the type of story that makes you so sad and makes you wish the world could be a different (better) place

I just saw on the news that there were two shootings today in Colorado. The second shooting took place in a mega-church. The gunmen killed one person and wounded several others before being shot and killed by a security guard.

This is obviously so tragic, and seeming all the more for taking place in church. And it's lucky that more people were not killed. But I cannot imagine going to church and seeing a security guard armed with a gun. I know that I am not an expert on going to church, and clearly today it was necessary - but what kind of world are we living in when Churches are handing out guns? Obviously this practice is not widespread, and I have never been to a mega-chruch - I just think it's a really interesting and sad commentary on the world we live in. That people are paid to carry guns in churches and that today that practice saved lives.

tragedy continued.

Imagine in five or ten or twenty years time being the boys who were allowed to leave the school. How could you ever forgive yourself? How at the age of 40 do you reconcile your life being spared when you were 10, when the life of your sister was not.

For that matter, imagine being one of the men whose life was spared at Ecole Polytechnique in 1988. They were not children, they chose to leave those women there to die. I am not saying they should have choosen to stay and die as well, or that they should have maytred themselves, leaving their own famillies to grieve. I am just saying, what an unbelievably difficult choice. And how different and yet the same the two situations are. How situations which are so obviously tragic are also so subtlely tragic. And I think, for me, it is almost more the subtle tragedies which are the most deeply affecting.

amish

In the past few weeks I have been thinking a lot about Wisconsin v. Yoder, the decision which excuses Amish children from education following 8th grade for cultural reasons. Since the tragedy in Pennslyvania earlier in the week, I have been thinking a lot about in Amish in a variety of different contexts. I don't know why, but this story has affected me more than many of the other far too frequent tragedies involving school shootings, domestic violence, child abuse and all those other things you wish were not a part of the world.

The one thing I keep thinking over and over again is that, thank god that man did not, was unable to, follow through with his intention to sexually assult or rape those young girls. The incrediable fear that that possiblity instill in me is something that I cannot even begin to articulate. Then, I feel so deeply (in equal measure) for members of the Amish community and members of his family. For his wife and his chidren, for the parents and brothers and sisters of those girls. I was watching a bit of Larry King tonight and apparently one of the first things the Amish did was to offer their forgiveness. I may disagree with Wisconsin v. Yoder, but how can I have anything but respect and awe from a community which is able to immediately offer forgiveness in the face of such a crime. (note: clearly there are issues with culture and autonomy and the role of individuals who do not want to offer forgiveness not having the choice, but that is not relevant to the broader tone and point of this point). On Larry King they also said that the family accepted the forgiveness. Which would also not be an easy thing to do. Apparently the family of the man was invited to the funerals of the girls, though it was insinuated that they probably would not attend. How could you? How could you go on. How could you explain that to your children? As a child and as a adult, how do you reconcile loving someone with the knowledge that they committed such a horrible crime? As with so many things of late, this situation, which should be unimaginable, becomes all too real, leaving behind questions which are not answerable.

public health

From Friday's Globe and Mail.

taken from an article by Andre Picard - divided into part 1 and part 2 by me as they are two parts of the same conversation - with part one being obviously tragic and part two being less obviously but also more intensely tragic.

Part I
Each year, more than 1.6-million people worldwide die in violent circumstances and many times more are wounded, according to the World Health Organization.

Of that total, an estimated 815,000 committed suicide, 520,000 were victims of homicide and 310,000 died in armed conflicts, including terrorist attacks.

In other words, for all the news headlines about war, murder, suicide bombings and bloody mayhem, the stark reality is that most violence is self-inflicted.

In Canada, the statistics show an even greater disparity -- six suicides for every homicide. Each year, in a country of 30 million, there are about 650 homicides and 3,700 suicides.

Part II

The homicide at Dawson College last week generated unprecedented levels of media coverage because it was unusual -- very public and involving several guns.

Two young people died tragically that day: An 18-year-old woman was savagely slain, and a 25-year-old man culminated a violent outburst by taking his own life.

All the sympathy, the tears and the concern have been for Ms. De Sousa. But, from a public-health perspective, just as much -- if not more -- attention should be paid to the suicide of Kimveer Gill.

There are fewer than two homicides a day in Canada but more than 10 suicides daily -- each of them a violent act, and each of them a failure of public health.

Lebanon and human responsbility more generally

I've been thinking a lot about the middle east of late - what with everything that has happened and I have some thoughts on Canada's response.

1) Mr. Harper is wrong, and so far Isreal's response has not "measured". As a Canadian I have more sympathy for Isreal than many other people (Europeans) but c'mon... measured?! Apparently his rhetoric shifted yesterday which I think was a political inevitability.

2) The Canadian governnment is doing a shockingly bad job of evacuating Canadian citizens from Lebanon. Thousands of people showing up to board a ship that could only a few hundred? fistfights breaking out? I obviously have no idea what is involved logistically with evacuating thousands of Canadians, but that is why I alone am not the government of Canada. As someone who think Beruit would be an awesome place to visit I can only imagine myself being there and my absolute sense of entitlement for my government to help me leave in the event of a war.

As well, I think this is an important/interesting example for all of us who imagine that we as a species or as individuals are reasonable or rational or have this amazing ability to always do the right thing. We cannot even maintain our civility trying to escape what is only a moderately unstable situation. This is not directly related, but I always wonder what I would have done had I been 15 or 20 or 25 (etc) able bodied person in Nazi Germany. In some of my reading on just war theory it is obvious that those who do nothing are still morally culpable, and honestly, I don't believe that I would be either a hero or a sympathizer, just a regular person who is still morally culapable. There is this phenomeon of children born to French woman by German soilders during the war who are forgotten/shunned because they do not fit with how France chooses to remember themselves in the second world war. Would I have been in the resitance? would I have been in the bed of a German soilder?

I think the thing with these questions is that you can never really know until you are in that situation - and I think the other thing is that tell yourself there will never be any more situations like that. But it's not true. Look at soilders in Vietnam, Somalia, Iraq. Our standards of humanity are not nearly what I like to imagine they are before I go to sleep at night. Every night I fall asleep thinking that I am fundamentally a good person, content in the knowledge that I am only passively culpalable and not actively culpable in the horrors of the 21st century. Right now, an entire subcontinent is dying of a communicable disease which is slowly making its way into India, Russia, and SEAsia. It's a genocide of indifference that we are all implacated in. As we push and scream and claw our way onto boats to return to Canada to escape the harsh realities of most of the world.