Cho Seung-Hui's killing rampage
This essay is divided into sections and arranged intuitively. It doesn’t have a single message. It contains thoughts on these topics: loneliness and depression, the idea that “there is no good or bad in art,” death, emotions, Cho Seung-Hui’s killing rampage.
I feel sympathy with Cho Seung-Hui because he was a person who felt depressed and lonely, I think, but also—and mostly, maybe—because anger, hatred, indifference, “shock,” “horror,” “disbelief,” happiness, excitement, or [any other emotion, I think] would not, in the long-term, prevent future killing rampages as effectively (or at all; most of the reactions I listed would probably cause more killing rampages) as sympathy and the behavior that results from sympathy.
When I say I feel sympathy that does not mean I am glad the killing rampage occurred. It does not mean I promote killing rampages. It means I feel emotional when I think about he enjoyed life so little and became so alienated from other humans that he decided to go on a killing rampage and commit suicide.
"CRIPPLING LONELINESS"
Cho Seung-Hui probably felt “crippling loneliness,” depression, despair most of his life due to his difficulties with communicating with people. It seems like he talked much less than I did in high school, based on what I’ve read about him. I knew of maybe 2 other people in my high school of ~2,000 people who talked as little as I did. I didn’t talk not because I hated people or was “content” to be alone or didn’t have information I wanted to communicate. I didn't talk because talking to someone IRL felt scary and embarrassing to me because I knew from experience that my neck and eyes might tremor, my voice might stutter, I might not feel in control of my body or face, I might feel dizzy. I cried alone in bed sometimes even in college. Reading books and listening to music and reading lyrics by people who, in my view, to almost any degree, felt similar to how I felt made me feel better and able to “keep going.” I thought about killing myself sometimes but during those times my self-pity felt so powerful that it was almost exciting, as if I were in the presence of something rare and interesting, then I wouldn’t want to kill myself. I had many friends in elementary school and middle school that Cho Seung-Hui probably didn’t. I had some friends in high school and college. Cho Seung-Hui probably didn’t.
SYMPATHY
Kurt Vonnegut died recently. I don’t think I’ve ever felt bad for Kurt Vonnegut. I didn't feel anything when he died. I feel like he was capable of doing what he wanted with his life, that even if he felt severe depression he felt it self-consciously and therefore was always a little outside of the severe depression, from where he disapproved of it or felt amused or interested or by it. I don't feel bad for myself either, as I am right now. I feel capable of doing what I want with my life and of almost always remaining detached, to some degree, no matter how terrible I feel. I feel rarely completely “inside” things like “despair,” ”depression,” etc. I feel capable of accepting whatever happens to me. Death, severe depression, crippling loneliness, multiple amputations, terminal illness, etc. To me I am already dead. Death is assumed. It isn't something that I want to allow the power to make me sad. Death is not painful and it is not “suffering.” I want pain/suffering to have the power to make me sad because pain/suffering unlike death can be avoided or reduced. Sadness about death has no effect on the existence of death and causes behavior, like reduced productivity or increased media attention, that will not reduce future sadness from future deaths; sadness about pain/suffering effects behavior that will reduce future pain/suffering because people are able to change whatever in concrete reality is causing the pain/suffering.
Death, to me, would only be justifiably sad, to varying degrees, if it happened to someone whose concrete existence affected my daily life. For example if someone I liked to touch and be touched by died I would feel sad (because we wouldn’t be able to touch each other anymore). Kurt Vonnegut still exists for me ~99.999% as much as he did a month before he died.
An amount of people, based on what I read on the internet, felt automatically sad when Kurt Vonnegut died. The sadness they felt, if they were not concretely affected by the physical absence of Kurt Vonnegut, was “cliché,” in that it was unexamined and based on a pre-existing, automatically enforced, other-received set of rules. A person cannot earnestly say "I feel sad that Kurt Vonnegut died, to fix this I am going to resurrect Kurt Vonnegut, resurrecting Kurt Vonnegut will cure my sadness."
Sadness about death, especially if it's the death of a person who has no effect on you in concrete reality, is “meaningless” and illogical. It ignores pain/suffering and allows what can’t be changed to appear to you, and those who perceiving your sadness, as something that can be changed.
Feeling sad for the people Cho Seung-Hui killed is similar. It won’t as effectively effect behavior to reduce future killing rampages. Feeling sad for the person in the “weaker,” more oppressed, longer suffering position is maybe the only helpful emotion, if one wants to reduce killing rampages, to feel in a situation like this. To feel sad about Cho Seung-Hui’s alienation is to assimilate some part of him into oneself; the opposite, categorizing him as “evil” or “insane” or to be a “sociopath” or other cliché, is to view the situation as a war in which the solution is to eliminate, or remove from society, anyone who is [abstraction whose definition is ever-changing and literally not exactly similar in any two different brains].
ANGER
I think anger means wanting to destroy something in concrete reality. People's bodies exist in concrete reality but abstractions do not. Pain/suffering do not exist in concrete reality. Destroying a person, or category of people, does not do anything to the existence of pain/suffering.
PERSPECTIVE
Many more people than 33 people die each day. Many more people suffer more than did from being killed by Cho Seung-Hui. I'm not saying "why does it matter if 33 people die if thousands of people die each day?" I'm saying that a person who earnestly wants to reduce pain/suffering in the world should, if they want to increase their effectiveness, almost always ignore what is being discussed in the mainstream media—or probably any media whose existence or size depends on “hits” or attention—and focus instead, as a computer would, on numbers. Media that are a part of publicly-owned companies will, regardless of what each person honestly wants, always focus, in the long-term, on whatever will generate the most attention from the desired demographic. I'm not being “cynical,” this seems, to me, like an inarguable fact. Investors buy “stock” in publicly-owned companies, who then use the investment to attempt (via New York Times, McDonald’s, IBM, etc.) to increase their “stock” price, for purposes of increasing the money of their investors. For example, if Noam Chomsky worked his entire life to become the editor-in-chief of the New Yorker, and began focusing the magazine on topics that decreased circulation, there would be pressure from people who represent shareholders of the corporation that owns the New Yorker to replace Noam Chomsky. Even if Noam Chomsky was the CEO of the corporation that owns the New Yorker he wouldn’t be able to remain in that position unless the investors in that corporation were happy at the rate of increase of their investments.
Therefore a person who earnestly (though there are, I know, different degrees of “earnestness” and of “wanting”) wants to reduce pain/suffering should almost always ignore what is being reported by CNN, NBC, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, [any TV], [any newspaper, pretty much], etc. For example, billions of dollars invested in stem cell research can possibly save, I don't know, thousands of people from degenerative spinal diseases; billions of dollars invested in clean water, infrastructure, sustainable farms (or whatever) can save probably hundreds of thousands of people from entire lives of intense suffering and also prevent future generations from the same.
The person who wants to reduce pain/suffering in the world should probably completely ignore killing rampages. Probably less than ten thousand (I’m not sure at all, just estimating) people have died from single-person killing rampages throughout history. Probably almost anyone feels “horror” about a killing rampage or who is simply aware of a killing rampage that occurred in a different city has, to some degree, been manipulated by [actualization of the concept of “publicly-owned company”] to feel something that they logically do not want to feel.
VEGANISM
From the perspective of a person who includes “non-human animals” in their context of “reduce pain/suffering” almost any focus on human deaths or human pain/suffering is like diverting billions of dollars from billions of “things included in the context of reducing the pain and suffering of” in order to save one “thing included in the context of reducing the pain and suffering of.”
CONSISTENCY
Some people “freak out” when they see a PETA video and feel sad for maybe ten or twenty minutes. Some vegans watch a PETA video and feel sad for 30 minutes. The person earnestly wants to reduce pain/suffering in the world should internalize the pain/suffering that is happening and also train themselves to not feel more affected by things they can see than things they cannot, at whatever moment see and also to not be more affected by “cute” things than “ugly” things. For example, the person who earnestly wants to reduce pain/suffering would not stop jogging if they saw a rabbit on the side of the road that has been hit by a car but is still alive. The person can better utilize its pain/suffering-reducing time by gaining money and spending it on organic vegetables (or whatever) sold by independently-owned companies that are owned by specific people who will spend their profits in a certain, relatively predictable manner.
CLICHES AND GENERALIZATIONS AND ABSTRACTIONSCho Seung-Hui used many cliches, etc., in what he said in his video to CNN. He said things like "now you have blood on your hands that will never wash off." He said things against "rich kids," which doesn't reference a specific thing that exists in concrete reality.
