Since the Sandy Hook massacre, people are in an uproar over every issue that remotely pertains to such incidents - gun control, violent entertainment, etc. Notice that I said "massacre" and not "tragedy." The reason I do this from now on is connotation; when 20 children and 6 school staff die in a bus accident, it's a tragedy; when 20 children and 6 school staff are ripped apart by bullets in cold blood, it's a massacre. I knew I would have to write something in depth about it, as the problem doesn't seem to be sorting itself out on its own. Nearly 700 more people have died and we've had a few more shooting rampages since the massacre. This blog post will be merely the observations of an armchair psychologist, philosopher, criminologist, and historian, but I still feel the need to say these things.
The title of this blog entry was inspired by the segments of the Bernie Mac show, where he addresses the viewing audience. But, in reality, to understand the rise in mass killings, we need to take a long, hard look into the American mindset. I'm surprised that no one has tried to look at America as a collective person before. So, let's take a look at Mr. America right now. This would involve thinking of him as the composite of 300,000,000 people's thought processes, so this would be a very loose extrapolation of the psyche of a hypothetical person. Mr. America indulges in rampant voyeurism, obsesses with the underbelly of life, has little interest in intellectual pursuits, is self-loathing, has an addictive personality, has a short attention-span, suffers from paranoia and a messianic complex (thus the "world police" foreign policy), and has a narcissistic view of himself. America has no superego - a sense of morals and responsibility, and a barely functioning ego - a sense of self-preservation. America's id is almost completely unchecked.
I'm not saying these things to be unpatriotic. I love my country, but ignoring its problems won't make them go away. It's like loving a mentally ill person (an experience I've had far too many times). You don't want them to die; you want them to seek help.
When violent crime was on the rise, or maybe when it was reported more often, people started blaming comic books, then movies, then video games, then TV. People didn't have such a problem with violent TV back in the '50's and '60's. People died on a weekly basis, and no one noted anything, unless a scantly clad woman was involved. "Dick Tracy" is an interesting subject to discuss concerning that topic. People died in shoot-outs on a weekly basis, and people tuned in to watch, and no one protested... until a woman wore a low-cut dress.
I'd like to note something interesting that pertains to the next point I'd like to make. In the 1950's and 1960's, during the height of the cold war, there was a rise in "Martian invader" movies. Basically, at the height of the Cold War, while the mind of the public was on the fear of the invasion of the Reds, cinema was focused on the fear of invaders from the Red Planet. After the cold war ended, we didn't know what entity to fear, so there was an increase in natural disaster movies - the fear became faceless. It seems that the collective conscious of society has dreams, and those dreams show up in creative endeavors, like art and cinema. It's no use silencing these movies. It's an accepted fact that an individual who doesn't have dreams is a unhealthy; so, since American movies have, admittedly, become increasingly violent, why is Mr. America having more violent dreams?
One of my favorite subjects of discussion and study is evolutionary biology. It is the study of how humans act in relation to the path that they took as a species over the eons. When you study chimps, you'll see that their young play also. Like humans, chimp young'uns also imitate their elders as a form of play. They will watch momma caring for their babies and grab an elongated rock or a bundle of sticks and rock it back and forth. At some point in our evolutionary past, our young started to imitate their elders and pretend to kill their friends. It started out with children using a stick as a club or sword, imitating the exciting battles they learned about. As this progressed, it continued with the production and sale of toy guns. Violence, at some point, got into our nature. Video games are an extension of that, where the players kill soldiers, hit targets, etc. with digital guns.
Violence in our mass media isn't new.
Let's take a look at the very first mass-produced book: the Bible. This is a book that features tales of genocide, rape, homophobic murder, child sacrifice, and all sorts of sordid stories. But, it's O.K., because a genocidal tyrant condones it! This book is the bases for the dominant belief systems in the western world: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam - the Abrahamic religions.
But, according to Christians, it's O.K., Jesus is supposed to wipe away our sins, as long as you receive his grisly tale as truth. Christianity is a a relgion loaded with murder and mayhem. You must accept that you are a piece of crap from the beginning, and that the only thing that will wipe your crappiness away is to have a wonderful, wise teacher beaten, tortured, mutilated, and left naked and nailed to two pieces of wood. That's HORRIFYING! No wonder society is violent wherever this story is accepted as fact!
But still, adherants to these stories will tell you that school massacres wouldn't happen if people stuck to them as fact and prayed to this blood-thirsty god. "God isn't allowed in school, so that's why he's allowing this to go on." If that's the truth, then he's an asshole for sacrificing children to prove his point. If such a God exists, no wonder He isn't stopping genocide and holocausts; He cheers them on. And many people in America the Violent worship Him? And, by the way, if He prevents children from being hurt in places where people pray to Him, why isn't He preventing child molestation in churches?
