by Gene Howington, Guest Blogger
U.N. Visitor’s Plaza, New York, New York
A gift from Luxembourg.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last forty-eight hours, you have no doubt seen the coverage concerning the mass shooting in Aurora, Colorado. If you possess even a minimal level of empathy for your fellow human beings, twelve dead and fifty-eight wounded when their only crime was wanting to see a movie can only be properly described as tragic. Among the dead accounted for up to this point are a man who had been celebrating his twenty-seventh birthday (Alex Sullivan), a member of our Navy (Petty Officer Third Class John Larimer), a twenty-four year old aspiring sports journalist (Jessica Ghawi), and a six year-old girl. Some less responsible outlets are reporting this little girl’s name (Huffington Post, looking your direction), but other more responsible outlets are not. I will not post her name for the same reason others have declined: the little girl remains unidentified because her mother, also a victim of this horrific crime with gunshot wounds to the neck and abdomen, remains paralyzed in hospital and has not yet been told of her daughter’s death. Even in reporting on events, sometimes a little discretion goes a long way and does not impair the “public’s right to know” in any substantive manner.
Over the next few days, you will see many attempts by people with various political agendas trying to monopolize on this shooting to promote their pet causes. In fact, it has already started and in a most heinous manner. During a radio interview on The Heritage Foundation’s “Istook Live!” show, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) said Friday that the shootings were a result of “ongoing attacks on Judeo-Christian beliefs” . . . and questioned why nobody else in the theater had a gun to take down the shooter. Gohmert in one fell swoop illustrated that not only is he a base political opportunist, but that he apparently doesn’t understand the 1st or 2nd Amendments very well – a common affliction among Texas pols. Others pols are already using this as a way to promote their anti-gun agendas, their pro-gun agendas and the Twitter-verse is filling with statements from “our leaders” about this tragic event and all of them in some way self-serving.
I urge you to ignore these opportunists for a moment and to think about something else related to the Aurora shooting.
Multiple outlets are reporting that the accused gunman, James Holmes, had dyed his hair red and told the police he “was the Joker”.
There is the fantasy of violence. There is the reality of violence. They could not be more different in outcome. This presents the issue of instances like this where the line between fantasy and reality have clearly been crossed in some meaningful manner. Does this problem exist in the individual or in society itself? I submit the answer might be “a little of both”.
Consider this: one of the elements of drama is that the hero (or something or someone the hero holds dear) must be in peril. It creates tension, it moves the story. You cannot have drama without an element of danger or risk and very often that danger or risk is portrayed in the form of physical violence. As a species, we are wired to find this entertaining. There is nothing wrong with a bit of wish fulfilment in seeing the hero overcome adversity as entertaining.
The reality is starkly different. Witness real heroes like Jon Blunk who was killed defending his girlfriend Jansen Young during this rampage. Witness Jarell Brooks, a 19-year-old from Aurora, who put himself at risk to help Patricia Legarreta and her two young children escape, but not before he and Legarreta were wounded. Witness Eric Hunter, a 23-year-old from Aurora, who found two wounded girls and dragged them to safety in an adjoining theater before blocking the door to Theater 8 and preventing the alleged gunman from spreading his gunfire in to a new room of innocent theater goers.
All three possible outcomes. Death, wounding, escape from physical harm. All three equally heroic in that other lives were saved, some of them strangers with nothing in common but a love of the same kind of cinema and being in the wrong place at the wrong time. It’s a funny thing about heroism though. As F. Scott Fitzgerald famously quipped, “Show me a hero and I’ll write you a tragedy.” In real life, the tragedies and the heroics are real and have real consequences. The hero does not always win the day as they are prone to do in fiction.