If Cho Seung-Hui were affected by circumstances into a situation in which he explained specifically to himself what he was doing and why he was doing it and what the specific causes and effects, in concrete reality, were, of what he was doing, I don't think he would have felt able to go on a killing rampage. His brain would not have allowed his body to do it, or would have resisted a certain amount that would have prevented it.
Being around people who speak in cliches, etc., can affect a person to think and speak in cliches and generalizations. I am not sure how to eliminate cliches and generalizations from people's lives. Articles by The Associated Press are mostly detached, unemotional, specific, concrete. I think TV where the person is allowed to speak on whatever it wants has many cliches and generalizations. A lot of fiction I've read has many generalizations and cliches. Poetry I've read has many generalizations and cliches and abstractions.
INTOLERANCE OF ARTMany people like Gary Lutz. Many people like Stephen King. "I dislike Stephen King's [specific book or story]" can a fact. "Stephen King's [specific book or story] is [abstraction, such as 'bad' or 'good']" cannot not a fact unless a context and a goal has been defined and calculations have been made to discern if [specific book or story] benefits the goal or not. Stating that "[specific book or story" is "[abstraction]" without adding "to me" or "in my view" or without defining a context and a goal is like saying "I am the only person who exists and my opinions are actually facts" or "I am the entire universe and the universe is not indifferent but actually makes value judgments on specific things within itself without defining a context and a goal."
A person's writing comes from their brain. It is who they are. Some people have sad facial expressions and when they talk their voices tremble and maybe they have a deep voice or respond mostly with one-syllable answers or maybe they don't speak and don't make eye contact. That is who they are, most people would say. If you met that person you wouldn't say: "Your facial expression and voice are horrible, you have no talent. You have no talent for the pitch of your voice. You are talentless and horrible and unoriginal. Your voice and facial expression are very bad. You should stop doing those things and releasing your terrible shit onto the world. Maybe you should try something else, instead of existing. Maybe you would be good at something else, like not existing." Most people would not say that about a person's idiosyncrasies, a person's "personality," but almost all people, it seems like, would say those things about a person's writing.
A person's effect on the world is their "art," that is who they are. How they move, release noises, arrange their room, write their sentences, give their poems line breaks, etc.
People laughed at Cho Seung-Hui's voice and other people (and people currently, on the internet) said (are saying) his writing was "horrible," "talentless," etc.
"You have no talent" means "I am the only perspective that exists and I am judging that you are not good," which is a meaningless statement if a context and a goal is not defined.
CONTEXT AND GOALSFiction writing has no universally agreed upon purpose or even agreed upon purpose between any 2 people. Something without a goal cannot be "good" or "bad." It can only be "liked" or "disliked," though even those are not completely accurate. Someone can accurately say "Stephen King's writing makes my face feel like a giant pancake" or "this sentence by Stephen King caused my heart rate to increase by 2 beats-per-minute."
I feel that people who say things like "this novel is the best novel of 2007," or anything like that, are increasing pain/suffering in the world. It is a circuitous and difficult-to-trace way of increasing pain/suffering, I feel, and so is often ignored, in the same way that a person will eat veal or spend money at Wal-Mart or smoke cigarettes in the presence of other people. The effects are not immediate and cannot be seen or traced back to their sources (the affected are not able to know what specifically caused their pain/suffering) and so are often ignored.
SHYNESSSome people talk very little and don't make eye contact and maybe don't speak and don't "hang out" much.
Those are facts, they aren't good or bad. Some people prefer to be around people who talk a lot and make eye contact. Some people prefer to be around people who talk very little and make no eye contact.
In the context of a person who wants to talk more, make more eye contact, and have more friends, "talking very little," "not making eye contact," etc., are "bad."
People are different. All people are different. Not good or bad just different. Writing is different. All writing is different, etc.
EXTREME SHYNESS IN AN ENVIRONMENT INTOLERANT TO ARTThe extremely shy person who is in an environment intolerant to art (the person itself) has no way to communicate reciprocally with other human beings. When a human cannot communicate with other humans other humans become something different. Like a rock or a tree. Humans mostly do not feel they have the ability to communicate with rocks or trees. If I am walking I don't feel bad, most of the time, for kicking a rock or throwing it. If I viewed other human beings as things that I could not communicate with and who could not communicate with me I would not hesitate to do whatever I want to them as means for other things, for example to relieve boredom, exercise, see what happens, etc. For example I would kick a rock to feel amused at how it moves through the air.
"YOU AREN'T GOING TO DEFEND CHO SEUNG-HUI ARE YOU?"Facts do not defend anything. A person can use facts to either defend something or defend its opposite, but only if they introduce a context and a goal. It would be impossible for me to convincingly defend or condemn Cho Seung-Hui unless the context was something like .00000000001% of the universe and .000000000001% of time and the goal was something like "eliminate killing rampages where more than 15 people die on a college campus."
What if a person's context was "The Solar System from 2000-3000 a.d.," and goal was to "reduce pain and suffering of human beings (which excludes animals but includes people in Argentina and Tasmania who the person has never met and does not know of, even abstractly, as a number, on a TV screen, as much as possible." In that context is it good or bad what Cho Seung-Hui did? One would need to study Cho's effect on the media, the relocation of charity funds, of media attention, etc., to begin to study whether it was good or bad because the death of 33 people in a relatively painless event is like .00000000000001% of the pain and suffering that occurs each day, in that context, of "The Solar System." It would require an incredibly powerful computer to conclude whether or not what Cho did was good or bad from that perspective (that context and goal), which is a common perspective.
WRITING WORKSHOPSIf a teacher censors writing or expresses "concern" about a person's writing that is the same as censoring someone's existence or expressing 'concern' about the validity of a person's existence.
If Cho Seung-Hui was in my writing class and wrote a story like: "Cho Seung-Hui woke up and picked up a knife and followed Tao Lin into the bathroom and stabbed Tao Lin in the ass and ass-raped Tao Lin, then put Tao Lin in a bag, brought Tao Lin home, and ate Tao Lin's corpse," I wouldn't "report" him for counseling. I would treat the story like any other story. I would probably like the story because those are all things I have thought myself. I have thought about killing people, etc.
Then we would both be less lonely. Cho Seung-Hui would feel that human beings were more like him, and that he was also a human being, which is a thing that feels pain and seeks pleasure, that wants to be happy and not feel bad emotions. He would want to die less, and if things like that kept happening, where he felt less lonely, he would eventually not want to die anymore, and would not go on a killing-rampage.
CONCRETE REALITYFiction exists in a person's brain, not in concrete reality. Applying concrete reality's laws, of cause and effect and pain and suffering, onto the metaphysical world is not logical; it censors thought and therefore censors people existentially.
In middle school I talked to people. We talked about how we would kill the most white people if we were Native Americans. We talked about flying over the Superbowl in a helicopter and dropping grenades and things like that. Those things did not actually happen, because the things that get talked about, written about, and thought about exist not in concrete reality but in a 'place' with no cause and effect, pain, or suffering. (Without concrete reality there is just one thing, what many religions and philosophies describe as "oneness" or "the world of noumenon," and when everything is just one thing, and experienced as such, there is no desire, and where there is no desire there is no suffering).
Thinking something is not doing something; there is "abstract reality" and "concrete reality"and each has its own rules, but people seem to often view them as having the same rules.
DEPRESSING STORIESNoah Cicero wrote a story about someone who consoles himself, or makes himself feel better, by eating expensive ice cream, a giant pizza, watching movies, and not answering the phone. Instead of doing those things, for one instance at least, Noah Cicero wrote the story. Instead of eating ice cream to feel better Noah wrote the story to feel better.
Now other people can read the story to feel better instead of eating ice cream and a giant pizza. What happened in Noah's story happened in abstract reality not concrete reality. It does not, even implicitly, condone eating ice cream or not answering the phone as ways to feel better. If anything it condones writing a story to feel better.
That is one function of a "depressing story." It is a life-affirming function, though the story itself, if read as rhetoric (and also as if it exists in concrete reality not abstract reality), is not life-affirming, since it shows a person doing something that will make it die faster and not connect with other alive things as much, but reading Noah's story as rhetorical is a distortion of the story; the story does not tell you to do what happens in the story, it only tells the story.
The person who views the story as rhetoric and therefore is "against" the story (wants to censor it) is distorting the story. Distortions make unclear causes and effects. The person who wants to censor should learn to not distort things, if it wants to reduce pain and suffering in the world, instead of "blaming" the story.
Thoughts and stories are not the same thing as concrete reality and are not rhetorical.
DENYING THE INDIVIDUALAbstractions are only a temporary solution to loneliness. Joining an Asian Society or something can make a person feel like they "belong," but not in a way that is permanent, sustainable for all people, or existentially constant, for example what if the Asian Society disbanded?
