Good, Better, Best, Never Let It Rest Until the Good Is Better and The Better Is The Best

So I've kicked around whether or not to blog on this topic...
I wasn't there.
I don't know anyone who was there.
And I worry about being tactful and respectful in time of tragedy.
But, as a young American and college student, I feel the need to at least say something...I don't propose any answers here, nor do I believe I'm about to say anything totally meaningful or intelligent, I'm just going to sort of riff off what's on my mind I guess...
So, in case you haven't heard, there's been another school shooting.
This one, at Northern Illinois University. As I said, I wasn't there and I don't know anyone who was there, but this shooting hits a little closer to home because, well, it is closer to home. NIU is not all that far from Chicago.
In the wake of Virgina Tech [side note: I find it a little disturbing that the name "Viginia Tech" has become the noun by which we refer to "that incident AT Virginia Tech when a mentally disturbed student went on a rampage killing fellow students and himself"] I found myself walking around my own campus thinking, "What would I do? What the hell would I do if the bullets started flying? Where would I run? Would I run at all?"
It seems disgusting that I, and other college students, should have to worry about bullets potentially flying on a college campus.
But, it also seems disgusting to me that people in the world go unfed and without a warm place to sleep at night.
It also seems disgusting to me that people cannot afford healthcare.
It also seems disgusting to me that there are children in the world who are abused, or hurt.
...there are a lot of things that disgust me about the world. There is a part of me that believes you have to accept that this is just the way the world is in order to get out bed in the morning and in order to live your life in any sort of way that would be progressive. There is a part of me that believes you have to accept the world in this way in oder to understand that is does not need to be that way and in order to change it.
...and then there's this part of me that believes this is not the way anything should be ever. There's this part of me that wonders what we have done as a human race to get to this point where it becomes commonplace for students to light up a lecture halls with bullets.
I was talking with my good friend about this whole mess the day it happened and she said something kind of interesting. Basically she said that it's become easier for human beings to harm each other. Like, when the founding fathers wrote the constitution and gave us the right to bear arms...a gun could only fire shot. And it took time to reload. With the advancement of technology it's become a whole hell of a lot easier for us to harm people, faster.
Sad, no?
Not to be all gloom and doom about the human race...but I think if we're not careful I think this could be the proverbial "meteor" that wipes us out as a species.
Technology figures promiently in human advancement-it has since some caveman-esque ansector decided to pick up a stick or a stone and use it as a tool...
I think technology has ceased to become a mechanism for survival though, and more or less one for power-even the technology that serves good and is not necessarily about building better bombs. Technology has become about being better, faster, and stronger to be more powerful to therefore not have to go into "survival" mode.
Eh, I don't know...maybe I'm wrong. And I'm not saying this is a bad thing...
But the problem with aquiring this sort of power is that if the situation arises in the wrong hands...we could blow ourselves up. We will meet our demise by our own advancements.
That was either the smartest thing I've ever said, or the dumbest...I can't decide which.
I think we've seen this play out...
As my fifth grade teacher, Mrs. Thomas, used to say, "Good, better, best, never let it rest until the good is better and the better is the best." She of course, was refering to the laws of grammar. But we as humans can't let it rest until we have technology that is good, better, and the best. And sadly, part of our technology today has to do with the most efficient ways to kill people. We make guns and bombs and weapons that are designed to inflict massive amounts of damage and destruction. And then when people do kill others with guns that we made to be better for killing, we look around and are like, "What the fuck?!"
Um.
Yeah. We did that.
WAIT! Before you get mad at me...
Obviously, I know it takes a person to pull the trigger.
Obviously, I know when we make guns we're not making them so some dude can go shoot up a lecture hall...
I'm just saying...we shouldn't be so surprised when it happens.
If we're going to be a world that makes guns, we have to take part of the the responsiblity for the consequences of that decision. In whatever capacity...in the capacity of war and in the capacity of school shootings and gang violence and hate crimes and whatever else...
It takes a person to pull the trigger, to push that button...yes. But we are a part of the reality that creates the ability for them to do that.
The guy who shot up NIU got his guns legally.
Legally.
He did not buy them on the black market or steal them. He simply bought them.
...that is more or less what my logical thinking mind says.

And then there is my heart.
My heart that can simply not look at this event, or any like it in a logical manner. This is a complex and at time illogical world we live in, I know. So much so that it becomes impossible to even wrap my brain around sometimes-in both good and bad ways:
I can't wrap my brain around it when a kid goes into a lecture hall and kills students.
And I can't wrap my brain around how good it is to laugh so hard I get a full abdmonial work out.
My mind tries to understand what happened, in the ways I've talked a little bit about...and then my heart comes in. And any grip I had on understanding is totally lost. I think about the terror those students must have felt. When, for no reason, on just an average day, some person decided to walk into a classroom and start shooting. I think about my brother-who's still got some college years ahead of him. I think about my brother-who was (and still is, maybe?) considering tranferring to NIU. I think about him and I think, "He could have been in there. He could have been in that classroom."
...then again, he could also get in a car accident or hit by a bus or drop dead of some strange virus that strikes otherwise perfectly healthly young men.
And so could I or anyone else.

*Sigh*

Oh life...
It's pretty much crazy.
I guess all I can do is live life the best way I know how. And despite the gloom and doom tone at which I wrote this post (come on guys, I'm a college student trying to figure out life I'm going to be emo sometimes), the best way I know how invloves good things. Good things like love, hope, and compassion.
Call me a bleeding hearted hopeful optimist. I am one. Occassionally, jumping into that pool that is cynicism.

In conclusion:
We need stricter gun control laws.
Period.
Although, since I do believe in the constitution and what the founding fathers said...I think everyone should get a state issued musket.
And that's all.
You can't buy pistols, you can't buy shotguns
You've got the right to bear arms ok?
You want to use that right to shoot up a lecture hall, bitch?
Well guess what?
You better have damn good aim because you have one shot.
And then you better be able to reload damn quick because that linebacker from the football team is coming to take your ass out.


...can you imagine how much more peaceful our world would be if we all used muskets?
"Oh man! I'm so mad at that guy I could just shoot him!"
"Well, honey, take the musket."
"Oh, that's right. The musket. Screw it, it's not worth it."

In a SERIOUS CONCLUSION:
Good, better, best, never let it rest until the good is better and the better is the best. Let's get good, better, and best at love. Please? Can we stop coming up with ways to hurt each other?


OK.

And just because this post needs a little humor...

QUOTE OF THE DAY

(Conversation had online)
MEGHAN: i guess i am in the mood for man bashing.
ME: Yeah, I was gonna say...
MEGHAN: bash them! bash them! remember that game with the big poofy mallot and the alligators would pop out of the holes and you had to club them?