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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lonely Tylenol" data-source="post: 3065496" data-attributes="member: 18549">I used to wear a trenchcoat back in high school.  Black.  It was actually a quite useful garment (the inside pocket could hold my old 1st ed Player's Handbook), and it made me stand out in a crowd, which was one of the reasons I chose it.  I also wore a black fedora hat with it, and when I would wear a white collared shirt (esp. with tie) I looked like a bizarre anachronism from the 50s.It's a fashion thing.  Black is a rebellious colour.  Regular people do not wear trenchcoats anymore, so it's become a symbol of being different.  If you're fed up with popular culture and want to establish that you're not one of the mooks, peons, and other NPCs that surround you, dressing differently is an easy way of making that statement.Unfortunately, the people who are different seem to be the most likely to blow up and shoot up a school.  Go figure--if you feel like you're alone in the world and other people reinforce that opinion, it's not a stretch to think that if your mental state is a bit poorly-aligned that you might start to dehumanize others.  I hear that in Columbine, there were some positive changes after the shootings.  The other students came to the realization that they had been part of the reason that those kids went postal: they had treated them like pariahs, and that led to the shooters wanting to take revenge.  Apparently, things have changed there, and the students have learned the wisdom of treating other kids like human beings, with real feelings and aspirations.  This is something that the students themselves have done to change the atmosphere of the school, which formerly had apparently been somewhat suffocating.Interestingly, it took some kids shooting up the school before those positive changes occurred.  A previous incident in Montreal involved a Concordia professor who shot four other professors in a rampage, claiming that they were stealing his work.  His claims were not unfounded, and it led to a major overhaul of the research policies of the school.  It is doubtful if such an overhaul would have occurred if he hadn't shot some people.Something to think about, anyway.  Why do we need a gun-wielding maniac to go on a rampage before we make any positive social changes?  Couldn't we "jump the gun" and identify problems before they turn into murder?  I can't believe that we can't identify dangerous social situations early enough to put things right before they go wrong.  Even just listening to outcast kids and working to fix their social environment so that it's not a constant source of pain might be enough to prevent future Columbines and Dawsons.</blockquote>

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