Feeling "proud" of one's heritage, attacking "rich people," joining a political party, identifying oneself based on race, ethnicity, location, etc.
ACCEPTANCELiterature where the characters feel bad emotions, existential despair, and are in terrible situations (and react with passivity, acceptance, indifference; or ineffectual rage, ineffectual counteractions, ineffectual solutions, etc.) have, I think, caused me to be more accepting. Books by the following and other writers have made me feel better able to accept things: Jean Rhys, Kafka, Kobo Abe, Richard Yates, Ann Beattie, Todd Hasak-Lowy, Matthew Rohrer, Michael Earl Craig, Lydia Davis, Joy Williams, Lorrie Moore, Frederick Barthelme, Fernando Pessoa.
By accept I mean less likely to feel anger, blame others, or complain (and more likely to react calmly and rationally) when disappointed, in an unfair situation, or in a situation of unrequited emotions or loneliness. Less likely to feel anger toward myself or the universe. But to just accept what happens to me. If everyone around me is "shit-talking" me I am more likely to focus elsewhere or begin to view the "shit-talking" neutrally and not go on a killing rampage.
Much of my own writing is written to help myself accept existential things like death, limited-time, the mystery of being and existence, arbitrary universe, etc. But also things like shyness, loneliness, "not getting what I want," depression, etc.
After I read Mr. Brownstone by Cho Seung-Hui I felt like I was a little more prepared to accept whatever would happen in my life in concrete reality. The characters in the play get ass-raped by their math teacher and suffer other oppressions from the math teacher. In the end the characters win five million dollars, and are happy, but then the math teacher comes and tells lies and gets the five million dollars. The characters do not attack and destroy the math teacher or ass-rape the math teacher for revenge.
The play does not end with a scene where the math teacher's lies are found out or where the math teacher "gets what he deserves" for ass-raping his students and lying to get the students' $5 million.
The play ends with the characters about to go to jail without the $5 million they won. It is an unfair situation, and it ends like that.
I felt like Cho Seung-Hui wrote that to try to help himself accept.
59 Comments:
i like this post.
i too like this post.
i liked the play Mr. Brownstone.
it had real thoughts in it.
this whole cho seung-hui media circus has been ridiculous. many important events and lives got lost in the cracks while the media made money off of this. this is why i dont buy cable television.
the memorial services that ring bells or light candles for all the students who died except cho seng-hui are part of the reason killing rampages happen.
this essay was more informative than other blogging poets comments about cho seung-hui.
my previous comment has several stock phrases.
"You should stop doing those things and releasing your terrible shit onto the world. Maybe you should try something else, instead of existing. Maybe you would be good at something else, like not existing"
I'm probably going to start saying this to people.
1.Your discussion of emotions as being useful is interesting but I
disagree with a central assumption: that emotions are intentional. I
would say the opposite: that emotions are involuntary, so feeling sympathy for person A over person B is not strictly a choice. Where we can engineer change isn't in the emotions but in the actions they spur. Consider something like racism. I would say that racism hasn't been so much eliminated as it has been made taboo, ie, the social cost of acting on it has become prohibitive (though not even consistently). But even then, it still has obvious and regular manifestations in our culture. And racism is something we can all generally agree is a bad thing. Could we really do such a thing with the playground hierarchy that cause Cho's suffering? With the powerful bullying and subjugating the powerless? I'd hope so, but I don't think there's enough of a will to make it ever happen, not really, especially as it perpetuates the power structures that run throughout our society. They are entrenched in government, media and so on, and so they are cultivated and established in the way we socialize our children.
2. Your equation of valuing the killer's suffering over the victim's death makes some sense, maybe, but completely ignores the suffering to all the living affected by the tragedy. Maybe you could say that those suffering as a result of the tragedy should realize that the death of their loved ones and the reminder of their own mortality should not be upsetting, but I don't think you would, or should, since expecting others to adhere to your own philosophies of emotion and sympathy would then be a paradoxical failure of sympathy.
3. Most of all, I just don't think that sympathy is a limited resource, at least not in a quantifiable way, so I don't see a need to choose between those who deserve it from me. Have you read Mill? You should, and then you should read his critics. Like you, he tries to remove value judgments by quantifying the qualitative, but in the quantifying, the value judgments aren't eliminated, just expressed in a new way that is less preferable because it obscures the
subjectivity. To say "your suffering makes me sad," is more straightforward than "your suffering is worth 34 cubits to me, and can thus be plotted along this graph of my sympathy as it is felt for this or that person."
Maybe it is the Catholic in me, but I see no reason not have an
infinitude of sympathy for every person everywhere throughout the
past, present, and future, to whatever extent on can dole out sympathy by choice. I try to assume that everyone everywhere is doing their best, even if their best is not good enough. This includes me and my own personal efforts to make my own "best" better and hope that others are doing the same because it isn't something someone else can do for you, at least at the most personal and important level (though they can facilitate it and this is what we should all hope to do for each other, I think). In other words, I
see nothing mutually exclusive about having full sympathy for Cho, his victims, and everyone else who suffers.
For me, the attempt to empathize with every creature in the world is a given, as is the impossibility of effectlvely acting on that empathy.
It comes down to a question of our own capability for good, which is
limited but mandatory. We have to try, even as we know we will fail.
Failure is inevitable, so the attempt, I guess, is all the more necessary and noble. You do it with veganism,etc I do it with teaching, etc. I don't think, and I doubt you do, either, that there is enough good in the world that we should bother being judgmental about how go about accomplishing goals similar to our own (reducing overall suffering).
I want to talk about your points about art, too. Like the above, I mostly agree but my assumptions are a bit different.
i think "the catholic in you" is angry his drink order is taking so long.
good job
I want to address many points in this essay. At one point, I will write a long post about veganism, organic foods and poverty, but I will save that.
Crippling loneliness: Everyone feels "left out" at times, and even people who have many friends feel depression, crippling loneliness, et cetera. These are natural human emotions, and these emotions exist to relieve psychological trauma or other psychosocial factors.
"I had a lot of friends in elementary school and middle school that Cho Seung-Hui probably did not" is an assumption, which cannot actually be determined by anyone by Cho Senug-Hui, who will never be able to confirm or deny that.
Perspective: What you are suggesting is that the human race must be so selfless as to delay the decrease its own "pain and suffering" by devoting its life to decreasing the "pain and suffering" of others. Every species of living organism exists to decrease its own "pain and suffering" as a priority. Every act a human, animal, plant, bacterium, et cetera, partakes in is a selfish act. With humans these acts also have a latent "psychosocial" impact, and even a "selfless" act is selfish because the one doing the act is gaining something positive psychologically in doing the act.
If a company decides to invest billions of dollars in stem-cell research to gain happiness by earning more money, this is no more selfish than a company that donates billions to water-treatment facilities and sustainable farms. The first company will "feel good" about saving lives from the research, or possible financial gains, and the second company will "feel good" about "saving lives." Both are "helping others" for selfish reasons. Anyone who does any action is being selfish. To say that one act is better than the other is strictly opinion.
Consistency: "Sadness" is an emotional outlet for built-up emotional trauma. This is a human form of release that would otherwise destroy the human mind. Other types of releases include eating and having sex.
Also, spending thousands on organic vegetables would not reduce the "pain and suffering" of chickens. In order to do this, one would have to change the market for chicken, and thus change the mindsets of the millions of people who eat and enjoy eating chicken. Increasing the popularity of organic vegetables wouldn't cause people to stop consuming chicken.
Cliches and Generalizations and Abstractions: All I will note here is that, by your own overuse, the phrase "pain and suffering" itself has become a cliche, and thus this essay on "pain and suffering" is a cliche. (You use it 35 times in this essay alone.)
I don't have time to talk about the rest right now.
gene, i like your posts also
ryan, i liked mr. brownstone also, it was not bitter or mean, it was like kafka
nick, you should say that to a homeless person and put it on youtube
pete,
"1.Your discussion of emotions as being useful is interesting but I
disagree with a central assumption: that emotions are intentional."
i think that emotions can be intentional
or rather thoughts cause emotions
thoughts cause emotions, emotions do not cause thoughts
even if that is not true a person can train themselves to think things in order to make them feel certain things
google cognitive-behavioral therapy
i will respond the rest soon
Thoughts do cause emotions. The brain will signal thoughts to provoke emotions. This is done subconsciously. People can "train" themselves to think a certain way, but that does not block or prevent the brain from subconsciously using thoughts to create emotions. You can "condition" your briain, but you are never consciously in control of your own emotions.
my laptop is broken so i had to print this out and i will read it at home tonight.
i just wanted to thank you now for writing it.
thanks.
