Letter to the Editor re: School Shooting

Tragedies like this will be avoided when people learn to criticize contempt--in ourselves and others, and make choices for respect for the world and people around us.

Victims: Danny Parmertor, Demetrius Hewlin, Russel King

(RIVERDALE, NY) - From time to time, Salem-News.com carries Letters to the Editor and while we can't publish every submission, we do enjoy sharing our reader's thoughts, particularly about terrible events like the recent school shooting in Ohio.

Tim King, Executive Editor

Salem-News

Dear Mr. King:

My heart goes out to the friends and family of the students of Chardon High School who were shot in the attack by another teenager. As a person who worked in NYC high schools, I know how much young people need to know that the cause of such violence has been understood and can be changed. As the question "Why did this happen?" is asked once again, I want very much for your readers to know that the answer exists!

Eli Siegel, the American educator and founder of Aesthetic Realism, explained that every person’s largest desire is to be fair to the world and people, but we also have a competing desire:

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to have contempt, defined as “the addition to self through the lessening of something else.” Contempt can be ordinary, such a making fun of a neighbor, but-taken further-it is also the cause of all cruelty and violence.

Persons quoted in various news articles describe the suspect as an outcast and also as having friends. Whichever is so, I am sure he also had enormous contempt for the world and people, some of which is evident in his writings online. Had he seen other students as like himself, as having similar hopes and fears, he could not have done what he did!

Mr. Siegel wrote:

"As soon as you have contempt, as soon as you don't want to see another person as having the fulness that you have, you can rob that person, hurt that person, kill that person." (James and the Children, 1968)

Tragedies like this will be avoided when people learn to criticize contempt--in ourselves and others, and make choices for respect for the world and people around us. You can find out more at www.AestheticRealism.org.

Sincerely,

Marion Fennell