What world do we live in. No, really! The amount of despair that can reside inside someone has always been so scary to me. It's hard to describe how i feel because on the one hand, i am a very happy person in general, but on the other hand, i can understand the insurmountable amount of despair one can feel as i have personally experienced tough moments in my life. This balance of extremes is at the core of the story, where love and hate are so different, yet so close. If you haven't known happiness, how can you empathize with your neighbor in your darkest moments? If you have known happiness but feel such resentment when it's no longer around, how can you empathize with your neighbor in your darkest moments?

Some time ago, such despair would amount to a "simple" suicide, an act in and of itself that is hard to comprehend. It's such a strong statement that for centuries, people were "denied" Heaven by the collective consciousness if they did it. Even today in many Asian countries for example, suicide remains very taboo: it's a bad omen for friends and family, as if an evil spirit had visited them. There is also an undeniable sense of guilt that such a thing happened without having been able to prevent it. But today, more and more people chose to go out with a bang in an ultimate act of destructive nihilism and take as many souls as possible with them. Talk about a pact with the devil, let it be a common terrorist, Seung-Hui Cho, or a father killing his children and wife before killing himself (thinking of the very good and underrated Falling Down which i re-watched last week).

Where does that come from? I believe that the same forces that pushes an anti-abortionist to feel they have the right to kill a doctor, are also at play when someone goes berserk and feels they can take the life of another human being for any reason. If taking one's own life is an incomprehensible act, taking another person's life out of spite, hate, vengeance or complete psychotic motives is despicable. And even in a milder way, standing up and screaming bloody murder because you have been offended is something i feel is uncivilized. A couple of years ago, a Danish newspaper published some very offensive cartoons that took aim at Islam. Granted, it was of poor taste, but calling for the assassination of its author and creating such a revolt went too far. And the silliest of them, PETA activists who think they can attack individuals and hurt them because they wear fur. Don't they have anything better to do? I love animals and i personally hate furs (it's ugly, it stinks, i can't believe how anyone could wear a dead thing on their shoulders), but how about spending all that time they have to take care of kids and poverty instead? Which is more important? Kids or animals? Come on! Why do supposedly intelligent people feel entitled to do stupid and reprehensible things? If the cause is worth it, then it's OK? The end justifies the means?

The basic tenant of the American way of life is that you shouldn't prevent someone from expressing what they think, and that engaging in conversations, no matter how heated they can become and how reprehensible the subject matter may feel to one of the parties, is better that making the subject taboo, banning it outright, or prosecuting individuals just for uttering a thought out loud. For example, i oppose the European approach to simply ban and prosecute Holocaust deniers. This only forces a radicalization process to go underground. Shit in plain sight is always better to shit tucked away out of sight. I prefer the American way where a Neo-Nazi party is legal for all to see its ugliness.

So, this being said, the tragedy of Virginia Tech is profound in that it signals yet another escalation in personal violence. This one guy killed more people than most terrorist attacks that have occurred in recent history. In a society where we feel more and more disconnected from one another, we accumulate more and more excuses as to why that is. Do you really think for one second that Oldboy had anything to do with this? Or can you blame Video Games? Come on, be serious! This came from a deeply disturbed individual and a series of small blunders from the part of University officials who failed to recognize and properly contain a dangerous individual. Two counts of stalking, expulsed from a class, wrote several plays that were deeply disturbing to a lot of people, and a stay at a mental institution? And what about his parents and immediate family?

Ah, parents! Isn't that a truism that the sins of the parents spill to the children? I am particularly aware of this as i consider myself pretty messed up by my parents, even if overall, they were very good parents. I can only think about individuals who had parents half as good as the ones i had. A couple of weeks ago, my 4-year-old son had a birthday party, and one of his friends came in with a 102 degrees fever. The kids could barely stand, was red hot and sick. Not only the parents had work to do and couldn't bother to have the kid stay home, but worst of all, they felt their sons would have been so disappointed if he hadn't come to the party. Ah! Guilt, guilt, guilt, in its worst form. So of course, my son got sick, and on the following Monday for class, 3-4 other kids got sick. Guess who was patient zero. That gave me an idea for a future project where a plague hits New York City kids, and you have 4-year-old zombies trolling the streets of the big apple just because one parent didn't keep a kid home when he was sick. And then, my wife read a horrible article on New York Family a few days ago about this doctor who was an inch away from recommending that access to medical drugs be made easier because kids today all suffer from one form or another of some problem, from ADD to hyper-activity to i don't know what. Hyper-activity? Oh my god, in this climate, i would have been sedated and put in a straight jacket when i was a kid! We are raising a generation of kids with very distanced parents and pumped full of medication. Talk about an Orwellian society in the making. It's not going to be about technology invading our lives in negative ways, it's not going to be about politicians or mega-corporations. Each of us will do our little part and one day we'll simply be there. It will all sum up to Love, or the lack of it, and our collective disconnectedness.

Ask yourself when was the last time you had a proper family dinner and know that over half of families interviewed in a recent survey said they didn't dine together. Parents work till late, and kids have dinner in front of a TV with the nanny. Did you recently cancel an important business trip, at a cost to you, to be with your kids when they were sick? Do you make a concerted effort to not be sucked in by work and reserve daily sanctuary times with your kids? It's actually much easier than people think, and you come to realize that the rest is simply not as critical as you thought it was.

Time Flies, which already contains a couple of controversial messages (which the entire team is keeping secret for your enjoyment), suddenly took on a much bigger meaning after Virginia Tech. So of course, there is the fact that Takashi is Korean. I immediately started to think about whether i should keep that intact or change it, for sensitivity reasons. But that is silly: the behavior of one Korean doesn't change a thing about how nice Koreans are in general, and obviously, White Christian American kids have been good for a long time at school shootings too. So, let's refrain from dumb generalization, and i am not changing the story.

What Time Flies is about is love and hate, what brings someone to kill another person, and how sins of one generation manage to transfer to the next generation, often with disastrous consequences. These themes are central to the story. It's bleak and forces you in a corner where you have to think about it, your own beliefs and what you consider "Moral" or not. It is trans-cultural and trans-generational. At least, that's my ambition. Despair and disconnectedness, together in their rawest form, that which pushes one to cause irremediable destruction on others, is the ultimate horror, and the philosophical question of our time. Forget ghouls, ghosts, serial killers and other traditional scary characters. They are all PG stuff? Even though i am sure some people will be offended by some of the content in Time Flies, i hope most will look through it and reflect on its messages. The individual that quantum-jumps from one extreme to another is the ultimate scare. I hope your skin curls when you see the final product.

Our society is dying because of the lack of love, respect and increasing disconnectedness, which together lead to despair. The entitlement that some feel they have to act in horrendous ways to settle their grievances (Terrorism being the immediate one, but activist groups in general too, and of course, lone disturbed gunmen) makes this new equation an even more important subject in today's time.

OK, this is the end of my rant today. I am very concerned, very pessimistic about the world. As Nicholas Cage said in The Rock: "The world is being Fedexed to Hell". All i can do is love my children, friends, extended family, and make the lives of people i get in contact with every day as pleasant as possible. The rest is quite overwhelming. All my deepest condolences for the friends and families who were affected by this horrible act of destruction i feel is as every bit as significant as 9/11 in scope.