Does our propensity for dramatic entertainment, let alone dramas involving violence, feed a propensity for violence? This is a question as old as drama itself. On one side of the argument is the catharsis argument put forth by Aristotle in Poetics; that in viewing tragic events, the audience’s negative feelings like fear and pity are purged. This line of reasoning was later supported by psychologists and psychiatrists such as Sigmund Freud and A.A. Brill. On the other side are modern researchers who have found correlations between watching violence and the rate of violence in society, but causal connections between the two in the general population have been difficult to pin down. What is clear is that “exposure to media violence does not produce violent criminals out of all viewers, just as cigarette smoking does not produce lung cancer victims out of all smokers. This lack of perfect correspondence between heavy media violence exposure and violent behavior simply means that media violence exposure is not a necessary and sufficient cause of violence.” (“Media Violence and the American Public” by Brad J. Bushman and Craig A. Anderson, Iowa State University, American Psychologist, June/July issue, p. 482, 2001.) That a small segment of society seems particularly susceptible to being prodded in to violence through the consumption of media violence though seems undeniable. To me, this seems to comport with the rate in society of people with mental problems revolving around empathy like sociopaths and psychopaths. People who lack empathy would naturally not connect the actuality of violence with the fantasy of violence as they don’t care about the impact of their actions on others to begin with. Correlation is not causation and the root causes of violence are more complex than just a person’s entertainment choices. There are also environmental, social, economic, and personal history to consider. Some people in certain situations are simply going to be more prone to violence. While causation in the general population has been found in desensitization toward violence and violent entertainment, causation of real life violence with fictional violence has been more elusive although desensitization in itself has been can “[increase] aggressive thoughts, angry feelings, physiological arousal and aggressive behaviors, and decreases helpful behaviors.”
As a society, do we have a duty to mitigate all factors that can induce violent behavior in individuals? Even if that susceptible segment of society is a very small percentage of society? With complex compound causation, this is a practically impossible task, and even if “perfect mitigation” of contributing factors was had there are a certain percentage of society that are going to be violent psychopaths no matter what their environment is like. Where to do we draw the line a social inputs that can encourage violence and personal responsibility for individual action? Consider this as well: do we have the same duty to mitigate when the violence perpetrated by sociopaths and psychopaths is economic (as in the banking industry shenanigans that birthed the OWS movement), is purely psychological (as seen in pathologically verbally abusive spouses) or is purely political (as in the religious far right attempting to trample history and the Constitution to institute theocratic laws if not outright theocracy)?
Perfection is not possible. Evil cannot be eliminated in the world for without it we have no definition of good. The perfect removal of error from complex systems is a mathematical impossibility. Does that mean we should not try?
What do you think?
Source(s): ABCNews.go.com (1, 2), NBCNews.com (1, 2), Huffington Post (1, 2, 3)
~ submitted by Gene Howington, Guest Blogger
UPDATE: The names of all the victims have been officially released by the Arapahoe County coroner’s office. These are the names it is important to remember. Veronica Moser-Sullivan, 6, Jessica Ghawi, 24, Alex Sullivan, 27, Jonathan Blunk, 26, John Larimer, 27, Matt McQuinn, 27, Micayla Medek, 23, Jesse Childress, 29, Alexander Jonathan (AJ) Boik, 18, Alex Teves, 24, Rebecca Ann Wingo, 32, and Gordon W. Cowden, 51.
A Personal Note to the Aurora Victims and Their Families and Friends:
My sincerest condolences. May your loved ones lost live on in your memories and may your memories be long, robust and full of happiness. May the wounded heal and take every advantage of their good fortune at surviving this senseless act of violence. May this harm done to you and yours not keep you in the depths of lament, but transform to a celebration of life – both theirs and yours. Peace, love and long life.
Gene H.
NOTE: For those of you waiting for the next Propaganda installment, I’ll either publish it tomorrow or publish next weekend depending upon time constraints. I thank you for your patience in the face of breaking news.
