More than a Tragedy

The past week the media has been in a perpetual frenzy over the tragic mass killing last Monday of 32 people at Virginia Tech University by Korean-born VT student Seung-Hui Cho. The story has been told and retold on every show of every station. Teams of reporters scrambled to be the first to introduce the tiniest of details. And a steady stream of opinionated hosts and guests sounded off on the culpability of all parties intersecting with Mr. Cho before and during his horrendous killing spree: His parents should have known, his classmates should have been kinder, his teachers more alarmist, those he harassed should have prosecuted, the police should have intervened, the Virginia Tech administration should have been more proactive and NBC News more discrete.

I have very few opinions on these subjects. I don't know the participants or the details well enough to make a judgment. I doubt that there was willful negligence from anyone. We love to assign blame, but sometimes very bad things just happen.

And I am a little embarrassed to admit that it's difficult for me to share the pain of the victims. If I stop to think about it, it saddens me to consider the senseless loss of life and the grieving families. But since I was old enough to understand the tragedies of this world, I have built an emotional wall of defense that protects me from profound depression: I can think about these things intellectually, but don't let myself feel the suffering or the grief of others. It's too much to bear.

Consider not so ancient history in this world of ours: It's been estimated that 10 million Africans were shipped to the Americas in the slave trade. Maybe a third died in their first year due to disease and acclimatization. (Some estimate that as many as 30-50 million Africans died from slavery worldwide.) Looking for something more recent? Just over 50 years ago, seven million Jews died in the Holocaust. Let that one sink in a little. Want to bring it up to date? The Rwandan genocide of 1994 resulted in the deaths of nearly one million people--mostly Tutsis. Or consider this: An estimated 16,000 people in this world die from hunger every day--that's about one every five seconds, while 60% of Americans are overweight, and one in five is obese.

It seems to me that in the relative comfort of my home, sitting at my laptop while digesting my Sunday dinner, that I had better direct my attention to happier thoughts, because if I dwell on these any further I will be overcome with guilt for doing so little, for not making a meaningful contribution to solving these problems, or alleviating this suffering, for not doing what little good that I could do.

I am sorry for the tragedy at Virginia Tech. But in my quiet hour of contemplation, I weep for all the world, for my own insignificance, and for my silent contribution to man's inhumanity to man.