I'm not quite sure what to say about the shooting from yesterday. It was extremely shocking although it immediately brought to mind a similar incident in Salt Lake City recently. There a much heavier armed young man went into a local mall and probably would have killed far more people had an off-duty Officer not had his firearm with him. The Officer was able to pin him down in a hallway shootout until the Police could arrive. Were it not for that the shooter was headed to some crowded 2cd floor restaurants with few exits. As it was several people died.
I'd mentioned this Over at Eugene Volokh's blog which was about when it was appropriate to even discuss policy. I kind of regretted the comment since shortly thereafter someone who was at the shooting in Virginia posted slamming anyone who'd dare have "intellectual discussions before the blood has dried." I'm still not sure what I think about that. (I tried to be civil in my comments and explicitly avoided talking policy, still I felt panged somewhat)
Yet, I think back to 9/11 and most of us were discussing policy even as we watched the building collapse. Is it inappropriate? I don't know.
Over at Daniel Drezner's thread someone mentioned the chapter in Pinker's How the Mind Works on this topic that seemed relevant. Now I know many have some problems with Pinker's work. I have to admit that this book in particular I enjoyed as he didn't seem to engage in polemics or do the usual Evolutionary Psychology thing. Allow me to quote an excerpts.
But running amok is not unique to America, to Western nations, or even to modern societies. Amok is a Malay word for the homicidal sprees occasionally undertaken by lonely Indochinese men who have suffered a loss of love, a loss of money, or a loss of face. The syndrome has been described in a culture even more remote from the West: stone-age foragers of Papua New Guinea.
The amok man is patently out of his mind, an automaton oblivious to his surroundings and unreachable by appeals or threats. But his rampage is preceded by lengthy brooding over failure, and is carefully planned as a means of deliverance from an unbearable situation. The amok state is chillingly cognitive. It is triggered not by a stimulus, not by a tumor, not by a random spurt of brain chemicals, but by an idea. The idea is so standard that the following summary of the amok mind-set, composed in 1968 by a psychiatrist who had interviewed seven hospitalized amok-Papua New Guinea, is an apt description of the thoughts of mass murders continents and decades away:
I am not an important or "big man." I possess only my personal sense of dignity. My life has been reduced to nothing by an intolerable insult Therefore, I have nothing to lose except my life, which is nothing, so I trade my life for yours, as your life is favoured. The exchange is in my favour, so I shall not only kill you, but I shall kill many of you, and at the same time rehabilitate myself in the eyes of the group of which I am member, even though I might be killed in the process.
The amok syndrome is an extreme instance of the puzzle of the human emotions. Exotic at first glance, upon scrutiny they turn out to be universal; quintessentially irrational, they are tightly interwoven with abstract thought and have a cold logic of their own. (364)
My wife and I were discussing the shooting in the car yesterday as we listened to the latest news on NPR. I'd mentioned the basic ideas Pinker brings up along with similar things I'd read in other books. This is an unfortunate fact of human nature. Unless we, as a society, decided to significantly change how we handle mental illness this will always be with us. The only question is how to minimize the cost to society without infringing on civil liberties. However as I think we found with the decisions our country made after 9/11, often emotion tends to overwhelm our judgments. Fear and anger don't always make us take the best actions.
Clark,
Most definitely it is not helpful to start talking about policy at this point, because it will be rushed and fruitless in the end. There will be plenty of time to talk all about what we can do better as a society. At this point, let's just stick to understanding the situation better first.
I agree regarding policy (although to be frank policy talk is rarely anything but rushed and emotional). However what I was more thinking about was less what we as a society should do but simply the attempt to understand intellectually.
While I appreciate the idea of "understand the situation" what I'm questioning is how we do that. In terms of the "facts on the ground" past experience shows that most of what is reported the first week tends to be filled with error and focused on emotion. It seems, if anything, intellectual consideration is a better way to understand.
I've thought about the above since I wrote it earlier this afternoon and my thought is that anyone who has been traumatized by an event probably shouldn't go on a blog or discussion group to read about the event. That is, I just don't think it fair to expect everyone to respond to a tragic event in the same way.
For instance I was in a large hostage taking by a guy who claimed to have a bomb here at our local campus several years ago. The way my friends and I attempted to understand it was primarily by intellectualizing it. Yet some of the people we had with us were completely the opposite. To them it was extremely traumatic and emotionally jarring. But is one response more "authentic" than the other?
What I worry is that people are saying there is one allowed mode of discourse regarding disasters and so forth. And that to me is dangerous.
There's a much more elegant description, but along the same lines, in Emile Zola's novel "The Human Beast" (Ch. 10).
I've closed comments in order to avoid spam since I don't check this older blog as much anymore.
and Theology
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