I bet the nude TSA protester is angry about the Colorado shooting. The story completely knocked him off the front pages, and you know how protesters love the spotlight: http://lawblog.legalmatch.com/2012/07/20/your-right-strip-naked-airport/
Malisha, I should have included that in my comment above. You are right. And to “snap” implies sudden impulsive actions with little or no forethought. From the little bit of what may be accurate information released, this was a complex operation, complete with booby traps, body armor and a well stocked armory. This was not something he thought up on a Thursday and carried out on Friday.
What bothers me in the news on the Aurora massacre is not so much the “gun control versus non-gun control” debate, but the premature analysis of the shooter and what “made him snap.” We do not even know that he actually “snapped.” Yet I have heard conjecture that: (a) He had failed for the first time in his life because before this May he was academically excellent; (b) He must have had a failed relationship and when rejected, he must have thought his life was over; and (c) miscellaneous crap like that.
How offensively idiotic! We have ZERO information about his motive so far and people are already analyzing it! Maybe he hated movies!
Mike and Gene,
I tried to watch some of the TV news coverage, but my poor stomach can only take so much abuse before rebelling. Blech! Some of the coverage reminded me of some of the news coverage of aircraft accidents where the reporter on the scene does not know the difference between a Cessna and an Airbus. If they cannot get it right, then they should just day they don’t have a clue and fade to black.
I spent part of the day today trying to get through to someone who insisted all self loading guns were automatic weapons, despite the fact I linked repeatedly to the ATF web site where the difference between semi-automatic and automatic weapons were defined. If they cannot tell the difference between a Glock pistol and a machine gun, they have no business commenting.
As for Heath Ledger, a great actor, the mixture of drugs he took indicates a young man in psychic pain. Benzo’s, hypnotics, vicodin and Oxy don’t mix well and he was smart enough to know it, but perhaps didn’t care. Within two days after three different major chest surgeries in 2010, I discontinued my painkillers, not because I didn’t like the buzz, but because I didn’t like the disconnect I was feeling from my emotional self. I’m sure Ledger wasn’t in worse pain physically, but felt he needed to escape his negative emotions. Doing that rarely works out well.
As Gene has identified it the problems we face from the attack of the 24 hour news cycles feeding frenzy in this tragedy is overanalysis. To be honest once I learned the simple facts about the dead and the injured I tuned out. This was not the result of lack of empathy, but of disgust with the overanalysis of pundits of various stripes. I don’t have to read or listen to the analysis to discern it.
Pro- gun people will proclaim that if everyone in the theater was armed, he could have been stopped sooner. They of course forget that if people were so armed there might have been even more horror.
Anti-gun people will bemoan the violence engendered by lack of gun control. This ignores the fact that a crazy man like Holmes could have bombed the theater, or set fire to it.
Realgious zealots will see it as God’s message that we are not following his commandments. This begs the question of why God would choose to inflict such pain on innocents?
Law enforcement types will call for greater security measures everywhere, failing to mention that they will profit from the institution of these measures.
What will be overlooked except for some closeup interviews with survivors and bereaved, is that those affected will feel the pain for the rest of their lives, having learned the harsh lesson that to be alive is to be subjected to unforeseen and life threatening happenstance, and we humans can’t legislate against it.
Gene,
Yer welcome.
OS,
Thank you and I have no issue with you nit picking my posts let alone the postings from Natural News. 😀 I bow to your superior pharmacological knowledge and it sounds like they owe you a tip of the hat as well.
If nature had in its randomness hurled a 5 lb. meteor through the roof of the theater, killing 12, injuring 59 this would be a natural and equal tragedy of loss, pain and whying. The perpetrator was not a whim of nature, but a human being, which we are all related too. (This is not over reach in the grandiosity of existence) One of our own, one of 7 billion people on the planet did this horrid thing…. on purpose and with forethought.
I shiver inside and soulfully. We are all related to him. In the deep dark of me I realize, in the chance of circumstance, some human spirits act beyond group human understanding. This is the boogeyman of myth, the monster of nightmares. The reality that a pinch, will not wake us from our terror.
