LETTERS: SHOOTING SHOULD MOTIVATE US

To the editor:

I was very sorry to learn of the shootings in Jonesboro, Ark. They follow painfully closely on the tragedies in Kentucky and Connecticut. Nothing I could say would bring back the dead or adequately comfort the living. I may have something to say that could help prevent similar tragedies in the future.

Do you remember a wish Nietzsche made in his "Genealogy of Morals"? Do you remember Nietzsche wished that the English psychologists would "know how to contain their emotions and have trained themselves to subordinate all wishful thinking to the truth -- any truth, even a homespun, severe, ugly, obnoxious, un-Christian, unmoral truth." Nietzsche reminds us "such truths do exist."

One such ugly truth may be this: These shooting might have been prevented. These girls and their teacher might be living and loving today if someone had cared enough to listen and act with enough expertise and in enough time. I am sorry to have to write this.

We have to care. The essence of caring lies partly in feeling and partly in doing. We have to learn both. I hope the events in Jonesboro will motivate us to do just that.

LARRY ROEMER

Grand Chain, Ill.