Worldwide Pain and Grief

By Victoria Brewster, MSW – SJS Staff Writer in Canada

Friday was certainly a day of tragedy, but this word does not adequately describe what happened. How is it that there are so many people that have such internal negative thoughts, feelings of hate, anger and the wish to harm?

I cannot understand it. I am not sure that I or others ever can. To think that Adam Lanza walked into an elementary school in Connecticut and murdered his mother, other school staff and all those children….Why?

Across the world in China a man entered a school with a knife and murdered innocent children. Again, why?

How is it that so many people are walking around with such internal hate, negativity and no one notices ahead of time? People who are depressed show signs of depression and those that are negative tend to be very verbal about their negativity. Where does the responsibility belong? I do not want to think that society is so wrapped up in their own lives that they do not notice odd behavior that should make one pause, especially when it comes to family, friends and colleagues.

Events like this have occurred quite a bit in history much like war and genocide. Think here in Montreal at the Montreal École Polytechnique where 14 women were murdered by Marc Lepine, 25, who separated the men from the women and before opening fire on the classroom of female engineering students screamed, “I hate feminists.” (http://www.cbc.ca/archives/categories/society/crime-justice/the-montreal-massacre/marc-lepine-mass-murderer.html)

July 20, 2012: At least 12 people are killed when a gunman enters an Aurora, Colorado movie theater, releases a canister of gas and then open fired during opening night of the Batman movie “The Dark Knight Rises.”

July 22, 2011: Confessed mass killer Anders Behring Breivik kills 77 in Norway in twin attacks: a bombing in downtown Oslo and a shooting massacre at a youth camp outside the capital.

November 5, 2009: Thirteen soldiers and civilians were killed and more than two dozen wounded when a gunman walked into the Soldier Readiness Processing Center at Fort Hood, Texas, and opened fire.

September 13, 2006, Kimveer Gill entered Dawson College in downtown Montreal with three guns and began shooting people. Within minutes, an 18-year-old business student named Anastasia De Sousa was killed, 19 people were wounded and Gill had ended his own life.

April 26, 2002: Robert Steinhaeuser, 19, who had been expelled from school in Erfurt, Germany, kills 13 teachers, two former classmates and policeman, before committing suicide.

March 13, 1996: Thomas Hamilton, 43, kills 16 kindergarten children and their teacher in elementary school in Dunblane, Scotland, and then kills himself.

There are too many more for me to list, that in itself says something-unhappiness, depression and anger is happening around the world and yes in the underdeveloped countries of the world children die every minute due to malnutrition and women continue to be exploited for sex and control.

The world has learned nothing, but all of this is a warning that things need to change. The question is how and when.

*http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/dawson-college/ *http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323297104578179271453737596.html *http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/americas/united-states/120720/decade-mass-murder-around-the-world

*First posted at: http://northernmsw.wordpress.com/2012/12/15/worldwide-pain-and-grief/