The fingers keep pointing like they do each time a great tragedy occurs. Not surprisingly, they point away from ourselves to other groups, to other forces in society and culture. They never point back on ourselves and question if all of us are responsible in some way in creating or supporting the violent "zeitgeist" of the post-modern world.

Pointing fingers may not point in the right direction but we need to remember that the act of pointing itself is more important than the location of the point. Fingers need direction to point towards and direction needs place. So, these efforts at locating the "evil" of Columbine High School are similar to most everything we do in our content oriented western culture in our perpetual attempt to put everyone and everything in its own place. (A place for everyone and everyone in their own place) Once in place, this evil has been isolated, cut away from ourselves like a bad, cancerous seed. It can now be analyzed and perhaps "bombed" out of existence. If it can't be destroyed then at least it might be "locked" away from us normal, good people in the rest of society.

When will we realize that all of us are the problem, that violence is a type of air we all breathe today? When will we realize it infiltrates the water we drink, the screens we all view, the sounds we all hear? It is not any particular place. Not Hollywood. Not Madison Avenue. Not Serbia. Not Littleton, Colorado. Not anywhere but rather everywhere. It is the type of "medium" Marshall McLuhan once talked about but we run around in this medium searching for "messages," or clues. In our search for "clues" to the big "villain," the one "evil" we run around like a bunch of children on a collective scavenger hunt.

But even this hunt itself is influenced by the polluted environment we all live in, the air we all breathe, the increasingly short attention span of our collective interest. We will forget in a number of weeks, our attention directed toward some new "blockbuster" event of the moment. Something new will wedge its way onto the cover of People Magazine, some new "celebrity" interest will surely push its face onto the cover of Entertainment Weekly. In our post-modern world, events are little more than products and brands, competing for the public attention of the moment. And this attention gets shorter and shorter as information increases, as the "hits" keep on coming over our radios, onto our television and computer screens, onto our bestseller lists.

The experts and pundits are similar to paparazzi, attracted to the "celebrity" events of the moment like bugs around a yellow summer porch light. Pulled toward popular events by the "flash bulb" gravity of public attention. Once the flashes die down they swarm onto the next popular event of the moment.

Government commissions will again be created. Think tank "wise-men" will write long reports. School officials will hold countless meetings. But in the end, nothing will really change and our ship of state will continue full speed ahead into the ice bergs like a modern Titanic without anyone at the helm. The captain has retired for the night and there are only a few kids up in the crow's nest with cheap binoculars. And the result will be more serious violence in our schools. And more. And more.

And also the marketing machine of late capitalism will continue little affected by the tragedy. Manufacturing its entertainment products that help the nation return to its state of sleeping trance. Feeding its continual muzak back into culture, surrounding all of us in the new information medium like a vast "data smog" so that it becomes increasingly difficult to see the proverbial forest for the trees.

We blame Hollywood for making products that cause all of the violence. We blame the schools for not recognizing the problems. We blame the increasing number of guns in culture for the violence. We blame particular types of parents.

Yet in our pointing finger blame, we fail to see that the violence is itself a "product" of our modern culture. And that we are all "manufacturers" of this violence. Only when we realize that this violence is made everywhere and not just in Littleton, Colorado will the winds of change slowly start to roll in over our republic.