Like The Moment When The Brakes Lock...

Those in Austin remember all too well Charles Whitman and his senseless rampage at the University of Texas tower over 40 years ago. It saddens me to know that yesterday's spree at Viginia Tech replaced Whitman as the country's worst school rampage in our history.

The thing that surprises me just as it has a friend of mine who pointed this out to me this morning. From the responses that he has been getting is that people pointed to racial stereotypes about yesterday's shooting BEFORE considering the possibility that the gunman was most likely suffering from a psychological disorder. Psychological disorders are not limited to "Islamic tehrrrrorissts," and that is something that has been especially ignored conveniently.

I cite as examples:

Charles Whitman, The Manson Family, The DC Snipers, Timothy McVeigh, George Henard, Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin, Jeffrey Dahmer, David Koresh, Jim Jones...

Point is that there is a ton of ignorance in this world that states that differences in race, religion, financial status, gender matter. In the Grand Scheme, they don't. Or at least, they shouldn't. Too much emphasis is placed in society (by the media, governments, entertainment outlets and by the individual choices that people make) on dividing us by what makes us "different" instead of uniting us by our common Human bond and celebrating what makes us different.

In some cases, it's subtle, in most cases it's not. We've been fighting amongst ourselves over these things for thousands of years and realistically none of that will ever end. The only hope we have left in this world is for people to start reaching out to their communities and start making choices towards building global cohesion and friendship, not forging hate and ignorance.

And that is not likely on a global scale.

We are a species that is capable of so much good and enlightenment but, as a species, more often choose the path that leads to such horror and destruction. We Americans spend more on defence annually than we do on educating our children, funding scientific and medical advancements over a four year period.

Think about that for a moment. According to the 2007 budget, our government currently spends 460+/- Billion a year on defence. We spend a combined total of around 114+/- Billion on education, science and technology. If these numbers hold reasonably steady, four years of defence spending would equal SIXTEEN years of spending on education, science and technology.

Am I suggesting that defence isn't important? No, of course not. The world is a tough place and we need to safeguard our citizens and our country from enemies foreign and domestic. Since our country has a proven history of meddling in other people's affairs (and rightly so in bonafide cases regarding the interests of promoting world freedom and protecting our nation), we've made ourself a target over the years. It'd be foolish to not be prepared.

We have this general overwhelming sense that as long as American Idol is on this week and that we know once and for all who was the second party who uploaded Anna Nicole's baby's DNA onto the World People Server, all is right in the world. Why should we waste money on going into space when we have Bin Laden to hunt? Why should we properly fund our schools when teachers "make enough money as it is?"

Why should we study history or geography when it "doesn't apply to anything I need to know?"

Our nation has lost general focus on what is important in life. If we are to survive as a species, we must start working together. We focus too much on "entertainment" or unimportant "fluff" issues that the media kindly spoonfeeds us instead of research, education, science, building friendships, promoting cultural togetherness, mending the rift of gender inequality, events and viewpoints in other nations, social cohesion.

Events like the VT shooting are tragic, but that does not give good cause or reason to start lining up the nearest group of people of a race that is different than the one you happen to belong to just because you think they "look funny." It's attitudes like this that fired the ovens of Auschwitz, set the churches aflame in Mississippi and brought down the Twin Towers.

Think I'm being a little overdramatic?

Study a little history.

Or are you sheeple just too obsessed with finding out if they finally managed to kick Sanjaya off American Idol yet?