Constitutional Law, Criminal law, Free Speech, Politics, Science, Society

The Reality of Violence

by Gene Howington, Guest Blogger

“Non-violence” by Swedish sculptor Carl Fredrik Reuterswärd
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”.

Jon Blunk and Jansen Young

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.

270 thoughts on “The Reality of Violence”

  2. There is one sentence in Gene’s post about yet another epic event in our society that caught my interest.

    That sentence is (“As a species, we are wired to find this entertaining“) which seems to be controversial.

    It reminded me of the Mike S mythology post last week or so, not because of Gene’s sentence, but rather because of a quote I recently shared here.

    I will do so again so you don’t have to look it up:

    The concept that humanity has a violent and evil core is widespread; it is one of the oldest and most resilient myths about human nature. From historical and philosophical beliefs to current popular and scientific beliefs, the view that a savage and aggressive beast is a central part of our nature permeates public and academic perceptions. Given this view, it is a common assumption that if you strip away the veneer of civilization, the restraints of society and culture, you reveal the primeval state of humanity characterized by aggression and violence.

    While there are many reasons for the resilience of this myth, the most powerful one is the simple fact that humans today can and do engage in extreme levels of violence and aggression.

    (Bully Worship: The Universal Religion – 2, quoting the book “Race, Monogamy, And Other Lies They Told You“, by Agustin Fuentes of Notre Dame). He is a long-time professor of Anthropology.

    Over the past decade various scientists / professors have found that behavior changes genetic makeup, i.e., genes do not determine behavior, it is closer to the other way around.

    We learn violent behavior, or the enjoyment thereof, from our society around us – it is not hardwired.

    In fact, very little is permanently hard wired in that sense.

    I will try to add a short video that discusses these discoveries:

  3. Tony C, why not replicate? All good studies get replicated; I look for good replication wherever I can find it.

    Recently I read about a case in which a truly crazed person (hearing voices) committed what WOULD HAVE BEEN murder had not some bystanders and first-responders been absolutely outstanding. He only got one victim; he was not able to distinguish right from wrong and now, after years in a well-credentialed hospital for the criminally insane, he STILL doesn’t get it and has no inroad into rational thought. And he did his crime with a kitchen knife. Had he had a gun he would have killed half a dozen people at least, probably. But he COULD have gotten a gun, because he had no criminal record!

    In the long run, we are not able to predict behavior and we are certainly not able to pre-detain people who may be dangerous in the future. But whenever something like Aurora occurs, it makes me angry to think about how much money our government wastes doing things that are not only unnecessary but that are frankly culture-destructive (the drug war, the corruption, the government cover-ups, the millions spent on bending state court judgments to satisfy personal, special interest, or agency official agendas), rather than providing some framework for addressing problems of the would-be mass murderers.

    One comment about James Holmes came from a student who went to high school with him. It was a chilling comment, in a way. The guy said that whenever someone “teased” Holmes, he would “just smile.” He did not respond, just smiled. No one defined what “teased” meant. I wondered, inevitably, “Was Holmes thinking, ‘just you wait, a55hole, I have something for you — I will deliver it in the future”?

    We will never know the answer to this. It would play like a scene out of one of Stieg Larssen’s books, and who cares, in the final analysis. But the sentence alarmed me, made me consider how bent out of shape our society is, and how much more it is being bent as I write.

  4. Apologies to those (Blouise) whose thoughts I may have replicated; I wrote my response to Gene without reading any other comments.

  5. Gene,

    I think if we wanted to do everything possible to minimize the amount of senseless violence, we would live in a true tyranny, and would ironically increase the amount of violence in the world. We would have no free speech, no right to privacy, we would be personally monitored 24/7, we would have no right to possess any weapon of any kind or anything that could be used as one. For example we would have to outlaw martial arts training, wouldn’t we? I personally know three martial arts teachers I truly believe could kill a roomful of people bare handed, if they turned their skills to ruthless murder (or to hijacking a plane). But I think if we outlaw the teaching of martial arts in order to decrease violence, we would increase violence and rape by refusing to teach men, women and children how to defend themselves against criminal assault.