There's always a question that I ask myself when these events make the news. When people talk about the the background of the typical notorious killer, I feel something stir within me. Many of these lost souls have typical things in common. Male, broken home, growing up in violence, domineering parent (typically a mother), fascination with fire, loner as a child, and cruelty to animals as a child. These points hit home. So, my question is, why aren't I like these people?
In light of what I just revealed, don't worry, I'm not going to flip out and kill people. There are two points to consider before worrying about that. One, being a notorious killer is like being a noted physicist - if you haven't done anything in that line of work by the time you're 30, you're not going to do anything notable at all. And two, I'm not going to commit a violent crime until I've taught myself to fight with two daggers while singing (preferably a dark cabaret song); if I'm going to death row, I'm going there in style!
After a while of soul-searching, and thinking about my past, I've realized something. I was taught, and I can't remember when, that everything and everyone is interconnected. Especially when you are a sentient being, like a human. No matter how precariously I felt I was hanging onto a thread, on the fraying fringes of the tapestry of life, something reinforced the fact that I was still connected.
That's what people need, beginning early on. They need constant reminders that they are part of the tapestry of life. They need to learn that, even if they have no other desire than to avoid personal discomfort, they would do well to remember that what they do has an impact, and can bear repercussions. At some point in their lives, notorious killers forget that, and no one was around to remind them of it. They, on a psychological level, are disconnected.
Individuals, like Mr. America in relation to the world around him, seem to be in a disconnected bubble. This must be addressed, but how?
We've determined that Mr. America is mentally ill. So, what next? Well, I knew - and loved - a person who wound up in a psychiatric ward. When she was dangerous to herself and others, they confiscated things like sharp utensils. In a society that is, collectively, mentally ill, why let just anyone have any weapons? Are tougher gun restrictions really so bad? I don't think so at all. I know, there are a lot of arguments against gun control, but they don't hold up to logic. Mr. America is terrified of ALL guns taken away. It seems like he suffers from castration anxiety. LOL Let's break the arguments down.
1. "I should have a right to keep my AR15 or Bushmaster. If they disarm us, then we'll face another Hitler." God damn... Do you really think that they'll come marching through the streets next? And if so, do you really think that your collection of guns is what's stopping a force of thousands who are armed with tanks, helicopters, drones, and cruise missiles from taking over the country by force? You don't want another Hitler to happen, then why aren't you upset about the constant ramping up of defense spending, the consolidation of the media by a small group of people, and union-busting legislation? Those were hallmarks of Hitler's and Mussolini's reigns of terror.
2. "Guns don't kill people, people kill people." What if your mechanic lost his tools, or had a hard time finding them? Would you tell him "Tools don't fix cars, people do"?
3. "My AR15 is used for hunting and defending my home." Nothing that isn't extinct yet needs to be brought down by a rapid-fire weapon. And if you can't hunt or defend your home with one bullet, you shouldn't be owning a gun.
4. "Of course you can kill a bunch of people with an assault rifle. You can kill someone with a butcher knife, so do you want to ban those, too?" Think about this. Yeah, you can kill anyone with any household item. You can stab someone with a butcher knife, you can dismember people with a chainsaw, you can blow up a building with fertilizer, you can snap someone's neck with your bare hands. But, that's what happens when you MISUSE those items. If you USE an assault rifle as it was intended to be used by manufactured design, living beings die en masse.
5. "Criminals are still going to get their hands on assault weapons anyway!" Well, let's forget all legislation, then! Killers are going to kill, anyway, so let's make murder legal!
6. "If you outlaw assault weapons, then only criminals will have them." This statement runs on the assumption that all criminals are the same. For one thing, access to contraband items isn't as easy as people think. I know this through experience. Let's take a look at the typical spree-shooter. Young males, loners, living in a small town that no one hears of until after they gun down innocent people. They've had no prior run-ins with the law, and lead straight-laced lives. They want whatever guns they can easily find with the least risk. Let's take a look at the typical dealer of contraband items. Established criminals, based out of bigger towns, illegal businessmen. What are the realistic chances that someone like Klebold, Harris, or Lanza would cross paths with a mafioso or cartel dealer? Undeniably slim to none, unless you live in a world where your typical high schooler or college student is mob-connected. The potential spree-shooter doesn't want to stick his neck out and look for illegal guns. And the gun-runner doesn't want to immediately trust new clientele, because they could be an undercover cop.
Common sense, especially in these crazy times, calls for control. And not for iffy control, but legislation with teeth. We've never had that, even with the assault weapons ban in place.
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