I Must be Getting Old
Feb. 22nd, 2008 09:31 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
porphyryLast week, my father and I were discussing the recent rash of students going into classrooms and opening fire on their classmates and teachers. This is a phenomenon that comes and goes in waves in the United States.
Whenever this happens—and it is tragic, no doubt—all the news reports that one sees tend to deliver common themes about why a person would do such a thing. The person was depressed. The person was bullied. The person was picked on. The person was abused. The person was taking antidepressants. This person had been in therapy. This person wasn’t the person everybody knew. This person shouldn’t have had access to guns. This person had been diagnosed with ADD or ADHD.
Now, my father isn’t prone to ranting and is not an overly emotional person by nature (“It’s because I come from the Scots” is his explanation why), but as we were discussing this topic of school shootings—something one would not have seen prior to the early 1990’s—he grew irritated.
“Apologist horseshit!” he exclaimed. “Everybody wants to know what’s wrong with these kids. I’ll tell you what’s wrong with them. They are no more depressed than we were; no more teased or bullied or picked on or anything else. What they were was overindulged and overmedicated—never taught to just cope with life and its disappointments. They all think just because they exist they’re special. ‘Oh, I’m depressed,’ they’d say, so off they’d go and get these brain chemical altering drugs that probably did them more harm than good. ‘Oh, I need a therapist’,” he mocked, “’Nobody ever affirmed me.’”
At this point, I laughed. “Settle down, Dad,” I said.
“Well, it’s true,” he said, warming up to his subject. “They all think they’re special even if they haven’t done a damn thing in their lives except be born, that the world exists to serve them, and then when it doesn’t, they do this kind of crap and then don’t even have the guts to take the consequences for their actions.”
I must be getting old. I’m rather inclined to agree with him.
Whenever this happens—and it is tragic, no doubt—all the news reports that one sees tend to deliver common themes about why a person would do such a thing. The person was depressed. The person was bullied. The person was picked on. The person was abused. The person was taking antidepressants. This person had been in therapy. This person wasn’t the person everybody knew. This person shouldn’t have had access to guns. This person had been diagnosed with ADD or ADHD.
Now, my father isn’t prone to ranting and is not an overly emotional person by nature (“It’s because I come from the Scots” is his explanation why), but as we were discussing this topic of school shootings—something one would not have seen prior to the early 1990’s—he grew irritated.
“Apologist horseshit!” he exclaimed. “Everybody wants to know what’s wrong with these kids. I’ll tell you what’s wrong with them. They are no more depressed than we were; no more teased or bullied or picked on or anything else. What they were was overindulged and overmedicated—never taught to just cope with life and its disappointments. They all think just because they exist they’re special. ‘Oh, I’m depressed,’ they’d say, so off they’d go and get these brain chemical altering drugs that probably did them more harm than good. ‘Oh, I need a therapist’,” he mocked, “’Nobody ever affirmed me.’”
At this point, I laughed. “Settle down, Dad,” I said.
“Well, it’s true,” he said, warming up to his subject. “They all think they’re special even if they haven’t done a damn thing in their lives except be born, that the world exists to serve them, and then when it doesn’t, they do this kind of crap and then don’t even have the guts to take the consequences for their actions.”
I must be getting old. I’m rather inclined to agree with him.
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no subject
Date: 2008-02-24 06:12 am (UTC)And there's hardly a point in your list I could claim for myself: re: 1) I'm totally confused about what's wrong or right; re: 2) I know too well how much I depend on the crowd; re: 3) not only do I let others betray me, I even try to fool myself; re: 4) I wouldn't recognize a fool; re: 5) I've always got obsessed about authors I could not yet understand and laid them down when I would have been mature enough; re: 6) a lot of introspection, but very poor self-control. (Fortunately, I'm indulgent enough to still kind of like myself. Also: I don't want you to read this as something self-deprecatory.)
no subject
Date: 2008-02-24 01:59 pm (UTC)The downside of what he meant, though, is that being this way made me also somewhat melancholy, although I've learned to live with that; it's not so bad :) nor is it the same thing as depressed. Also, I'm somewhat cynical because I've always lived with "what is" rather than "what could be." I seem to lack a capacity for self-justification or self-rationalization for doing wrong which at times has made me miserable but I'll stand by my principles even if they make me suffer or cost me dearly. I have also been interpreted by those who have betrayed me or made me ethically or morally uncomfortable as cold because once I perceive this trait in another, I just cut that person out of my life, no explanations. Just shut the door and don't look back. So mostly I'm alone rather than having a wide circle of friends.