The Enemy Within

It's about guns. No, it's about mental health. No, guns! No, mental health! And so on – the endless, swirling whirlpool of blame and accusation, insuring – as always – that rational discourse has been left behind and that any “solutions” will be both wrong-headed and ineffective. (But what counts – as the Obama administration taught us – is rhetoric, not actual results.) 

I'm not going to attempt to propose a solution to the school shooting plague, but will simply offer a few points for consideration.

#1, is the phenomenon new? Not brand new, in that incidents of this sort do appear in the historical record going back quite far. But yes, new in frequency and magnitude. And is this, in turn, a product of our fast-forward, media- and Internet-based society (and the hybrid of these, namely social media), which has, at long last, achieved the “global village” of Marshall McLuhan's dreams (or nightmares?). Because in that global village, information spreads as rapidly as it did between busybodies and gossips in the traditional village – except out in plain sight, and amplified. As such, it partakes of many of the qualities of mass hysteria, and in that sense naturally feeds on itself, grows, reproduces, morphs, and stimulates stable and unstable minds alike. And that, in turn, leads to not only “copycat” incidents, but copycat thinking, which is expressed, more often than not, in the social media, which offer the appearance of anonymity but which are, in fact, the digital equivalent of posting a sign in one's front yard. Combine this with the promise of instant fame (which has ever appealed to losers) and you have multiple accidents waiting to happen. 

So we have not only the copycat phenomenon, but also the gradually growing social acceptance of this form of “acting out”. Social acceptance? Surely not, in view of the universal condemnation of such acts. But I'm not talking about normal society here; I'm referring to a subculture made up of countless moody, isolated “weirdos” -- a fellowship of the bullied, rejected, and generally shat-upon – and we know it exists because we've seen ample evidence. And the operating base for that subculture is, again, the social media. In those circles, school shootings are seen as a form of justice – of getting even, of standing up to authority (both adult and that of the “in crowd” -- the popular kids – the cliques), of asserting oneself against an unjust and cruel world. Witness, even, the frequency with which the shooters (the ones who survive, or the ones who leave their thoughts behind in some form) say that their victims are better off dead – presumably because no one should have to put up with the offenses that the world dishes out on a regular basis. So they were doing their victims a favor by taking them out of this world. Deranged thinking? Certainly – but, seemingly, becoming more common. Combine that with delusions of grandeur – of a “superiority complex”, if you will, and again, it's just a matter of time. 

To this we might add – paradoxically, perhaps -- a more general phenomenon or trend, namely the erosion of individual self-esteem. And this seems wrong on its face, since if the public schools represent anything in lieu of academic standards, which have long since been left by the wayside, it's the unremitting obsession with, and provision for, self-esteem, “inclusiveness”, and all the other ways of describing the morphing of the public education system into a gigantic sociological octopus. The problem is that, clearly, these programs don't work – at least not for the real outliers, the truly marginalized. They work for the ones who are already in the system in some way – not necessarily whole heartedly but enough to be amenable to persuasion and manipulation by “agents of change” (teachers and school administrators in this case). But for the true rebel – the true outsider – these efforts will invariably come to naught, because those in question have already, on some level (consciously or otherwise), declared themselves to be non-players, bad citizens, and rebels – and if you survey the writings of many of the school shooting “perps” you will find this attitude in abundance. 

Another way of putting it is that these people do have self-esteem – but of a markedly different, pathological, and dangerous type. It goes beyond simple sociopathy, which is about being a rebel and a “badass”, and extends into hatred, resentment, and a desire for revenge – for “getting even”. (Please note that most of these shooters don't seem to have any other notable accomplishments – nothing that would merit being listed in a yearbook, say. Oftentimes the sort of hostile energy that motivates shooters is the same kind of energy that can, in some cases, be channeled into something more constructive and/or creative – but that would require some sort of talent, which these shooter types seem to lack.) 

Then there is that old stand-by, morals and morality – both of which have been expunged from public education because they are insufficiently inclusive... and, after all, “it's a matter of opinion”, as the cultural relativists never tire of saying. And heaven forbid anyone should start talking about morality in a public education setting; who knows, it might constitute a “trigger”; it would certainly be readily identifiable as some sort of “hate”. Not to mention which, how many public school teachers in our time would even be comfortable teaching morals, or even ethics, when it's much easier and less threatening (to their own self-esteem) to stick with “niceness” and “consideration for others”? 

But again, the rebel – the badass – is only going to sit in the back row of the classroom and laugh at such foolishness. He knows these people are all hypocrites! And his sense of superiority dictates that he devalue them not just to the point of not caring whether they live or die, but being willing to help matters along. 

