Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

Canadians are idiots too

Author:Karl Fast
Posted:5/4/1999; 7:31:27 AM
Topic:scriptingNews outline for 5/4/99
Msg #:5611 (In response to 5592)
Prev/Next:5610 / 5612

Being a Canadian I would really like to agree with Dave, and I do. But Canadians are idiots in this matter too. As are most western cultures. I just returned from a conference in SF and spoke to a Calgary woman on the plane who would have voted with the majority in the CNN poll.

My take is this. We are a quick fix culture. We desperately want to take senseless things like Littleton and point to the problem so we can swiftly remove it, like a cancerous growth. So we say "TV, Movie, and computer game violence is the problem." Dave says bullshit, as does Robert Cringely and Jon Katz. And so do I.

It sure would be nice if life was this easy and we lived in a direct cause and effect social system. Not that simple. The answers are much more complex. No one thing did this. And no one thing can undo this either.

The most puzzling thing for most of us is why Littleton, and why kids from a middle class home. They had good lives, at least economically speaking, which is how we tend to measure these things, despite it being a vast oversimplication of an impossible measurement. Most liberals will tell you that poverty is one of the major causes of the ills that face our society. It's not the whole story, but I tend to agree that poverty is a bigger factor than most. Yet if that's true, why do things like this happen in places like Littleton? That is what is so vexing for us, and the inability to find a quick fix is driving everyone nuts.

I am reminded of the following quote from East of Eden by John Steinbeck.

Money is easy to make if it's money you want. But with a few exceptions people don't want money. They want luxury and they want love and they want admiration.

This isn't the whole answer either, but something tells me Eric Harris didn't have much love or admiration in his life. And those aren't things you can buy at the local convenience store.

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