[lit-ideas] Re: The Final Finger of Fate
- From: "Andy Amago" <aamago@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "lit-ideas" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2006 22:59:17 -0400
"It's all just fate."
It is, to a large extent. We're all like our posts, eventually to be deleted
off life's server. After deletion we'll lie around in dusty garages and
bookcases for a while on disc and hard copy but at some point it will be as if
we never existed. Until we're deleted though, child abuse and how children are
raised has an awful lot to do with the path fate takes, not just for
individuals but for the world. Stop the child abuse, give all children two
loving parents, and you can all but empty out the prisons, empty out the
psychiatric hospitals, prevent gangs, end war, and on and on. Most of fate is
very much in our hands. We just let it slip through our fingers.
Not a very poetic misanthrope tonight. Just my fate.
----- Original Message -----
From: Mike Geary
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: 9/14/2006 5:18:58 PM
Subject: [lit-ideas] The Final Finger of Fate
I have a dear friend who teaches at Dawson College in Montreal. Yesterday,
after the shootings there, she sent out an email to her friends advising that
she was fine . I got the email before I saw the news about the shootings. I'm
glad I did. Nonetheless the shootings struck me as very close to home just by
virtue of knowing someone who could well have been a victim. It also struck me
as especially evil when any life is willfully destroyed for reasons that seem
to be nothing more than a kind of pleasure. What a horrendous waste. But what
of the vein that bursts in the brain, the sudden imbalance of electrolytes, the
gas leak, the drunk driver? Are those deaths not a horrendous waste as well?
Yes, but those events weren't brought about by willful intent, they were
fateful events. There's a meaningful qualification there. Is there?
There's not only the whole question about the mental state of the shooter -- my
first assumption in these cases is that of severe dera
ngement -- but even if he was acting willfully, the fact that anyone was where
they were at that time was fate. In fact, everything's fate, isn't it? We
might truly make reasoned decisions in our lives, but the world surrounding
those decisions are not ours -- they are the world we just find ourselves in
and of which we have extremely little knowledge and practically no control
over. We live in darkness and every step we take is potentially over a
precipice.
I don't know whether I find those thoughts comforting or distressing. The idea
that life has some meaning outside myself can be very distressing. The thought
that I have some purpose in being here and that it's up to me to fulfill that
purpose is dreadful. Holy Mother the Church has certainly gotten a lot of
traction off that idea. I understand, contrary to my own rejection of the
notion that ultimately there is some purpose and meaning to our existence,
that that notion can be comforting and itself bring meaning and purpose. Most
human beings seem to assume that to be the case and hitch their psychological
and philosophical wagons to it. But the randomness of death won't let me seek
solace in such hopes. Each moment we live is a gift (or a curse as the case
may be) of fate and nothing else. These are ancient thoughts, I know, I know.
But they spring all new in your face with each such event as Charles Whitman's
killing of 14 at the University of Texas Tower or Kle
bold and Harris, the Columbine boys,killing 15, or Patrick Purdy's killing of
6 at the Stockton, CA school, or Gang Lu's killing of 5 at the University of
Iowa, or Luke Woodham's killing of 2 at Pearl, MS high school, or Michael
Carneal's killing of 3 at the Paducah, KY school, or Kip Kinkel's killing of 2
at Thurston High School in Oregon, or Mitchell Golden's and Andrew Johnson's
-- 11 and 13 year old boys -- killing of 5 in Jonesboro, Arkansas, or Jeffery
Weisse's killing 10 at Red Lake High School in Minnesota. All of these killers
were surely insane, but just as insane is the society that put guns in their
hands. It's all just fate.
Mike Geary
Memphis
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