Thank you for writing this.
It is very courageous.
I'm especially responding to your comments on shyness and intolerance of art.
I was shocked to hear Nikki Giovanni say on CNN that Cho's writing was "not poetry." Reminded me of a panel I had heard of Cave Canem people, one of them (I forget who) said he was similarly shocked in a workshop setting when someone said a student's work was "not poetry." They formed Cave Canem to make a safe haven for writing, so people could figure out what their "poetry" could be. And my main reaction to the media coverage of Cho's writing is that he had no safe haven for writing and learning.
If I were his teacher I probably would have wanted him out of my class too, if only to make the safe haven for other students. But where is the safe haven for "shy" people who need to explore violent ideas? Especially if they do not yet have a formed voice, and need time to find it?
I don't defend him. He killed people. But the mainstream reactions to the tragedy are turning my stomach for other reasons too. The whole thing will fade into the background for most of us, those who haven't lost loved ones. What will happen to the undeveloped writers who need to explore violent feelings and impulses? Will they be doomed to act on those impulses, in the absence of a safe place to express them?
I don't think he killed people out of the lack of an outlet to express himself. There are plenty of places he could have gone for that purpose.
However, I think the two plays I read by him really do speak to his mental state and his underlying mental issues. He obviously felt dominated and unable to overcome this feeling.
In both pieces, the young male characted is molested and sexually assaulted by authority figures. The solution of the narrator in both pieces is to destroy the authority / dominating force with death. This is speculation, but perhaps he was sexually abused. Obviously, no one is going to come forward with this information now that he is no longer here to explain it himself.
His intention was obvious. He didn't know how to gain power for himself socially, so he took it by force. He designed a news package for NBC, shipped it off to them, and killed himself. It was like the young man in his stories finally taking the dominant role. Notice at how in the end of both plays the young man loses. Here, he is in the masculine, dominant role. He even planned it so far as to send "mug shot" stills at the end of his video for the evening news.
Tao. You asked me to read this. I imagined you thought I'd be pissed off. But you contradict yourself so much it's hard to.
When did Tao Lin start feeling sympathy for others? I feel overwhelmed. I am not going to respond to it point by point right now. But I'll say maybe a few things about Cho:
His play is horribly sophomoric. It is bad. Yup. Bad. I think if, say, I wrote that play, many of you would think it was bad, but since the guy went on a killing rage and all, you feel some sort of empathy for him. You like mass murderers and so say you really liked it. That's okay. I generally like murderers too. Especially if they're young, and have been abused. I used to keep clippings of articles in which abused children lost it and killed people, the people who were abusing them. Heroic aren't they. Not so heroic when you kill at random, plan it before hand. Create a really lame manifesto about nothing in particular.
But I'm not even sure he even experienced more harassment than a lot of people do in Jr. High. And he was in college. Percentage-wise not may people who are harassed go on killing rampages. There are even shitloads of people who were actually, physically raped, who don't go on killing rampages. And he stopped in the middle to mail a package. He was mentally fucked. That's all. And it's the only reason I feel bad for him, but barely. But he lost his chance at a vigil. Boo hoo. I doubt he cares. I feel sorry for his family, maybe, and I feel sorry for the other families. Not all those kids could have been harassing this guy. Innocents. Lame. And his video is horrendously vague about this alleged abuse. It sounded like maybe he thought he was being held down by the system, by society, for being Asian. Hey Tao. Are you going on a killing rampage too? Because you're Chinese?
He clearly had mental problems. He, yes, should have been sent to counseling. Jesus Christ. I'm sure their were warnings, not the play, which wasn't very revealing.
I feel sorry for people with mental problems. I have mental problems. When I was twelve, I was sent to a counselor. I didn't like it. But the fact that anyone was paying attention probably kept me from killing myself. I didn't know how to ask for help. I was twelve. I wrote dozens of stories about killing people, and about suicide; no one even thought about it. I told shitloads of people I wanted to die. It wasn't until someone noticed I had been hacking up my arm, that someone thought maybe I really was sick and needed help. Whatever. But I was twelve. By college I knew to ask for help. Cho didn't "fall through the cracks." At some point you have to become an adult and start taking responsibility for your own feelings and actions. You know, talking to someone before killing everyone.
All the same. If we approach this as a computer, one Cho dying causes much less suffering. Less suffering in himself. Less suffering for the loved ones of thirty people he shot. Suffering times thirty at least. Mathematically, if you're anti-suffering, Cho made the wrong choice.
Tao Lin wrote: A person's writing comes from their brain. It is who they are. Some people have very sad facial expressions and when they talk their voices tremble and maybe they have a deep voice. That is who they are, most people would say. If you met that person you wouldn't say, "Your facial expression and voice are horrible, you have no talent. You have no talent for the pitch of your voice. You are talentless and horrible and unoriginal. Your voice and facial expression are very bad."
-----------------------
This is totally illogical and stupid. The size of your vocal cords and lips and mouth and stuff are not the same as how your brain processes thoughts and ideas.
the size of YOUR vocal cords, john, is illogical, I think.
pete,
"Your equation of valuing the killer's suffering over the victim's death makes some sense, maybe, but completely ignores the suffering to all the living affected by the tragedy."
i don't want to ignore the suffering (or any suffering) that the friends and family of the dead people feel, i don't think i said that; if i did i messed up
"Maybe you could say that those suffering as a result of the tragedy should realize that the death of their loved ones and the reminder of their own mortality should not be upsetting, but I don't think you would, or should, since expecting others to adhere to your own philosophies of emotion and sympathy would then be a paradoxical failure of sympathy."
that is complex; i think your definition of 'sympathy' in what you typed, there, is different than mine
i tried to avoid paradoxes in this post, this post is not existential, it blocks out a lot of information and assumes many things
"Most of all, I just don't think that sympathy is a limited resource, at least not in a quantifiable way, so I don't see a need to choose between those who deserve it from me. Have you read Mill?"
i have not
"You should, and then you should read his critics. Like you, he tries to remove value judgments by quantifying the qualitative, but in the quantifying, the value judgments aren't eliminated, just expressed in a new way that is less preferable because it obscures the
subjectivity. To say "your suffering makes me sad," is more straightforward than "your suffering is worth 34 cubits to me, and can thus be plotted along this graph of my sympathy as it is felt for this or that person.""
a person whose goal in life is to reduce pain and suffering would be more effective at that if it did quantify things like 34 cubits; since a person is not omnipresent and exists in time and space, if he or she quantifies sympathy then there is a limited amount of it, if sympathy is only sympathy if it impels actions, which in this post it is
i don't quantify sympathy i don't think, and i know my goal is not, at all moments, to reduce pain and suffering in the world; based on my actions i can see that that is not my goal, at all moments
if i am in a relationship i do more for that one person than for 'reducing pain and suffering overall, in the world,' i do what i said about stopping for the rabbit, or for most of my life i have done that i think
the computer lab is closing
i'll be right back
pete part two,
"In other words, I see nothing mutually exclusive about having full sympathy for Cho, his victims, and everyone else who suffers."
sympathy without action is just a person sitting there, or can be
a person has limited time and brainpower with which to move his body to do things in concrete reality, and therefore creates hierarchies
"I want to talk about your points about art, too. Like the above, I mostly agree but my assumptions are a bit different."
i like that you said your assumptions are different rather than calling me an ass or something
"Crippling loneliness: Everyone feels "left out" at times, and even people who have many friends feel depression, crippling loneliness, et cetera. These are natural human emotions, and these emotions exist to relieve psychological trauma or other psychosocial factors."
yes, probably
"Perspective: What you are suggesting is that the human race must be so selfless as to delay the decrease its own "pain and suffering" by devoting its life to decreasing the "pain and suffering" of others. Every species of living organism exists to decrease its own "pain and suffering" as a priority. Every act a human, animal, plant, bacterium, et cetera, partakes in is a selfish act. With humans these acts also have a latent "psychosocial" impact, and even a "selfless" act is selfish because the one doing the act is gaining something positive psychologically in doing the act."
no, i didn't suggest anything
i said 'for a person who is serious about reducing pain and suffering in the world'
yes, every act is firstly for 'the self' even if the act is to relieve guilt, but this post assumed that only actions in concrete reality 'matter'
for example if bill gates donates all his money out of guilt that would be 'better' in 'reducing pain and suffering' than if steve almond donated all his money out of 'compassion' (a meaningless word, but i'm saying from the perspective of a person who can somehow 'understand' meaningless words)
"If a company decides to invest billions of dollars in stem-cell research to gain happiness by earning more money, this is no more selfish than a company that donates billions to water-treatment facilities and sustainable farms. The first company will "feel good" about saving lives from the research, or possible financial gains, and the second company will "feel good" about "saving lives." Both are "helping others" for selfish reasons. Anyone who does any action is being selfish. To say that one act is better than the other is strictly opinion."
