Ok so I'm home sick and catching up on my netflix, one of the movies I got is "Bowling for Columbine" which is a Michael Moore documentary about violence in America. There are a lot of different opinions out there about Michael Moore, and think what you want, but you can't argue that he doesn't spark some thought. Personally, I tend to see most things in a similar way as Michael Moore.
Anyway, one particular part of the movie was like-- what I've been thinking for awhile now! Most recently with the swine flu pandemic scare. As all of this has been happening I've been thinking--it's almost like people want some huge tragedy to occur. News and 'experts' scream at us all the time about all these possible, horrible things that might happen. I swear people are disappointed when everything ends up being ok...like it always does!!!
In the movie he talks about the Y2K thing when life as we knew would just come crashing down because of a computer glitch-- people stocked up and were scared to death and everything was fine...the killer bees were going to come out of Mexico and spread through the U.S., the swine flu...which we're now being told isn't any different than any other strain of flu really.
Why does it seem that people thrive off of horrible things? And to add to that, this goes back to my theory that we publicize too much crap. We report all these horrible stories which I think it makes other potentially crazy people feel more normal about what they do or want to do. I've always felt if we didn't know what other people were doing we'd be better off. If kids had never seen or heard of kids shooting up their schools, do you think they'd have the idea to do it?
This Canadian woman on the movie just said it so perfectly-- "People over there (U.S.) just react, they don't think about it." AGREED! Another girl just said, "The U.S. seems like they solve things by fighting--in the news people are shooting or fighting, the government just sends troops to kill someone rather than negotiating,"....hmmm....TRUE!
Anyway...just some thoughts.
