Tuesday, May 27, 2014

The External Causes Of The Santa Barbara Tragedy

When I learned of the Friday night events in Santa Barbara and was told the killer left a video and "manifesto" of sorts for all to see, I thought well that's enough data for me to apply one of my stronger talents, psychological analysis.

I watched the video and cringed.  Then I read the "manifesto" and started to make notes of the things I thought may reveal where this young man was coming from.  I wasn't far into the notes before I began to notice some patterns.  For example he was an extremely strong willed child.  Kudos to his parents for the fact that they ever managed to deny him his way at times.

I also began to catch myself.  I realized that as the good person I perceive myself to be I couldn't just lay out my psychological analysis without any redaction.  This after all is a real person with a real family, not a fictional character or just some logical argument to be critiqued.  I also decided not to use any names in this for a number of good reasons.

What I decided to do was to concentrate on the external influences that I think pushed this young man to become a killer.  And I will note here that I think he has to be the one we consider ultimately responsible.  In concentrating on the influences on him that I call 'external' I am not giving him an excuse for his actions, but only addressing the question we always seem to ask when things like this happen; What could have been done differently to have possibly prevented this?

Again, I am redacting from my analysis anything a time traveler might want to have told his parents about how they could have raised him differently to have avoided this.  In the absence of time travel it would just be 20 20 hindsight and thus little more than cruel.  I will only say this much.  It is clear that his parents demonstrated great care in raising him and that he loved them both.  Any human being could not ask for much more than that from parents.

I'm also not going to make readers wade through all of the rest of my analysis either.  Instead i'm going to summarize the parts that most interest me and I hope by extension also most interest my readers.

In my analysis informed and still humble opinion I believe there were two major external forces that played on his strong will in such a way as to culminate in Friday's tragedy.

The first major external force was one of collectivism's most ugly faces, the tendency of those insecure in their own belonging to pick on those they see as weird.  After the Columbine murders, schools around the country decided they needed to be on the lookout for loners, and they were horribly misguided.  The problem with loners is not that there are loners, but in how loners are perceived, as dysfunctional.  School officials going out of their way to try and integrate loners just further cements the idea that the loners are "losers" who can only stop being "losers" by no longer being loners.

I mention the misguided school officials here because it shows how even adults who think they're helping are really just as lost in the mistaken perception.  It's a huge problem on secondary education school grounds.

And in this young man's case, a group of girls teased him relentlessly for being weird.  now combine this with him being a very strong willed boy just starting to be sexually aware and actually desiring the affections of a girl, and his hatred and resentment follows predictably.

That alone, as disturbing as it was, was not enough to make a killer or even a violent person out of him.  There was something else that combined with this to make it possible.

And here is where I must warn my readers that I'm about to take what they may think is a ridiculous leap.  But I assure you that as a writer of fiction who takes my art seriously, I am being very serious here.

Anakin Skywalker's transformation into Darth Vader in Star Wars III, which has been widely seen by critics as poorly done, I think had a huge impact on this young man.  He says as much himself in his manifesto though he doesn't make quite the connection I do.  If he had, we might not have this tragedy to talk about right now.

The poorly carried off and thus highly implausible transformation of Anakin Skywalker into Darth Vader in Star Wars III grabbed this young man's attention when he was a young teen.  This is frightening and should be a very sobering reminder that story telling does have an impact on reality.  

Perhaps if Star Wars III had done a better job of explaining how a character could so radically turn from a hero into a heartless killer of children, just perhaps this tragedy in Santa Barbara might not have happened.  And I don't think that twice is too many times to try and make that point.

At the time that I saw Star Wars II and III, I was very taken myself by how Anakin's love for the princess was not just on an epic scale but so out of proportion to his responsibilities to his fellow beings as to be sociopathic.  I guess for the writers of those movies this was their ticket to the evil transformation they needed to happen, but as I saw it they had missed that they made Anakin an evil sociopath from the moment he fell in love if not sooner.  A seemingly minor mistake until three real people get stabbed to death, three others  get shot to death, and several others injured by gun and car.  

