It happened ten years ago today.
At 11:10 a.m. on Tuesday, April 20th, 1999, gunshots rang out from Columbine High School killing twelve students, a teacher, and both assailants. This act reverberated across the land like a mighty thunderclap. It sounded a terror-laden warning. It awakened in countless individuals, families, and communities a truth forgotten, a vulnerability denied, and an anguish concealed. Time stopped as hearts and minds resonated with the harsh moments of that mournful event.
No doubt. Columbine sent tremors of fear across the nation. Like a peaceful sunlit meadow suddenly overrun by a raging mountain storm, the tranquility of trust was replaced by the wrenching uncertainty of distrust. Existential angst seeped into our national consciousness. We asked with uncertain expectation what dreadful journey led Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold to tear the social fabric and tear it so hideously. We became fearful of what was going on in our own neighborhoods, in our own families, and with our own children. We became suspicious of our children’s actions and our children’s friends. We became frightful of the tribute that might accompany their attendance at school. We wondered about our children’s exposure and our powerlessness to intercede on their behalf. We worried about the unknown and the brutal forces that range beyond our control. We asked “what next?” as we braced ourselves for another round of violence.
I – We Remain Clueless
And yet — despite the shock, despite the fears, despite the soul-searching, despite the speeches and reports, and despite the many years since – we as a nation remain clueless as to why so much violence continues to happen among our youth. We never seem to get close to the source of the problem. We never seem to comprehend it. We never seem to truly empathize. We seem unable to journey into unfamiliar territory. We remain concerned yet disengaged, hopeful yet fearful, acting yet standing still. For ten years, we have been “running to nowhere.”
Especially, we find ourselves at a loss to prevent it. To be sure, preventive action is hashed out every so often in our executive and legislative bodies, in the press, in speeches, at town meetings, and at the dinner table. It has become a staple of conversation. Occasionally, some sort of remedial action is implemented with much hoopla. But, as Nathaniel Hawthorne might say, all this discourse and activity reflects weak, nerveless suggestions devoid of energy and promptitude. We must do better — if we have ambition enough to succeed.
And succeed we must. For across the nation, there is a chronic awareness of sudden, unpredictable dangers intertwined in the common lives of youth. These dangers stem not from risks ordinarily associated with growing to maturity, risks such as illness and disease, injury and accidental death. Today’s foreboding is of a different nature. It stems from the awareness of an undercurrent of existential turbulence in the lives of anonymous individuals, an unseen convulsive force that can easily be provoked to wreak havoc. More than anything, the unmasked secret of Columbine is a preconscious, anxious-ridden, apprehension of the growing willingness of alienated individuals to rage against others and to visit upon them emotional trauma, injury, and even death.
Yes, a specter of violence hovers over America’s youth. It is real. So are our fears. But how do we reconcile a will to violence at once so menacing yet hidden in the shadows? How do we confront the vagaries of personal behavior and the ominous rumblings of uncertain danger concealed deeply in the darkest recesses of the soul. But most of all, what do we do with our fears? Should we allow indifference to make them languid and weak, like dull narcotics numbing pain? Or should we allow their energies to be transmuted into a caring spirit whose healing warmth can reconcile the deadly passions we fear. Can we make of our fears a vital force for good?
Numbing indifference or a dynamic of reconciliation. The choice is ours to make.
Tomorrow: II – The Critical Juncture: An Indifference to Spiritual Interiority
In my humble opinion,
There are two things that can help us understand Columbine.
The first is that high-school as it exists in America today is a four-year holding tank for young men and women who have reached what in earlier times would be adulthood. It is the hormonal equivalent of a particle accelerator. At the age Dylan was, he should have been on a career track, either towards one of the various departments of the college level (humanities, liberal arts, etc.) or towards a trade of some kind.
Instead our educational romanticism leaves it almost entirely up to the kids or their over-bearing parents, disregarding what society and the common good might benefit from. “What do you want to be, junior” eventually translates into, “you’re on your own, figure out what you want to do, we can’t help you.” We live in a society where many structures are disintegrating. Any kid facing those realities is going to have an existential moment. And that moment for some is going to become a month, a year, a lifetime.
The other thing we must consider is that Eric Harris was a psychopath. And society cannot guard against the machinations of every psychopath. Serial killers have existed throughout history. All we can do is draw the line and try to catch them as early as we can. But we can’t create a “psychopath free” society.
We can prevent the Dylans or make them less likely by restoring sanity to education and parenting. We can only pray that there are fewer Erics and stop them before the damage they do becomes too great.
Joe,
Just as there will always be psychopaths, so there will always be the poor. The question is why. What makes them such. And if a cultural influence helps generate psychopaths, it is not useful to say “but there always will be psychopaths.” Just look at the situation in the Holy Land. Because of the way the Palestinian people are treated, being put in a tight, closed space, feeling caged up, et. al., the reaction which comes out of it, while still wrong, is nonetheless sociologically explainable. The same, I think, with a lot of psychopaths and their rise in today’s society. We are losing ourselves as a society and causing conditions which generate them.
Henry,
Poverty and psychopathy are not comparable. They’re apples and oranges. Poverty is often the result of structural problems in the economy and the culture at large.
Not even the Palestinian suicide attacks can be classified as psychopathic.
I hope that it is understood that by “psychopathy”, neither I nor the psychiatrists who have defined it understand it to be an actual disorder – to be a psychopath is not to be psychotic. Psychoses of various types might be managed through medication.
