newly ancient

I waited to write this until emotions had calmed down a little and people could look at the event more analytically. However, we should never forget that rush of feeling we get after a horrible event like this.

When you think of a school shooting, you must inevitably think of how it might have been prevented. Many people have tried to solve these problems through increased security, student psychology, and strict observation and prevention strategies. The fact is, none of these strategies will work because of the unpredictability of these events. For instance, many people have pointed out that Cho (of the Viriginia Tech massacre) wrote very violent writing prior to the incident. Unfortunately, If we put every student who writes of killing themself or others we would have more work for psychologists than math teachers. I’ll admit it myself, I have written of suicide in poetry. Does that mean that I need to be put in counseling and observed constantly? No, for there is a huge step between writing/thinking of violence and actually doing it. Instead of trying to prevent violence, we should be trying to prevent the thought of suicide.

First off, we should look at the statistics. Interestingly, females attempt suicide 3 times more often than males. However, males are 4 times more likely to succeed. What cause these statistics? Obviously, more females feel depressed enough to commit suicide. However, males depression feelings are apparently much stronger in the respect that they succeed when they try. If we look at the sources of depression, we can see that most of them can be treated through therapy and support.

I feel that, especially in youths, the leading cause of suicide is low self esteem. Low self esteem arises from a fact that you feel you cannot reach some standard for yourself - the love of another, a certain body image, a level of intelligence. For the most part, these feelings are simply superficial and exaggerated. However, society makes the see real. Let’s look back to the cave men, I doubt that anyone killed themselves for being too stupid. That is because there was no expectation of intelligence. I still feel we do not need an expectation for people in general. Instead, expectations should be based upon a person’s prior achievement. As for body image, we have the magazines and movies to thank for unfair expectations. Seriously, why should a girl be depressed because she doesn’t have a perfect body and why should a boy be depressed because they don’t have perfectly muscled arms. In the end, we need to judge people by personality alone.