Fiction matters, it really does.  Writers learn that a character's sexual love can be a convenient way to get them to do what their base character would normally not allow them to, but we writers must be careful.  Our writing is potentially even more dangerous than blades or guns.  

If we posit that the love of a woman can cause an otherwise good guy to become evil we are potentially saying that seeking or failing to obtain such can justify horrible acts.  Especially if we have already established that the character who so turns is later redeemed as in Star Wars VI, thus confirming that the character did in fact start out as good.

The reality of this, as strange as it seems to use reality and Star Wars in the same sentence, is that the character of Anakin Skywalker was evil even before he fell in love, at least as the movie presents the evidence to us.  If he were not already evil then his love for the princess would never have reached sociopathic disproportion without him noticing.  And while it is understandable that real teenagers in real life may not be quick to notice such things in themselves, fiction should not be so indistinct.

I am not saying that fiction writers need to concern themselves with people who jump off buildings because Superman can fly or who shoot up schools because some fictional character is trigger happy.  These are people who are already bent to do the sorts of things they do and the fiction just happens along.  A bird or a real shoot out would have eventually inspired these sorts of people to the same ends if the fictional works hadn't come along sooner, and the fictional works are no more responsible than birds or press reports of crimes. 

But this case in Santa Barbara is different than those.  Here a piece of fiction tells us that a good person can become evil because he is threatened with the loss of access to a woman's love.  It should be a ridiculous idea on its face but it was passed off as otherwise.  Unlike Superman's powers which are clearly unreal, this idea that good people can become killers because they may not get the attentions of the opposite sex is too easily perceived as real, perhaps even too commonly.  This isn't someone who was already challenged in his perception of what is and isn't real.  This young man knew he couldn't fly and that killing people has real significant consequence.  He saw his father mourn his grandfather and was moved by it.  But what he didn't know, and I think we'd find that shockingly many don't, is that whether or not you can get any doesn't outweigh the importance of other people, their lives, and dignity.  This young man acted out what far too many people think, largely due to poorly thought out fiction.

This was a young man who didn't need to be a sociopath but ultimately became one.  But if he had lived through this and found himself in the company of other sociopaths, I really believe he would have fit in with them even less than he thought he did with everyone else.  Because unlike them he knew right from wrong, at least the right and wrong he was taught.  Star Wars III may not have singularly pushed him over the edge to becoming a sociopath but its irresponsible writing greatly reinforced a general contemporary wrong attitude towards sex in our society.  And combine that with the collectivist tendencies in school cultures that pick on loners, and we have the external causes of this tragedy pretty well summed up.

I only hope we can look past all the tools he used to see what really enabled him to do this. 

Tuesday, May 20, 2014

The Historical Context Of Now

Somewhere around the year 29 AD a teacher said to his students, "You do not realize now what I am doing, but later you will understand".  And those words amongst many others of his were recorded and passed on through to this day, first in Greek and later in most all other languages.

These words in particular seem almost like something the character Captain Obvious might say.  Doesn't our understanding of things we see in a moment in time get better as we have time to think about it and combine it with other things that happened around that same time. including things that happened later?  Isn't that obvious?

Well it should be but our own behavior tells us otherwise, starting with phrases many of us like to use.  It's supposedly a good thing we say, to 'live in the present', 'in the now' and not be 'stuck on the past'.  And yet it is the past we more fully understand and the present we can never fully understand as long as it remains just the present.

The present is the newest input that we have had and thus we have had the least time to process it, to analyze it, to judge it.  It is there that we are most vulnerable to being tricked.

To live 'in the present' may be good advice to someone who is apt to worry too much about the future or allow bad past experiences to seep into and spoil the rest of their lives, but beyond those extreme cases it just doesn't seem like a good idea.  But none the less we are so easily convinced that it is.