i agree that both companies are equally 'selfish' but the one that donates billions to water machines will reduce pain and suffering more
i said specifically that the second company will 'reduce pain and suffering more' (in a certain context) which was my definition of 'better'
i didn't just say 'better' without defining a goal
this post ignored abstractions like 'selfish' and focused on what happens in concrete reality
"Also, spending thousands on organic vegetables would not reduce the "pain and suffering" of chickens. In order to do this, one would have to change the market for chicken, and thus change the mindsets of the millions of people who eat and enjoy eating chicken. Increasing the popularity of organic vegetables wouldn't cause people to stop consuming chicken."
yes it would. it would reduce the pain and suffering of chickens even if it was just .0000001% because grocery stores would stock more organic vegetables, creating less space for chickens (even if .0000000001%
organic farms would become larger, more people would invest, and some of that money would become unavailable for chicken farms
it makes a difference even if the difference is .0000000001%
to dismiss the .00000000001% is to dismiss hierarchies or else to live 'magically' by saying things like 'it only matters if it is complete irradication or if it is above .5%'
"Cliches and Generalizations and Abstractions: All I will note here is that, by your own overuse, the phrase "pain and suffering" itself has become a cliche, and thus this essay on "pain and suffering" is a cliche. (You use it 35 times in this essay alone.)"
i should have defined cliche
'wash the bloods of your hands' is not literal, it has no agreed-upon meaning in concrete reality, and has different meanings for everyone, that is what i am saying
'pain and sufferring' is literal, all three words have meaning and it is the meaning i intended
using a word many times does not make it a cliche to me; for example 'and' is not a cliche to me
i should have defined cliche, thank you steve
I doubt whether counseling is really the answer for everyone. It certainly is an american answer. As a society we have become so impersonal and inept at honestly communicating with one another that we have to pay people to talk to us. We pay people to listen and try to give us advice. The notion of having to purchase the services of a compassionate
(financially reimbursed) listener could hypothetically be more damagaing than brooding alone. It would serve us well to communicate with other humans (even in electronic form) in a way that treats them like other people and not word generators. It is not necessary to feel bad for cho seung-hui to understand that the whole institutionalized nature of america is fucked. The only time many people genuinely communicate with another person is when they have the chance to tell them off or attempt to make them feel inferior. It is a matter of pride. His writing was not polished and I don't know if that is the result of any language barriers (I don't know what his first language was) or if it is because...he was still in a juvenile stage of his writing. No one said they want to publish his plays or give him a book deal (a major publisher might see money in it at some point). My main point was that he avoided fluff and abstract nonsense and wrote something very honest. the "lost in the cracks" comment refers to oh I don't know anyone else in the world that died or had something important happen in the last week or so. It was not meant to defend cho. I can't help but believe that interpersonal communication is fucked. We should all get in a room and yell as loud as we can and turn really red in the face and have someone neutral videotape it and call it reality t.v. and send it to fox or nbc or something. Then we can each watch it hearing only the words that we personally were screaming and pat ourselves on the back.
I am going to play rugby now in the world of non-virtual human interaction. I expect when I come back someone will have derided my naive 21 year old views on things and furthered my own point (if one in fact ever existed).
madison,
i don't think tao ever said he liked mass murders. stephen king writes about violence and murders but most people who read stephen kind don't like murders.
also, i don't think tao said that what seung did was "good". i think his essay only addressed how most people have been reacting to the event and the things that sometimes lead to a killing-rampage.
anne
"Thank you for writing this."
you're welcome
"If I were his teacher I probably would have wanted him out of my class too, if only to make the safe haven for other students. But where is the safe haven for "shy" people who need to explore violent ideas? Especially if they do not yet have a formed voice, and need time to find it?"
i don't know, if people thought treated thoughts, stories, and art differently than concrete reality then maybe the safe haven would be 'anywhere'
"I don't defend him. He killed people."
i'm curious why you want to say that you don't defend him
saying you don't defend him won't prevent future killing rampages; for example if george w. bush kept going on tv saying that he doesn't defend osama bin laden, but condemnds his actions, that would not do anything to prevent osama bin laden to do more, since george w. bush probably exists in osama's brain as someone whose words are the opposite of what osama wants to do
"But the mainstream reactions to the tragedy are turning my stomach for other reasons too. The whole thing will fade into the background for most of us, those who haven't lost loved ones. What will happen to the undeveloped writers who need to explore violent feelings and impulses? Will they be doomed to act on those impulses, in the absence of a safe place to express them?"
if you want to put them out of your classroom in other to give everyone else a safe haven, if that is how you would 'deal' with 'someone like cho' probably, yes
"His play is horribly sophomoric. It is bad. Yup. Bad. I think if, say, I wrote that play, many of you would think it was bad, but since the guy went on a killing rage and all, you feel some sort of empathy for him."
if you wrote that play i wouldn't say it was bad, or i would but only if we had a relationship where we both knew the other person knows that 'bad' would be said sarcastically and with the knowledge that there is no possibility of 'good' or 'bad' unless a context and goal is defined
"You like mass murderers and so say you really liked it."
i said that the play was an unfair situation that ended in an unfair situation, like kafka's the trial or most of kafka and the kobo abe i have read, and that that kind of writing makes me calmer and better able to 'accept'
"That's okay. I generally like murderers too. Especially if they're young, and have been abused. I used to keep clippings of articles in which abused children lost it and killed people, the people who were abusing them. Heroic aren't they. Not so heroic when you kill at random, plan it before hand. Create a really lame manifesto about nothing in particular."
this post does not like or dislike murderers
"But I'm not even sure he even experienced more harassment than a lot of people do in Jr. High. And he was in college. Percentage-wise not may people who are harassed go on killing rampages. There are even shitloads of people who were actually, physically raped, who don't go on killing rampages. And he stopped in the middle to mail a package. He was mentally fucked. That's all."
'mentally fucked'
that is what laila lalami said:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22laila+lalami%22+%22mentally+ill%22&btnG=Google+Search
that was addressed in the post
'mentally fucked' is meaningless outside of your own brain, just like 'good' and 'bad' are; all words are meaningless outside of a brain but there are degrees
people can say 'touch the tree' and most people will touch the same thing in concrete reality
killing 32 people to you is 'mentally fucked,' what else defines 'mentally fucked' to you?
after you define 'mentally fucked' within a context and a goal i can respond to your comment and then other can also and then maybe do something 'productive' against killing rampages, since you seem to be against killing rampages (of random people)
unless you believe in magic and 'good' and 'evil' and think the only way to stop future killing rampages is to destroy all 'mentally fucked' people
you would still need to define 'mentally fucked' in that case in order to know who to destroy
"And his video is horrendously vague about this alleged abuse. It sounded like maybe he thought he was being held down by the system, by society, for being Asian. Hey Tao. Are you going on a killing rampage too? Because you're Chinese?"
yes, he used many cliches and abstractions and generalizations, like you have
if he used only specific, concrete language it would have been more difficult for his brain to reconcile what he was going to do
the post addressed that
I feel sorry for people with mental problems. I have mental problems. When I was twelve, I was sent to a counselor. I didn't like it. But the fact that anyone was paying attention probably kept me from killing myself. I didn't know how to ask for help. I was twelve. I wrote dozens of stories about killing people, and about suicide; no one even thought about it. I told shitloads of people I wanted to die. It wasn't until someone noticed I had been hacking up my arm, that someone thought maybe I really was sick and needed help. Whatever. But I was twelve. By college I knew to ask for help. Cho didn't "fall through the cracks." At some point you have to become an adult and start taking responsibility for your own feelings and actions. You know, talking to someone before killing everyone.
"All the same. If we approach this as a computer, one Cho dying causes much less suffering. Less suffering in himself. Less suffering for the loved ones of thirty people he shot. Suffering times thirty at least. Mathematically, if you're anti-suffering, Cho made the wrong choice."
maybe, the equation for whether or not cho made the right choice if you are 'anti suffering' probably is unsolvable by the most powerful brain currently given like 20 years (also a context would need to be defined)
this post didn't make any conclusions on whether or not cho made the right choice
"This is totally illogical and stupid. The size of your vocal cords and lips and mouth and stuff are not the same as how your brain processes thoughts and ideas."
a person can change their facial expression and pitch of voice, etc. just like a person can change what they write, etc.
Blueberry (Ellen?), I was being sarcastic. About people liking mass murderers.
