Many things...

Been a long couple of weeks, and I haven't been able to even look at my blog, let alone actually contribute to it. Indeed, as I write this, I'm about eight hours short of my week's quota of sleep, with at least six of those eight coming from yesterday's abortive attempt to 'go to bed'. This is my twenty-sixth consecutive hour of wakefulness.

My rushed state of being did not prevent me from 'observing' my birthday. The verb is exact -- I watched my birthday pass by from a safe distance, as if it carried with it something catching. It was anticlimactic, April 4th -- I didn't do anything but run non-linear simulations as people called me from various longitudes (to wish me, of course).

Not that I regret it. Birthdays are inevitable, and hence not special. What deserves to be celebrated is strength of character, or the prevalence of sense in a world that is increasingly turning away from it. No, really. I'm convinced that we're headed towards societal self-destruction.

Not for the obvious reasons. I will not quote the proliferation of nuclear weapons, for example, or the...


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(A week later)

I'm not making excuses again, and indeed there can be nothing that excuses the inability to finish writing a blog post. I'm not writing Edwin Drood, for God's sake.

Anyway, I can't remember the reasoning that led to my meditations on the nature of society in the previous paragraphs, so I'm going to have to let it go. I will admit to feeling a little irked at this sort of self-imposed interruption -- I'm not used to having my nascent thoughts being put out by "the diurnal dynamics of student life".

And so I will turn to the Virginia Tech massacre, which has disturbed me beyond reason. In the past couple of days I've read everything I can about it, and I now know more about gun laws in the southern United States (and specifically Texas) than the average international student. I have also gotten my hands on specific 'literature' written by the perpetrator in question, and examined it at length, if a little breathlessly.

A few thoughts on the latter -- apparently Cho Seung-hoi, the gunman, was an undergraduate student in English, and had made a few attempts over the years to 'write' -- as of course, literature students must. His writings will be examined by millions nationwide, in the feeble hope of deconstructing this man piece by piece; the people who will read will be primarily those who would like to know what kind of a person he was,and what his motives were. I will not do the same thing.

Instead, I will examine here his writing, which is feeble at best, and not worthy of being pronounced as even an attempt at literature. It is shoddy, ungrammatical in many places, and is fraught with spelling errors.

Consider this line, for example, on the very first page of his 'play', Richard McBeef --

"Come on John. We need to have man-to-man talk."

No prizes for spotting the error. On the next page, we have this paragon of grammatical excellence --

"Richard gently rests him hand on John's lap."

and this--

"...you can get into my mom's pant!"

These are not the only transgressions. The entire play smacks of a lack of attention-span, and consists of little else but swearing and physical violence. There is no attempt at establishing depth of character, no endeavor to create even the tiniest smidgen of context. It is very badly written prose.

My point is this -- if this guy was no good at English, his major, then why was he allowed to continue? Why even put him under the impression that he was worthy of obtaining a degree from Virginia Tech (of all places)? Why didn't they just expel him for incompetence?

These are especially relevant questions. If they had in fact fired him, or flunked him out, then maybe he wouldn't have shot so many people. Maybe he would have just gone back to his home in west Virginia, sulked for a little while, and then become an engineer or something. By allowing incompetence to continue with impunity, the professors at the department of English at Virginia Tech have to take at least partial responsibility for his presence on campus, and (by proxy) his behavior.


But let us not "play the blame-game" here. I bet that there is no one reading this who has not, at one time or another, tolerated to a similar extent incompetence in himself, or in others. The former especially. How many times have you cut yourself a large portion of slack? How many times have you made excuses for yourself, your behavior, your performance? How many times have you told yourself that "it's alright"?

I thought so. And maybe there's nothing wrong with that. Maybe it's our way of dealing with failure. Maybe it's our way of telling ourselves that we matter in this world. But at the same time, there should be a conscious effort at improvement, a concerted attempt at catharsis, a considered stab at betterment. Otherwise we become hollow shells caught in the nowhere between self-deprecation and hope, abject and imperfect representations of our true selves. And maybe when these things happen,maybe when we have within us only a mere shadow of ourselves, going on a shooting spree will begin to seem more...interesting.

Let us, then, for the sake of all the people around us, expect nothing but the best from ourselves. Let us hold our heads high and walk with an urgency that reflects our desire to excel, to rectify, to reach the truth. Let us finish our days as we start them -- with a smile on our faces, and the knowledge that we have come a long way, but still have a long way to go.

Let us uplift ourselves.