A shameful week

"Everything is permissible" – but not everything is beneficial. "Everything is permissible" – but not everything is constructive. Nobody should seek his own good, but the good of others. (1 Corinthians 10:23-24, NIV)

This Monday the world saw the handiwork of a young man whose deranged self-involvement resulted in the traumatic death of 32 Virginia Tech students and faculty, and has left countless others forever scarred.

This Wednesday the world saw the handiwork of a corporation whose institutionalized self-involvement led them to publish the video and rantings of a mass murderer. Who can say what the consequences of such gross irresponsibility will ultimately be? NBC management attempted to justify their decision by offering the notion that society can learn something from this; precisely what lesson are we to derive? We already knew that one insane individual is fully capable of producing unspeakable damage and hurt to those around him. Even if history did not abound with examples, the truth of this is intuitively obvious. The true lesson, which NBC surely had not intended to teach, is how a respected and influential corporation can inflict damage and hurt to an entire society... and then attempt to rationalize their acts as some kind of public service.