I was also responding to a lot of different posts. And not responding. Having my own thoughts etc.
I did keep news clippings about kids who murdered their abusers though.
Counseling. An American idea. Yes. Because we are so alienated and afraid of each other that we have to pay "objective" strangers to listen to us. I almost never found it helpful. But ignoring a problem doesn't make it go away. Does it. I solve my problems with a massive dosage of blue and pink pills. It has at least worked better than counseling. Kept me alive etc. But their was something wrong about this guy, and if he was actually insane, as in--couldn't recognize his own mental problems and get help like an adult, I imagine someone noticed and sat on their hands. It's not that big of a school. And they were wrong. And if Cho were at least partially sane, he was wrong too. And, frankly, premeditation, video, etc, says "not psychotic" to me.
Tao Lin:
Jesus fucking Christ. "Mentally fucked" is, a technical term.
I'm sorry if I've been too fucking vague.
Let me be absolutely clear.
If Cho was not in control of his mental facilities, no one can really make moral judgments on his actions.
31 people dying sucks no matter how you cut it.
One dying would have sucked less.
(Adhering to your instructions: “focus on numbers, facts, etc., as a computer would.")
And gee (swings arm in an old-timey way) I sure wish someone had recognized he was insane before he killed all those people.
There are so many people using vague generalities here. I don't know why you always pick on me about it. Maybe I should go on a killing rampage.
You make value judgments all the time Tao, you just don't use the words "good" and "bad." "Letting oneself feel sad about one rabbit is selfish" is a value judgment.
"The person who is serious about reducing pain and suffering in the world should internalize the pain," “a person who is serious about pain and suffering should almost always ignore what is being reported by CNN, NBC, etc.” Is not just instructive, it's elevating yourself to the level by which you are the authority "right," and we don't understand, "we are wrong."
You can’t seriously instruct people without thinking that what you’re doing is right. Unless you’re just spouting shit. Which doesn’t seem to be the case, but I wouldn’t put it past you.
i said 'a person who is serious about reducing pain and suffering in the world' should ______ and then i said why
maybe you think all these are value judgments because you view 'a person who is serious about reducing pain and suffering in the world' as a 'good' person
i didn't say that
i didn't say 'a good person should ______'
'selfish' is not 'bad'
those aren't value judgments, they are statements no different, in terms of judgment, than 'a person who wants to kill another person and for the other person to die should shoot the other person in the head instead of the foot'
EEEEE EEE EEEE
Thank you, Tao. I will post a picture of me interacting with EEEEE EEE EEEE.
Thank you Ellen, for teaching me EEEEE EEE EEEE.
Arguing with you is like arguing with my boyfriend. I can't win. It always comes down to there is no "good" or "bad." "There is no truth but your own." Then you can't or don't take a stance on anything, just pick apart my word choice and then I can't argue with you. And you win. And right now I can hear it "I'm not arguing, I'm just voicing ideas." You dragged me over here to get pissed off and make the conversation interesting? I make a statement and you attack the semantics and ignore the idea. Are you toying with me? Trying to make yourself feel superior? Wait, you can't feel "superior" because superiority doesn't exist. Bite me. Why did you ask me to come here Tao. I'd really like to know.
I'm going home. I expect your answer tomorrow.
steve,
thank you
a sexy photo
madison,
did i ask you to come here? i just said if you had read my post. maybe i said 'you should read my post.' i think i just asked if you had. i like when people read and comment, that is why i asked probably.
i like your boyfriend. i liked his blog posts. are you afraid your boyfriend will leave you for me?
I think seung represents the relationship with humans that most humans that eat animals do with animals. Seung was alienated to the point where he couldn't communicate effectively with humans. He rarely spoke, which made people feel uncomfortable, he wrote to console himself, which other people found “disturbing”, he basically was different than everyone involved in his life and other people reacted to it by “condemning” him by treating him as something that is “wrong” and should be “fixed”. Cho Seung-hui did not communicate with humans so he probably wasn't "emotionally" affected by humans. maybe as a very young kid he was, but after years of loneliness and being alienated he lost the ability to relate to them.
Humans and animals cannot communicate with each other verbally. Some people argue that a human can have an emotional “connection” with an animal but that is subjective. Animals feel pain but they cannot verbalize it to a human so therefore the human does not relate to the animal. An argument that a lot of people who eat animals use to “defend” their choice to eat an animal is that an animal doesn't have long-term goals, an animal does not think “i don't want to die because i want to fulfill my dream of being a famous doctor”, an animal does not think “i want to watch my children graduate from college”. To humans who think this it means that the death of an animal is not as “tragic” as a human because it doesn't understand that it will no longer be able to fulfill those goals. An animal, does have short term goals though. For instance an animal can feel hunger and then have a goal to catch a salmon or a cow can have a goal of protecting its calf from a wolf that is coming near them in a field of even in the broadest way an animal wants to avoid pain. Failure of these goals can be stressful and “tragic” for an animal but it cannot communicate it to a human. This detachment i think allows people to be unaffected by skinning an animal alive while occasionally beating it with a club in the process because the animal can't say “i have a child to take care of, i am in agony”. The human can't relate to the animal's pain so it becomes unaffected by how it treats it. A human cannot relate to the feeling of being skinned alive while also being beaten with devices it has never seen before or even by a creature it has never seen before.
This i think is the same thing that happens to a person who is unable to communicate with other humans. They become so detached that they don't relate to the pain a human feels. Like you said in your essay, humans become the same as a rock or a tree.
i don't think by showing a person sympathy you are defending them. I think by defending someone you are agreeing with them that their actions were “good”. By showing sympathy you aren't saying killing people is “good” but are instead are being tolerant towards someone who is different than you. I don't think tolerance alienates people. I think people feel alienated when anger is directed toward them because it feels like they are being “condemned”. i think when something violent happens to a human specifically, humans feel pressure to say things like "that person is pure evil" or "i hope he burns in hell" because they don't want to seem like they are condoning the person who acted violently. people don't think about why violent acts occur, but instead think of ways to promote how they are not a violent person. if the person reacts neutrally to the situation they are often considered to be "heartless" or "cynical" when really most people probably react neutrally to violent acts when they are alone and only when they are around other people do they feel compelled to say things like "fuck that stupid asshole".
i have typos in that. i am sorry.
i used to think that i would never become a vegetarian, but when i look at the actual process of killing an animal, skinning it and gutting it-- a process i have done many times-- when i look at these actions clearly and focus on them, i realize how horrible they are.
when people buy meat at a restaurant or a store, they do not see where it comes from. it is prepackaged. and because the meat is prepackaged, it comes from nowhere. meat is an abstraction until you kill it and clean it yourself.
most people do not understand this, and that is why they eat meat. most people understand that killing people is wrong, because they see it on tv and movies and society tells them repeatedly that it is wrong. it is not something they learn from experience.
okay, but the consequences of changing your facial expressions are totally different than changing your thought process.
"i'm curious why you want to say that you don't defend him"
Good question. Honestly, because I don't want to think of myself as someone capable of doing what he did. I want to put myself in the "good" category. There is no such category. You are right to call me out on that. But that was the impulse behind what I said.
Still, my main reaction to all of it is feeling sympathy for him. If I were his teacher I wouldn't have had the balls to really help him. Or the tools. Introverts are hard to help because they are introverts. They need to figure out how to help themselves. Sometimes they fail.
"if you want to put them out of your classroom in other to give everyone else a safe haven, if that is how you would 'deal' with 'someone like cho' probably, yes"
When you're teaching groups, it's a kind of triage. You inevitably have to play to the status quo. This is one reason I stopped doing it. People fall through the cracks.
I have no idea what I meant by "safe haven." Maybe the safest haven for students is one where they are really challenged to deal with work that is not like their own. In which case, evicting people is not a valid option. If "safe" means everybody doing the same thing, then no one is learning.
But too, people need to feel like what they are exploring is valid. The main way teachers ostracize students is grades. I can't stand grades.
Once, I was teaching a lab section for a performance art class, and the assignment was "confessions." One student wanted to do a performance with a rifle, about his experience in the military. I told him if he brought the gun to class, I would fail him. He brought a stick instead, and used it like a gun. He was a little unhinged. His military experience was messing with his head. I'm glad he did not bring the gun for obvious reasons. But his performance stuck with me. I remember this guy, after 15 years. I think I gave him an A. I hope he is OK. I imagine he is not an artist now.
Another student did a performance about what a bad teacher I was. It was funny. It also made me feel faint. I gave him an A.