Somehow there is he, … does that not raise the question..Somehow there is not me. What neurons in me work that don’t work in him? What series of events and circumstance placed this action in his mind and not mine.
I as an atheist do not choose to search for Gods master plan to find reason. I as an animal, human in nature, do not comprehend this malice.
I as a conscious human, the highest life form on our planet, struggle with understanding.
I am finite, I am simply 1 of my 7 billion brothers and sisters. I know this is true, but this also is beyond my comprehension. How easy and human it is to abandon my reason and accept myth to explain or create a “place” for his actions. My personal weak and meager “place” of reason for this; he was a human meteor that struck indiscriminately and randomly for no reason.
He may have a reason, but it is not reason. It is the terror of myth personified. Monsters and Angels dwell within us all. His monster was terrible, his monster was master.
This is a story of the human race, and when I dwell on it …it scares the crapola out of me. But for the grace of my nature there walk I or anyone of us. Hug the people you love, practice kindness, and be rewarded.
Practicing, preaching hate is its own hell.
Jan Briggs,
“Has no one considered (and I am only doing so in jest) the effect of trying to complete a PhD. in neuroscience? Writing a dissertation can unbalance anyone.” Jan Briggs———–
Well, my psychologist in 1963 said that after interviewing job candidates that most of the seekers were sicker than the patients. Ed Boyle was his name and he was serious, although expressing himself with levity.
Maybe our qualified therapists have some views on this. I, of course, find it natural that troubled persons seek help, consciously(?), by their choice of studíes and careers. How about Sigmund? (levity again)
Here is an article my son, Evan, posted today:
Evan Mascagni
I am an attorney living in San Francisco, currently working on a documentary film, Toxic Profits: (http://kck.st/NnkagZ).
Batman Shooting: Why Praying Will Not Be Enough to Avoid Another Aurora Theater Massacre
•Evan Mascagni
•in
•Politics,
•Guns
Batman Shooting Why Praying Will Not Be Enough to Avoid Another Aurora Theater Massacre
Being from the religious state of Kentucky, my Facebook news feed has been flooded with people praying for the victims of this week’s terrorist attack in Colorado and praying that something like this never happens again.
These are the same people that prayed Columbine and Virginia Tech would never happen again, that Fort Hood would never happen again, and that the Arizona attack on Gaby Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) would never happen again. Yet, this week’s terrorist attack shows us that simply praying doesn’t really do anything to prevent these types of attacks in the future, which is why America must take concrete steps to diminish our fetish with guns and violence.
Before I dive deeper into this, I want to clarify something. I call this week’s shooting spree in Auora a terrorist attack because, by definition, that’s what it was. However, in the United States, it’s nearly impossible to be called a terrorist if you don’t have brown skin and you’re not a Muslim. Since 9/11, there has been nationwide anti-mosque activity reported in over half the states, including several instances of arson, fire bombs, and attempted attacks of mosques here in the U.S. Yet, never do you hear these attacks being referred to as “terrorist” attacks, which is exactly what they are. Instead, Americans have co-opted the word and refer to anyone who acts against U.S.’s interests in pursuit of our failed “war on terror” as a “terrorist.”
Now, what concrete action can we take right now that makes sense? Renew the Assault Weapons Ban. This ban on assault weapons wouldn’t be the first time in the United States such measure is implemented. In 1994, Congress passed a 10-year ban on assault weapons, but that law expired in 2004 and efforts to renew it since have failed. It should come as no surprise that before he flip-flopped, Mitt Romney used to support a ban on assault weapons saying, “I believe the people should have the right to bear arms, but I don’t believe that we have to have assault weapons as part of our personal arsenal.”
Now, I understand that the killer used other guns that were not assault weapons; but I don’t think that undermines the necessity of prohibiting the use of such weapons. I would go into many more ways of how we could strengthen our gun control laws in this country, but that will have to wait until we can all agree with the 2004 Mitt Romney that we don’t really need to be legally buying and owning assault weapons (although I don’t think I’ll ever agree that we need personal arsenals – in the words of Kurt Vonnegut on guns — “I wouldn’t have one of the motherfuckers in my house for anything”).
