Well, we're back from Aruba, and the real world seems to be butting in on what was supposed to be a lighthearted vacation recap. I already had a tribute piece to Kurt Vonnegut planned, but that will happen later in the week. First, a few words on an actual real news story, unlike Imus, which was an utterly vapid piece of navel-gazing by the American news media in which any interesting aspects of the story were pushed aside for empty theatrics.
The shootings at Virginia Tech are utterly horrific, needless to say, ranking not only as one of the worst such incidents in US School shooting history, but the worst spree killing in US history, period, and possibly the third-largest in recorded history. Over the next couple days, the ratio of information to misinformation will gradually rise from the current 1:10 ratio to something approaching 1:1 or so, and as details become clear, they will almost certainly be horrible. As I was discussing tonight with alexm, when these things get so large in scope it necessarily implies that a lot if things went wrong; when the police and campus security respond correctly, the casualties by definition will be significantly fewer. What happened here is likely to be the same story as with the Simon's Rock shooting 15 years ago: the authorities failed to act in time, because they were put in a nearly impossible position and reacted badly, as people do. Put a group of people under immense and unexpected pressure, and they will frequently not do such a fantastic job. We're human, and we're imperfect, and extreme acts can bring out the worst in us just as they can bring out the best.
It's hard not to bring up the gun control issue at a time like this. Needless to say, I am a strong gun control supporter. We happen to live in a society that is a bit too comfortable with random acts of violence (see our media, romance for war, even the casual cruelty with which hunting is accepted), and our romance of the firearm is part and parcel of this. Many conservatives out there (see Lawyers, Guns, and Money for some links to reprehensible examples) seem to think that had students been allowed to pack heat, this could have been stopped. First of all, who carries to German class? Second, imagine encouraging acts of vigilantism in tense situations by students completely untrained in crisis situations: they are as likely to shoot the hostages as they are the gunman/gunmen, to say nothing of the fact that the police will have a fun time figuring out who is who. Third, and most importantly, COLLEGE STUDENTS DRINK TOO MUCH AND MANY ARE CLINICALLY DEPRESSED!!! This is not a good mix with widespread firearms. Think of how many fights occur at college bars, and now add heavy weaponry. Think of how many students are distraught over bad breakups, wondering if they should confront the person who replaced them, and add the capacity to commit homicide. Let's face it, college students are not a particularly trustworthy lot, and it's best to pacify the crazier part of the population, not arm it.
In the end, many people will ask why these things happen. Here is a list of the reasons as best I've been able to figure out from being on the barrel side of the gun, rather than the trigger side:
1. There is no reason. These things happen. A small percentage of the population can be driven to homicidal behavior, and accessing deadly weaponry is not particularly difficult.
2. God moves in mysterious ways. Honestly, I find this explanation to be a complete crock, but if it works for you, so be it.
3. College students are a bit emotionally unstable by nature, because adolescent brains do not possess the full suite of behavior control techniques. Moreover, there is a significant percentage of people who are either clinically depressed or on strong psychotropic drugs that can cause violent behavior. More moreover, college is a disruptive time in life where you are displaced from family, and it is not so hard to become isolated. These all combine to make it inevitable that students will flip out every so often, though we really never know where, when, or how many will suffer as a result.
So, I hear you saying, what can we do? Honestly, not much in the short term. In the long-term, try not to be such violent bastards, basically.
If anyone is interested, I've posted a scanned version of my one published poem, which was written about the Simon's Rock shooting, on my website as two image files. You can find the first half here and second half here. Warning: contains strong language and graphic imagery, as one might expect.
On a happier note, I've posted our pictures from Aruba to my flickr account. More on that tomorrow. Also, Alexis, check the comments to dkon's piece for the song about which you asked.
More tomorrow, kids.
Monday, April 16, 2007
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6 comments:
I am so, so relieved to be far away from what I can only imagine is a total country-wide orgy. Americans love the macabre.
Also I don't buy the university angst years argument. Or maybe it just angers me. How can people be so ungrateful, so dissatisfied when they lead a lifestyle envied by the majority of the world's population?
"How can people be so ungrateful, so dissatisfied when they lead a lifestyle envied by the majority of the world's population?"
Because people live in bubbles and compare themselves with the people around them, not people far away. And even if one knows that one is luckier than 99% of the people in the world, that doesn't prevent depression or hormones or immaturity.
But then I'm not entirely convinced about the youthful angst argument either. All kinds of people can go off the deep end, and the ready availability of firearms in the U.S. changes that from a personal psychological problem to a social one.
Hi Megan, hope you are doing ok with all of this. (I hope alexis and everyone else is doing well too, of course).