I had no business teaching. I let crazy shit happen and gave too many A's. It was probably not a safe haven.
hey tao. i read this post instead of eating dinner and doing my math homework. thanks for writing it.
in many ways i guess i agree with you. to me the thing that really matters about this massacre is that he managed to legally buy a gun despite being checked off as 'a danger to himself' by specialists, because of a loophole in the law. how did this loophole in the law even come to exist? i really regret the loophole.
i think i am starting to understand what you are saying by it being very hard to define whether what he did was 'good' or 'bad.' because after all maybe in 10 years a plague will hit virginia, all the other vt students will die with much more pain and suffering due to this disease. who is to know, maybe cho spared them. nevertheless i feel more sympathy toward the innocent students than i do toward cho (although i still feel some toward him). i guess because they had so much potential in their lives.
to me, i guess, each (human) life is (or should be) worth the same amount. thus, i agree with you about having to save the most # of people possible. but ethically it is really hard for me to agree still, i know logically that it's true that money should be given to the water people instead of the stem cell people, but... i empathize with all the people. i don't know, i wish we could help everyone.
about the plays: i read them, i thought they were very amateur. i can kind of see what you mean by kafka-esque and trying to be accepting, but i would not have thought of that on my own because when i read the plays i thought, 'these are super-unsubtle, they do not utilize many methods that most successful plays use, i do not find myself believing in these characters or sympathizing with them, the stories are not very engaging or realistic to me, or even very creative.' to me if i react to a piece of writing that way i think it is bad. that is the way i think.
anyway thanks for writing, you make good points as always.
great post, tao. too much packed in there for me to respond to entirely, but in regards to how you would deal with him if you ran a workshop, your thoughts are spot on.
i also think you are on the ball when you talk about the intolerance of art. when i was reading some of the message boards where the plays were posted, i was unsettled by the comments, which as you know, ranged from "that was terrible" to "talking about how it's terrible is terrible because we're not focusing on the tragedy". i wasn't able to articulate why this was disturbing to me earlier(and still am not entirely able to) but your thoughts are well-stated here.
off-topic, but i think you met some friends of mine at the noon reading the other day -- annie dewitt and lincoln michel, from columbia?
Fine. I'll leave.
I had stopped reading your blog because It constantly made me feel bad. And nestled into Noah's.
I think I'll quit here. There's no talking to you. And yes, you said "you should come read my blog."
I was wrong to take your advice. You're better, a little, in email anyhow. And you have a nice place here where almost everyone agrees with you. All nice ass-kissing, brown-nosing, dick sucking for points.
He barely has a blog as of late. He's working on a larger project. I don't know what you're talking about. And no. No one would ever leave me for you.
you can stay, i will continue to try to use facts, and you can do whatever you want
i just looked at statcounter and saw you came here again after you said you wouldn't
i 'caught' you
about your boyfriend's blog i mean i liked the post he did post a while ago
Hello, I am responding to Ellen (I think?) and Gene, about killing and eating animals. Here is an example; I am living in Japan now, and a few weeks back I went to a restaurant with my friend, an Australian. I was ordering whale meat and my friend stopped me and said something like "You shouldn't eat whale meat because the Japanese are hunting whales to extinction."
I thought about this for a while and my thought process was roughly, "Whales becoming extinct feels the same as an animal from a thousand or a million years ago becoming extinct. I've never felt sad that sabre-toothed tigers no longer exist, so why should the loss of whales upset me?"
Anyway my plate of whale sashimi came out. A whale is a mammal and so its meat is more similar to a cow's than it is to fish; this is raw-steak-looking meat. The whale has obviously been killed to provide this. While looking at and eating it, I tried to visualize the existence of the whale or relate to its existence somehow, such as imagining its calves or it eating krill or what the shapes of its mind might be like. I wondered whether if a whale has goals, it can reflect on them consciously, or whether it just feels them as emotional or instinctive imperatives. But then I thought, "My life is only for a brief moment and I did not choose to exist. Therefore, why should I care if whales go extinct? Hundreds of smaller species go extinct every day, but I hear nothing about them. Why should I care whether a whale feels pain, or even if a whale's flesh is completely ripped to shreds? Am I somehow better than a whale, or a lion tearing apart a gazelle? No, I am an animal the same as them. A lion does not stop to consider a gazelle's emotions or goals as it tears it apart; all that is happening is the gazelle is dying and the lion is eating its flesh."
I know that if someone was trying to kill and eat me or my family or friends I would probably try to escape, and would feel pain and fear. But I feel like even this pain and fear, my own, is ultimately meaningless and just some kind of process or expression of the universe, like some kind of equation balancing itself out.
I feel like at the heart of a whale's mind and at the heart of my mind there is essentially nothingness, or some kind of light, on which all kinds of forms and shapes are reflected or appear; these are identity, opinions, emotions, etc. Maybe the whale perceives the reflections as distinct shapes or emotions without words or language, but it probably still has some kind of thought or emotion. But underlying all of this there is that kind of singular light or 'awareness' which is not separate from empty space.
When I was younger I used to hunt rabbits, and sometimes after shooting them they'd jump around or kick very rapidly before dying; I always thought "That rabbit is alive right now even as it is dying; it is experiencing complete immediacy. The rabbit only exists for a brief period in time and space, but now the 'awareness' of the rabbit is at a very high point...the rabbit is not separate from anything around it."
Probably I interrupted the rabbit's goals; maybe the rabbit's goal was to create more rabbits or eat lettuce or something...I don't know. My own goals are often interrupted, so I can relate to the rabbit in that.
In the room with me now is a cat; I can easily reach out and pet the cat, but if I die and the cat is hungry it might eat my flesh. If I was smaller than the cat, the cat might tear my flesh and eat me the same way it does with other animals smaller than it. When becoming 'excited' the cat has often scratched or bitten me and even when I told it to stop it did not. Therefore, I feel neither love nor hate for the cat - I understand it behaves according to its nature. I don't wish it any harm; but neither would I hesitate to kill it if I needed to.
General existence is suffering; fortunately it's only for a brief while.
your post puts everyone to shame
*hangs head*
there's a dedicate balance between passion and intelligence
maybe not intelligence, maybe something like wide-mind, big open mind, acceptance, able to see beyond yourself, something like that
passion blinds, emotions are blinding, it's hard for people to see beyond themselves
though it's still a shame
very intelligent post I feel
*muses*
Tao Lin -- I love the ironic & explosive way you use "etc." That's all I wanted to say.
justin, you have good points.
you understand meat without abstraction. which is, meat is the flesh of an animal you could look at and possibly communicate with, or at least share some space with and watch it breathe. it is not just protein that you put on a sandwich or eat with wasabi, it used to live like you live.
i have started eating less meat. i have killed birds. i have walked in on my dog killing my parrot. i since have come to the realization that i don't need meat to live. i don't need to be a top predator all the time just because i can. i don't need to kill and eat the parrot, because i have the ability not to.
actions and ideas are meaningless in the universe, but meaningful to me when i look around at things and make abstractions based on what i see. i like seeing trees and i like seeing birds, and i relate the tree to a table and the birds to my dead parrot. this is okay. it is okay to be attached to things and have a relationship that is not physical, but a complex abstraction based on my own experiences.
when i die, my life will mean nothing, but right now, the things i experience and how i interact with my environment are important to me and have value in my life, and that is all i really care about. i am selfish in my desire for caring about my environment, and that is okay. it makes me happy, and that's all i care about.
other people do not feel the same way, and that is fine. they will die like me.
Gene, I feel like all you said is correct.
i think we talked about different things. i usually don't stay on topic, but we agree, so it's okay.
You write about many of the things my cousin and I talk about, but your thoughts are coherent, whereas my cousin and I just tell stories about how cold someone was, or poorly we saw someone being treated, and ask the other's opinion.
I like what you said about shy people. My cousin and I talk about shy people, and wonder how much of it is shy people being shy or just being "shy". Like the eye contact thing. I can do it sometimes, but I've had to practice. Mostly I find it difficult. I have to pretend that looking into their eyes and keeping my eyes from watering or blinking uncontrollably is natural to me). Where I grew up, looking people in the eye wasn't stressed (neither were hand shakes). When I first moved to DC from Hawai'i, people probably thought I was shy. They definitely thought I was conservative and were always shocked to hear me swear. Oh well.
I have more to say about your article, but saying that I liked it sums it up. Also, I work at a bookstore that has both your books. I'm not sure if the owner wants his store listed, but the store is Vertigo Books, and it’s in College Park, MD, if you want to expand your list.
stn,
i added vertigo to the list. thank you for telling me.
you should type some more about eye contact, i haven't read much about it like you talked about it, with the watery eyes and the blinking, i get that too.
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Really glad you responded and that you know what I'm talking about. I don't want to leave a long post, but I have too much to say.
