Hearing about the Virginia massacre on Tuesday was chilling enough – did we really need to see those pictures of murderer Cho Soong Hwee in an army vest waving his weapons around?
He apparently went to the post office to send a copy of his home movie to American network NBC - before storming off to kill 32 students and staff and commit suicide.
In a rant that was broadcast on many networks – he raged against rich kids and said he was going to die like Jesus Christ.
But how harmful are these pictures? Does broadcasting material like that encourage other would-be killers out there to take action? And be subsequently immortalized in death?
Maybe we do need to see the pictures – to understand the mind of a killer who so few people on the Virginia Tech campus seemed to know.
And maybe it can be justified as being in the public interest.
What do you think?
Comments (1)
The Virginia massacre was a tragic event indeed. However in light of the 2,000,000 abortions carried out annually in the USA one must consider upon what base is abortion carried out in any country.
In Australia the average conservatively is 18,000. Despite our governments realising Australia's aging population we kill 18,000 potential Australian citizens for what ever reasons.
Apart from the Judeo Christian base, all other belief systems would fall into the 'impersonal' plus 'time' plus 'chance' universe. Richard Dawkins who champions the atheist flag cannot like his predecessors Jaques Onod, Francis Crick and B F Skinner all fell to the same personal tension. B F Skinner in one of his books begins to spell nature with a capital 'N'. Crick had the same issue.
Plato in his 'Republic' said for true morals to exist there must be a moral absolute. Jean Paul Sartre the French existentailist philosopher said the finite is meaningless without an infinite reference point. Sartre also said there were only two basic philosophic questions that confront man; who am I and where did I come from, the questions of being and of personality.
Dawkins in his book talks about morality yet has no way of deriving meaning from his 'chance' system yet has more names for God than the Bible does.
Getting back to the massacre. These things are the natural flow of a shift in the methodology by which people approach the questions of truth and knowledge, from antithesis to the postmodern concept of synthesis. We Christians often assume that our non-Christian world think along the same pressupositions as the Christian.
We would be wrong and as a result we tend to answer the questions thrown at us without considering where our non-Christian people begin or simply answer the wrong questions. Abortion infanticide euthanasia and the like are philosophical positions opposite that of the Bible.
Unfortunately, this contrary world view dominates the entire world. Christian's have not only lost the consensus in the postmodern context, our world has lost the God concept.
Once upon a time when people talked about God everyone was on the same wave. Today this is not the case as the consensus has shifted. Antithesis which implies two opposites which gives us an absolute answer is dead.
Synthesis fuses these two opposites into a higher truth or synthesis after the Hegelian model.
Francis A Schaeffer correctly writes in his book, 'The God Who Is There', The chasm between the generations has been bought about almost entirely by a shift in the concept of truth. These tragic events are the result of the 'impersonal' plus 'time' plus 'chance' systems which dominate the field wherever you look.
In education the scientist had become the philosopher who claims his discipline can explain the questions of metaphysics and of morals, and they are wrong because the 'personal' tension brings them undone.
God Speed.
Posted by Hona Wikeepa | April 23, 2007 12:25 PM
Posted on April 23, 2007 12:25