I'll be back tomorrow

I have a dream... actuallly many of them.
They draw together to form constalations.
The hope of many nations,
In shapes we know and love.
Clouds of doubt blot out my sky,
The lightning flashes of of resistance catch my eye.
The cold winds of fear, chill me to the bone.
Can I make it there, so far from home?
My stars are real,
My dreams have faces.
Voices calling from many places.
Hearts breaking, hope lost.
I've come too far to count the cost.
A young woman crying on a bloody bed,
A young man cradling a friend who's dead.
Hatred fueling bitter wars,
Body counts so high they've raised the floors.
Deception, a silent killer.
If you're not carefull, it'll change the face in the mirror.
Peace so hard to find,
In a world that's blind, to any real answers.
Truth a vapor tossed upon the wind,
No longer known by men, to whom it's but a memory.
Direction, destiny, design; two roads in my mind.
Trying to find the answers, searching for the signs.
Poetry, an expression of the soul.
But a tiny puzzle piece, of a much greater whole.
I hate to say but the end is near, but have no fear.
Just shed a tear and know that I'll be back tomorrow

"The good of the many..."

In light of the Virginia Tech massacre, and the countless copycats, and threats which inevitably pop up after such a tragic event, I thought It would be prudent to write something about the recent violence in the national spotlight especially in regards to our education system. Now many have written about the tragedy of it all, questioned the apparent lack of concern by Virginia Tech, when they decided against closing the school down after two students were killed two hours before the massacre. So figuring that everyone else had these issues covered I decided to take a slightly different approach and hopefully present something new for everyone to think about.

The idea for this post came the other day while talking to an older friend, who expressed not only her remorse for the tragedy of the situation, but also a loss for how so many people were able to be killed by one man. The more she talked about it, the more I began to see her point of view. Her main point was this; when she was a kid, the virginia Tech massacre, Columbine and similar situations would not and could not have happened for one simple reason. SOMEONE would have stopped them before they were able to kill so many! And its true, there was a time not so long ago when no self respecting young man (I'm not disrespecting women here, just making a point) would have allowed himself to be caught cowering in a corner or under a desk. He would have never been able to live with himself afterwards. It was a time when young men knew what it meant to be a man, and realized that there are somethings worth dying for, like your country, the woman you love, and (no disrespect intended here) so that thirty friends and fellow students don't have to die senselessly. Wasn't it Mr Spock who used to say "The good of the many, outweighs the good of the one or the few?" Wow too bad Spock wasn't attending Virginia Tech or a student at Columbine, he might have been able to inspire a few fellow students to put the lives of everyone else above themselves and take out the gunman before all those people had to die senselessly. I mean think about it, how many "men" would it have taken to rush one gunman with two pistols? Two pistols mind you, it wasn't like he was carrying a fully automatic rifle; while pistol types and clips very, they all have a generally small clip size and rate of fire. And yes it is likely that had a group of students rushed the gunman, several of them may have been killed. But then instead of mourning the senseless massacre of thirty plus students we would right now be praising the heroic actions of a few brave young men.

Now in all honesty I don't blame those at Virginia Tech for not taking direct action, because we live in a society today that leaves men as a whole confused as to what it really means to be a man. And it used to be that if you were in the middle of a crises like the one at Virginia Tech and you saw a chance to act, you knew that if you took action, the other guys would back you up. And today? Today I would be less sure. And I don't pretend to believe that had I been there that day, that I would have been like some movie star hero, spitting in the face of danger, and asking the gunman in the time honored words of Clint Eastwood "You've got to ask yourself a question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?" I am sure I would have been scared to death just like everyone else, because death is a scary thing to face even if you have made your peace and are confident in your future. What I do know is that had I been there, I would have known that I could not simply sit there and await my eventual death. Because if I did one of two things would happen: One, I would die senselessly, cowering pitifully in a corner, or two, I would have lived and I would have to go through each and every day knowing that if not for my cowardice, my refusal to act, I might have prevented some or all of this great tragedy. I would live everyday with the burden of those deaths on my conscious. And I don't think I could live with that.

And so I suppose that my point in all of this, is that somewhere along the line in our attempt make men less dangerous, to make them nicer and safer and well, more like women, we have caused them to lose the very essence of who they are. A result which not only leaves them empty and frustrated, but as we've seen in these recent acts of violence, makes the world a more dangerous place in which to live. It's ironic how so often as human beings we set out to "fix" something only to make it worse in the end. In an effort to have less violence and aggression in our society, we ended up removing one of the primary sources of protection against the violence. It's like the whole gun control issue, regardless of how much you try to control and restrict gun usage, criminals will always find a way to get one. Why? Because criminals rarely use legal means to obtain a gun and so in the end you're really just limiting the ability of the "good" guys to defend themselves. Well I am sure this post is likely to garner me much more negative comments than positive ones but that is ok, because if everyone agreed with me, then there would be no interesting discussions following, and what would be the fun in that?