A dear
friend of mine runs a composition class with a theme of monsters. In it she has
the class go through and look at some common monsters, then expand the idea to
other things. They've been very creative in how they approach the problem
critically to define monsters as social ills, obsession with status, material
gain, and other things.
In the wake
of Newtown, I think it's time we acknowledge that there are truly monsters in
the world. And we made them.
I'm not talking about guns.
We didn't intend to make them,
didn't realize we were making them. They were not grown in Dr. Frankenstein's
lab or on the Island of Dr. Moreau, but we still made them.
Then we turned blind eyes to the
making of them.
I didn't know the shooter in
Newtown, CT. I didn't know the shooter at the Sikh Temple in Wisconsin. I
didn’t know the shooter in Aurora, CO. I don't think most people knew them,
either. But I know that people are not born wanting to kill others. They're not
born wanting to slaughter children.
We made them that way. Into
monsters.
It's time to stop pointing fingers.
Stop trying to patch the problem. Stop politicizing.
We need to make them human again.
We don't let them ever become
monsters, and we stop the monsters.