I was raised in a household under a big, mean Marine who ruled our family using a black-and-white system and an iron fist.

There was no marginal behavior. Stunts I pulled were either right or wrong. Good behavior and I got gas money. Bad behavior and I was digging holes in the backyard or smacked with a paddle inscribed with the words “Hello Tecla.”

There was never negotiation. Behavior was either good or bad and arguments supported only one of two sides. While simplistic, it was consistent. But I swore up and down the moment I arrived at college, I’d begin to base my decisions on analysis rather than hard lines. Good and evil would require definitions with context and a grey area would be introduced. I’d approach the big questions of life with an open mind and willingness to compromise. And sure enough, for the past three years, I’ve spent considerable time sitting and thinking in cafes and talking about nothing with articulate but smug peers as we relish in American college-land, the forum for ideas and liberal consideration. Whatever.

Babble is fleeting when there’s open fire. When a madman murdered 32 on the Virginia Tech campus Monday on some sick tirade, there was no time for negotiation. I returned to dichotomous reasoning.

For others in the wake of the Virginia tragedy, there’s a palpable desire for a remedy. How can we mend 300 million broken hearts?
As a post-industrial society, we rely heavily on our brains. We try to gain insight into why things like this happen and speculate on how to fix them. We crave a prescription — a laundry list of things we can do to lessen the damage and ward off future threats.

Culturally, we’ve been trained to be good listeners. It speaks volumes of our success at opening our minds when we accept a myriad of voices. Our adopted practice of moral relatively is incredibly helpful in excusing iffy behavior. I capitalize on it often, but it’s destructive in the sense that we no longer call things for what they are. Wrong.

The media is swarming. Repetitive speculation floods the airwaves. What does this mean? Are we becoming a more violent society? What will this do for immigration? Korean relations? Global warming? What about that gunman? Was he aggrieved in some way and felt his response was appropriate in his extremely narcisstic world? What did society do to give rise to such a person?
There’s also a degree of resistance in the commentary of this event. The puffballs are reluctant to call this anything but “record-setting.” There’s an infuriating negotiation going on bordering perilously close to acceptance. What Seung-Hui did should not be allowed to become a viable avenue for attention.

It’s here that we’re faced with a conundrum. On one hand we want to mourn the tragedy and take rational steps to prevent it from happening again. On the other, we must avoid sensationalizing this kind of behavior. This is not an appropriate way for anyone to act. Ever.

As a child, I learned not to eat dirt, to use both hands on the handlebars, to watch out for boys and not lick knives. I learned not to use cocaine or hurt cats and that beating my little brother with a tennis racket would merit a hole. I also learned there are bad people in the world that might hurt me for no reason at all and that pure good and pure evil exists. I missed the lesson that murder is OK if you’re upset enough.

Seung-Hui hurt those people for no reason. I will not default to an analytical position of the events and overlook the simplistic explanation. No reason at all.

Maybe later I’ll sift through analysis and listen to the psycho-babble, explanations and excuses for what happened. And later maybe I’ll rationalize it. Later, I’ll write the whole thing off as an educational experience and join the call for structural adjustments. Later, I’ll learn he was a looney-toon having a bad day. Maybe later, I’ll know he believed he was in video game in a simulated reality. Perhaps later this will turn into the next great gun-control platform.

But for now, he was just evil. What he did was cruel with no discernible ideological basis.

Despite the deafening cries of the bands of special-interest twits, we must remember there is not one segment of our society can change to prevent something like this from happening again without compromising the basis of our way of life. We would have to adjust in very unacceptable ways and I’m not willing to do it. No new preventative measures. No increased security on campuses, no tougher gun control laws. No increased funding for fifty-minute shrink sessions for the local looney-toon. No. No. No. We won’t bend because some creep with a gun told us to.

We’ll remember and pray for the fallen but we will show up in class and not be afraid. We will not hire an army of security guards. We are not deterred from getting through our day because of the possibility of getting blown to bits before lunch. We’ll continue to buy into the idea that life will be as wonderful as we make it. We’ll continue to ostracize antisocial behavior. We won’t give credence to lunatics with assault weapons and we won’t make a place for them in society.

In understanding what happened in Virginia, I’ll go with evil for now. I choose to be judgmental when it comes to murderous and senseless acts. Most of the events and people in our lives are neutral and situational but some are extreme. There are things in this world that are very wonderful. And there are some, like that man in Virginia, that are very dark and very wrong and merit no other rationalization. I choose to keep moving, to strive for the wonderful, put faith in my peers, hole-digging childhoods and the American way of life and I will not change one thing.

–Originally published in the University of Idaho Argonaut, 20 April 2007