Psychopathy is an absolute disregard for morality. The wiki definition is as good as any other:
“The psychopath is defined by a psychological gratification in criminal, sexual, or aggressive impulses and the inability to learn from past mistakes. Individuals with this disorder gain satisfaction through their antisocial behavior and lack remorse for their actions.”
Since we cannot create a perfect society, we cannot prevent anti-social tendencies from arising in all persons. Psychopathy is not a genetic disorder, it is simply the condition of not caring about morality, of removing all restraints on the selfish impulses inherent in each of us.
I want to reiterate my previous post: I said I believed that kids like Dylan Klebold can be helped. Society DOES produce the Dylans. Dylan was not a psychopath. Eric, though, certainly was. Anyone who reads what he wrote, who heard his phony apologies and his later snickering at the fools who bought into them, his contempt for the vast majority of the human race, his ego and vanity, would understand this. He willfully chose evil.
Not everything in the universe is reducible to social and material cause and effect.
Joe
Saying that social and material causes have a role in the creation of psychopaths is not saying that is all that is involved. However, to deny such roles can also be reductionistic, to make it as if there is nothing explainable about the situation. However, there is something which causes it, and when you see (as you do with other animals) that such behavior is more common when caged than when not, it is clear it has an impact
Henry,
Animals are incapable of psychopathy. At best a human sociopath resembles an animal in that he is unable to think about moral implications.
But a psychopath takes delight in violating social norms and morals. It would be an insult to animals to compare them to psychopaths.
Psychopathy is a function of our God-given free will to choose evil over good.
Until the last episode of South Park, I’d say Eric Cartman is the classic psychopath (in the last episode they tried to explain his behavior with a different theory which I think diminished the character).
Joe
I think you are looking at the human unholistically, and even gnostically, if you do not think the material affects the spiritual (and vice versa). The two are together as one, and so when there is a breakdown in the material, there will be a breakdown with the spiritual. This is why the body is important, and what happens to the body will affect what happens to the spirit. We are animals, and the physical, animal side still exists within us, and it can and will break forth more when the spirit itself is broken, and the spirit can be broken through the body.
Henry,
I don’t know how many times I have to say it: I do believe that there are many, many problems which are the result of societal decay.
I think that for every Eric Harris there are 10 or 100 Dylan Klebolds, whose tragedy is that family, society, and even religion failed them.
But we DO have free will and we ARE capable of operating independently of material sub-structures. I say we are capable. We are born not with angelic intellects but with a fallen nature. At the same time, sainthood is a possibility for all men. If we were to adopt a purely structuralist worldview, we would have to rule out sainthood a priori in a fallen world.
Eric Harris and others like him, and I know this isn’t very popular to say, behave like demons. They are the opposite image of our potential sainthood. They are the Marquis De Sades of history. Instead of striving consciously for perfection in the virtues, the emulation of Christ, they strive to emulate Satan, whether they know it or not.
Between these extremes are many confused and lost souls that have been malformed by structures of sin, by, as you say, a breakdown in the physical. Societal decay has material and historical causes which can and should be addressed.
So I don’t think I am gnostic at all in recognizing that humans CAN transcend material limitations in either direction. In our day and age, though, we only want to take full credit for the good and no credit for the bad.
How often do we see great achievements reduced to material circumstances? We say it is genius, we say it is an exercise of values and virtues. No one tries to explain Mother Teresa’s life work as a function of her environment. But our natural abhorrence to the evil that dwells within us all leads us sometimes into the error that we can “fix” man by “fixing” his conditions.
If recognizing this error is gnosticism, then Pope Benedict too is a Gnostic, as is JP II, and probably every other Pope. Fighting the structures of sin means making it easier to practice virtue, not making it possible.
Joe
That does not answer my point about psychopaths. My point is that we do see their rise in the midst of different cultural and political envirnoments. There is a correlation of the two. And in this way, we can see the material world having an effect and helping generate the spiritual decay that leads to the development of psychopaths. I did not say we could eliminate them all; my point is we can and so find their rise as something which is more than just some chaotic event without cause.
“My point is that we do see their rise in the midst of different cultural and political envirnoments.”
I’ll assume that is accurate for the sake of argument.
We still have to understand that correlation is not the same as cause, and to be on the look out for spurious relationships.
For instance, I don’t think that environmental decay “develops” psychopaths – it simply gives them more validation and encouragement.
I would also take issue with the idea that a free exercise of will to evil – which is all I have said psychopathy is – is something “chaotic”. It only sounds like a non-explanation, a non-cause, if one has a hard time accepting that free will and evil are realities.
In other words, the cause is us, the cause is in our nature as fully conscious beings with the freedom to choose. It is the spark of the divine in us that is the cause – some angels followed God, others rebelled. We share a nature with these spiritual beings in that we too have a spirit!
Psychopaths transcend their social, cultural, and educational limitations in the complete opposite direction as ascetic monks and saints. If evildoers had an inverse “sainthood”, it would be a collection of textbook psychopaths.
If there is any hesitation to accept this simply because you think it detracts form finding a realistic solution to social problems, it is unwarranted. Psychopaths, like saints, are a very small percentage of the population (one percent). Eric Harris happened to be one of them.
[...] Part I [...]
[...] Part IV Part I Part [...]