Just to be clear, I didn't want to suggest adolescent angst as anything more than a possible trigger. When I mentioned isolation and disruption, I meant more that when you enter college your emotional support structure undergoes some pretty jarring changes, and for some people it can lead to isolation. This isolation isn't necessarily the root cause of violent incidents, but it makes it much easier for someone to become strongly anti-social without anyone noticing or stepping in.
Put another way, when I get depressed (it can happen, at least in theory), there are a bunch of people around me who will notice and intervene in their own ways. College doesn't always afford that luxury. I realize that some, like the Columbine killers, were "isolated" within seemingly happy suburban families, but we are talking trends linking extremely rare incidents, for which individual circumstances will vary greatly. In the end, no matter how much we psychoanalyze the individuals and institutions involved, school shootings are pretty goddman random and represent the far, far tail of the distribution of human behavior. Random phenomena are hard to characterize by definition. That said, easy access to weaponry after years of conditioning about its acceptability hardly seems like a positive influence.
We can all feel alone. We all often do. Usually it's a neutral and occasionally a good thing. But there are moments when people feel alone and don't wish to be in that state. We all have egos. We all want to be noticed. We all want to matter. All of the commentators have had first hand experience with this at some level. One of you more of a personal experience than any of the rest of us can comprehend. We all want explanations for what happened. We all want that it never happen again. We will never really know, it is beyond possible in this case, it is virtually impossible in every case. And it will happen again. We can take steps to minimize the chances it will happen again, but we won't. We can be aware of those around us who need our help. We won't if their need conflicts with our needs or activity. It isn't all teenage/young adult angst, but for many the college years are a jarring time. Some who have never been away from home (summer camp doesn't really count) are in a new environment where the pressures are unknown and myriad. We live in a society where we try and fix everything, and somewhere there is a pharmaceutical wonder pill to make it all better. We treat problems that weren't even recognized as problems 40 years ago. Some attend college or choose a major not out of any desire to learn (at least not in the chosen field) but out of a need to conform to the minimum standards we have set for ourselves. Some are plucked from one culture and inserted into an alien culture. Yes, it's a menu for trouble, but it's also the real world. It will happen to each of us, to some extent, at some point in time. It's unavoidable. How will each of us respond. I don't know, and you don't know. You may turn to drugs (of the non-pharma sort), I did. You may seek counseling (been there, too). You may deal with it internally, perhaps successfully. But nothing is predictable. We don't really comprehend the mind, much less emotions. We can generalize, categorize, synthesize, but in the end it's a crap shoot. We do what we can, and cry and mourn when we fail. It sometimes sucks to be human, but being grass or a rock isn't a practical alternative. So we muddle along, live in the moment, and act as compassionately as we can. We mourn, some pray, some meditate, all feel some pain and we console each other. It's what we can and what we should do.
As Josh's mom this brought back too many memories of Simon's Rock and the media frenzie...though on a lighter note of that time, Josh did tell the NY Times to "hold on" while he finished a conversation with a friend. By this morning I had to turn it off. I knew that I was not needed for the inacurate frenzie to continue.
When all is said and done my question still is..."When will they ever learn"...the guns are still out there and the carnage continues. People will continue to die untill this world wakes up.
First, I think the isolation aspect, our very individualistic culture, has more to do with the issue than teen angst. It doesn't take going away to college to isolate a person -- a nasty divorce, losing one's job, or any number of major events could cause it. One can always get out and find a new support group or club or church or whatever to join, but they have to get out there and make that effort themselves -- in many cases, nobody will do anything, or even notice, if their neighbor/coworker/classmate/whatever doesn't bring him/herself to help him/herself. At least not until something tragic happens.
Though it's around a century old, I think of Emile Durkheim's "Suicide" at times like this. He did a study of suicide rates in Europe, which tended to be much higher in predominantly Protestant countries than in predominantly Catholic countries. He made the argument that the social value placed on social networks in Catholic countries tended to provide a safety net to catch those who might fall into suicidal behaviors, whereas the Protestant countries placed greater value on individualism. And, that emphasis on rugged individualism, on pulling oneself up by one's bootstraps, etc. became a large part of the American ethos long ago.
"How can people be so ungrateful, so dissatisfied when they lead a lifestyle envied by the majority of the world's population?"
That too is cultural. When I was in high school (graduated 1996), there were several occasions when I was made to feel like there was something wrong with me because I WASN'T depressed. All of the kids I hung out with would sit and discuss which antidepressant was better, while I was the weird one who was not particularly dissatisfied with my life and had never even tried suicide. No, it didn't make me want to become depressed to fit in, and such support might help some of those kids... But it also creates unhappiness and dissatisfaction as a norm. Pop another pill to become numb instead of suicidal, it's no big deal, as normal as wearing prescription eyeglasses or carrying an asthma inhaler.
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