See How Alike We All Are
Title
See How Alike We All Are
Description
By Kim Heung-sook
``We will continue to invent the future through our blood and tears and through all our sadness ... We will prevail...'' _ Nikki Giovanni, Virginia Tech Distinguished Professor, poet, activist.
Ten days have passed since 33 members of Virginia Tech community died in a shooting spree. Though many journalists have written about the 23-year-old Cho Seung-hui and his victims, I'm adding my two cents as I can't help thinking about him.
Human beings are like china made of the same clay and a few other elements. No matter how great or vulgar a person is, the common things he shares with others far outnumbers the differences he has. The similarity, so to speak, is the ocean and the differences, the sea foam.
Whether it's God or genes that create them, it is apparent that too much or too little of some ingredients are put into certain men and women. For Jean-Baptiste Grenouille in Patrick Suskind's ``Perfume,'' it is human scent that he is born without and the lack of it turns him into a serial killer obsessed with perfume. For Anna in Leo Tolstoy's ``Anna Karenin,'' her dazzling beauty is the starting point of the tragedy she will live through.
People's lives are usually ruled by their excessive or deficient qualities owing to the human tendency to determine who is desirable or not on the basis of the small disparities. Babies are babies, but babbling, smiling ones are loved whereas crying, autistic ones are shunned.
Seung-hui seems to have had too much silence from early childhood, a trait reportedly attributable to his father. For senior Cho, his quietness may not have been a serious social hindrance in his youth because such a quality had been regarded as a male virtue in his native Korea until recent years.
For the eight-year-old immigrant Seung-hui, however, his reticence must have incurred double trouble as American culture cherishes expression, particularly verbal and articulate. The pressure to talk, let alone the stress of adopting an unfamiliar language, must have been a gigantic challenge for the boy.
Psychiatrists and psychologists debate whether Seung-hui could have avoided committing his crime had he lived in the country of his birth. Well, he might have been less lonely here. He could at least understand what others were saying and his mother might have spent more time with him. In the U.S. she had to work long hours outside home. He might have grown up as an incomprehensible, unnoticed man like his father. He might have fostered a home-grown discontent and destroyed himself and others but after a more time-consuming preparation due to the unavailability of guns here.
While agreeing that he is a complex case of depression and derangement, the specialists continue to ask: ``Did he do that because of mournful love, or of anger for racial prejudice and/or maltreatment by his classmates, or frustration over prolonged economic difficulties?''
As a lay analyst, I don't think disasters, whether natural or man-made, come from one distinguishable cause. Time and conditions must have been ripe for Seung-hui to let out his anger, which had been brewing ever since he was side-glanced for being different. Many of us share his weakness, loneliness, frustration, anger and despair, but we can avoid being branded like him just because we have a little less of everything.
Given the ever-spreading unfairness towards people who are considered different, Seung-hui may not be the last dangerous oddball to shock the global community in such a gruesome way. Tens of thousand are struggling against biased perceptions others have of them and they may turn into a second or third Seung-hi if their striving doesn't pay off.
The best way to keep them among us would be to recognize how alike they and we are and celebrate the similarities together. If they have to vent their frustration, they should be helped to find better means than guns, which should be banned no matter what.
We should prevail through ``our blood and tears and through all our sadness'' as Prof. Giovanni says, but we should never allow emergence of another Seung-hui in America, in Korea or anywhere else.
--
Original Source: Korea Times
<a href="http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/opinon/opi_view.asp?newsIdx=1872&categoryCode=169
">http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/opinon/opi_view.asp?newsIdx=1872&categoryCode=169</a>
``We will continue to invent the future through our blood and tears and through all our sadness ... We will prevail...'' _ Nikki Giovanni, Virginia Tech Distinguished Professor, poet, activist.
Ten days have passed since 33 members of Virginia Tech community died in a shooting spree. Though many journalists have written about the 23-year-old Cho Seung-hui and his victims, I'm adding my two cents as I can't help thinking about him.
Human beings are like china made of the same clay and a few other elements. No matter how great or vulgar a person is, the common things he shares with others far outnumbers the differences he has. The similarity, so to speak, is the ocean and the differences, the sea foam.
Whether it's God or genes that create them, it is apparent that too much or too little of some ingredients are put into certain men and women. For Jean-Baptiste Grenouille in Patrick Suskind's ``Perfume,'' it is human scent that he is born without and the lack of it turns him into a serial killer obsessed with perfume. For Anna in Leo Tolstoy's ``Anna Karenin,'' her dazzling beauty is the starting point of the tragedy she will live through.
People's lives are usually ruled by their excessive or deficient qualities owing to the human tendency to determine who is desirable or not on the basis of the small disparities. Babies are babies, but babbling, smiling ones are loved whereas crying, autistic ones are shunned.
Seung-hui seems to have had too much silence from early childhood, a trait reportedly attributable to his father. For senior Cho, his quietness may not have been a serious social hindrance in his youth because such a quality had been regarded as a male virtue in his native Korea until recent years.
For the eight-year-old immigrant Seung-hui, however, his reticence must have incurred double trouble as American culture cherishes expression, particularly verbal and articulate. The pressure to talk, let alone the stress of adopting an unfamiliar language, must have been a gigantic challenge for the boy.
Psychiatrists and psychologists debate whether Seung-hui could have avoided committing his crime had he lived in the country of his birth. Well, he might have been less lonely here. He could at least understand what others were saying and his mother might have spent more time with him. In the U.S. she had to work long hours outside home. He might have grown up as an incomprehensible, unnoticed man like his father. He might have fostered a home-grown discontent and destroyed himself and others but after a more time-consuming preparation due to the unavailability of guns here.
While agreeing that he is a complex case of depression and derangement, the specialists continue to ask: ``Did he do that because of mournful love, or of anger for racial prejudice and/or maltreatment by his classmates, or frustration over prolonged economic difficulties?''
As a lay analyst, I don't think disasters, whether natural or man-made, come from one distinguishable cause. Time and conditions must have been ripe for Seung-hui to let out his anger, which had been brewing ever since he was side-glanced for being different. Many of us share his weakness, loneliness, frustration, anger and despair, but we can avoid being branded like him just because we have a little less of everything.
Given the ever-spreading unfairness towards people who are considered different, Seung-hui may not be the last dangerous oddball to shock the global community in such a gruesome way. Tens of thousand are struggling against biased perceptions others have of them and they may turn into a second or third Seung-hi if their striving doesn't pay off.
The best way to keep them among us would be to recognize how alike they and we are and celebrate the similarities together. If they have to vent their frustration, they should be helped to find better means than guns, which should be banned no matter what.
We should prevail through ``our blood and tears and through all our sadness'' as Prof. Giovanni says, but we should never allow emergence of another Seung-hui in America, in Korea or anywhere else.
--
Original Source: Korea Times
<a href="http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/opinon/opi_view.asp?newsIdx=1872&categoryCode=169
">http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/opinon/opi_view.asp?newsIdx=1872&categoryCode=169</a>
Creator
Kim Heung-sook
Date
2007-10-11
Contributor
Haeyong Chung
Language
eng
Citation
Kim Heung-sook, “See How Alike We All Are,” The April 16 Archive, accessed November 2, 2024, https://april16archive.org/index.php/items/show/1441.