Take the phrase to be "on the right side of history".  It is used to describe any idea that has become so commonly and strongly held about what represents social progress that it seems inevitable that anyone who questions the idea will find themselves an "outsider" of sorts in the area of human discourse.

Take the prohibition movement for example.  It ended with the repeal of their amendment to the constitution.  People commonly recall that it had become very unpopular but they seem to miss the implications of it actually being an amendment to be repealed in the first place.  To become an amendment it had to be extremely popular at one time.  Amendments don't generally get passed without both strong and prolonged support from majorities in most states across the nation.

Indeed it could have been said about the time of prohibition's consideration that anyone who opposed it was "on the wrong side of history".  And yet with the actual history available to us we can see that wasn't so.

That's because it is foolish to suggest that the taking of any position in the present will place you on the wrong side of history.  Not only is it impossible to tell where history is going but the present is least understood while it is still the present.

That teacher by the way is Jesus of Nazareth. You can find the quote in John 13:7.  He really wasn't kidding when he said, "You do not realize now what I am doing, but later you will understand".  And even our own present is likely to be beyond our current understanding.

So take care.


Tuesday, May 13, 2014

Does The Definition Of Marriage Matter?

A lot of debates as of late seem to come down to semantics and yet they go on as if the two sides are talking about the same thing, and they're not.  Is there something like this listed amongst logical fallacies?  Perhaps one can find one or two that apply here but for me it's just some combination of annoying and insulting.

e.g. If one side says there is no such thing as gay marriage, that pretty strongly implies we're trying to argue about two different things as though they're the same thing.  So what's the point in not addressing the definition?  Is one side intentionally trying to confuse things? Is one side trying to impose a high degree of clarity that just isn't there?  I suspect that more importantly there isn't anywhere near as clear a delineation of who is good and who is bad based on the side of this argument they're on.  

There isn't a "right side of history" in this.  The institution of marriage has been sick for the better part of a century, long before the idea of "gay marriage" came along.  If anything this current drive toward something called gay marriage is much more a symptom of a near terminal institution than it is a milestone in the history of civil rights.

It is insulting to everyone to try and make us believe that allowing same sex couples to share space on the deck of this sinking ship is some how a mark of progress.  Shame on those who push this issue as though it is some how definitive of an individual's character, where they stand on it.  And double shame when they brush aside those who make the point that some semantics are questionable.  Are we not to use reason because of "history".  

Once one actually begins to discuss the definition one finally begins to see the real problem with marriage today.  We've lost our way as a civilization on this.  This is strikingly evident in that we can't agree on what marriage is or what it's for.  

e.g. Is there any difference between it and a robust civil union?  And if so, what are the important ones?  Joint property, hospital visitation, medical decisions for the partner, child custody, portability across state lines?  Are any of these not possible through civil unions?  Is the purpose of marriage to run an end-run around the legal challenges of making civil unions achieve the same?  Is that what marriage is, a legal hammer?

There are many who believe marriage is quite a bit more than that, something same sex couples can't achieve.  Not because homosexuality is wrong but because only a partnership between a woman and a man can be a mother and father, and whether such a married couple ever actually achieves this is not as important as that they can.

Of course there are those who would argue that families are whatever is there to care for each other and very often are fine functioning families, in spite of not having both a mother and father around.  But once again that misses the point.  The point is that nothing is ever ideal or perfect but the perfect model is still extremely valuable and often even crucial to civilization.  Those families that don't resemble the ideal make-up still benefit from the existence of that ideal.  It allows them to know what they need to substitute for.  What they can't duplicate makes them no worse than any other family but what they go out of their way to choose not to duplicate is radical, and radical and child-rearing are not good companions.  This difference between dealing with what life deals you and choosing to take children along with you into great challenges or risks is a very important one.

I make no judgments here.  Parents have to make very tough decisions.  Some times exposing the family to risks is necessary or best and far be it for a libertarian like myself to make that decision for anyone else.  Some time it's a matter of the lesser of evils, a child growing up without a family verses growing up in a family that doesn't match the "mother and father" ideal model.  That's just one of infinite examples.

