Last week I began a series of responses to Robert Ringer’s series called “The Cho Factor” in which he discussed the Virginia Tech shooting in April 2007 and the possible issues behind it. In his second installment, entitled “A Soul Without Purpose,” Ringer more or less prepares his readers for the following installments. In my opinion, he over-sells this series here, going on about how these “issues” “feed our frustrations and fears,” and attributes to them the failure of marriages, the glorification of school athletics, ignorance of learning disabilities, and a host of other societal ills. Quite a bit to dump on some as-yet unnamed “issues.”
He also goes on to “warn” his readers that his exploration of these issues “promises to be a long, and often uncomfortable, journey.” This is all well and good, and I applaud him for preparing readers for the rocky road ahead. But what bothers me most in this post is that he then pretty much tells readers that they had better agree with him, or else they will fall into one of two categories of readers – those with closed minds or those who are “knee-jerk-reaction folks.” So, unless you agree with his observations (i.e. what he has to say will “go down well” with you), you are either closed minded or reaction-prone. Either way, you must not be “open minded” enough to read what he says and agree with him. Well, I consider myself open minded, and I am not given to knee-jerk reactions, but there are some very big parts of his argument that I cannot agree with. Perhaps this has to do with my own personal experience in life.
I did find it interesting that Ringer reprinted a comment from someone questioning his use of Cho to refer to these issues. The reader was concerned that he was “elevating” Cho by using his name in the series. Ringer replied that he felt Cho was a symbol of the problems that Western society is facing, and that we need to look into the causes of Cho’s actions in order to understand and deal with these problems.
Ringer continues this installment with a comment from another reader about our society’s focus on quick fixes rather than real answers. “J.G.” is entirely correct on this – we want to solve the problem today, even if it means slapping on “a fresh coat of false security.” Now, is that a great image or what? In our world of fast food, microwaves, and sound bites, the tendency is to look for the fastest way to get it out of the way so we can go back to our reality shows and celebrity sightings. The sad thing is, in my opinion, this is, to some extent, what Ringer ends up doing. He has his own agenda/axe to grind, and he ends up focusing on that only to the exclusion of everything else that could be discussed. But we will come to that in a future blog.
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