II — The Critical Juncture: An Indifference to Spiritual Interiority
Indifference or reconciliation. The choice is ours to make.
Yet, such choices are often perplexing, ranging as they do through the murky depths of the human psyche. They easily befuddle the most astute observer and tend to dishearten those inclined to reconcile.
But apart from presenting confusion and discouragement, what makes an understanding of this choice so difficult is the use of the term indifference. To most, indifference implies a moral deficiency relative to another person, such as a want of concern or caring for them.
Not surprisingly, most parents would deny any such assertion. Few would admit they are indifferent toward their children. Most parents have strong feelings of love for them and this love is a powerful testimony against any allegation of indifference. Given this, it would seem that the disjunctive proposition — indifference or reconciliation — holds little, or no, promise for deepening our understanding of the causal dynamics of youth violence.
But before dismissing the term indifference altogether, it is well to remember that it has a logical meaning which transcends the moral sensibility and commitment to caring.
As noted already, Columbine has unmasked in the lives of youth a dark and seemingly impenetrable landscape dotted with signs of danger. A few years back, TIME magazine alluded to this predicament in a cover story entitled the “secret lives of youth.” As most have since come to know, this secret life involves a volatility in the lives of some youth and the unpredictability they present summons forth in us a nagging, even free-floating, fear of what they might do. To alleviate this fear by preventing youth violence is the challenge.
But to remain content with a national prevention strategy that merely observes these material conditions and circumstances, then calculates the assorted risk factors correlated to them, and lastly makes public the primary warning signs of violent behavior has not proven to be very helpful. The reason for this is clear: it is only a first step of knowing. It does not even begin the hard work of understanding. What remains to be explained beyond the accumulation of scientific correlations is why these behavioral dynamics exist in the first place. What efficiency or root cause brings about violent behavior?
It is with this question, “why violent behavior?”, that we arrive at the critical juncture in our inquiry. It is here where the failure to understand youth violence has its origins. For rather than engaging the underlying truth of the evidence perceived, we assume a posture of intellectual indifference and detachment toward it. We refuse to go beyond a mere description of the active display of our perceptions. We fail to see manifested through them a causal origin situated within the intrinsic dynamics of the human person.
It is as though the brute facts of perception are self-explanatory, that no spiritual accounting of experience is necessary. It is as though the material conditions and circumstances we perceive are not indicative of an interior life situated within the person. It is as though perceptions are mere atomistic units and their interactions are of a purely mechanical nature.
It is this mechanistic presumption – a presumption born of an indifference to the causal relevance of spiritual interiority — that shapes and colors our understanding of youth violence.
How odd it is that very little is commonly accepted about youth violence beyond the false assumption that it is equated with violent behavior. But make no mistake about it. There exists here no tautology. Youth violence embodies a more profound reality than that contained in an objective display of violent behavior.
To equate youth violence with violent behavior is to deny violent acts an intrinsic origin in the structures and dynamics of the human person. It is to be disengaged, distant from the inner life of youth. It is to say that youth violence has no formal structure, that it has no causal dimension, that it has no intrinsic dynamic, that it reflects no intrinsic purpose. It is to say that behavior is just an unmixed activity, something strangely sterile and cold, distant from its origins, existentially destitute, devoid of spiritual content and freedom, and thoroughly depersonalized. It is to say that youth violence is simply bad behavior, that it should not be tolerated, and that it should be severely punished. It is to say: that’s the end of it! There is no more to be known … or said … or done.
All this should cause concern. But there is more. The reduction of youth violence to violent behavior posits a practical assumption about the intrinsic nature of the person. In any mechanistic scheme, the person is reduced to a kind of empty vessel whose sole function is to serve as a methodologically determined locus for the interaction of discrete social and economic forces.
The practical implication of this slight of hand is that the observed associations of material forces are judged to be the actual causes of human behavior. The spiritual dynamics that are intrinsic to, and flow from, the person are assumed to have no impact whatsoever on the life of violent youth, or any other human behavior for that matter. Indeed, the existence of these spiritual dynamics is not even acknowledged.
