24. nóvember 2006

Priorities, indifference and irresponsibility

This story was posted recently on slashdot.org following the shooting by the troubled German youngster from Emsdetten.

Bret540 writes:
"A Reuters news story reports that German lawmakers are considering a crackdown on 'violent computer and simulated war games' because a youth decided to attack other students at his school. The young man was apparently already under police consideration for weapons-related violations, and was described as 'someone with no friends.'"

From the article:
"Wolfgang Bosbach, the deputy head of Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU) in parliament, said it was time to consider banning games that simulate wanton killing. 'We need effective guidelines to protect children from exposure to different types of media, but we don't need (simulated) killer games that can lead to brutalisation,' Bosbach was quoted on the Netzeitung news Web site as saying." InfoWorld has more details on the event as well.[more]


Besides the same blame-the-worlds-problems-on-video-games platitude I think this story describes a more subtle but much graver attitude problem people have today. Namely the blind urgency everybody feels regarding detailed diagnosis and observation rather than actually providing people with the help they need.

That the young man was described by the police as 'someone with no friends' is more terrible than I can imagine. Why, since the police obviously had knowledge of the fragile state of this youngster, didn't they try to give him the help he needed?

In my opinion, it's both criminally negligent and fundamentaly in-human! And WE are to blame.

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