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Re: fuel-air explosives and the next highschool "event"



Bill,

I think your comments regarding teen-age depression, its causes and
its results are to the point. While I don't remember my high school
days as pure hell as apparently you do, I certainly don't recall them
as halcyon days either. In fact, I rather think that the "Happy Days"
image is pure fantasy; almost no one really remembers their high
school days in that manner, and most of them who do are fooling
themselves. Normal teen-age years are not care-free and joyous, they
are problem-filled and scary, and TV and other such images that
pretend that the norm is otherwise only contribute to the problem.

But I have one concern. In your letter you several times make remarks
like "...public schools simply are 'living hell' in fact." My
question here is why do you single out the public schools. Don't you
think that the students in private schools bring much the same
psychological baggage with them? If the alternative you imply by your
comments is home schooling, then we are doomed. Whether home
schooling is an effective alternative to "outside-the-home" schooling
is open to debate and research, but what I think is a given is that
the fraction of students who will be home-schooled, regardless of its
possible benefits, will always be minuscule. The overwhelming
majority of parents are either intellectually, professionally or
psychologically (or all three) unfit to school their children. One
reason the schools have been burdened with all these extraneous
responsibilities over the years (sex education, hygiene, driver
education, and more recently ethical education) is that it was
glaringly obvious that the parents were not doing the job that
everybody felt was rightfully theirs. If fact, it was many of those
parents (for a variety of reasons) who urged the schools to take
those tasks on. I can't say that the schools have done a much better
job than the parents they replaced, but that is another issue.

This is a minor quibble, however. I am in full agreement with the
main thrust of your comments, which is to create a situation in our
society (not just the schools) where there will be no more outcasts.
We can't do it by outlawing trenchcoats, or weird haircuts, or other
superficial silliness. We must create a climate where normal
diversity is accepted at face value. No one should feel ashamed about
their religion (or lack thereof), their sexual orientation, their
intellectual interests, their appearance, the way they talk, the
language they use or their ethnic background, or any of a myriad of
traits that are routinely savaged in our society by people who ought
to know better. And for those who show signs of falling outside the
accepted norms, there must be effective help available.

While this change in society must ultimately come from within us, it
can be helped by our leaders (political, social, religious, moral,
intellectual, and others) who take firm stands in support of the idea
of "no outcasts." It doesn't help when some pompous so-called
"religious leader" mouths off about teletubbies being gay, or that
the Antichrist is among us and is probably a Jew, or equally silly
remarks emanating from other points of the political spectrum. Nor is
it helped when spectators outside a memorial service for the young
gay student murdered in Wyoming, can hold a sign claiming that he
deserved to die and is surely now in Hell, or an editorial writer for
a diocesan newspaper can write in praise of the killing of a
physician who performs abortions. The list goes on, and what is going
on in Northern Ireland, the Balkans, the Middle East or East Timor
certainly isn't helping.

By the way, I don't mean necessarily to pick on the political right.
It's just that their silliness has been more prominently displayed in
the press recently, and I don't have any good examples from the other
side at hand. I'm sure others can fill that gap, however. The right
wing certainly has no monopoly on silliness and stupidity.

But I rant on. I may not agree with you on CF, Bill, but on this
issue, you're right on.

Hugh


I have a question regarding "nature vs. nurture", but first I have some
comments.

I must remind the group that we are not discussing "those teens." We are
discussing ourselves. I myself have very clear memories of my own
experiences in high school. I'm sure that everyone here does also. When
we describe the "problems" that are presented by "those teens", then we
are blinding ourselves to the fact that *we* are those teens ourselves,
and we should not adopt a stance of superior-sounding hypocracy while
pathologizing "those teens" who are such a problem. Why not discuss
ourselves and our own experiences regarding our own "developing brains" as
we went through school? It would be a far more honest and humble
approach.

Second, I believe that I have a good idea of what causes teenage problems.
High school was living hell for me. My self-image was entirely destroyed
by the constant ridicule. My only respite was in the computer room and
video studio, and also on summer vacation where for a brief time I again
could see myself as a powerful and normal person, before being forced back
into the concentration camp where I magically was converted once again
into "damaged goods." The only thing I didn't know at the time was that a
very significant portion of other students were in exactly the same
predicament as I. Had I know it, I think it would have helped a lot.
However, knowledge of the size of the problem was (and is) specifically
covered up by nearly all school administrators, and by former teens who
grow up to become adults who deny that they ever were damaged children
trapped in the in highschool nightmare.

My conclusion is that public schools simply are "living hell" in fact.

The reason we don't fix them is that we carefully maintain conscensual
blindness to the problem. It is Denial on a global scale.

Third: the Littleton/Columbine tragedy. Why would children murder others?
I'll tell you why. While in high school I frequently entertained
vengeance fantasies. I was a fairly normal person, and not deranged in
any way as far as I know. Yet I wanted to torture my tormentors slowly to
death. I thought in those terms for a simple reason: because the
situation really was that bad.

At present we sometimes discuss learnedly the "problem" of teen suicide.
Why are "those teens" killing themselves left and right. Hmmmmmm. Maybe
they are in the same situation that I once was, but they unfortunately had
to deal with even more ridicule/bullying that I did.

Let me make a prediction. Columbine/Littleton has breached the barrier,
and teens now realize that, when they are about to kill themselves, they
can take their tormentors with them. Back in high school, if I had
decided to kill myself by blowing up the school, then I wouldn't have
messed around with subconscious "crys for help." I was well aware that
REAL crys for help are entirely ignored, and always had been. And back
then I was already extremely competent in home-built technology. If I had
reached the end of my rope back then, and had decided to kill myself and
erase my highschool, then for awhile I would have once again had a reason
for living. I would have performed proper testing of my creations in
advance. There would have been redundant systems in place. There would
have been no survivors at all.

My prediction: an intelligent and competent student will be driven to
suicide, but this time they won't make subconsciously-motivated mistakes,
and they won't indulge in foolish egotistic posturing with handguns, and
their simple little fuel-air explosives will kill every single person in
the school building.

To prevent this from occuring, we need to breach the collective denial in
a very big way, and we need do it very VERY quickly. If we do not, then
the next "event" will breach it for us, and we won't be able to lie to
ourselves and blame it on "violent video games" as we did with the recent
Littleton/Columbine high school tragedies.

Fuel-air explosives were found at Columbine. They failed to function.
Doesn't anyone understand what this means?!!!! Are we that stupid they we
protect our own asses rather than confronting that which is about to
occur?!!!

Fuel-air explosives are equivalent to small tactical nukes. A smart child
can build one quite easily. We should feel fear: profound fear which
cannot be covered by the usual amount of denial. This would be a healthy
response to the situation. Denial is the worst possible response at
present. No, wrong, the worst possible response would be to blame the
victims, and to attempt to keep "bomb plans" out of the hands of suicidal
students. The problem is not "bomb plans," the problem is school
administrators who CREATE suicidal students by their actions, and who
cover up this fact.

Sorry that I didn't get a chance to ask the group my question on the
Monday WEEKDAY show:

What is the difference in teen suicide rate between public schools and
homeschooled students?

I suspect that the answer will be very telling.


Hugh Haskell
<mailto://hhaskell@mindspring.com>

Let's face it. People use a Mac because they want to, Windows because they
have to..
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