Have you become numb to tragedy?

[Rex_Goodheart]

After all the tears for Columbine, 9/11, New Orleans... I don't feel much affected by what happened at Virginia Tech. I feel more guilt about not feeling much.

[Debau2005]

1. I still have tears.

Don't feel guilty, we all have phases.

This has hit me hard, because I remember my college years, as ones of laughter, and a few tears...usually over a boy that I didn't want anyway!

But I always felt safe, and trusted the people around me. The fact that these kids have lost that "safe" feeling is what strikes me the most. My college roommate and I are still close, and we have both felt the samethings.

My heart goes out to the students that have lost their friends, teachers, and their feeling of well-being.

[WCGreen]

2. I really wasn't surprised nor was I that shocked...

I have been waiting for someone to snap for a long time now...

I remember when that guy drove into a restaurant in Texas, got out of the car and started to shoot...

I also vividly remember Kent State, Jackson State....

I also remember the race riots when far more poor people of color lost their lives...

I don't remember any public funerals, or grieving centers or media transfixation...

Of course all this was going on during the Viet Nam catastrophe, and the twin assinations...

People grieved privately then...

They didn't demand media events...

[orpupilofnature57]

3. MSM does that to everyone ,hang here and discuss.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_murder

[Old and In the Way]

4. It bothers me greatly.

Maybe because I have a daughter, away from home, in college. I suspect every parent who has children in college are effected by this on some level.

[dweller]

7. echo that here

i'm a state over from Va. with a daughter in college but an hour away, and still grieved for that whole day for everyone at VT, knowing but a slim line of chance/fate or whatever circumstances that occur kept me from being a parent w/out a child, and it feels tenuous at best. Torn between thanks and feeling guilty that i can be thankful ... for i could just as easily be a parent in the shoes of those in midst of that tragedy.

i called my daughter and told her of the news early just to hear her voice and made her promise to email me daily just to placate me for a week or so. She comes home for the summer in 2 weeks, and not soon enough right now.

peace
dp

[blues90]

5. No , it just makes me more depressed and hopeless

I don't know how much more people can take before they go crazy , I know I can't handle much more of these horror stories .

[splat]

6. Dylan Thomas: "After the first death, there is no other"

Yeah, I'm not goin' down there. We can make anybody's problems our problems. Fix what you can, keep moving...

[glarius]

8. This Canadian sends you deepest sympathy for the terrible, senseless

act of lunacy at Virginia Tech. I know what you mean by being "numbed" to tragedy. It never seems to end. Our networks carried the memorial service today and I just want to say how impressed I have been by all the young Virginia Tech students I have seen interviewed on TV. They have been, without exception, thoughtful, caring people. Their parents must be very proud of them. I just pray they will be able to resume a normal life without too much pain after this terrible trauma.
:loveya:

[Cabcere]

9. Not so much numb, as just tired of it all.

Tired, sad, hurting, and weighed down by all the grief and the utter senselessness of it all. :( I live in Virginia and I have several friends at Tech - as far as I know, they are all OK, but there are still a few I haven't heard back from yet so I don't know for sure. So far, 2007 has NOT been a good year for me (in January, I was sick for my 21st birthday, in February, a friend was killed in Iraq, in March, my mom was diagnosed with thyroid cancer, and now this in April), and I'm just tired of the pain wearing me down almost constantly. It's like a dull emotional ache that resurfaces as a stabbing, soul-wrenching pain from time to time, and sometimes I can't help but wonder if and when it will stop. :shrug:

[libodem]

10. Welcome to DU Rex

I think you have a point to discuss. I am a compassionate person by nature and I feel pretty numb. I have a hard time getting emotionally involved after the last 7 years of Bush. I'm burned out with tragedy. I grieve with all the victims and families of every suicide bomber in Iraq. All the flesh and blood flying through the streets, the smell of human guts and brains. I shudder to think of the children walking to school past dead bodies in the streets. I have several friends, whom have lost sons and a daughter to car wrecks, in the past. What I watched them go through hurt my heart and gave me first hand experience of mourning and grief. I don't believe any one death is more tragic for the families than any other. Say for instance a good High School friend of mine lost her brother to an OD. Is her grief less important than the death of another friend's honor student? Are the deaths of the fathers and sons of Iraq, dragged off to prison, for the crime of being a fighting aged male, in the household, more sad than promising young American engineering students. Yes, I feel guilty. I've had irrational thoughts and unwanted ruminations that now Americans can know how it feels to have death visited upon us in such random and senseless manner, just like what we have caused to be visited upon the Iraq citizens every day. I don't see Bush making sympathy speeches to them after every car bomb blows up a market place full of mothers, or an IED blows the legs off our boys. Thanks, for the vent space.

[AlCzervik]

11. no i haven't, i'm a bit surprised at my own reaction after the past 4 years

of war, i thought maybe i was desensitized but i guess i'm not which i think is a good thing.

yesterday morning i was in las vegas, the last day of a 3 day weekend there with my friends, we were eating breakfast when cnn came on reporting one death and we all looked up, made the right noises and continued on eating, an hour and half later and i'm sitting at gate A11 at the airport when i check the news on my phone and it's up to 21 and i'm in total shock, "huh, this can't be correct" i get home finally after a very long day and my husband says "oh---my---god 33, 33? what the hell?" I am still in shock, it's wearing off a bit but the horror is there.

[merh]

12. Yes.

:(

[VTMechEngr]

13. Normally I would say yes...

But this one hit home for obvious reasons.

[Melynn]

14. No

I have never been to VT but I have lived in the general area. I lived in Roanoke many years ago. So the VT tragedy hit me hard.

[ElizabethDC]

15. Yes.

I feel very sad, of course, about what happened - and, as a college student, I feel much more connected to the situation than I might otherwise have been. But, at the same time, I have an on-off switch. I can watch the stories on TV for an hour or so, and then get up and go to class and forget about it.

My mom has called a couple of times to check on me and to hear my voice. She is clearly feeling the events much more sharply than I am - maybe it's because she's a parent, or maybe it's the generational difference.

[johnnie]

16. No

My heart hurts as much for these people as it does for the people in Iraq, the Columbine kids, the people who died on 911, the Amish children who were shot and killed last year, the Katrina victims and so on as much as it always has. I'm not numb to this and hope to never be, but the compassion in me is one of the things I can't suppress.

[bling bling]

17. I hate to say it, but yes.

The media has burned me out. They treat one story after another as though it's the biggest most important event in history. Shark attacks, Anna Nicole, Natalie Holloway.

They simply can't outdo themselves anymore. Unfortunately I've become so turned off by their in-your-face 24/7 tactics that It's hard to differentiate this from the other tripe they freak out and spazz over every day.

I think I was immediately turned off by the almost orgasmic spouting of the point that "this is the biggest shooting massacre in the history of the United States." First of all, that is misleading. Second, they're using that line for dramatic effect. Third, it makes me wonder how they'll top themselves next time. Will it get to be like watching football where the announcers throw out random/trivial statistics such as "this is the first time in NFL history that a running back caught 4 touchdowns in the 4th quarter of the 3rd game of the season." And forth, the media seem to be so fantastically impressed by this "biggest shooting massacre in history...." statistic and keep repeating it over and over that they're almost asking for someone nutcase to want to one-up this guy.