The Ordinariness of the Newtown Massacre
December 20, 2012 7 Comments
The words “unimaginable,” “unspeakable,” and “unbelievable” have been used countless times to describe the killing of children and teachers in Newtown, Connecticut. Indeed, my good friend Brad East has said, “This is not intelligible. This is not comprehensible. It is absurd. It is evil. It is not a genus of a species (whether this be “evil things” or “mass murder shootings”); it is not an instance of a larger nameable phenomenon. It is entirely dumbfounding.” And, while I understand the sentiment behind such statements (which are almost always ironically followed by thousands of words of commentary which make it clear that they believe it is none of those things), I believe they are mistaken and actually hinder our ability to respond appropriately to Newtown. In reality, someone did imagine Newtown, we all now believe it can happen, and we have been speaking about it for nearly a week. And if we continue to act as if this is not the case and that it is truly unintelligible and incomprehensible we will be saying the same words in a few months when the next Newtown occurs. Instead, we should admit that, sadly, Newtown was to be expected in contemporary America.
Perhaps one of the saddest facts about the massacre, other than the dozens of deaths, is that what so surprised most of us was that it was children who were the primary victims in a mass school shooting and not that there was another mass school shooting in the US in 2012. Part of the reason for that is that in so many ways Newtown was so ordinary. And it is the ordinariness of Newtown that so troubles me.
I’ve written before about the peculiarity of American male violence. Ours is a culture which shapes boys into young men who see violence as an organizing principle of life in the world. We are formed by our society to be violent. Prof. James Garbarino’s research has consistently made this clear. In a recent CNN op-ed, “How a Boy Becomes a Killer,” he says,
We start by recognizing that many young Americans (and other young people around the world) develop and carry with them a kind of moral damage, which I have come to call “the war zone mentality.”
However it develops, they grow up with a damaged sense of reality. They view the world as if they are soldiers confronting a hostile environment that they perceive to be full of enemies. Once they get fixated on this damaged world view, they may hatch the delusion that even teachers and young children are their enemies. For Adam Lanza, apparently even his mother was an enemy who had to be destroyed.
There is no one cause. It is as if they are building a tower of blocks, one by one, that can get so high it falls over, with innocent people dying. These building blocks can be found in a dangerous neighborhood or a school rife with bullying…through the internet and mass media…web sites and videos that promote paranoid views of the world…in pervasive and intense playing of video games…
But moral damage and a misperception of reality usually are not enough to lead to murder. The typical killer is emotionally damaged and has developed mental health problems, perhaps exacerbated by being bullied and rejected by peers, or abused and neglected at home…
The crucial point is that even “crazy” people operate in a particular culture, a particular society, a particular time and place, and within a certain world view of how to manage your rage, your hurt, and your sadness. While not uniquely American (it has happened in recent years in Europe and the Middle East), the mass murder that took place in Newtown, Connecticut, is especially American.
Our socially toxic culture promotes paranoia, desensitization to violence, almost unlimited access to lethal weapons, opportunities to practice mass murder via realistic “point and shoot” video games and games that justify violence as a legitimate form of vengeance in pursuit of an individual’s or group’s idea of justice.
And, in a related op-ed Prof. Michael Kimmel says,
Why are angry young men setting out to kill entire crowds of strangers?
Motivations are hard to pin down, but gender is the single most obvious and intractable variable when it comes to violence in America. Men and boys are responsible for 95% of all violent crimes in this country. “Male criminal participation in serious crimes at any age greatly exceeds that of females, regardless of source of data, crime type, level of involvement, or measure of participation” is how the National Academy of Sciences summed up the extant research.
How does masculinity figure into this? From an early age, boys learn that violence is not only an acceptable form of conflict resolution, but one that is admired. However the belief that violence is an inherently male characteristic is a fallacy. Most boys don’t carry weapons, and almost all don’t kill: are they not boys? Boys learn it.
They learn it from their fathers. They learn it from a media that glorifies it, from sports heroes who commit felonies and get big contracts, from a culture saturated in images of heroic and redemptive violence. They learn it from each other.
In talking to more than 400 young men for my book, “Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men,” I heard over and over again what they learn about violence. They learn that if they are crossed, they have the manly obligation to fight back. They learn that they are entitled to feel like a real man, and that they have the right to annihilate anyone who challenges that sense of entitlement.
In other words, our culture intentionally creates people – overwhelmingly men – who commit violence, and in the extreme mass murder. From the violence we inflict on children to the violence we teach them to inflict on others and the violent definitions of masculinity we insist they conform to we create young boys and men who believe it is natural and right for them to commit acts of violence. This is why Ta-Nehisi Coates had so many stories of men committing violence against women to draw from in his recent commentary.
And, while Garbarino and Coates are correct that better mental health care and stricter gun laws would help curb potential violent perpetrators from committing specific crimes, these legal and political restraints will not help us form nonviolent citizens instead of the violent ones we now create. For that to occur, as Prof. Garbarino also points out, we need a radical change in culture – from entertainment to parenting to politics to religion. We must become a different people if we are to avoid future Newtowns. Because – and it hurts to write this – we are a violent people for whom domestic violence, inner-city youth violence, constant warfare, and even mass shootings are our way of life.
