Protection from the SNAFU World

A friend on Facebook shared an article that discusses how the cover image of yesterday's New York Daily News that depicted the shooting of the journalists was appropriate, despite the outcry on Twitter that it was a bad move.

This Is a Good Newspaper Front Page

One passage in particular caught my attention: "Upsetting things make us upset.  Parents will be mad, yes—and they should be, mad that they have to raise kids in this f***** up gun-filled world.  Be mad about it!  You're right to be mad.  But don't mistake the picture of the man holding the gun for the paper that printed it."

True words indeed.

A knee-jerk response like "we need to protect our kids from these graphic images" is expected.  What we need to do therefore is educate our children, to help them understand that bad things happen to good people and no amount of lawmaking will be able to change that.  Trying to shield a kid completely from the world does them a disservice, especially given the information-saturated medium called the Internet.

I'm no stranger to violence, having grown up with it.  Several of my relatives served in war and I have no doubt they had to kill people.  My father verbally abused my mother, and she in turn abused me; a wooden spoon was her method of choice.  I saw friends get into drugs, alcohol, teen pregnancy, and self-destruction. Shocking yes, but I accepted it as part of life and made me into the person I am today.  I abhor violence but understand that sometimes it's necessary.

  

Avoiding bad stuff is next to impossible but we can mitigate it to a degree.