But – one might say – isn't the home where morals are, or should be, taught? Certainly. And that should be reinforced – or at least not directly contradicted – by the educational system. And yet too often we find the opposite, and I'm trying to think about at what point the public schools, and their “agents of change”, came into direct opposition with the values of families and the home. I suspect it was at about the time when the “60's” types got their teaching degrees and spread out across the land like a plague, determined to subvert American culture in all of its forms, because, after all, American culture had treated them shabbily and it had to go – and any totalitarian worth their salt will tell you that the program has to begin with the young, and the younger the better. “Anyone over 30” is a lost cause... and if you're going to be a rabble rouser, the most amenable rabble to rouse are people of high school and college age. 

But this argument assumes that the home and family remain a redoubt of proper training, ethics, and morality – but that would be a mistake as well. Lest we forget, the same “60's types” who signed up as agents of change are also the ones who raised the next generation – and are, in fact, the grandparents of the current generation of high school- and college-aged individuals. So we have, basically, a generation, or the second generation, raised up in a moral vacuum and then sent off to the public schools, colleges, and universities where that moral vacuum is even more complete, permeating, and insidious. And then we wonder where school shooters come from. They are, basically, externalizing their inner demons, which in earlier times might have been suppressed either totally or sufficiently by the collective influence of family, school, and community. But there are no such inhibitors now – it's as if we have a landscape of human nuclear reactor cores with missing control rods; there is nothing preventing the occasional meltdown. 

So yes, it's not about guns. Guns have always been with us, although it could be argued that “assault weapons” and the like have not, but those are an aggravating factor rather than a cause. And I'll even venture a guess that more American households 100 years ago – or 200 – had at least one gun on hand than is now the case, percentage-wise. There was certainly at least one gun on every farm... and at least one in the home of every hunter... and that included a goodly proportion of the citizenry back before mass industrialization and migration to the cities. And where are guns considered a problem, by the way? In rural areas, or the suburbs? No, in the cities, of course, where, allegedly, no one “needs” to have a gun but so many do. 

Is it, then, “mental health”? Well, yes – if you include under that heading being something other than a moral imbecile. And if you take into account a collective pathology which is more obvious than ever in society, namely the acceptance and depersonalization of violence. Acceptance? Yes – in fantasy mode, via video games and the Internet, where one can plow through platoons of enemies with weaponry that the U.S. military can only dream of. But wait, that's just “fantasy”, right? And everyone knows the difference between fantasy and reality, right? The problem is, a growing number of our citizens, particularly of the young type, don't. Their fantasy worlds constitute so much of their reality that when they're confronted with real reality, their fantastic thinking doesn't turn realistic, but remains in charge. 

Think about it. Is the human brain, especially the youthful human brain, really able to make this sudden, violent, many-times-a-day transition between fantasy and reality? Look at the screen... then at the world... then back at the screen... then back at the world... and so on, many scores, or even hundreds, of times per day. Isn't that expecting a bit too much of our perceptual and cognitive abilities? What “works” in one world (uninhibited violence without consequences) ought to work in the other as well, shouldn't it? Does anyone ever point out, to young people, the flaw in that thinking?

I recall a phenomenon that was pointed out by military psychologists back during the Vietnam era. It was sometimes referred to as the “cartoonization” of not only the enemy but also of non-combatants. And this was way before the advent of “realistic” video games or the Internet; all we had was TV and Pong, basically. And yet even back then, there was a tendency for young men in uniform armed with powerful weapons to see others (pretty much anyone not in an American uniform) as non-human... as no more than scuttling little creatures who could be picked off at will in a sort of grotesque form of target practice. While not claiming that this was a typical attitude, or even terribly common, we cannot ignore events like My Lai as examples. (And as someone said in the recent PBS series on Vietnam, there were “hundreds” of My Lais.) 

Now of course, the notion of the enemy as “the other” is pretty much universal in warfare, and has been reinforced by military and civilian leaders from time immemorial. But along with that there has been a tradition – not always honored but persistent – that civilians, i.e. non-combatants, were off limits. You don't have to hand out Hershey bars, just don't kill 'em. So when did this basic, and I would say honorable, premise, start to erode? We can point to the concept of total war, which is, again, not all that new – but which reached a kind of peak in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This was one point at which “Kill 'em all, let God sort 'em out” could have been declared the unofficial motto of our foreign policy. And of course there are always justifications – and they may even have some validity. But justifications don't change facts. And they don't change the demoralizing effects of war – not just on the direct participants but on the civilians back home. (We always fancy ourselves as being so smart by confining our wars to overseas actions, ignoring the long-term impact on veterans and on our society in general, not to mention the corrosive effects on politics and economics.) 

