How little we are

Tuesday April 17, 2007 - 11:57AM EDT

I've talked about how little tribe mentality among humans prevents us from advancing past a certain point and will continue to cause conflict because all humans don't view each other as part of the same large group.  Hopefully we will get there eventually or our survival as a species may be stretched to the limit.

Today I see a headline on BBC news that read  "South Korean  named gunman".  BBC news wasn't the only one who had headlines like that.  Pretty much every news outlet  had similar headlines.  Most may  look at the headline and say what is the problem. And that my friend is the part of the problem.  The headline has implied that this terrible act is somehow connected with being South Korean. Whether you like it or not having gunman and South Korean in the same sentence is going to affected how people view South Korean. Not only that it gives you a little bit on insight into how those that write the headlines think. If it  had been a farmboy from wisconsin would they have said  "Gunman was a Wisconsin kid"? Almost certainly not.  I wish I could go back to the various similar incidents like this and see what the headlines said for all the homegrown gunmen.  The most recent one that comes to mind is the shooting at the CNN building. I didn't hear a single  thing about  the man's  heritage or race  in the headlines. America has learned a little bit that  you don't do that with race (I am speaking specifically about naming African American or Black in such headlines), but  we still have the same prejudice against foreign born non-white people.  I  make the distinction of non-white because chances are if  the gunman was  and of anglo-saxon descent but from Britain they wouldn't say British gunmen although I think  there would a slight  chance that they would mention they were foreign. I just don't get what being South Korean has to do with reporting who the gunmen was to the general public. If it had to do with some kind of radical ultranationalistic act then it might matter. And other than it doing in the investigations of speculating to why he did it and his being different as being part of it then it doesn't matter to a headline. 

The most difficult part about this thing is that no one notices. In fact there are probably people out there who think I am just some kind of over sensitive crazy person. This is where I need to bombard you with historical news headlines showing exactly what I mean. Because what I am saying is there, it is not some kind of fight THE MAN illusion.  Well I need some food.

The other crap about this is the damn prayer vigils I see as captions to pictures. What a fucking worthless act.  Well I suppose it is not worthless in a personal sense of coping but as far as practical public help or change in relation to the tragedy it is a laughable action. These clowns sit there and pray to some god yet any clown can go out and buy a gun and do the same thing again. Some of same people praying will probably still treat their fellow humans like dirt (especially those deemed foreigners or some junk) which can lead to this kind of garbage. But it is ok, because they feel a little better after.