As Americans, we have made light of what guns actually do: kill people. Instead of “praying” that gun violence stops, it’s time we actually do something about it.
We had a neuralgic here in Sweden which had to be taken off the prescription list.
Combined, although expressly forbidden, with a light beer it would result in respíration depression and death. The effect did not depend on sleep, but occured in conscious individual.
I was one, who survived fortunately. 3 ounces of beer was enough and one tablet.
I was awake. Taking it for a bad back.
_________________________________________
How tragic for Ledger, How can anyone give so many different drugs to anyone? Different doctors?
I stopped using a sleeping pill (hydroxisinhydrochloride?) which was bad for me. Since a check showed it to be a neuroleptic, I discontinued it for that reason also. It had given me a hangover effect which encouraged to new use even during the daytime, uncomfortably similar effect to benzodiazepines, although it was said to not be addictive.
Watch carefully whatever you are taking is my user advice.
As for this guy, do we know what he had in his blood at the time? Or in his prescription list? Or in his illegal consumption? Or will they bother finding out?
And will the pitchfork gangs go the big pharma HQ or to the Congress.
(Nixon was on something I forgot the name of, but a billionaire buddy had said it was great, and he thought so too. 25 years of use/abuse.
Karl F, sadly, all our uncles do that.
The reality is Uncle Sam solves most of his problems violently and so we reap what he sows.
Has no one considered (and I am only doing so in jest) the effect of trying to complete a PhD. in neuroscience? Writing a dissertation can unbalance anyone.
I believe, though, that if Arlene Holmes had said “You have the right person” referring to herself, the news outlets that had reported these words would have already been advised to correct their statements to reflect her actual intent. I cannot imagine that the family’s public statement, issued to the media the same day Arlene Holmes was located by the press (and later by the law enforcement authorities) would not have included a correction, as well. I believe she probably meant, “They have arrested my son; he probably did this.”
I went to the link posted that had a review of the movie, and this sentence leaped out at me:
“When all else fails, Bane threatens to destroy the human race in 23 days with one brash act, and Bruce ends up flat on his back, in more ways than one.”
I would hope that the FBI get busy trying immediately to determine whether there is some larger violent attack brewing to be conducted 23 days after the movie theater attack, but I don’t know if there is a way to do that. Surely on TV it could be done, if criminologists thought there was a reason to try..and on that point, I am completely ignorant as well. Jess sayin…this guy may live in a fantasy world.
Analyze all you want, but there is not much one can do about such situations, other than be more vigilant and tip off law enforcement. The other thing, as has happened in the past in similar situations, is for someone at the scene to attempt to stop the perpetrator in situ…and thus limit the damage.
Gene, a minor nit to pick. Both Valium (diazepam) and Xanax (alprazolam) are benzodiazepines. Both are anxiolytics (anti-anxiety). Neither is an antidepressant. Restoril (temazepam) is an hypnotic; that is, a sleeping pill, but also in the class of medications called benzodiazepines. This combination of medications will have the effect of depressing respiration. He just went off to sleep and his breathing got more and more shallow until respiration stopped altogether.
Gene, once again you have hit it out out of the park.
Excellent post. My concern is the same as yours, and the hue and cry has already started. No matter where you turn on the internet or the TV, all you can find are pitchforks and torches. Drugs. Not enough drugs. Ban guns. Let people carry sidearms for self defense everywhere, bring Jesus back, it is the fault of the religious extremists. Damn!
We don’t know the motive, and in view of the fact the perp is being uncooperative, gathering information from him may turn out to be impossible. He apparently is brilliant in terms of IQ, but clearly troubled in some way. This may very well be another Ted Kaczynski. Based on the MO, I doubt he has motivations similar to Eric Rudolph or Timothy McVeigh, but without a LOT more data points, we may never know.