Fort Hood
As I fell asleep last night I found myself dreading something: a week of coverage of the shootings at Forth Hood and What It All Means. Now, just to be clear up top, this is an unimaginable tragedy for the families and the community who lost loved ones yesterday. It’s a horrible tragedy for our armed forces, as the president said, to lose life in such a senseless way — so much worse than in battle, where at least one’s sacrifice might be for the greater good.
That said, I find myself entirely in agreement with James Fallows:
In the saturation coverage right after the events, the “expert” talking heads are compelled to offer theories about the causes and consequences. In the following days and weeks, newspapers and magazine will have their theories too. Looking back, we can see that all such efforts are futile. The shootings never mean anything. Forty years later, what did the Charles Whitman massacre “mean”? A decade later, do we “know” anything about Columbine? There is chaos and evil in life. Some people go crazy. In America, they do so with guns; in many countries, with knives; in Japan, sometimes poison.
We know the emptiness of these events in retrospect, though we suppress that knowledge when the violence erupts as it is doing now. The cable-news platoons tonight are offering all their theories and thought-drops. They’ve got to fill time. I wish they could stop. As the Vietnam-era saying went, Don’t mean nothing.
RIP.
For all the progress of psychological science, do we really have any more satisfying answer?: Sometime people go crazy and do horrible things. Stress can be a factor. Narcissism seems to be a factor in some cases. Exposure to other violent acts can be a factor. Ideology can be a factor.
And it’s that last one that will get all the attention this time around. Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan is a Muslim and apparently a devout one. He’s expressed sympathy with suicide bombers, and his crime may well have been intended, to some extent, in solidarity with the cause of terrorists overseas. But will this mean Islam is to blame? While I’m not of the politically correct opinion that Islam has no connection to violence — in the modern world, extremist Islam is clearly used to justify an astonishing amount of violence, far more than any other modern religion — it’s also true that any insane, violent person can wrap up his or her crimes in the banner of religion. In fact, I think it’s probably the case that extreme religiosity is a symptom of the same underlying problem that leads to the violence — one isn’t violent because he or she is religious (okay, it’s almost always a he), one is religious because he is crazy and violent because he is crazy.
To be clear, when I say “religious,” I mean fanatically or obsessively religious. An abortion-doctor assassin is probably religious. He will wrap his crime in the pages of the Bible. But his fixation on religion and abortion, in the first place, is a sign of a deeper psychological problem. The religion is used to justify the murder; but the need for the religious fixation itself has an underlying cause.
But, then, here we go again looking for meaning. The most that can be said is that Hasan’s extremist statements should have been a sign that he was a danger; but we don’t know enough yet about why they weren’t treated as such.
Also: This will be one of the only cases where a mass shooter has survived, allowing us to ask him questions after the fact. So, for all our speculating, the actual person in question may someday weigh in.
UPDATE: And we have another mass shooting. It seems like this often happens, but that could easily be my availability bias at work.
UPDATE II: Ridiculous error in title and body of post (shooting at Fort Hood, not in Fort Worth) corrected.
Post Your Comment
You must be logged in to post a comment
T/S Members
Log in with your True/Slant account.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by ryansager, slone. slone said: What we know about what causes mass killings? Just about zero: http://bit.ly/4azFlx [...]
Mr. Sager,
I have to disagree with you on this one. There is “meaning” in this event, albeit a cold and clinical one. It is another piece of data in a scientific experiment. In some societies solitary men periodically, generally 20 – 40 years of age, go on murderous rampages with little or no advance warning. The attacker often dies, commonly by his own hand. In Malay societies it is called “amok” but it is know elsewhere as “mal de pelea” or “cafard” and various other names. The outburst usually has a proximate cause as a perceived slight or insult and the individual usually in a major life change, not uncommonly a loss in social status. This is one a number of “culture bound syndromes” that are found in one society but not another.
The role of military service and post-traumatic stress syndrome of course does probably only worsen this tendency.
So this is something that can be understood and has meaning, if we can learn from it and try to prevent it from happening again. That is the hard part.
I would like to think Davidlosangles has it right. One would like to think that is would be an opportunity for national dialog about our society or effects of religious belief or stress, but it will not be so…we are in store for endless confusing monologues.
The hand-wringing and profiles of the victims start up once again. It’s all sadly predictable, including the “unpredictable” violence. Look at this culture and wonder why it’s such a shock.
[...] Sager is right when he writes: “Don’t Look for Meaning in Fort Hood Violence.” Senseless killings in this country that loves its guns usually have no [...]
Exactly Ryan and glad you said it, sometimes people just fall over the edge.
“In fact, I think it’s probably the case that extreme religiosity is a symptom of the same underlying problem that leads to the violence — one isn’t violent because he or she is religious (okay, it’s almost always a he), one is religious because he is crazy and violent because he is crazy.”
I believe Sam Harris talks about belief and the types of behavior that belief can lead one to. I can’t remember if it was Harris or Steven Pinker that said some failed murderers and suicide bombers who were later apprehended appeared to be otherwise normal and intelligent men. They were driven to do what they failed at because of religious belief.
So, I think it’s a little bit of both. Some crazies use religion as an excuse, and some act violently because of what they believe.
I am glad, however, that there is some commentary on this event that doesn’t involve emotional prodding and confusion. “Oh my, the shooter turned out to be a Muslim. Oh my, the shooter was an Army psychiatrist.”
Erich Fromm study Hitler and looking at his father being a civil servant and a beekeeper, such nice pursuits, decided that you just can’t predict evil–evil just happens. But Alice Miller, the noted Swiss psychoanalyst, went back and more carefully studied things and found that the father mercilessly beat young Adolph into psychosis, which Adolph flatly documents in Mein Kampf–his “iron will”. The civil service job was an opportunity for the strutting martinet of a father to demand the highest level of address while returning the lowest. The bee hives were a model for Adolph’s slave colonies.
Underlying Hitler’s political success, far from randomness or “the nature of Germanic peoples”, were the facts that many Germans shared the experience of poisonous pedagogy, the fact of oppressive war reparations from WWI. Finally, Miller points out that 80% of the top Nazis were the sons of Protestant ministers.
Evil *doesn’t* “just happen.”
More recently, the findings about Columbine are absolutely conclusive that bullying is always a major component in these sorts of rampages. Schools across the country now have excellent anti-bullying programs.
Evil *doesn’t* “just happen.”
The psychologists who studied Columbine and the school districts that responded to the findings are owed a big debt of gratitude. I appreciate that people will try to understand the Ft. Hood incident and point to the reasons this intelligent man went amok.
Don’t people ever get tired of bringing up Hitler on the net?
In response to another comment. See in context »Oh, come on, Bryan. Bullying was present in Hitler’s evil, in Columbine, in Ft. Hood. If you look closely at violent people you will always find that bullying in its broadest definition was afoot. We still need to understand the lesson that was Hitler. Why? Hasan, had he had a cultural context, could have repeated Hitler’s history, given the humiliation of the Palestinian/Muslim people coupled with an often-authoritarian misinterpretation of the Qoran. Are we incubating an Islamic Hitler? You bet we are. The time for understanding is nigh.
In response to another comment. See in context »And, yes, superficial invocations of Hitler’s name are irritating, if not obscene. I mean, he was a vegetarian and loved his dog, afterall.
BTW, Bryan, I hope your health problems are improving.
It’s Brian, not Bryan.
In response to another comment. See in context »You aren’t in NIC?
In response to another comment. See in context »