    I think every act of regulation incurs a cost in terms of freedom, and it is a legitimate “good law” (to reference a previous posting of yours) when, in our rational analysis, the benefits delivered by deterrence exceeds the cost to us in freedom. So outlawing fraud is obviously a good law, it does help prevent fraud, and the costs to society are almost nothing in terms of what we believe we should be free to do.

    However, for a different example, outlawing pot is more of a borderline case. In recent decades the analysis of benefits and costs to society were overly influenced by negative propaganda (to reference more of your work) and lies, but in recent years that influence is fading and a thin but increasing majority of Americans have come to see the outlawing of pot is doing much more harm than it is good.

    As it relates to the Colorado Theater, I think society has to formulate laws with the presumption that citizens can exert rational control over their actions at some point, and then when a few citizens prove they cannot, provide facilities to separate them from the rest of society and truly enforce maximum protection and safety: A prison.

    Most laws prescribe punishments that are intended to deter people from crime, and when the laws are enforced and punishments are severe enough, that really works. People with rational control of themselves restrain themselves and the incidence of the outlawed activity drops. People really do refrain from crimes because they fear the punishment, financial or otherwise.

    However, that system breaks down when we encounter people that lack rational control, like the Colorado shooter. Under those circumstances laws of punishment are meaningless, the only thing that could have prevented this would be laws of preemptive restraint of people that are innocent of any crime.

    Speaking as a person that has lost two siblings in two separate murders, and as a person that knows the pain of losing family members that have barely begun their adult lives, I think incidents like this one in Colorado are just inevitable in a free country.

    What we can prevent with “good law” is the “crimes of the sane,” meaning people that can exert rational control over their actions. If we start outlawing what fantasies people can weave in fiction, we engage in preemptive restraint of everybody so that a few insane people will not be exposed to fiction they might mistake for reality.

    I think that is a fool’s errand, because I do not think it will stop the insane. If the perpetrator had not seized upon the idea that he was the Joker, he would have latched on to some other idea; perhaps that he was the Angel of Death or Satan himself (as other insane killers have done in the past). Shall we outlaw the Bible for inciting that violence?

    The same thing goes for those that believe outlawing his guns and weapons would have prevented his crime. If the perpetrator had no access to guns, he could have prevented the exit doors from opening with a few strategically placed nails in the push bar mechanism, and then set fire to the theater, or found some other way to kill the people, like with a lethal gas. Shall we outlaw building materials and common cleaning compounds and bathtub chemistry? I will note the perpetrator was a PhD candidate, and could easily have learned the chemistry needed to make a lethal gas; shall we outlaw chemistry books and the Internet?

    I believe we in the USA could do a FAR better job of investigating and prosecuting and punishing the crimes of the sane, including those by banks and corporations in addition to those by individuals. I truly believe that the threat of punishment when combined with the demonstration that we are willing to implement those punishments is a deterrent to crime, including crimes by sociopaths. Most sociopaths are deterred by the likelihood of punishment (in fact, nothing else works).

    But I think that is as far as we should go, no level of consequences will deter the insane that cannot process consequences. To stop the insane I think we would have to surrender the majority of our freedoms and all of our privacy, and I think that is too high a price to pay. Thus I accept the distasteful truth that maximum safety means maximum restrictions, it would look and feel like prison, or absolute dictatorship.

    So a balance must be struck between risk and freedom, and even the ideal environment will contain lethal dangers, including insane people that have heretofore done nothing illegal and are therefore presumed innocent. I think the Aurora incident is an example of the type of irreducible risk we would have even in an ideal environment. I do not claim the USA is that ideal environment; I think we are very far from doing all we could do in order to deter crimes by sane people. I am saying that even if we did all we could to minimize the crimes of the sane then lethal dangers would still remain, and being exposed to them is essentially the price of freedom.

  6. OS,

    ” … every liberal or progressive gun owner I know hates the NRA with a passion. ”

    I’m not a gun owner, bow and arrow are my hunting weapons of choice, but I despise the NRA.

    As to your comments about “backwoods of Appalachia” … yep, it’s a whole ‘nother culture back in the mountains.

