In my humble opinion....

When my mom was in high school up in Canada a school shooting occurred. It was whispered about as an 'isolated incident'. Now mom says she thinks it was early symptoms of a deeper sickness in humanity, most especially the youth.

I have a theory about this sort of thing: the "system", if you will, the ones with power-over in our hierarchal lifestyle, keeps pushing and pushing the already disturbed kids in school. I admit that I was one of those potential school-shooter kids in school. Except I would have focused entirely on administration, not any students. Revise that: not many students. Just a few.

By being cut off from that which spawned us, as we have been since the industrial revolution, and being cut off from each other and the presence in ourselves, as patriarchy teaches us to be (please not that I am not singling out men here--I am singling out patriarchy and hierarchy, which can just as easily be matriarchy and hierarchy--the problem lies in the latter word), we fall into endless despair. We reach out to anything to find what we've lost, but end up finding more nothingness. Some are able to fit in and play along at happiness by never analyzing the gaping void within their souls, but the others, the non-conformists, the freaks, get pushed by their peers, families, and the system for not being 'normal' enough.

I had about 6 nervous breakdowns during high school, all major ones, and the last one had me sobbingly replying "I don't know!" whenever someone asked me my name. I just thank the Goddess that I had Her incarnate in my Mom, otherwise I really would have snapped.

College was much better.

But there is still that underlying authority thing, that thinking of "Teacher knows best, because you are a stupid child, and that is why you are here--to be taught what you do not know".

I think a better solution to this problem (actually, to most problems) would not be to just throw the perpetrators into max-security prison (that is, if they haven't already killed themselves) and consider the problem over, but to actually address the root of this severely antisocial activity.

The root is our culture. We live in a culture of estrangement, of cutting off from what's right or natural. We're taught we have to ask for permission to go to the bathroom, to pee or poop, which are natural bodily functions. We're taught (if we're women) that farting, burping, and sex are done/wanted only by "bad people", and (if we're men) that those same things can be the subject of contests to see who's better in each arena. Tree-huggers and animal rights-activists are the "freaks" in school, and the "normal" kids are the ones who succumb to what's expected of them no matter how far it is off their own course, who develop eating disorders to maintain that 'perfect look', or who take steroids for the same purpose.

We are taught to deny our natural impulses, our natural beings, and our emotions, because they're not "appropriate" to "adult living". "Good" people don't feel anger. "Good" people don't want to kill others. "Good" women are obedient and submissive, and never show their "bitchy" side, and "good" men are aggressive go-getters, who are never allowed to be vulnerable or sensitive, lest they be considered gay. (Oh, what a tragedy that would be.)

As well, "good" people don't care about the environment, but only about furthering their own agendas—getting the most toys and riches, and being the most influential on the block. Only then may you rest, because you've risen to the top. But beware! One slip-up, one tiny thing that reveals you're actually a "bad" person who's been faking it all these years and BAM! You Fall, back to the gutter, back into Hell. Only Angels get good lives.

The truth is, Christendom never went away. It just became secular. Sure, we live in a secular society. Then why does everything close early on Sundays, why is gay marriage an issue when it's not a religious one, why is religious tolerance not the norm, why are abortion workers murdered by Christian fanatics who do then not get prosecuted, why does all our currency say In God We Trust, why are Wiccan or Pagan Veterans not allowed to get a pentacle on their gravestones, why are Easter and Christmas and all those other Christian holidays also civic holidays but not Halloween, why are there still some places where being a non-Christian can get you beaten to death, why is there a stigma to being an unmarried mom, why is prostitution illegal, why are naked bodies "shameful", why must we ask for permission to do what is natural for our mammalian bodies to do, why does the GBLT community have to even ask for rights that should be theirs on account of their being human, why has every single president been a white man, why is there no problem with See You At The Pole on school grounds but any other religious observation during lunchtime would bring about a stake-burning, why must we deny our natural lives—children, birth, death, love, marriage, grief, bodily functions, sweat—in order to "survive" in the "adult world" if this is truly a secular society?

I do not hate Christians. I repeat: I do NOT hate Christians. Some of my best friends are Christians. And they are the best Christians I have ever met. They are the ones who don't parade it about, who don't tell others what to believe, who don't "fight wars for Jesus" and who realize that there are different paths for different people. This is what we should ALL strive to achieve, an attitude to replace the current one.

This attitude of good/bad people and fitting the mold has been carried into Neo-Paganism, which is hardly hierarchical, with the notions of "good witch/bad witch" or "white/black magick". Like there could be a difference between white or black magick--saying there is only promotes racist thought. Magick is magick. A witch is a witch. Good and bad are matters of perspective--if you ask the villian in any story if he or she is evil, he or she will probably say "No. I'm just misunderstood."

School shootings, acts of "terrorism", etc, are just examples of people who are lost and confused in this culture lashing out with all the anger they've been taught to deny their whole lives, lashing out in very unhealthy ways because all they know is that it is unhealthy to feel differently, period, and that there is no healthy way to let it out.

Instead of just punishing people and leaving it at that, of teaching people that the punishment/reward system is all there is and they better be good, for goodness sake, or Santa will beat them with a stick, we need to re-teach people. We need to re-teach ourselves. And we need to foster a different culture, a culture of immanence instead of estrangement, a culture where we see each other and ourselves as part of a huge web, and all emotions as valid, so we can learn how to be healthy, body mind and soul.

Now, if these people were psychopathic personalities, which I personally believe are born without souls, then that's an entirely different issue.

Psychopathic personalities are completely sane and logical, lack any empathy for other beings, and are "never in the wrong". A psychopath can waltz into a school, shoot up a hundred plus people, and waltz back out never feeling that he or she has done anything wrong. He or she may even strike up a perfectly normal conversation with the cops if he or she is taken alive.

By the way: we have several PPs running this country right now.

School shooters kill themselves at the end because they're overcome with grief. Because they know they've done something wrong. Even if they couldn't articulate it, that's the emotion. That emotion thing again—what we're supposed to deny.

If the people running this country felt anything for other human beings, or other beings in general, they would have committed suicide long ago. The United States has now been involved in Iraq for longer than we were in World War II – perhaps the only just war.

What we fail to see is that we've become the new Nazis of the world—big bullies everyone's afraid of.

And they have a right to be: the US spends more money on "defence" (read: nuclear weapons) each year than the rest of the major defence-spenders on the list combined. Canada isn't even on that list.

You may say what you want about "influences" in youth's lives today, about how it's all that Marilyn Manson crap that they listen to, or how you can't understand how anyone could be so violent and cruel. It's easy to understand: look around you. Look at this country that you're living in, in the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave, turned into Land of Fear and Home of Death, and look at how it throws its weight around in the rest of the world. Look at its use of power-over to force others to do its bidding, the true definition of violence.

This is a country where I'm not even allowed to say something like this, because I may be "promoting terrorism." That is, if I fear them. That is, if I let them control me.

You can let them make an "example" of the few who stray, and stay safely locked in your pen, never hurt, but never living either.

Or you can fight back, and fuck the lot of them, because we're human, damn it, and we've been fighting for millennia, and you won't take us without a struggle. We will not go down peacefully.

Because if we do, no anthropologist will even care to document our history. We will be a speck in the history of the galaxy. Because we didn't care enough to fight for our good name—so why should anyone care enough to talk about us?

Kurt Vonnegut died recently. His words: "It's too bad. This country could have been something great."