2007 JET Podcast
Some helpful hints from folks already on the JET Programme. It covers all of those very specific things that you really need to know but may have forgotten to ask or that you just couldn't find answers to. Click here.

Friday, April 20, 2007

One Post About Virginia Tech

I'll admit that I didn't want to post anything about Virginia Tech's massacre. I work in news. I have seen enough of it for the eight hours I am here every day. I, honestly, wanted to leave any reference to it completely out of this blog whose purpose is a hopeful one.

But it IS important. The tragedy affected me greatly, so much so that I had to take half of a day off of work on Tuesday simply because I couldn't be inundated with it anymore. I spent that half-day working on this blog -- something that made me happy and took my mind off of how screwed up this world can seem sometimes.

So, in this one short post about Virginia Tech, I lead you to another blog that posted something interesting enough to prompt me to post it here.

It seems that one of the posed pictures Cho sent to NBC resembled (and I totally didn't realize this until someone pointed it out) a still from the Korean film "Oldboy". I saw this movie a few months ago and it was very well done. Kind of sad, very violent, with some pretty sick parts thrown in for color. What struck me about the film personally, is that the ending gave justification to the ill-treatment of the protagonist. Throughout the movie, the lead character exacts revenge for a 15-year, solitary confinement that ruined his life.

In the end, he finds out why the main bad guy did what he did, but (not to ruin anything) the bad guy is portrayed as being completely justified in doing it.

I think, with linking this movie to the Virginia Tech massacre, one might draw some pretty strong associations. Anyway, click on the link. Read the post. And that is all I'm putting up here about that tragic day.

A link to this interesting and insightful post about the human psyche and how one's outlook impacts not only how one sees the world, but how one sees others. The implication is that Cho's view of the world (as evidenced by his ranting multimedia manifesto), whether that perception was accurate or not, does offer a plausible frame of mind that would cause someone to not only commit such an atrocity, but to also feel justified in doing so.

1 what do you have to say...:

EUGENE PLAWIUK said...

Thanks for the link to my post