A short while ago, I realized the conversations I have with most people are an act. Not that I'm telling them bullshit, but I'm pretending it isn't a tremendous effort to act in a "normal" way. Eye contact is only one example. I tell myself I must look fixedly into someone’s eyes, but not just with a blank stare.
But then my eyes might get dry from being open too long or b/c I'm nervous, and then I'll start to blink (and I have to force my blinking to be paced so it's not like I'm blinking every second), causing my eyes to produce water. this doesn't always happen, though.
Are you like me? Do you find it easier to look people in the eyes when you're listening rather than when you're talking? I can't really talk and look someone in the eyes. I'll do it for a little while then look away. Sometimes I'll look at another part of their face, but that seems strange too. Of course, if I know someone, these aren't things that I worry about as much b/c they don't expect me to act anyway except for the way I'm going to act.
Growing up, no one really said anything like, "look me in the eye when you talk to me". Sure, we knew that in the mainland that was what people did - they shook hands, looked people in the eye, and rode in taxi cabs. But I shouldn’t blame it all on culture.
Eye contact is too powerful a thing to be used just anywhere (at least I think so). It's confrontational, and not just in a bad way. It can be aggressive or it can be sexy; those are things you don't want to fuck around with. Then again, it can also be empathetic or kind, but those are powerful too.
I feel like I’ve said a lot of nothing, but maybe some of this is what you wanted to know?
Any comment?
A lot of what you said I feel about Jesus. To quote Marc Ribot (from his punk album): I don't have to go back 2,000 years to find somebody to feel sorry for. I'm not sad Vonnegut is dead, I'm glad his suffering is over. (He was old and he smoked cigarettes all his life.) I met Vonnegut once. He told me that America is so big it's ridiculous to believe in it as one place. He also told me a lot of evil in the world is the result of bureaucratic momentum. Then he declined to give me one of the copies of Slaughterhouse Five out of a box of many copies because they weren't his to give away. I didn't actually ask for a copy, but I appreciated the sentiment.
Hey, Tao.
I found your blog via Dennis Cooper's blog. I'd never heard about you before today.
I live with a lot of vegans, and my older sister's boyfriend is a vegan. There was a time when I like, challenged his veganility, and tried to be a vegan, too, but I was terrible at it because I couldn't eat the fries at Wendy's without the honey mustard sauce, which had egg product in it. So I'm no good at it, but that was because I was thinking of it in total emotional terms. I was being analytical of veganism only to the extent that I felt like being, which was only far enough to criticize my sister's boyfriend's, and I never really looked back at my own critiques.
Your little debriefing on the vegan mindset was pretty interesting, and it made me realize that my sister's boyfriend, and you and some people on this blog and Jamie Stewart, all approach veganism as a moral imperative rather than a lifestyle choice, which was what I was basically seeing it as.
I think that's pretty rad that you think like that. I might start applying the concept of moral imperativity to things I want to do but am too lazy to do, like clean the house or do dishes or maybe even write more.
I haven't read anything by you yet but I told my girlfriend I'm excited to, and she's glad. Man, we had a long-ass argument about that Transformers movie that's coming out, and I'm pretty offended by the product placement contained therein, whereas she's all like, "Fuck, Joe, it's just a movie." So we had this big long silence and I was analyzing my sister's Pokemon card staxxxx and then we apologized and talked about how intense I can be with movies and music and junk.
As far as Cho goes, I think he is the perfect example of someone who I think is an asshole, and by asshole I mean somebody who I would not want to hang out with because they weren't into the same things I am and they seemed immature to me. I don't think, though, that his apparent assholiness invalidates his existence, or his art, i.e. his life. His plays reminded me of guro manga, which I'm really into, so I thought they were kind of interesting, but other than that, forgettable to me. So were Kliebold's Doom levels. They were not fun to play in when I tried to play in them, for me at least, and there were no cool monsters to shoot. Most people aren't really into those Doom levels. So, I would say that they aren't good Doom levels, just like I would say Cho's writings weren't good writings. But, most people would say "Gummo" isn't a good movie or that noise music isn't good music, so I'm buttfucking myself all over the place right now, because I love both of things a lot.
My decision is that my brain is too easily influenced, so I'm going to stand in the middle here and like, not sway towards either side of the debate, if you want to call it that. I have to place a pretty good deal of emphasis on both the logical and emotional cores of my psyche, so I can't say I agree with your philosophy, not that you yourself ever claimed to agree with it. You could've just been mulling things over in a sequence which was just as illogical as whatever else, and not really believe or disbelieve much or any of it.
I guess I think that this post's comments reminded how much I don't like Nikki Giovanni, because she is not someone I would ever want to hang out with and she is old and mean and not very smart from what I can perceive. She's an asshole, too, I think.
Hey, do you have a Wii? I have one and like, if you want to, we could trade Wii numbers and our Miis could have a parade. If you don't have a Wii and you have no idea what I'm talking about, oops. I sat in line for 16 hours at Wal-Mart for my Wii, and I didn't feel bad spending money for it. I really like the Wii, even if Wal-Mart's lighting makes me nauseous. What grudge do you carry against the Wal-Marts? I'm just curious as to why you don't like them. I mean, okay, if you're a poor family, like my family is, Wal-Mart rules because they have hella cheap prices and make our lives easier, like more sustainable and stuff. I think that's a good thing. I would presume that Wal-Mart really does help a lot of people, considering how many people it employs and how many people it feeds and how, even if you argue that sweatshops are a bad thing, usually factories are better than the domestic alternatives in third-world countries, or that's what I would be led to believe.
Tell me what's up and we can talk more about it next time I give you a comment.
hi joe.
i don't have a wii.
i typed some things about wal-mart. i don't know where. if you read what i typed about corporations somewhere that applies to wal-mart. if you find that that is some facts about wal-mart. but i don't think anything about wal-mart. i don't know.
this is inadequate response to your giant comment maybe. i don't know what else to type though.
tao
This post helped me understand statements I've seen written by you on the internet so much more.
Ever since I started reading your work and began learning more about you, I've wondered if you wrote anything dealing with the VT shooting. It wasn't until just now that I decided to search through your blog for the topic.
This also helped me "humanize" you more. It was starting to get hard for me to do that with so much online controversy and scandal following you. You were becoming very abstract to me.
I have a very boring office job and I am a fan of your writing so I decided that rereading one of your posts would be a good use of my time.
Also, at the time this happened, I did not know who you were, wasn't as invested in writing creatively, hadn't read your blog or any of your work etc. So I thought it would be retroactively interesting to see what Tao Lin had to say about the situation.
Also, I am from Virginia. Dozens of people from my highschool that I probably didn't like that much anyway end up going to Virginia Tech each year. Naturally what I remember from the day of the "killing rampage" is lots of people crying about various brothers, friends, ex-boyfriends, that ended up not being dead.
I think there is a lot of "truth" in your post and I enjoyed reading it, even after the fact, I enjoyed the way it made me re-think the situation. I especially like the title of the blogpost "cho seung-hui's killing rampage" because it was not called "The Virginia Tech Massacre" which is what every single media outlet and person in Virginia referred to it as.
And I am not sure if you are familiar with this phenomenon- but after the fact every single person and their mother from Virginia, especially people from the surrounding Virginia universities made a little "tribute to the slain" by making their facebook picture (of all things) a black ribbon with the "VT" symbol in the background. Or they used the saying "we are all hokies today". I think these displays of sympathy are useless and kind of dishonest. Going to school in the same state as Virginia Tech didn't allow any of those people to experience any of the same feelings. I go to school in New York and I think I was still able to have a significant level of feeling about the event. I think your blog post is a much better tribute to the victims and to Cho Seung-hui. The fact that no one even says his name in connection with the event is awful and typical of media sensationalism and also of the way people never seem to learn to pronounce people's names, especially when they are "cold blooded murderers".
Anyway, I am really glad I went and re-read this post and I was impressed with your skill in talking about this difficult subject matter because I am, of course, not used to "reading" you in this context. I'm glad your writing exists.
Hello, Mr. Lin. I liked this essay more than I've liked a lot of the other things I've read in the last while. I don't understand why you like to write in low caps so often and so for a while thought you might be an elaborate prankster, but this essay has changed my mind on that. You've introduced a few thoughts that I might try to live by myself.
I am also suddenly realizing just how hard it is to write without making instant value judgements. I find it hard to avoid writing things like "This was terrific" and "That's silly". So that's a new lesson I am learning just now. I feel slightly childish writing like this, like somehow my writing style in this comment is less mature, but as the part of your writing that I feel is more childlike is what I like so much about it, perhaps that is a good thing.
i like this post
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