Making Sense of Mao and Virgina Tech's Seung-Hui Cho
Lying in shavasana, the final relaxation pose, in Wendy's yoga class just now, thoughts of Virginia Tech and Mao flowed through my mind. Ever since last Monday's shooting, I had been trying to come to grips with how and why a person could be driven to hate so much to want to kill so many people. I had also been reading Jung Chang and Jon Halliday's painstakingly-researched biography of Mao Zedong, founding father of Communist China. And the same questions kept gnawing at me as I read about his seemingly opportunistic and haphazard rise to power and the senseless havoc and suffering he wreaked on the Chinese people throughout his rise and reign. Even this afternoon when TB, who has a masters in Forensic Psychology, visited the office I sought his views on the how Cho's psyche could come to create such a horrific endgame.
But then, during those quiet moments in yoga class, it hit me. Isolating both Cho and Mao, treating them as exceptional cases, led me to ask the wrong questions. The question should not have been why or how they came to be what they are, but why and how we as a society allowed them to become what they are. It's easy to isolate them as cancers of society and wipe our hands clean of any responsibility. And since Cho took his own life, it's even easier to place all the blame on him and then go back to our lives thinking that there won't be another Cho and avoid addressing the root issues -- that most of us don't care enough about a person suffering in isolation; that most of us choose the easy route of self-preservation over a seemingly hopeless battle; that someone else's problem is just that, someone else's problem. We never see how bad things can get until it's bad for us.
With Cho, news report after news report feature interviews with neighbors, classmates and teachers who knew that he was unhappy, isolated and angry. Some reached out to offer a helping hand, but found it an impossible task to break through. Others gave up trying to talk to Cho. There's been so much talk about how this all could have been prevented and much of the debate centers around lax gun control and the corrupting force of American culture and media (one article I read even surmised that it was a psychologically-castrated Cho's desire to prove and assert his masculinity that drove him to this massacre). With Mao, people around him feared him more than they despised him and therefore chose not to challenge him.
This also made me think of RT's wise advice about how to deal with difficult people. Rather than fear their moods and reactions and be sucked into a state of dread, it's more productive to try and alter someone's negative moods with a smile or a joke on first contact. It's the difference between feeling helpless in a situation and taking an active role in shaping the situation.
So instead of blaming Cho, university officials, lax gun control, the media and what not, we should be asking ourselves if we know anyone like Cho and reach out to these people. In any situation, we can choose to do nothing or do something. We can choose to accept or to change. We can choose to be a helpless victim or a hopeful fighter. The choices are not alsways obvious or easy, but we always have a choice. As we look for answers and closure in the aftermath of Virginia Tech, we can choose to dwell on the dark past that was Cho's life or work towards creating a future where each life is worth cultivating.
As I write this, there's news of 74 people killed by gunmen in Ethiopia and there will continue to be Iraqis killed in Iraq. Are any of those lives any less valuable than the 33 dead at Virginia Tech? Judging from media coverage, it would certainly appear so. In the end though, Cho is like any suicide bomber or terrorist, desperately wanting to be noticed.
But then, during those quiet moments in yoga class, it hit me. Isolating both Cho and Mao, treating them as exceptional cases, led me to ask the wrong questions. The question should not have been why or how they came to be what they are, but why and how we as a society allowed them to become what they are. It's easy to isolate them as cancers of society and wipe our hands clean of any responsibility. And since Cho took his own life, it's even easier to place all the blame on him and then go back to our lives thinking that there won't be another Cho and avoid addressing the root issues -- that most of us don't care enough about a person suffering in isolation; that most of us choose the easy route of self-preservation over a seemingly hopeless battle; that someone else's problem is just that, someone else's problem. We never see how bad things can get until it's bad for us.
With Cho, news report after news report feature interviews with neighbors, classmates and teachers who knew that he was unhappy, isolated and angry. Some reached out to offer a helping hand, but found it an impossible task to break through. Others gave up trying to talk to Cho. There's been so much talk about how this all could have been prevented and much of the debate centers around lax gun control and the corrupting force of American culture and media (one article I read even surmised that it was a psychologically-castrated Cho's desire to prove and assert his masculinity that drove him to this massacre). With Mao, people around him feared him more than they despised him and therefore chose not to challenge him.
This also made me think of RT's wise advice about how to deal with difficult people. Rather than fear their moods and reactions and be sucked into a state of dread, it's more productive to try and alter someone's negative moods with a smile or a joke on first contact. It's the difference between feeling helpless in a situation and taking an active role in shaping the situation.
So instead of blaming Cho, university officials, lax gun control, the media and what not, we should be asking ourselves if we know anyone like Cho and reach out to these people. In any situation, we can choose to do nothing or do something. We can choose to accept or to change. We can choose to be a helpless victim or a hopeful fighter. The choices are not alsways obvious or easy, but we always have a choice. As we look for answers and closure in the aftermath of Virginia Tech, we can choose to dwell on the dark past that was Cho's life or work towards creating a future where each life is worth cultivating.
As I write this, there's news of 74 people killed by gunmen in Ethiopia and there will continue to be Iraqis killed in Iraq. Are any of those lives any less valuable than the 33 dead at Virginia Tech? Judging from media coverage, it would certainly appear so. In the end though, Cho is like any suicide bomber or terrorist, desperately wanting to be noticed.
posted by 10000miles at 21:28
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