Deliberate Acts of Violence
Everyone else is talking about the Colorado high school shootings, so I will too. I should probably warn you that my reactions to these things tend to be, um... well, I'm not going to go on about how terrible it is. You can read that in the newspaper. You should read that in the newspaper; I've read some excellent reporting on the subject. All I have are a few observations that I haven't seen elsewhere.
But first, a personal aside: Back in high school - I think it was senior year - a freshman committed suicide in the school auditorium. He hung himself, as I recall. What I remember striking me the most was the intense reactions that people in the school who didn't even know him had. We had round-table counselling sessions. I also remember getting into an argument with a fellow senior (whom I'd never really gotten along with anyway) over the subject.
It wasn't that I felt nothing about the event, but I certainly felt less toward it than other people. To me there was a difference between that happening to someone you know, and happening to someone you don't know. And it seemed clear to me that everyone else knew there was a difference, since they heard about people dying all the time on the news, and didn't get broken up about that. But to me, the fact that the someone-I-didn't-know was in our school was not enough to bridge the gap created by the fact that I didn't know him, whereas for others it was. And I didn't understand this.
The other thing I didn't understand was why they kept school open for that day. It was incomprehensible to me that anyone who actually felt something would want to discuss it in public, without at least a number of hours alone - or with close friends - to ruminate about it. I certainly didn't feel like talking about it in public. (My reactions to death and similar tragedies tend to be fairly private, mostly going on in my own head.) And for me, it was a bad idea to stay in school that day, since I reacted quite strongly to how other people were reacting, and mostly with curiosity towards why they were behaving the way they did. Which, of course, was probably the last reaction that everyone else wanted to see someone having.
It's not that I'm a cold fish; it's just that I dealt with it in a radically different way from everyone else. (Moreover, I tend to become even more of a wise guy in stressful situations; it's a defense mechanism, I guess.)
The lesson I took away from that experience is that in similar situations - and there have been some; several people died on campus during college, including one grad student in the CS department - I should back away from everyone else, because I deal with it differently. It was pointed out to me that this sort of social interaction is the standard human way of dealing with such an event, and that my presence is important to others in that way. But I'm not convinced that my presence is a net gain, given the circumstances. Not in public.
A touchy subject, and a complicated subject. I still don't really understand it. Does anyone?
There was one newspaper article which really grabbed me, focusing on the stories of people who were in the building during the event, and who survived, including people who encountered the gunmen. It was a powerful antidote to television and movie violence, which all too often involves faceless nobodies getting cut down and never being seen again. The fear these people felt was palpably expressed. The thought that they were afraid to move because they might run into the gunmen and get shot, or trip some wire and set off a bomb, or something, was vividly brought to life. What the hell could you really do in that situation? Heroically jump one of the shooters? Probably not, if they were themselves wired with explosives. It was a hostage situation in a sense, not because there were people being held hostage, but because the people were too scared to move, and quite reasonably so.
The big question 'everyone' is asking is: What caused these kids to flip their lids like that? The answer is probably just that they were wackos, for one reason or another. 'Wacko' is a technical term (I'm serious!) basically meaning that they were among those rare human beings who get to the point where they just can't take it anymore, but they end up taking it out publicly on someone (everyone, in this case) else rather than withdrawing into themselves. I think that qualifies as 'wacko', don't you? Hell, it pretty much defines the term.
What worries me about this whole incident is not that there might be some underlying cause, in television or movies or video games, or whatever, but that now, after several years of occasional school shootings, it might be becoming part of our culture. That soon there may be kids - just a few, but isn't that too many? - who will go on shooting rampages because they hear that other kids are doing it.
No? Too cynical? People aren't that mindless, won't latch on to ideas that sick that easily?
In the world I live in, that seems entirely reasonable, to me. Unfortunately.
Gun control, anyone? I'll vote for it.
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