a thoughtful web.
Good ideas and conversation. No ads, no tracking.   Login or Take a Tour!
comment by rob05c
rob05c  ·  3084 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Shooting in Paris

    I remember, when 9/11 went down, my reaction was, "Well, I've had it with humanity."

    But I was wrong. I don't know what's going to be revealed to be behind all of this mayhem. One human insect or a poisonous mass of broken sociopaths.

    But here's what I DO know. If it's one person or a HUNDRED people, that number is not even a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a percent of the population on this planet. You watch the videos of the carnage and there are people running TOWARDS the destruction to help out. (Thanks FAKE Gallery founder and owner Paul Kozlowski for pointing this out to me). This is a giant planet and we're lucky to live on it but there are prices and penalties incurred for the daily miracle of existence. One of them is, every once in awhile, the wiring of a tiny sliver of the species gets snarled and they're pointed towards darkness.

    But the vast majority stands against that darkness and, like white blood cells attacking a virus, they dilute and weaken and eventually wash away the evil doers and, more importantly, the damage they wreak. This is beyond religion or creed or nation. We would not be here if humanity were inherently evil. We'd have eaten ourselves alive long ago.

    So when you spot violence, or bigotry, or intolerance or fear or just garden-variety misogyny, hatred or ignorance, just look it in the eye and think, "The good outnumber you, and we always will."

Patton Oswalt





_refugee_  ·  3084 days ago  ·  link  ·  

"When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, 'look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.' "

Mr. Rogers

A similar and helpful quote for such times.

someguyfromcanada  ·  3084 days ago  ·  link  ·  

He has said many good things such as: "like white blood cells attacking a virus."

For reference here is what the concert venue looked like. (lol a Limp Bizkit concert in June 2015.)

While I understand the self-preservation instinct, what I do not get is why people did not rush them when they were reloading apparently many times. We have thrown the old cooperation with highjackers theory right out the window and we have seen that it has been helpful a few times eg. when people rushed the guy with the AK on a Parisian bound train a couple of months ago.

(BTW the one guy on the train that helped tackle the attacker was apparently a college student in Oregon who left classes to go on Dancing with the Stars or he would have been in class perhaps during the Umpqua Community College shooting.)

_refugee_  ·  3084 days ago  ·  link  ·  

My guess would be shock. When I was robbed I didn't think to attack the guy and in fact wasn't even going to call the cops. I staggered home and started cancelling credit cards because that was all I could think to do after throwing up an angry Facebook status warning people to stay off that path. And there were police phones that I walked past on the way to my place. Literally had no idea what to do.

user-inactivated  ·  3084 days ago  ·  link  ·  

The guy that tackled the Parisian AK train guy had military training. Extensive attempts to break the thought process and create action. Willful disregard of your self is not innate in all but a few. I think a lot of military guys secretly hope to be there when shit goes down because they know what they would do and how surprising it would be to the other side.

someguyfromcanada  ·  3083 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Four people attacked that guy and the first and one other did not have military backgrounds. I do not believe the guys on Flight 93 that attacked the highjackers had any training either. Nor did that child that tackled a suicide bomber outside of his school.

So I would think that surely there must have been someone that would react like that.

<Insert silly French retreating joke here>