What Do You Even Say To This?

http://msn.foxsports.com/other/story/3540562

There are a lot of things I've been thinking about that today when I heard about it.

First off, it is a complete tragedy that a life was lost because of teasing. Without knowing too many details it's hard to say the true indirect cause of such behavior.

It seems to me that too many children are seeing the Ron Artests/fans of the sport world and how it is seemingly OK to be violent in relationation to heckling/teasing.

This seems to me a case where a younger child doesn't know a WHOLE lot about brutal force at 13 and maybe emulated the behavior he has seen so many times in professional sporting events, both as a player and a fan and went WAAAY too far.

Again I don't know the details, just my two cents.

to pin this on watching violence on tv, or on incidents like Artest and fans is not seeing the entire picture. if violence on tv was the root of all evil, we could stop it and the problems would go away. we all know that isn't it.

the younger boy got caught up in his emotions. he snapped, and acted out his anger and aggression. there are most likely further emotional problems that little to no one could know about. definitely more psychological issues than just emulating what is seen on tv. unfortunately, the older boy was definitely in the wrong place at the wrong time.

the younger boy seemed to realize what he did afterwards, and that is the more confusing part. he certainly did not think before he acted, and someone is dead because of it.

Malcom, I agree with you that at thirteen the boy had not the foggiest idea that the actions he would commit would end his antagonizer's life. I'm sure in his head, it was the only way to hurt the older kid and humble him.

Its sad that we live in a day where bullying is having such a profound effect on kids, so that it is becoming commonplace for a child to kill other children because of feelings of unacceptance.

I don't believe any of that goes back to the violence on T.V., but rather to the type of "Fear breeds Consumption" society that we live in. The news scares us with our own lives and the lives of our children so that we watch commercials and purchase products. Then the commercials scare us with the idea that one cannot achieve completeness without social acceptance, and that is only achieved through products, which thank god they are willing to sell us.

The sad part is that most of us buy into that everyday with the expensive gas guzzling cars we drive (guilty), and the clothes and watches we wear that serve no purpose, but to make us look good to other people. When all that leads to our kids killing each other, for fear of not being accepted, then maybe its time to rethink the priorities we put on things.