I'm also not one of those people that believe the nation is going to Hell in a hand-basket if it comes to nationally recognize and allow "gay marriage".  I believe all nations are going to Hell in a hand-basket "for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23).  Messing up the semantics of what marriage is all about is a symptom of our fallen state but it isn't what condemns us.  And fixing it wont redeem us either.  

We Christians need to re-read our Gospels if we think either of those two things.  Our salvation is through Christ alone and not our own efforts, and most especially not through what we may force others to do or not do through force of law.

But I speak to people on both sides of this issue here.  Ignoring the definition of marriage here is a cause of nothing but trouble for all involved, at least those who sincerely care about people and civilization (shouldn't one of these concerns always include the other?).

I propose a new movement in the area of marriage, one aimed at strengthening the institution.  

The first step is to remove government as its caretaker.  Government should be encouraged to change all of its laws and regulations regarding marriage so that they instead refer to civil unions.  Obviously civil unions would have to be made more robust to completely fill the legal and contractual role currently filled by marriage.

Then other institutions like Religious institutions (or whatever an individual voluntarily attaches them-self to) would then issue marriages through whatever ceremony or vows they see fit.  Under current marriage laws there are virtually no consequences for violating marriage vows so the potential ostracizing that could come from these other institutions actually carries more enforcement weight than is found in our current system.

And what I like most about my proposed plan is that these institutions don't even need the government to go along with this before they start executing it themselves.  Religious institutions for example can publicly declare their definition of marriage and make it clear they will only have 'marriage" ceremonies performed on their property and/or by their clergy that fit that definition.

They can teach their own what marriage is and isn't and in the process will get people thinking about something we haven't thought enough about in decades.  Even when the definitions vary from one institution to another it will benefit everyone involved in the discussion.  

I think our nation's rural past where out of necessity communities tended to be dominated by religious institutions has spoiled us.  We have come to a point of taking it for granted that the fundamental institutions of our civilization will be preserved without our efforts, that some member of the clergy or more recently some judge will do that for us.  When outside of the small rural town setting that's no longer practical or even appropriate.  It isn't this current system of government's job to do that and our clergy are no longer that powerful.  It falls on us, and unlike the largely rural Americans of the 19th century, we have the time and resources to do it.

We don't need laws or public officials, just our words and actions.  No one needs to be condemned or attacked, just their ideas identified.  We need to take control of our own language.  Definitions matter.

Tuesday, May 6, 2014

Things To Beware

As long as human beings have been social there has been a struggle between individual liberty and those extreme tendencies that work against us.  These enemies of the individual fall into two categories, self-centeredness and group-centeredness. Both of these enemies take on and have taken on many names throughout history.  Today I'm going to name a few of them.

Self-centeredness


Whenever I read scholarly works on individualism I see this repeated error, mistaking the avid pursuit for individual liberty for a totally self-centered self-interest.  There are even those who favor individual liberty who mistakenly believe that if everyone looks completely out for themselves without regard for most anyone else the world will be a better place.  It is in their belief system that some how everything will work out for the best this way.

The term for this sort of philosophy as characterized is Social Darwinism.  Whoever may be the source of it, it is just one of the latest masks worn by this particular ancient enemy of individual liberty.  This ancient enemy, no matter what mask it chooses to wear, always uses the same tactic.  It essentially argues that everyone should be free to do whatever they please and that will allow the strong to have their way and the weak to get what they deserve.  And through the struggles that follow the best of humanity will rise to lead us to be our best as a species.

The power of this argument is that it resembles the argument for individual liberty so much that many individualist fall for it, the parts about letting people do what they please and the being led to be our best as a species.  The problem with it is that it doesn't actually say what it sounds like it's saying.  For this philosophy, when it says everyone should be free to do whatever pleases them, it really means no one should try to stop the strong from picking on the weak.  That's a far cry from cherishing individual liberty, not to mention a recipe for civil disorder.