In basketball they say “ball don’t lie.” In other words, at the end of the day the ball goes in the hoop or it doesn’t, and the winners are the ones who put the ball through the hoop more than the other team. We could say when reflecting on our common life together, then, that “bullets don’t lie.” And the bullets keep flying. And they keep killing. Because this is who we are.
Bullets don’t lie.
Jimmy, a painful, perceptive portrait of who we are.
Hey Jimmy,
Didn’t see this when it first went up, so sorry for the delayed response. Quick set of questions:
-Do you feel that the social analysis you offer in the main part of this post is mutually contradictory with the quote from my post? Put differently, does it make it less absurd, or less evil, or less dumbfounding? Does the ordinariness of our violent and corrupt culture make its evil manifestations and outbursts less evil because apparently mundane or quotidian?
-Is the parenthetical directed at my post, or at the general culture of commentary in the wake of these events? Because the one thing I made sure not to do in my post was to explain or render the events intelligible — I was responding *to the responses* to the tragedy, calling them to the only form of immediate faithful response I believe available to us, that is, to Christians. It was a call to repentance to sisters and brothers, not a commentary seeking to explain the tragedy while saying the tragedy is inexplicable.
-I’ve been challenged on this by others, so I’m genuinely wondering: Does it necessarily follow that to recognize the unspeakable evil of the evil action, and to call for a form of silence or non-commentary immediately following the evil action, means to cease from all subsequent analysis, reflection, commentary, discernment, political process, and identification of social conditions, problems, and potential solutions?
As you could surely guess, I agree with the force and thrust of your analysis and of those you cite. But why the either/or set-up at the beginning? It seems like two different sets of discourses, trying to say two different things, at different times to different audiences. Can we not affirm both?
Hey Brad,
Thanks for the probing questions. Re: your third question, like you, my immediate personal and public reaction was prayer and silence. So, no, I don’t think those things are mutually exclusive. Re: your second question, my parenthetical was directed toward general commentary. Re: your first question, yes, I do think there’s some contradiction here. Allow me to explain …
In general, we agree that Newtown was an act of evil. So, where’s the rub or contradiction? Specifically, your use of the words “unspeakable,” “unintelligible,” “absurd,” “dumbfounding,” “not a genus of species,” etc. Because I think Newtown is quite speakable, quite intelligible, and a genus of the species “mass shootings.” The first words in my head upon seeing the first headline was, “Again?” And, as far as I can tell, the primary reason people responded as if this was something new was because of the ages of those killed. The number of people, especially who have or have had young children, who responded with something like “That could have been my kids” or “I’m going to hug my children extra long tonight” can not be counted. Of course, I didn’t respond in that way.
Here’s the thing, in my studies of transitional justice, political reconciliation, and human rights law I read a lot of histories and ethnographies of horrific acts of evil. A common topic of discussion among scholars in this field is how those who spend such a large amount of their time reading about genocide, mass rape, torture, etc. avoid depression. It’s a very common phenomenon for those in the field to lose hope in humanity, find it hard to find joy in the simple things of life, etc. Reading these histories can make one feel that the default state of human existence is one of humans doing evil to other humans.
Right now, throughout the world, children are being drugged, raped, and tortured in preparation to serve as soldiers for militias. Other children are being sold into labor and sexual slavery. Other children are being horribly abused by their parents. And other children are being shot dead in the streets of American cities. Somewhere else men and women are being gang raped because of their race or religion or politics, others are being tortured in a countless number of ways, and all of this is being done to them by other human beings who believe it is the appropriate response to some other indignity that they have faced or some greater good to be achieved.
Indeed, in one sense, the disciples of Fox News were right to point out that on the exact day of Newtown a mass stabbing happned at a school in China. On the other side of the world. These things happen, and happen relatively regularly.
My point is this: Such acts are quite mundane. The are not extraordinary. They are intelligible, not unspeakable. There are a variety of reasons that people do such things and we can understand them. And to act as if this is not true, even pastorally, seems to me to give a kind of status to events that renders them more difficult to respond to. Thus, I was not necessarily responding to the spirit of your initial post. Indeed, I initially responded in the ways I think you recommended. However, and you were not the only one, I wanted to push against this idea that evil is necessarily absurd or unintelligible. It is against this that I shout a loud, “Untrue!”
So, no, the ordinariness of Newtown and other such situations does not make them “less evil,” as you put it. But it does make them “less dumbfounding.” It seems to me that history, and even the Christian faith, make evil speakable and intelligible. Or at least push us to try and understand and speak about evil. I guess my question is, why do you use evil as synonymous with absurdity, unintelligibility, unspeakability, etc?
