friday morning threads

yesterady i stopped by the htc commons room here on campus to chat with students about the viriginia tech shootings. there were about five students there, mostly first-years.

some important questions emerged during the course of our 40 minute conversation. How has the press handled this crisis, what is the media's role in giving/not giving the public information about these sort of events? What is the value, role of mental health services in our society? What determines wheather a person will "crack" like this young man did? Will there be a backlash against Southeast Asian community in this country? How will the nature of campus security change after this event? What is our reponsibility as studnets and faculty to report indiviudals with "red flag" behavior? What does an event say about the US? Or does it say anything particular to the US? Why are these 33 students given more coverage than the hundreds of soldiers/civilians killed weekly in Iraq? What does it mean when campus police crews are given SWAT training? Are we always living in a sort of undefined war zone?

But perhaps the most saddening one for me was posed by Dr. St. John: what does the coverage of this event say about the nature of grief in our society?

Is our "moment" of silence really 60 seconds?

Less than 24 hours after the shooting, before many of the victims were buried, the president of VT lead the commencement service. Less than two hours after the news of the shooting broke, as one student mentioned, there was already a debate on the airwaves about the need for gun control. Within an hour of the shooting, CNN had found and purchased cell phone video footage from a VT grad student and posted it on CNN.com.

I believe that a large part of it is that information has become a substitute for emotional outpouring in our society. We, in our-hyperactive need for production of....something.... stick ourselves into a constant feed of informationinformationinformatoninformationinformationinformationinformationinformationinformation to satiate the desire to feel, and most importantly, to feel as a community, with one another.

There are better examples. as I was reflecting on this last night with my housemates, my wonderful friend Margo mentioned that in the Jewish tradition, there is a process to grieving, all of which involve someone being with someone else. The first year of mourning is broken down in five distinct phases:
The time between death and burial
The three days that follow, when the family is given space to grieve privately
Shiva, a weeklong shared mourning with family, friends, and community members
Shloshim (which includes the shiva), a 30-day period after the burial, in which the bereaved person eases back into life
Yahrzeit, the commemoration of the first anniversary of death, at which time the headstone is placed, and things return to normal, relatively speaking

Professor st. John was mentioning a society in crete (i have to check on this) where two days after a tragic event were dedicated for the community to wail, mourn, cry out. There are vigils, like the one ou had.

and, then there are blogs.

sure, our information age brings with it wonderful connecting tools. but it also, i think, puts us at a grave danger of alienating the head from the hearts, so to speak, and ignoring the heart.