gave me, because I didn’t know why she gave it to me. The guy in front of me bought something very similar in value to my purchase and she had a decent exchange with him. I step up and I get the stink eye. Maybe I pushed her patience too far by buying something from her store. Or maybe I was holding up the line, but I was the only other person in the entire building. So I go through other various explanations and I eventually reached this one, she did not value me as a person of our society.

It is fair to say most of us find people younger than us irritating, I know I find underclassmen annoying. Likely this lady thought I was just like the rest of my classmates and lumped me together with them. At one point or another, everybody can recall a time they thought less of a person younger than them because of their inexperience or lack of knowledge. It sucks, but this is how our society works.

If we continue to clump together every new generation of people, are we not limiting our societies potential? True, we are inexperienced and foolish, but I believe I can at least bring something to the table. With any amount of hard work and diligence, something of mine should become worthy of some recognition, but it is potentially harder than it needs to be. This is because of the people who rush to judge as well as my equals who set these false impressions. I don’t act like an idiot and attempt to set a good impression, but a bad impression has already been set for me by people my age. But I can’t change an entire generation, so I can only hope that time will fix this, as it does.

This is just not an issue for me and my generation, but all sorts of groups. Let’s take self-publishing for example. Self-publishing can be a good way for a budding and serious author to get started. It can also be a good way for a guy to make a quick buck. Quickly the self-publishing market became overran with books that were unedited and unoriginal. Self-publishing lacks the extensive challenges a traditional book must go through. So while some great books are self-published, they must be discerned from the pile of trash that has also flooded the market.

We all want to be recognized as valuable for something, but it is very difficult when you are preconceived as worthless. Maybe I miss the target with the cashier, or maybe I got exactly what she was thinking. Regardless, I think it is worth saying that something valuable can come from a pile of what is seemingly trash. Not that I am calling my equals trash or claiming what I have is valuable, only that we should not judge hastily.