This logical indifference constitutes a radical form of methodological reductionism, pure and simple. It denies that human behavior flows from matters concerning personal dignity, freedom, and transcendent purpose. It fails to grant that behavior has any relevance whatsoever to quality relations, including those of love, compassion, understanding, and mercy. Instead, human behavior has been reduced to a barren reality, a reality akin to the interaction of balls on a billiard table. In such a scheme, personal behavior is nothing more than a function of matter in motion.
Given this methodological context, there is no possibility for creating a national prevention strategy that can alleviate the incidence of youth violence.
Tomorrow: Part III
Dear Mr. Campbell,
I have read Parts I & II. I have read some paragraphs several times. What you have written so far is waffle. Please say something crisp and to the point in Part III.
Gerald,
Excellent introductory remarks and early groundwork!
Brian,
I’m sorry for the difficulty you are having.
First let me set aside two things: 1) spirituality cannot be “crisp;” and 2) I am not waffling.
Quite the contrary. I am developing the argument that we fail to understand and reduce the incidence of dysfunctional behavior precisely because the root cause of those behaviors stands outside the methodology we are using to develop our strategies. For more than four decades, we have failed in our effort to control behavior in America. I’m trying to explain at the deepest philosophical level why we have failed.
So this essay is a philosophical critique of the prevailing understanding of youth violence — and by implication, other forms of dysfunctional behavior –insofar as it is rooted in the social science tradition. There are many conflicting ideas at work here, representing such diverse thinkers as Thomas Aquinas and David Hume. To get a sense of immediacy, I have used imagery to encapsulate the logic, emotions, and fears that surround the issue. There is much here and it is simply presented, given the scope and depth of the subject matter. Part of the difficulty is that it is so simple.
What specifically don’t you understand? Perhaps I can help a bit. I am willing to do so.
Mark,
Thanks. I realize, as Brian has said, this is very difficult sledding. Part of the reason is because what I say is totally counterintuitive. We have a penchant for social science in the U.S. This is part of our strength but it is also our weakness.
I’m trying to break away, not only from Cartesian dualism, but the materialism of David Hume. Social science methodology flows out of the Humean tradition.
Somehow we must return spirituality to our secular society. But we must do so without subtracting the gains that the scientific tradition have given us. To reconcile this split is, at least to me, the central challenge faced by Catholics in America.
Spirituality must become embedded in our “age,” or culture. When addressing issues, It is no longer sufficient to speak as though we were engaged in a mere contest of ideas. Those days are long gone. Today, we have the additional need to impact the culture and enrich it with new forms. Until we can succeed here, we will have no hope of addressing threats to health status that come from behavior. These threats, including homelessness, gangs, substance abuse, youth violence, teen pregnancy, divorce, and abortion, are spiritual at the core. Yet, the methodology we use to address them flows out of a tradition that reduces everything to matter in motion. Thus the need for reconciliation which is the underlying theme of my presentation.
I have tried to make this as simple and succinct as possible, hoping it will lead to careful input from others.
Gerald
The problem is that people often simple answers, because then they can easily find something to take apart. “Be short and simple, and get to the point” usually means “get to something I can easily refute.” And if they don’t get that, they still tend to latch on to one or two words, out of context, universalize something which was meant to be holistic, and label you a heretic, when the problem is not the writer, but the unholistic approach to their words.
Dear Mr. Cambell,
Thank you for your patient response to my somewhat curt comment.
“Waffle” was not a good word to use, since it implies that a person does not know what they are talking about and my impression was that you do. What I was reacting against was the style of paragraphs like:
“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.” That is very “un-crisp” your reply to me, on the other hand, was “to the point”.
I would have expected more of the latter and less of the former in an article aimed at a lay audience. Or did I wander into a corner of cyberspace where I have no business ..?
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