Unleashing the Rage

I stress once more that anybody who is sensitive to discussion about school shootings or related problems, in a particular or a general sense, should not read on. I can't be rendered insensitive if I warn you and offer you the informed choice of not to read this. What follows is why I think these terrible occurrences are happening with such frequency. If anybody wants to input a difference of opinion, feel free.

Some people are less stable than others. No matter what the nature of social integration in a given society is like, some individuals will always fail to meet the unspoken standards determined by social customs. There's nothing wrong with this; it's natural, and, to a degree, quite healthy. What is constantly debated by academics and civil forces is the appropriate and ethical means with which to constrain deviant activities when they're no longer healthy, no longer productive and are a positive threat to the lives of other citizens. We live in a liberal society. Questions of where to draw the line of state interference and surveillance of indivdual lives are constantly being raised without answer.

Nobody knows what to do. The front page of the paper (in an Australian city) responds to the killings of Cho Seung-Hui with the headline 'NOT AGAIN'. This immediately indicates a sense of hopelessness, of helplessness. We have no idea how to stop these maniacs from killing because we don't know when, where or how, until it's happened.

But we need to feel certain. We need progress. That's why there's so much public awareness about lax American gun laws. We have to feel like we're going somewhere, anywhere, to fix this problem. Questions of the appropriate interference of the state in people's lives are raised again in the problem of appropriate restrictions to the right to own a gun. This issue-within-an-issue suggests a desire to fix the problem as quickly and as simply as possible. And yes, there's something to be said for that. If a solution works, problem solved. Right?

Almost, but not quite. It's highly likely that if gun laws were waxed considerably, shootings like this would decrease in occurrence. But angry, psychotic young men would still be angry, psychotic young men, and if any of them did manage to still obtain a firearm and a few bullets - well, you know how the story goes. So what do we do?

Well, let's look at the causes. The ultimate cause in each case is a very angry young man who is different to the rest of us in two main respects:
1. He is very, very, very angry at everybody. Anger at one or a few people is applied to everybody he sees.
2. He no longer has a sense of restraint. He reaches a point where he can, for whatever reason, do what the rest of us could barely contemplate.

These causes seem to be too deeply psychologically embedded to be anything that can be caused by violent video games or heavy metal. If these were possible causes, why wouldn't anyone who plays Half-Life or listens to Marilyn Manson do terrible things like this? It has to be something that is more fundamental to the construction of the human psyche.

Yeah, I'm leaning towards social and cultural causes here. Might I stipulate that I wouldn't for a second absolve Mr. Seung-Hui of responsibility for his actions. However, there's an unresolvable sociological tension between individual autonomy and the impact of social forces on one's behaviour. What I'm trying to say is, it's nowhere near as simple as writing guys like these off as nutcases that shouldn't have been born. If circumstances had been different, who's to say whether or not what did happen, would've happened?

So let's look at cultural causes. Allow me to throw in a bit of psychoanalytic cultural theory here. A historian called Christopher Lasch wrote about American cultural narcissism (check out The Culture of Narcissism; it's a pretty interesting read). Narcissists are basically people who often appear to love themselves but are really filled with hate, and constantly require approval from others. This rage is caused primarily by parents who treat their children like consumer goods, like a part of themselves, and not an individual being. It's also caused by a lax education system and materialist social relations. The narcissistic kid subsequently grows up in an environment with very little discipline, and will often have to create his or her own sense of restriction and self-governance, which can overcompensate and become really aggressive. This, perhaps, is why easy-going families often raise nasty kids.

Cho Seung-Hui apparently grew up in seemingly quite a normal, healthy family. What if his upbringing helped to germinate a narcissistic personality? If this were the case, what if there was some other prevailing factor that encouraged Seung-Hui to redirect his self-directed rage outwards and mentally absolve himself of all of his actions? In his disturbing confessional video, Cheung-Hui had successfully excused himself for what he was about to do by conferring blame to other people, to society at large. If he managed to convince himself that it was totally society's fault that 'made him like this', what else was there to stop him from doing what he did on April 17?

Many western societies facilitate the shifting of responsibility for one's actions away from oneself. Hell, the sociological framework I've been talking in here comes dangerously close. And look at the way that therapy culture has allowed people to find an excuse to give up on life when when they may not always be quite as sick as they make themselves out to be.

My conclusion thus comes in the form of a question, because I'm not quite so arrogant as to state that what I believe IS the truth. What if these killings could be stopped by reconsidering the way that we raise our children, allowing them to understand themselves as fully functioning individuals with individual responsibilities?

Maybe I'm totally wrong and maybe I've just written a long spiel of total B.S. Maybe Seung-Hui's parents loved him as an autonomous human being and raised him in an environment of reasonable discipline. I don't know. I just think that all of this stuff about cultural narcissism explains a lot.

Next post I want to have a stab at the unnecessary consumer crap we buy.