Standing together in the awful light of day

Within hours of news of the masacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newton, Connecticut, discussions on my Facebook feed moved from expressions of shock to debates over "prescriptive" solutions. It seems as if, maybe, the sadness is too much to bear, and so we quickly want to "do something" to "fix" the problem through increased (or decreased, depending on which side of the debate you're on) gun control and better funding for mental health care. But mourn we must, and I believe that only through the process of really feeling our way through this tragedy--no shortcuts--can we arrive at real solutions that work. We need to lean into the pain. When we do that, we might find that there's more of it than we realized; we might also find hope.

So let's readjust the scope of the issue. Let's open it up and look at the bigger picture.

Whenever disasters like this strike, talk also shifts to a so-called “culture of violence,” which is often regarded (here in America) as a distinctly American problem. Sometimes blame is laid at the feet of so-called “violent” video games and movies. It’s an easy claim to make. But I don’t buy it. First of all, “violent” video games are just a fancy version of cops and robbers/cowboys and Indians—games boys have been playing since, like, forever. And if you think violent movies are scary, try snuggling up to your kids with some of the original works of the Brothers Grimm.

Let’s face it: murder and aggression have been a part of our psyche for at least as long as we have had psyches.

And is the problem even uniquely American? 

For as long as I can remember (i.e., long before there were video games), Africa has been disintegrating into a patchwork of bloodthirsty thugocracies. And the Middle East? Violence from terrorism is so common that it’s easier to describe those areas as living in a culture of fear—something we really can’t relate to in this country. Likewise, Europe (Eastern and Western) and Asia are no strangers to random acts of violence.

True, in some parts of the world, mass killing can be ostensibly explained by politics (geo and local), but post-colonial tensions and class resentments make violence no more or less sensible than does mental illness or relative access to weapons. Our so-called “culture of violence” is linked neither to our era nor to our particular patch on this globe. (And if you still think acts of mass killings are a “gun control” problem, Google “Rwanda” + “genocide.”)

The fact is, globally and nationally, we’ve seen less violence over the last century. War is actually on the decline and the murder rate is also stable, if not on the decline. As a civilization, we’ve shifted away from settling disputes with our fists. Any second grader will tell you that we use our words to settle conflicts; there's never been a better time to become a lawyer.

As a result, part of what makes the Sandy Hook Elementary killing spree so terrible is that it stands in stark relief against a world where non-violence is increasingly the norm. Looking at it another way, when you consider that just a century ago, women in the U.S. bore something like twice as many kids than they could feed, knowing that half wouldn't survive to adulthood, the expectation that every child will indeed live is a huge paradigm shift.

As it happens, this rampage occurred in a picturebook-quaint New England town that hadn’t witnessed a single murder in ten years. But isn’t that usually the case? Ever notice how suicidal killers tend to pick venues where innocence and complacency reign—where we literally let our guards down? Gun free campuses (Virginia Tech), high schools (Columbine, Colo.), theaters (Aurora, Colo.), shopping malls during Christmas season (Clackamas Town Center, Ore.)—even a military base which, ironically, enough, is a gun-free zone (Fort Lewis, Wash.).

I think it's safe to say that these killers were all trying to say something--something they couldn't express in words, but only with guns. Maybe it's a good idea to listen to what they're saying. 

Here’s the ugly truth about suicide: it’s the ultimate Fuck You—to one’s parents, community, friends, etc. When it’s performed on a grand scale, as with a killing spree-suicide, it’s a very loud Fuck You to something bigger—a system, a certain status quo, society itself. Think of it as the Imp of the Perverse gone horribly bad.

Maybe it’s the status quo we need to look at. Because the real evil in our world has nothing to do with video games or the over-availability of M16s and Paxil. The real evil, the cancer we fight, is the status quo and its main side-effect: complacency.

Such a conclusion corroborates what people have been saying on Facebook and the nightly news, that the Sandy Hook disaster is indeed a wake-up call. But maybe it's not exactly the one we’ve been expecting. Here's what I mean:

We fight and are even willing to die for peace. But once we get it, we tend to take it for granted. As if after 10 zillion years of animal carnivory, our upright posture magically grants us the right to disassociate ourselves from the very real fact that every time we look in the mirror and smile, we see a gleaming pair of cuspids (aka canine teeth), perfectly evolved to rip flesh from bone. As if the decision to go vegetarian or vegan can purge from our limbic system the carnal knowledge that we are not just animals—but specifically human animals.

Too often, when confronted by our animal nature (on Disney Channel documentaries, AM political talk radio, the CBS evening news), we cross the street, as it were, and look the other way: we shall have nothing to do with it. That is delusional thinking, aka insanity.

Normalcy itself can be addictive. As David Bedrick wrote the other day for Psychology Today,

The forces of denial, of a kind of collective amnesia, urge us to keep ourselves “looking happy” rather than show our pain, suffering, anger, and rage. We have become so invested in revealing only a narrow range of upbeat expressions that we don’t notice the signs of violence, depression, stress, and distress behind the happy demeanor. We are so accustomed to people telling us they’re “fine” that we no longer trust the feelings that arise when things are not “fine.” In other words, we no longer trust our distrust.

When we “other” terrorists and spree killers, we disconnect ourselves from the part of them that is actually in us. That cost is huge. It enables our complicity in slave labor when we buy third-world-manufactured polo shirts from megastores; animal abuse when we drive thru McDonald’s; sex trafficking when we click on our favorite Russian coed porn site. I’m not saying this to judge you or me (thank God), but to say, rather, that we're more connected to Adam Lanza than we’d like to believe.

It’s easy—and preferable—to believe that we are somehow more sophisticated than the mass murderers who go crazy from time to time. When bad things happen, we might say of the perpetrator, “There but for the grace of my superior upbringing/better education/skillfully managed antidepressant regimen go I.”

But if that’s the case, isn’t the opposite true, too? Shouldn’t we cast a glance at the Dalai Lama, or Anne Hathaway and also say, “There but for the grace of God go I?”

In other words, the truth is, when we look at all people in all of their good and bad traits and fucked up glory, we should simply say, “There go I.” No exceptions. Because when we do that and really mean it, we join the human race. And we’re more likely to greet our neighbors and look deep into their eyes and be their friends, even if their hair is oddly-textured or their cooking smells funny.

By embracing the animal and carnal that resides within ourselves, we become more fully alive, more fully human. We will see ourselves in those who struggle with their dark side too. Like a kind of dark "gaydar" their pain will echo with ours and we will know them as ourselves.  Maybe we'll even love them as ourselves. If our timing is right and luck and grace are on our side, we can help them to put down their guns and stand up and hold hands with us, blinking away our tears in the awful light of day.