But what does this have to do with school shooters? Well, let's not assume that they're stupid; in fact, many of them appear to be quite intelligent – mad scientists minus the science, if you will. And believe it or not, they might actually have done some reading and know a bit about history – with or without help from their official government teachers. So in a mush-brained kind of way, don't they have a right to reason that if something is OK for the government to do, then maybe it's OK for them to do as well? Think about the Waco massacre, and other causes that agitate the so-called “far right” -- who has more moral sense, the people who perpetrate these things or the people who protest? 

But wait! There's more! What about abortion? It's one thing to look upon “collateral damages” which is another way of describing the deaths of thousands of civilians (perhaps not all innocent, but certainly innocent until proven guilty) in places like Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria – but death in the womb (or barely outside of it) in neat, orderly, sterile hospitals? And consider that, as has been pointed out, everyone born in the U.S. since Roe vs. Wade is a survivor of a massacre which is still going on. Now, once again, don't assume that these young people are stupid; on some level they realize this. They know it, and while they ought to be grateful to their parents for not turning them over to the mercies of abortionists, they also have to feel that “There, but for the grace of God...” Or if of a non-religious bent, they were just plain lucky. So they survey the landscape and see that everyone else of their age – or approximately so – is also a survivor. Are those others more or less deserving? Maybe some of them should have been aborted. Maybe I can step in and fix things where the abortion industry failed. 

Fantastic thinking? Delusion? Grandiosity? Certainly. All too common? Certainly. But we have paved the way through a thousand decisions, many of which seemed minor or inconsequential at the time – or not even like decisions, just casual choices. “Practical” or “sensible” choices. But to quote a great Greek playwright, “The boys throw stones at the frogs in play, but the frogs die in earnest.” Our “stones” are what is called social experimentation, and the “frogs” who die psychologically are youth, i.e. the victims of said social experimentation. We are so shocked when a young person “acts out” in a violent way, when in some sense he is merely doing the next thing in a perfectly logical chain of reasoning (or anti-reasoning). Our social, supposedly benign, sub-clinical pathology has become his malevolent clinical pathology, with dire consequences. So yes, “the enemy is us”, but until we realize and admit that, and do what is required to remedy the situation, we can't expect the Era of School Shootings to come to an end, no matter how many march and protest and petition those in charge.

My Own Private Siberia

An extremely senior (age-wise, at least) New Hampshire lawmaker has resigned after having offhandedly suggested (supposedly in jest) that mental patients be shipped to Siberia. Well... the Siberia of today is not the “Siberia” of old, in any case; I understand it can be quite pleasant at certain times of the year – not unlike the Northern Plains of this country, as far as that goes. But as to the suggestion, whether in jest or not – he was clearly and willfully ignoring the far more humane solution that we have to the problem of the mentally ill – namely, to just set them loose in the streets of our large cities. Yes, let them fend for themselves, because they have “rights”, after all – including the right to eat, sleep, urinate, etc. wherever and whenever they please. That's the ticket – treat them as equals, even if they're somewhat challenged when it comes to returning the favor.

And furthermore... well, first let me indulge in a bit of nostalgia. I entered upon formal training in the psychology “biz” at the beginning of the end of an era -- the old institutionalization model for mental patients. There were still, at that time, mental hospitals dotting the landscape... but the bloodless term “mental hospitals” doesn't really do them justice. These were insane asylums, by gosh – nut houses, loony bins... places in which to abandon all hope. They were invariably high on a hill and built like ancient fortresses or castles, complete with towers and crenelations... with ample grounds, ancient trees, pathways, stone walls, the occasional flower garden... but scary in the best of times. They always seemed to be enveloped in the black and white twilight of a “B” movie, with bare, windblown trees and large black birds cawing and cackling in the gnarled branches... with the occasional muffled scream emanating from a high, barred window. Oh yeah – these places were the real thing. And on the inside, they weren't much more warm and fuzzy. High ceilings, everything painted the same color of pale green or yellowish tan... grossly overheated in the winter and stagnant in the summer... questionable odors wafting about... bland food... TV sets blaring... staff and patients shuffling around with equal energy (i.e. not much). And, above all, the resident psychiatrists, who invariably had paneled offices with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, large windows looking out over well-manicured grounds... who smoked a pipe... and wore white coats over their wool three-piece suits. This was their empire, their fiefdom... and they were, by and large, benevolent dictators, who seemed to, at least on occasion, recognize the residual, faintly-glimmering sparks of humanity in their patients. They were, to a man, enlightened humanists, big on “ethics” but indifferent to morals. It was, let's admit, a somewhat patronizing attitude... but on the other hand, when you're the only arguably sane person in a building full of madmen (and women), it's hard not to be a bit patronizing at times. Better to act like the kindly father – who could be stern if absolutely necessary – with the patients as your not-quite-right, perpetually needy children. This was a model that, for good or ill, persisted for many decades. But then came the revolution.

