Letter to my Son
Sunday, 21 April
 |
| Man with Tie |
Good Morning Jacob…
The odyssey from Monday’s Marathon
bombing to Friday’s boat capture of a teenage suspect charts a path of
expectations about the killers that reveals my own good guy versus bad guy view
of terrorism. My own profile of a perpetrator
of evil did not include someone described by those who knew him as a sociable,
likable, regular kid. My mind pictured a
dedicated fanatic warped by hatred and anger and not someone that just last
September 11th had celebrated becoming a naturalized American
citizen. Nineteen year old Dzhokhar
Tsarnaev appeared to be a young man successfully assimilated into American
society and not the cold-hearted murderer depicted on video released by the FBI
Thursday. His older brother, Tamerlan, a
self-described ‘very religious’ 26 year old more accurately fit my conception
of the lone wolf seething with the need for vengeance. Yet the news reports have so far implicated
these two brothers as a team responsible for random killings of innocents and
the assassination of a young police officer at MIT. It seems human nature has too many unexpected
crannies to routinely fit into predictable rules of behavior.
Can you imagine a software game that would enable us to live
a life foreign to our own personal experience?
I vaguely know the term schizophrenic.
The dictionary definition paints a picture of someone suffering
schizophrenia as sometimes behaving in a bizarre fashion because of their
delusional experience with the world. Imagine
yourself having to make daily decisions while being unable to trust your own
senses. I can visualize a game where
you, the participant, would have to make choices while uncertain as to the
reality of your experience. How long can
you survive before you are locked up or you fall from the roof of a tall
building? A more intense version of
disorientation would involve criminal insanity.
These ideas may not be commercially successful. Most people limit their concept of gaming as
a form of entertainment. I think it is
more like reading, which can be time spent for its entertaining value or as a
means of elucidation, enlightenment. I
think gaming has greater learning potential than does traditional reading and
note-taking. Maybe I would be safer to
say gaming supplements reading. Books
provide an abstract structure to a topic while gaming has the capacity to
enable understanding through one’s own personal experience. I am now able to safely walk a mile in the
shoes of a troubled or dangerous individual.
I come to appreciate and anticipate that person’s thought
processes. I come to intuitively
understand another’s motivations.
The topic of gaming mental illness does not imply I suspect
the Tsarnaev brothers of any mental or deeply emotional affliction. Their terrorist acts last Monday would be
less troubling if we could ascertain their nature to be well outside the
potential of the human norm. How
chilling it is to think these criminal acts were perpetrated by perfectly
normal human beings. As it turns out
this may well be the case. Had the
circumstances of their lives been altered they may have been celebrated pillars
of the community, role models for our young ones. Instead, carefully weighed personal decisions
have led to them to their own destruction and to destroy the lives and happiness
of the many they have had no opportunity to know. How does this come about? It is important that we should know.
Love,
Dad
No comments:
Post a Comment