What the World Needs Now

"No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were. Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee..."

— John Donne, Meditation 17, 1624

I won’t be teaching gun-takeaways in my next self-defense class, so please don’t ask me.

In the aftermath of the shootings at Virginia Tech, Cho Seung-Hui is being depicted as a “prototypical serial killer” — outcast, made fun of by his peers, a victim of years of constant jeers and insults. Now, Cho was clearly a very sick and disturbed individual. He was mentally ill. The last thing I want to do is oversimplify a tragic and enormously complex situation, or make light of the pain that the nation is feeling at this moment. But still, I can’t help but wonder what the cumulative effect of several years of hugs and encouragement (and yes, professional counseling and appropriate treatment) might have been in Cho’s life.

Have you listened to talk radio lately? Gun control advocates are stressing the need for increased firearm regulation, while their opponents suggest that if the other students in the Virginia Tech classroom were armed, they could have returned fire and stopped the assault. I don’t believe that more regulation would be effective, but we certainly don’t need more guns or a citizenry armed to the teeth, either. That’s not the world I want to live in. Definitely not the world I want my daughter to inherit. I believe that what we really need is more respect, more compassion, more tolerance, and more understanding. And making that happen will be much harder to do than getting any piece of legislation passed.

Many have expressed outrage that the media aired images and video of the “manifesto” that Cho mailed to NBC. The backlash against the media’s insensitivity is easy to understand, and yet, it seems tinged with hypocrisy: After all, we are the same society that glorifies “the Sopranos” (hey, that “r” is a gun!) and makes first-person shooter video games for our children to play. We live in a violent world, and we accept the violence as long as it is “pretend” or far enough away.

I see this in myself, too: It seems that on any given morning, I receive the news of a bombing that kills dozens half a world away, and I’m so indifferent, war weary, and numb that I barely pause to reflect before adding the cream to my coffee. It’s not in my back yard, so why not enjoy some java?

Well, as a newly aware global citizen, I see now that my back yard is bigger than I thought, and I’ve got some weeding to do.

Everyone seems to be looking for someone to blame, and yet no one is taking responsibility. Did the school system do enough? Did the healthcare system do enough? Where did the school administrators, mental health professionals, parents, and police go wrong? Would tougher or less restrictive gun laws have made a difference? Why didn’t people read the warning signs? And in his “manifesto,” Cho himself blamed everyone else for forcing his hand to kill. No personal responsibility there, either.

If nothing else, this week’s tragedy reminds us of our COLLECTIVE responsibility. It seems to me that our indifference and lack of compassion kills, too. The death of Cho Seung-Hui and his victims lies, in some part, with all of us. I don’t know what I could have done differently to prevent this tragedy, but I’m forced to ask myself, as a martial artist, what can I do to prevent this from happening again?

So no, I won’t be teaching gun-takeaways in my next self-defense class. I won’t be adding new firearm training requirements to my school’s Black Belt curriculum. Instead, I’ll be making peace education and training in nonviolent communication mandatory for my karate students. We’re all in this together. What are YOU going to do?