Logically there's a huge problem with this as well.  You can't be for the individual if you want your own interests to run over someone else's, since they are an individual too. 

The logical ends of Social Darwinism is also antithetical to the struggle for individual liberty.  Once the strong rise to the top and lead, what are they?  Their power over other individuals is as absolute as their acknowledged superiority.  They are virtual despots. While it is true any individual would be free in a society based on Social Darwinism to challenge those at the top, their actual individual liberty would be limited not just by their willingness to exercise it but by the strength of their personal resources to overcome those established before them. How can this be individualism?  Can an individualist be in favor of a system that by design only grants liberty to some, but not most?  Social Darwinism is just another excuse amongst many for the supposed right of some to rule others.

Another common mask of this enemy today is the “do your own thing”, “live and let live”, “everyone just leave everyone else alone”, and “do what feels good” philosophy.  For some this is a not so well thought out philosophy but one they follow none the less.  For others it is one of considerably deeper thought.  The ancient Greeks formalized this in the philosophy called Hedonism.

Unlike Social Darwinism there is supposed to be no conflict of interests in a Hedonistic society.  This is because everyone's goal is to maximize personal pleasure and minimize pain, and it is in that part about minimizing pain that people are expected to avoid conflicts with others whenever possible.

In spite of the negative connotations associated with the term Hedonism, the actual core of the philosophy has a lot of appeal but I see a few problems with it none the less.  One problem in particular as is relevant to the struggle for individual liberty is it looks outward in only a passive and selfish way, that of avoiding pain.  What happens if your neighbor's liberty is threatened?  Why should you care?

To Hedonism's defense, in a totally Hedonistic society your neighbor's liberty would never be threatened but the problem with that defense is we don't live in such a society.  And without a lot of caring about more than just pleasure and pain we have little chance of ever living in one. 

Hedonism is essentially, in a way, trying to live as though individual liberty has been secured and continues to be safe whether that's true or not.  And as any psychologist can tell you, pretending a problem isn't there can only tend to make things worse.

Then of course there is just raw self-centeredness and self-indulgence.  There is little long-term value to any philosophy that centers on these things. Perhaps if there is no meaning to our lives, our existence, these could be worthy center-pieces to a serious philosophy, but for those of us who struggle earnestly for anything beyond our most basic physical needs, we at the very least believe we know better, so on that very large common ground I'll say no more about this, the least reputable expression of self-centeredness.

Group-centeredness


The pursuit of maximizing individual liberty is a balancing act. Self-centeredness is one direction to fall in where, for lack of protection for the weak, only the strong end up with liberty.  The other direction to fall is group-centeredness where the individual is diminished in the name of the group.  They are the two extremes of a spectrum.  Interesting to me is that which ever way we fall, if we fall, we end up in essentially the same place, tyranny.  Here are some of the recent masks of this other extreme.

Collectivism is one. I tend to use this term to describe all of the group-centered systems across the ages, but most think of it only in its contemporary form, which justifies itself as looking out for the least fortunate in society (See the Wikipedia entry for a relatively neutral definition). One of the arguments of collectivism is that there is a common good that over-rides individual liberty and dignity from time to time.  Some of its proponents go on to make a moral argument that it is wrong for an individual to not share wealth and/or property with those less fortunate.  This, they argue then justifies some degree of forced confiscation and redistribution.

The obvious problem with this moral argument is that it takes a moral decision away from the individual by forcing compliance with someone else's very un-individualized decision.  

Allow me to illustrate with an example.  If an old lady with a walker needs to cross a busy street, it seems the right thing to do to help her across if you are able. That is a moral and charitable decision. Now what if someone else orders you to stop whatever you're doing and help her? Are you now doing what is morally correct if it wasn't your decision? What about the person who ordered you?  Do they know for sure that there may not be some reason you shouldn't help, like maybe you're having a heart attack or stroke and need to call 911 and wait for an ambulance?  It doesn't need to be that serious of an obstacle of course.  There are many others of a lesser nature.  Some obvious obstacles and some more subjective, but the point is it is best to allow you to make the decision yourself.

