culture

On The Oregon Shooter

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As you probably heard, the shooter apparently was on a campaign to kill sinners according to his diary.  It shocked his church and family, and it seems fairly obvious he was pretty troubled.

The thing is everyone is talking about how they were surprised.

I think by now, we’ve heard so many times that “oh, he shouldn’t have done that” or heard how “how surprising this is” to think that maybe we should stop being surprised.  It’s clear that when people miss someone is on the way to a violent breakdown missing it is no surprise because it happens all the time.

It’s up to us to watch out for each other.  Not keep watch on each other, we don’t need some panopticon police state in our heads (we’ve got enough would-be’s in the world).  We need to make sure we’re there to ensure our friends and family and neighbors don’t fall into the darkness.

It’s up to us to pay attention for when things look like they’ll fall apart.  It may not be a mass shooting (and for all of you I hope it never is), but it’s realizing someone may have a drinking problem, or is losing their way and falling in with radicals, and so on.

It’s up to us to actually care about each other as opposed to expect people to follow some rote behavior that will inevitably cause them to snap or snap worse.

When someone snaps and there’s surprise, that’s no surprise.  That’s a problem.

– Steven Savage

Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach.  He blogs on careers at http://www.musehack.com/, publishes books on career and culture at http://www.informotron.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at https://www.stevensavage.com/.

Anime Research – Jump On In!

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Special thanks to Manga Therapy!

Want to get involved in Anime Research?  Well there’s an International Anime Research project that’s looking for data.  Don’t know too much about them right now, but I asked for an interview, and of course you can go scope it out yourself!

– Steven Savage

Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach.  He blogs on careers at http://www.musehack.com/, publishes books on career and culture at http://www.informotron.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at https://www.stevensavage.com/.

Geek As Citizen: Talking Is OK

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Discussion Communication

It’s been an eventful few weeks in geekery, with many a thing to make us discuss problems in geekdom and society in general – and what we can do to make things better.

Now a lot of my posts are often calls to action Indeed for all I write, I hope mostly it provides tools and resources for people to do things. I’m always leery of “calls to action” that just seem to keep making more calls to action without becoming anything.

I actually think this is a culture problem. In a culture where overpaid punditry blotivates endlessly, we’re used to not calls for action, but plenty of complaining and words. It discourages action and replaces it with talking.

However, there is a time to talk. When the “Game of Thrones” rape controversy came up, one of the people in the discussion at Geek Girl Diva noted that she’d seen highly productive talks about the controversy. These talks helped people think of what they do, decide on action, and question themselves.

This is where talking actually does make a difference. So though I’ve often decrited the talk-talk-talk of our culture that rarely results in action, I want to note talking has a point. Sometimes the goal literally should be “talk amongst yourselves.”

It’s just that it’s a specific kind of talking that’s important . . .

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