School Shooting

I don’t often write about current events. In fact I actively try to avoid doing so. Mainly because there are enough people giving their ‘hot take’ on the events of the moment. I wrote about mass violence a few weeks ago and the horrible school shooting this week conjured more thoughts on this uniquely American issue.

The young man that perpetrated this act was a victim before he was the perpetrator. He was the victim of a society that cares so very little for those at the bottom. He was bullied, seemed to have no relationship with his father, had a mother with a drug problem, and had only experienced life as a series of interactions with a society that cared little about him.

We will hear the Left and Right squabble over gun control or mental health over the next few weeks. Actually it may only be days as the news cycle and our attention are so warped that we can’t focus on any event for more than a few hours, days, or weeks at most – even one as awful as this. Eventually we will get tired of listening to that argument. Something new will shift our attention away from it. Nothing will change. We will simply wait for the next one and react with the same level of horror and shock as we did with this one.

Truth is that almost everything has been normalized in the past decade or so. I was thinking yesterday about what type of news event would actually surprise me? If a giant alien ship appeared in the sky I honestly wouldn’t be shocked. If nukes were launched I wouldn’t be shocked. The only thing that would actually surprise me is if we thought about this shooting a week from now.

The argument in my Mass Violence post was that our hyper-competitive society is to blame for this American problem. I’d like to expand on that a bit here as this week’s events have conjured some more-detailed thoughts on the issue.

As I’ve stated above, this young man was a victim before he was a murderer. I won’t go into the details of his life further than I already have. If you wish to read about it further then you can find it on almost every news outlet.

Mental health was certainly an issue for this man, but mental illness isn’t some static disease. It comes in many forms and can be triggered by outside factors. It seems this man was in the throes of a mental breakdown. It also appears as though this breakdown was the result of a lifetime of trauma.

This is not an excuse for his behavior or the most atrocious of violent acts. What it is is an attempt to understand the conditions that led to this act of violence in an attempt to prevent it from happening again. Sadly though, it will happen again as we are very far from correcting these societal issues.

In my Mass Violence post I argued that when our relationship to others is as competitors we divide the society into winners and losers. And we can’t expect every ‘loser’ to take their lot quietly.

This young man was likely predisposed to have mental health issues. He was then raised in an environment of uncertainty, humiliation, and pain. This triggered the mental breakdown that made this event possible. It was the lack of a social safety net or resources that allowed it to go as far as it did.

Now we won’t be able to catch everyone from slipping through the cracks of, but we can try harder than we are. Mental health has been a taboo issue basically for all of human existence. Not long ago if anyone showed even the slightest signs of being unwell mentally they were sent to an institution and away from society – often for life. That is how much we wanted to ignore the problem.

It is also unfair to blame this on only mental illness. Mental illness doesn’t cause you to shoot children. Undiagnosed and untreated mental illness coupled with trauma and a society that has shown you little compassion is what can lead to this behavior. Think of all the suffering of the kids that don’t take it out on others. The kids that hold that inside and either hurt themselves or just live in constant pain and turmoil.

What we see in this act is not a lone gunman, but the most extreme version of pain and suffering that permeates the ‘losers’ of our society. We failed those kids in Texas by not addressing these issues and we failed the shooter because we ignored his pain.

I can’t imagine what it is like to lose a child. It is something that most parents avoid thinking about – for obvious reasons. My deepest sympathies go out to those affected by this tragedy. Unfortunately it would surprise me if something in our public discourse changes due to this tragedy.

I do not know where we go from here. One solution, which is my usual solution, is to heighten our capacity for compassion and empathy for our fellow person. Another would be to stop arguing over platitudes and start putting real resources towards the mental health of our youth.

This means providing training and more resources for guidance counselors and mental health professionals in schools. We cannot put perfect parents in every home, but the richest country in recorded history can treat its youngest and most vulnerable citizens in a more responsible manner. The resources exist. Our priorities have just been elsewhere.

It would be great to think those kids didn’t die in vain, and that their lives and the pain their families will suffer forever will mean something. Unfortunately I fear I’ll be writing about all this again before too long.

I appreciate your attention and hope you’ve found value in this. Please try to find compassion and empathy for each other. Thanks for reading