On 2012-12-17, at 4:45 PM, James Heartfield <james at heartfield.org> wrote:
> I think that David Brooks has a point when he says
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> "The crucial point is that the dynamics are internal, not external. These killers are primarily the product of psychological derangements, not sociological ones."
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> It is a common mistake on the left to imagine that sociological propositions about general trends can give insight into specific individual actions and behaviours. But they can't. Some actions are so exceptional that they do not really fall in the scope of sociological analyses, nor are they addressed by social policies (except of course that one needs to fund mental health care).
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> Mass murder is just too rare - and too small a sample - to make generalisations upon. Were the processes at work in Adam Lanza's head in any way comparable to those at work in Anders Breivik's head? It seems unlikely, even if outwardly their actions look similar.
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> Obviously it is tempting to force these exceptional events into whichever demonology you are working (I noticed myself momentarily pleased reading that Lanza's mother was preparing for some kind of apocalypse, I am sorry to admit.). But that is to look down the wrong end of the telescope. It would make as much sense to blame the inherent bossiness of teachers; or the coldness of accountants.
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> Social trends are explicable in social terms. But to kill twenty children, and your mother, outside of any recognisable conflict or struggle is something that needs to be understood in psychological terms, not sociological ones, as Brooks says. These events are too exceptional to tell us anything much about the state of the nation...
My sense is that most of this random aimless slaughter of the innocents is perpetrated by whites, which strongly suggests there is a social dimension to the problem. Very few of these incidents have involved non-whites, where the motives are not apparent and gives rise to all manner of conflicting psychological interpretation.
The arming of white America began in earnest after the rise of the black movement for civil rights. Opposition to gun control primarily resides among whites who increasingly feel their cultural values and economic status under threat. On the other hand, blacks and other minorities don't typically own firearms nor frequent firing ranges. Instead, they are the victims of gang violence in their communities and have every incentive to favour much tighter curbs on firearms.
The link between US white racism and the widespread access to, and abuse of, gun ownership by troubled whites has not, to my knowledge, been the subject of much media commentary, inadvertently or otherwise. But I strongly suspect such a link, which indicates that these events do, in fact, tell us something about the state of the nation.