Comment Read between the lines. (Score 4) 277
I don't agree with Katz on many issues, but I almost always enjoy reading his work because it's substantive enough to make me think about issues I might not have considered.
I was disappointed with the article in the Village Voice because it didn't do that for me. While my experiences in high school weren't as bad as many of Katz' correspondents, I refuse to have my own sour memories and mild but still perhaps too-lingering resentment caricatured like I'm in a John Hughes film.
There are sick people out there. What are we going to do about it? Try to "profile" them so we can head them off, and catch mostly well-adjusted (or at least non-threatening) people in the process? Pretend to restrict access to media (when does an 'R' rating actually stop a 16-year-old)? Pretend to restrict access to firearms? Hasn't society learned yet? There are no easy answers, but it's a good step in the right direction to just start being nice to each other.
The Hellmouth series didn't solve the problem, and I don't think that's really what it was for. It gave me an important insight, though. The system is not merely damaged; it's broken. Katz is significant simply because he opened a discussion on a large scale that didn't previously exist, and perhaps, by opening that discussion, he has contributed to helping thousands or millions of people realise they're not alone. Jane Dark didn't seem to be blaming guns (or worse, pictures of guns), so it's all the more frustrating that on so many levels, she seems to have missed the point.
Humans are not constrained to finite compassion. We can care about white, middle-class, teenage boys and still care about malnourished children around the world. They're both symptoms indicitave of broken systems, that is, sets of values that cannot survive in a world that's changing as rapidly as ours. Ms. Dark's article is a symptom, too, that the problem is more pervasive than we might've hoped. It's my responsibility--my moral obligation--as an adult that survived at least one of those situations (hint: I had plenty of food), to try to fix things. I have accepted that most of my attempts will fail. That's okay. I don't have to be successful every time--just once will do.
I was disappointed with the article in the Village Voice because it didn't do that for me. While my experiences in high school weren't as bad as many of Katz' correspondents, I refuse to have my own sour memories and mild but still perhaps too-lingering resentment caricatured like I'm in a John Hughes film.
There are sick people out there. What are we going to do about it? Try to "profile" them so we can head them off, and catch mostly well-adjusted (or at least non-threatening) people in the process? Pretend to restrict access to media (when does an 'R' rating actually stop a 16-year-old)? Pretend to restrict access to firearms? Hasn't society learned yet? There are no easy answers, but it's a good step in the right direction to just start being nice to each other.
The Hellmouth series didn't solve the problem, and I don't think that's really what it was for. It gave me an important insight, though. The system is not merely damaged; it's broken. Katz is significant simply because he opened a discussion on a large scale that didn't previously exist, and perhaps, by opening that discussion, he has contributed to helping thousands or millions of people realise they're not alone. Jane Dark didn't seem to be blaming guns (or worse, pictures of guns), so it's all the more frustrating that on so many levels, she seems to have missed the point.
Humans are not constrained to finite compassion. We can care about white, middle-class, teenage boys and still care about malnourished children around the world. They're both symptoms indicitave of broken systems, that is, sets of values that cannot survive in a world that's changing as rapidly as ours. Ms. Dark's article is a symptom, too, that the problem is more pervasive than we might've hoped. It's my responsibility--my moral obligation--as an adult that survived at least one of those situations (hint: I had plenty of food), to try to fix things. I have accepted that most of my attempts will fail. That's okay. I don't have to be successful every time--just once will do.
