Lord of the Flies comes to Chicago

In the past few days, the brutal beating and death of another CPS student has been all over the airwaves. Missed it? here: http://www.chicagobreakingnews.com/2009/09/derrion-albert-vigil-and-march-postponed.html

This is only one of many killings that's happened this year, but this one is particularly hard to swallow, since in this case it took much more than one rash decision (a pulled trigger) to kill...this child was killed by his peers with hands, feet, and sticks.

I'm not even sure how to feel about this--it's a mix of many emotions. There's anger, deep sadness, and fear. I'll call these "reactionary feelings". But then there's others, less reactionary and more reflective, like helplessness, frustration, and sadly even a tinge of racism on my part, which leads to guilt but also rationalization.

How am I to process such a violent and unrelenting expression of hate? Or is hate the right word? Authorities are saying that the victim was caught between two gangs, and so both sides must have hated someone else more than him. And yet they kept hitting him as he lay there helpless. Hate must be part of it, but perhaps this was just as much an expression of hurting.

Perhaps Derrion Albert was the scapegoat for the killers' hurting souls. What kind of pain could have fueled a rage so undiscerning and merciless I'll probably never know, but I DO know that I've felt that rage on a lesser level, and it comes from a feeling deep down that something is terribly wrong--that I've been cheated (whether by another person or my own ill-advised judgment).

I believe that everyone is born feeling cheated--with a tendancy towards this "rage". You can blame the rage on society's (lack of) morality, or on entropy, or a lack of parenting and structure, and it may well be all of these things...but I think it all starts with when (we cheated ourselves/the serpent lied) in the Garden of Eden. Whether we're (blaming ourselves/blaming others) we feel we have been cheated--and we should; we traded paradise for this world.

My intention was to compare gang-dominated areas to the island in Lord of the Flies (if you think about it, the similarities are quite scary), but I'm afraid this topic has brought about one more reflective emotion: I'm emotionally fatigued--much like I imagine Peter was the night before the first Easter.

I think I'll go to bed trying to remember that Joy comes in the morning.