It Gives Me Hope

Okay I really don't want to jump into this particular funeral procession but I am going to. We are inundated with the tragedy in Newtown Connecticut and we keep hearing the same things we always hear in the aftermath of these massacres. I think most of the stuff we hear is pretty much correct as far as it goes. The problem is that people are trapped within their own viewpoints, in other words we tend to believe our perceptions.

Some folks are talking about unmet mental health needs. I agree that as a society we pretty much ignore the truly mentally ill. Of course we are also over diagnosing like crazy and quite literally medicating our brains out. We should overhaul our entire mental health system (non-system) but this will not do anything to prevent these types of massacres. This is because mentally ill people really are not very dangerous on the whole.

The debate about gun control is going to become more fervent. I have already had someone very condescendingly explain to me that "guns don't kill people, people kill people." I congratulated him on his originality as he went on to rapid fire explain to me that more guns in more hands would actually deter these villains. I guess if all the little kids in that classroom had been armed to the teeth they could have shot the killer to pieces. It would make supervising recess a little trickier. It is true though that better gun control (which I do support) probably cannot prevent these particular types of tragedies.

The other thing I have been hearing is that our media and culture celebrate violence. I think this perception is correct too. However I am not sure it goes far enough. Even people who do not particularly like violent entertainment can be violent and some have been mass killers.

Any animal that is cornered and feels threatened will react with violence. Violence is nature's last ditch solution for any creature when all other solutions fail. Novelist Kurt Vonnegut had a running theme that humanity's problems stem from our large brains and our overuse of them. The reason we (including you and me) are so capable of murder is that we too frequently use our brains to convince ourselves that we are cornered and threatened.

The process of doing this is called building resentment. It is how people work themselves into a rage. It seems stupid but it is our true national pastime. People are obsessed with resentment building. Some radio hosts have made a career of it. I believe that a nation filled with pissed off angry resentful  people is an incubator for producing mass murderers. This is my perception.

We build resentment by first justifying our anger. In the wake of the Newtown tragedy will be heated debates.  The adversaries in these debates will justify their anger at each other. They will do this by seeking each other out and trying to force others to accept their own point of view. When this fails they will cluster with people who share their own perspective and reinforce their frustration with those who disagree. They will compare the other side to communists or Nazis as the case may be and this will further justify their anger.

Feeling justified each side will next amplify their anger by fantasizing about the other side. They will have imaginary debates where they suppose what the other side would say (the other side always says something stupid). Next they will somehow dehumanize the other side by using terms like "gun nut," "nanny state," "brain dead," or "knee jerk." Dehumanizing people makes it seem okay to treat them inhumanely. Next will come the humiliation fantasies as each side imagines winning and other side crying and whining pathetically. All this leads to less communication and more arguing. The result is never a lasting solution just more hard feelings.

The reason these tragedies happen is because we misuse our brains. Instead of opening our minds and seeking solutions we reinforce our feelings of self-righteousness and in self justified rage we lash out crazily. We reinforce this insanity in our entertainments where when the hero goes berserk in a fit of self-righteous violence he wins! We reinforce this insanity in our political groups who use self-righteousness to stir up anger and fear for political advantage. We reinforce this insanity in our approach to foreign policy, insisting on military dominance and the ability to humiliate our international opponents. Given the massive reinforcement for resentment building and the ubiquitous validation of  violence, frankly I am kind of surprised these massacres are not more common . It gives me hope.







Russell