And I don't know exactly how or why it happened, and I don't have time to research it at this point. I suspect the words "lawsuit" and "advocate" would enter in. But it most definitely did happen, and I saw it with my own eyes. Almost overnight, all across the country, mental hospitals flung open their doors and disgorged an army of... former patients, now cured and whole? Well, not exactly. Most of them were no better off than they'd been when they entered. But now the model had changed, and, besides, they had “rights”, just as the homeless who were that way for other than mental health reasons had rights. No more vagrancy laws, no more picking people up off the street just because they were living there and creating an unsanitary condition – no, now they were full-fledged citizens will all of the same rights and privileges as anyone else... whether they wanted them or not.

This was, let's say, “Step Number One” of the “solution”. Step Number Two was to then take the ones who couldn't stay out of trouble and throw them in jail – i.e. the more active, violent, feisty (and probably less insane) types. The more passive, depressed, and plain psychotic were left in the streets, parks, and public places. The result? Our prisons are bursting at the seams, and in many cases it's because they include people who, in the old days, would have been behind other bars – in mental hospitals, with a much lower “unit cost”. And, our cities are graced by the presence of the homeless, with public officials helpless to do anything about it, since those homeless have powerful and politically-active advocates. And let's face it, it's a sign of the times... of the evolving culture... of evolving “values”... of a hesitancy to ever, under any circumstances, “judge” anyone, because “there but for the grace of God go I”, etc.

So yeah, those old red-brick or stone fortresses on the hill are gone – or turned into condos – but the problems they were built to deal with are still with us, and are in fact more immediate, visible, and “in your face” than they were when the mentally disturbed could be locked up, safe and out of sight, and not able to cause scandal, especially when they came from a middle-class background. Ah yes, the “shame” of mental illness – something that seems downright quaint in our day and age, when everyone who is anyone has been through regimens of group therapy, couples therapy, individual therapy, drugs of all sorts (legal and otherwise), New Age gimmicks of all sorts... and when people who are arguably mental cases dominate daytime television (both as hosts and guests). It all started – as so much else did – back in the hippie era, when it was suddenly cool to be crazy. Well, I guess it had some prefigurings in the beatnik era... and the Roaring Twenties... and the Romantic Age... and so on. I mean, it's always been cool to be a little bit crazy, as long as you were also highly verbal, clever, and “artistic”... but the mental patients of the Fifties and early Sixties were anything but fashionable. The notorious “back wards” were places of despair – not so much for the patients, who hardly realized where they were (or even _if_ they were), and were totally drugged up besides, but for anyone witnessing the scene who had a spark of humanity. The word that comes most readily to mind is “waste”. After all, each of these creatures had only one life to live, just as we all do... and this was the way they had to live it? It just seemed to be too bad, even if they were “happy” (or at least “content”... or “cooperative”, as the expression went, which meant too far gone to protest). And who knows, maybe their inner world was glorious beyond compare, and if we only knew we would be insanely (ahem) jealous. But I'll leave that romantic assumption up to the radical fringe of psychiatry, like R. D. Laing.

All I'm saying is that, while it's easy to get all huffy about a jest like that of the New Hampshire lawmaker, at least part of that reaction is sheer defensiveness, and – dare it say it? -- guilt. Because we don't know “what to do about” the mentally ill either. The old fortresses weren't all that great (although they beat the heck out of what came before), but are jail and the street any better? And after all, doesn't it depend to a great extent on how we define mental illness (or whatever we choose to call it), and how we define it in relation to the rest of society? I don't think we've settled on that issue yet either. After all, political parties and politicians are fond of calling their opponents “insane” -- which is not far removed from the familiar tactics of those who were in power in the Soviet Union. And yet, if politics is based on reality, and there is only one reality, then shouldn't there be only one valid political position... all the rest being based on something other than reality, i.e. insane? Is there, in fact, any room for “opinion” at all, or can only one point of view be right? I'm asking these questions without answering them, because I'm not sure I know the answers. Some writers have questioned the very concept of “mental health” -- and yet we remain faced with hordes of people who simply can't function in a “normal” way, i.e. they can't hold their own in society as it is currently configured. Maybe they're all misunderstood saints... but that has yet to be proven. All I can say for certain is that the current model doesn't work, and it's probably because the metaphysical and psychological premises behind it don't work, either because they've been contaminated by politics or because they're just plain wrong.