Seeing that this is my last column, I’m just going to sit down, open a vein and spill it into these final inches of space. So, here I go.

People assume they have it right. People think their assumptions about the universe, God, eternity or the spiritual realm are correct.

Maybe you think such things exist or maybe not. But my advice is this: Just don’t dismiss the possibility that you’re wrong.

On a smaller scale, people assume they know why things happen, how society works or how people think.

They all know why the Littleton, Colo. shooting massacre happened. “It’s Marilyn Manson,” “Doom,” “Irresponsible parents” or “because God needs to be put back in the schools and society.”

On an even smaller scale, people assume they know why other people are the way they are or why they’re in the position they’re in. “Homeless people are lazy and immoral, and that’s what landed them their lot in life,” “African Americans are just bitter, and they need to get up and act like the rest of us,” “Homosexuals were sexually abused as kids” and “Atheists don’t believe in God because their parents got divorced when they were little.”

Let me just stop and say that all of these blanket assumptions are nonsense. Absolute nonsense. I don’t buy any of it, and let me tell you why.

Nothing is ever as simple as we want to make it. It just isn’t. And although there are many things we can speculate about, that is all we can do.

We’ll never know the factors that caused the Littleton shooting because we’ll never have the information necessary to make that judgment.

Let me explain. There are lots of kids listening to Marilyn Manson. In order to prove that listening to his music caused these kids to go on a murderous rampage, we need to examine other things logically. How many kids listen to Marilyn Manson because they relate to his lyrics? And how many kids who listen to Marilyn Manson respond in this way?

If we want to prove that playing “Doom” caused this, it’s the same thing. Or if we claim that bad parents lead kids to these violent acts, we need to stop and think about the number of amazing individuals that come from horrible backgrounds and the number of good parents whose great parenting didn’t have any effect on their delinquent child.

Simply put, we can’t explain away everything so quickly and easily, and we can’t answer tough questions with crude theories.

But, the truth is, the reason that we don’t understand the world and the people around us is because Americans are, as a whole, completely selfish, ignorant, self-righteous, obsessed with success and arrogant.

Americans come home from work, go in their homes and keep to themselves. We socialize only if it advances our career, if it’s expected of us or if it makes us feel better to be with those who support our own beliefs.

Rarely can you find a true friend who will place you before them and will sacrifice him or herself for your best interest.

Americans are becoming servants of green that doesn’t give life, and we’re becoming slaves of pride and adrenaline that leave us with superficial relationships. That’s sad.

On top of that, we’re also NOT honest. Political correctness suppresses latent hate that either expresses itself in tragic explosions or in under-handed dealings of toxic prejudice caused by misguided judgments, stemming from unfair assumptions.

If we would just take the time to stop in our trek to the top, to venture out of our comfort zones and talk to people who are different than us, we might discover that there are worlds within worlds and stories within people — which didn’t exist until we took off our blinders.

A homeless man, for all you know, is not a bum or a “good-for-nothing piece of trash” who clutters up the aesthetics of the town and deserves to wander the road with a plastic bag of collected pop cans. Maybe he was an ingenious geology professor who, after being plagued with schizophrenia, lost his job, his family and his life to the cold, shelterless streets.

Maybe an African American isn’t the stubborn, resentful, hate-driven and defeatist attitude-filled person you assumed him or her to be. Maybe the atheist has morals.

Maybe the girl with the nose ring isn’t doing drugs. Maybe the working woman isn’t a man-hating, ball-busting, dried-up snot. Maybe the Christian isn’t the closed-minded, naive, judgmental person you assumed him or her to be.

In the end, we’re all human and only mortal, and that’s the bottom line.

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April Goodwin is a junior in journalism and mass communication from Ames.