Anyone who believing they know what's best for you or society who then uses the force of law to make you participate and thinks they are morally justified is walking through a figurative field of land mines.  The mines are of a logical and ethical nature.  Can you build a moral society out of amoral people who merely follow rules because they have to?  Is it ethical to make someone act charitably?  Even if you aren't technically steeling their wealth and property from them with redistributive government policies, aren't you at least stealing their opportunity to act in true charity?

For a more pointed discussion of the moral aspects of this see my June 19th entry My Christian Brothers And Sisters, Social Justice Must Go .

More to the point of individual liberty and dignity, collectivism's assertion of a greater common good gives it undue justification to run over the individual.  There is no such thing as a good, at least as determined by human means, that can be clearly said to be so much more important than another good that it justifies forcing any individual to sacrifice their own good goals for it.  If there was then we should all seek some great enlightened group of people to direct us in the details of our lives and history should already be replete with great societies who found such leaders and followed them to their betterment.  But we can clearly see this is not the case.

History instead is full of examples of how whenever a nation or society has sought some higher goal, some greater good, some common good at the expense of individual liberty or dignity, that nation has ultimately left a legacy of horror and suffering.  This is because whenever we as human beings pretend that our ideals and best understandings of the divine are greater than the individual or equal to God, we become monstrous fools.  We forget or never think to ask this basic question.  If no two of us can always see everything the same way how can any one of us be worthy to make decisions for the rest of us?  We fail to recognize that someone else may see something differently than we do, and when we do, we fail to respect them as a human being separate from ourselves.

Many have rightly argued that just because the Nazi's philosophy was a combination of Social Darwinism and Collectivism does not mean all followers of these things are ready and willing to send millions to death camps.  They also rightly argue that it insults the memories of those who survived such atrocities to suggest such, but it also insults their memories to pretend that it was a group of non-human monsters who did this, and not real human beings like ourselves.

Let us not just look at the holocaust which is so painful and awful a memory that it's hard for us to accept it happened (though we must). How about the aftermath of the French Revolution as described so graphically in Tale Of Two Cities.  Groups of people, especially when they see themselves as in line with their societies in general are capable of horrors against individuals that they could never consider as individuals.

Yes, let's put that more personally.  We are capable of these horrors whenever we allow ourselves to be convinced that we are part of a group that by virtue of being a group has some common good that supersedes what some individuals may see as good or precious to them.

Other recent masks are CommunismSocialismProgressivism, and Fascism.  I'd consider throwing in Corporatism as I believe it is yet another mask of the same thing, but explaining that may require an article unto itself.  As different as these things may seem to be from each other, even to the point that their adherents kill each other at times, they are all at fault for the same reason from the individual liberty perspective.  They all depend on the invention of the the common greater good to justify running over the individual.

One could also follow the money, so to speak, to see this same point. With a mere formal exception for Fascism, not a functional one, all property and wealth in a nation under these systems is ultimately that of the nation.  Individuals may be allowed to operate to an extent as though it's there's, but given the perceived needs of some common greater good anything and everything can be taken from an individual.  Whether one says the wealth and property belongs to the people or the nation it's all the same insult from an individual liberty perspective.  It is also all the same essential false argument, that some common greater good exists.

The Ancient Struggle


And so the ancient struggle goes on. It's very ironic, if not out right perverse that Progressives, Socialists, and other collectivists assume the mantle of human progress and accuse people like myself of wanting to “turn back”, as one President Obama has taken to putting it.  It is after all those like myself that work towards the maximizing of individual liberty who fight against the tyranny and horrors that inevitably result when people like him use governmental power to advance what they think is best for us.  We are the only ones actually pointing the way forward, not him.



>> Notations <<

* “ we would have taken the better option between extinction and survival as something less than human”, should not be taken as an argument for euthanasia since the measure of what it means to be fully human is not in our physical state of being, but in that we endeavor to do the best we can with whatever we have and can ethically obtain.