Thanks for your reply. That’s very helpful. I guess the problem is mostly discursive, that is, in what sphere of discourse we’re talking. I think there is a mode of analysis within which Newtown *is*, as you say, intelligible, speakable, nameable. That mode of analysis is sociological, criminological, political, culture, and so on. You are absolutely right to make clear just how (tragically) common this sort of event is in both today’s world and human history.
The discourse in which I was engaging when I used those “non-” words was theological, with a view to moral ontology or metaphysics. In that discourse—in my understanding and conviction—evil is fundamentally not explainable, intelligible, comprehensible, etc. It is the utterly absurd, depthless absence of meaning: the annihilation of meaning in the midst of God’s good creation, which as good has rich and deep meaning from God as creator bestowed upon it. It is in *that* sense that my post was proffered.
And, by extension, I would want to include all those other acts of evil under my analysis—i.e., I don’t think this is an exceptionally evil tragedy, whereas others are more humdrum. You’re right that our reaction was trying to think through the unthinkable aspect of a grown man choosing to slaughter children; and to be sure, there’s probably something there that *should* remain unthinkable vis-a-vis many other similarly evil events. (I.e., many other evil acts seem to have a comprehensible or quasi-rational end, that is understandable if nefarious, in the service of which awful things are done as means. It is not clear to me that this event is analogous.)
So that’s where I’m coming from. I think it is a great temptation to think that conflict, violence, corruption, murder, slaughter, and senseless death are, so to speak, part of “the grain of the universe”: that they really go all the way down; and in that way, and for that reason, are intelligible to us. To the contrary, the gospel teaches us that “there is a deeper magic”; that this isn’t the ontological ground of all things; that peace is richer and deeper and fuller and wider and larger and greater; and that these things are contradictions to the meaning and goodness of what we are made to be. That such tragedies are daily realities of actual human beings only testifies to the extent of our fallen existence and our great sin and capitulation to evil. To ameliorate and minister and reconcile our fraught lives together, we should unhesitatingly engage in the sociological (etc.) analysis which I identified above; but we should at the same time retain the commitments and speech patterns of the theological discourse, too—and, I would venture, let the former be in service to the latter, so that we know the right order of things, lest we give in to despair.
Thoughts? (Apologies for typos, don’t have the time to re-read!)
Brad,
I’m no systematician, but doesn’t the doctrine of original sin and the story of humans murdering God point to some ontology of evil in the whole of human experience? I, like, you believe that “these things are contradictions to the meaning and goodness of what we are made to be.” However, we simply are not what we were made to be. Perhaps this is not ontologicical, but it is surely so deep down as to function as if it was in the history and experiences of actual human beings. There is always hope of something different, and human history is also a story of humans facing and overcoming and enduring evil in amazing ways, but if evil is not understandable *theologically* then surely theology is a limited discourse – no?
In this, I think R. Niebuhr’s (and others before him) claim that original sin is the only historically verifiable Christian doctrine has real force.
I take ontology to name what is, and all that is is willed, created, and sustained in existence by God. God does not will, create, or sustain evil. Evil, therefore, does not belong to what is most deeply true about created life, and in particular human beings.
Put differently, our goodness or God-relation (or whatever) is deeper than our fallenness and consequent inclination to sin, evil, violence, and death. Life is greater than death, peace is older than violence.
If all we’re wanting to say is that evil is deeply (even inextricably, save the miraculous power of God) woven into the heart of human existence, that’s fine. Agreed: “we are not what we were made to be.” Maybe it’s just semantics—”so deep down as to function as if it was [ontological].” My response to that is that Christians are called to remember that the temptation to see that “as if” as actually the case is one to be resisted; because otherwise, despair really would be the most fitting response to the world as it in fact is.
Perhaps we’re simply talking past each other regarding what it means to say that evil is “understandable” (theologically). What makes evil so tragic, overwhelming, awful, and deadly is that, at root, it is *not* understandable, *not* comprehensible. That is its power. It is absurd; it has no being; it is not willed by God; it is not meaningful. It is ugly, negation, anti-meaning. If there were something of it that *were* comprehensible, something of it would be good and thus created by God. But it isn’t.
You may simply be pressing me on the question of whether we can talk about evil; or whether human beings engaged in evil can be analyzed; or whether I’m saying that theological speech just turns to silence at the sight of evil. I think we can talk of evil, that humans doing evil can be analyzed, that theology has things to say about evil. If that makes it sound like I’m saying contradictory things, we might have to stop there and save this for a face-to-face conversation!
(P.S. Isn’t that line about original sin from Chesterton?)
I’ve never been able to go all the way with the evil as negation argument, and I think you name why here. If evil is negation it is therefore meaningless or, in your words, “anti-meaning.” This I can not make sense of. Evil is evil because of what it does to human beings. Human evil, then, is relational. And relations, it seem to me, have meaning simply by being relations. Human evil, then, must be meaningful. Otherwise, like you name, “despair really would be the most fitting response to the world as it in fact is.”
Thanks for giving me so much more to think through. I’m sure we will talk about this again when we get to see each other face-to-face again.
(That line very well be from Chesterton. I first heard it from Niebuhr, but am sure he didn’t come up with it.)