Friday, February 19, 2010

One final act in life

Yesterday Andrew Joseph Stack piloted his plane into a local tax office in Austin, Texas - deliberately. People killing themselves, and others these in the process, are not uncommon these days. Especially USA and Europe seems to be hit hard by these disturbed people, but we also see violent acts elsewhere. Statistics on educational institutions alone list 13 killings, 7 in Europe and 5 in USA, and 1 in Canada over the last 20 years.

The Department of Homeland Security have according to the news classified Stacks suicide has nothing to do with terrorism. I bothered to look up Stacks suicide note and read it in The New York Times. From what I understand Stack had enough of being abused by the law and so called justice, and in a act of desperation tried to strike a blow to the corruption that had damaged his life thus far. Stack writes as final words:
I saw it written once that the definition of insanity is repeating the same process over and over and expecting the outcome to suddenly be different. I am finally ready to stop this insanity. Well, Mr. Big Brother IRS man, let’s try something different; take my pound of flesh and sleep well.
One can agree or disagree with Stacks actions, but it made me think: What would you do if you knew your life was over? Terminal cancer, suicide, starvation, death of your loved ones, a future in slavery... would you lie down and take it, or would you do something with that last breath? Was this what Stack was thinking?

I know abuse and injustice makes most non-masochistic people angry. How we deal with that anger varies individually. I was angry, very very angry, already when I was 5 years old - because at that age I could already perceive something was insanely wrong with the way humans acted just because. Adults could not answer me the most fundamental questions: "What is evil? Why do money make people do bad things? Why do we tell people in Africa how to behave? etc." My son now answer the same kind of questions, and not because I ask him to, but I can at least attempt to answer them from my best ability.
At the age of 15 I was ready too follow Stacks example, and I can at least imagine I understand why peoples anger grow into terror to get YOUR attention - because governments can not afford to sway at one mans sacrifice! Georgians: "Help us - they are slaughtering us and stealing our country!", Uganda: "They are mutilating and raping our women and children and enslaving our sons as brainwashed soldiers!", Kosovo: "We are dumped in mass-graves in your back yard!" and so on. But those kind of cries drown in headlines like "Norweigan clown trousers are a hit in Canada" and "After plus degrees the frost returns". Luckily my fate allowed me to enslave my anger and transform it into something more constructive, as you are reading about it now.

My final act in life is raising my children with open answers to their questions and nourish a critical attitude to seek out meaning and answers in their world. For as long as I can remain free in thought I can guide my work towards finding smarter ways for us all and expose the wasteful ones. And with a little luck I may keep evolving and learning something new every day.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

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Brian Lassen said...

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