    At this particular point in time I’m not going to jump on the guns are at fault bandwagon. Holmes chose guns but could just as easily have used a bomb or a pyro device. However, the same society that produced this freak of nature named Holmes, also produces guns for citizens by the boatload. It’s the “Go ahead, make my day” mentality that worries me.

  7. Elaine M.,

    I think you’re on to something…….. No Hijad this day…… That’s the American Way……

  8. I have to wonder if the FBI or Department of Homeland Security would have been keeping an eye on the alleged killer James Eagen Holmes if he had been a Muslim or had “foreign-sounding” name.

  11. Gene,

    This is the first truly worthy report about the tragedy I have read. Thank you for offering us the opportunity to discuss this matter without hyperbole.

    I particularly liked Mike’s musings posted yesterday (July 21, 2012 at 6:37 pm) and supported by similar writings from other posters.

    “I don’t believe we have the ability to mitigate such behavior, simply because as you’ve alluded there is a percentage of all humans with violent sociopathic and psychopathic predilictions. Science is not yet at the point where they can grasp what triggered Holmes’ behavior.”

  13. FWIW, every liberal or progressive gun owner I know hates the NRA with a passion. I gave up my lifetime membership more than thirty years ago when the right wing extremists took over. As far as I am concerned, the NRA has one single thing going for it that they do right. Their firearms safety course protocol is excellent and the certified trainers do a good job of teaching classes on firearm safety–as long as they keep the RW propaganda out of the lessons.

  14. I agree in part and dissent in part with the comments above. Woosty has a point in that I would like to know what my members of congress are taking. Maybe random drug screens with the results being made public would be a start. Not only release tax returns, but a printout from the pharmacy as well. I recall after GHWB was diagnosed with Grave’s Disease. Frankly, that scared hell out of me, because a runaway thyroid can and will cause psychiatric instability. The later, I saw he was taking a hypnotic drug for sleep. That did not cause me any peace of mind either, because those drugs impair cognitive function. In fact, just taking them will get your FAA medical certificate revoked if you are a pilot.

    As for controlling guns. Prohibition did not work, and the drug wars are not working. The worst kept secret in the world is the fact there are still illegal moonshine stills, meth labs and “agricultural projects” in the mountains of Appalachia. As someone said last night on another blog, we should severely amend or revoke the 2nd Amendment and confiscate all guns that are not single shot as they were at the time the Constitution was written. I told that writer that if that happened, I would make sure they were offered a job to be the first one to go into the backwoods of Appalachia to tell the local residents you had come to confiscate their guns. The way I figure it, the agent assigned to do so would not make it through the first day, and the body would never be found. As part of there training, seizure agents should be required to watch Deliverance and the Discovery Channel documentary about the Hatfields & McCoys. Step right up here folks to sign up for a good job with benefits. What? No takers. Now how are we going to enforce the law on guns if we cannot find people to seize them?

  15. Gene,

    Excellent post! That said, isn’t it at times such as this that advocates of gun control would question how easy it may have been for someone like this mass murderer to procure all his weapons and ammunition?

    *****

    Colorado Shooter Likely Got Guns With Ease
    George Zornick on July 20, 2012
    http://www.thenation.com/blog/168986/colorado-shooter-likely-got-guns-ease

    Excerpt:
    This morning, as the country digested the terrible events that unfolded in Aurora, Colorado, overnight—where a gunman killed twelve people and wounded 59 others in a packed movie theater—New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg immediately called for a renewed conversation on gun control. “You know, soothing words are nice, but maybe it’s time that the two people who want to be president of the United States stand up and tell us what they are going to do about it, because this is obviously a problem across the country,” he said. “There are so many murders with guns every day, it’s just got to stop.”

    The usual suspects raked Bloomberg over the coals for “politicizing” the shootings, which is nonsense. When there are plane crashes, we talk about flight safety. When there are wildfires, we talk about fire prevention. Terrorist attacks beget huge (often over-reactive) conversations about security measures.

    So when one person is able to shoot seventy-one people in rapid succession before police arrive, it’s sensible to talk about whether it should be so easy. Guns aren’t exclusively to blame for the tragedy, but they sure did help make it possible, and multiply the destruction.

    However, the White House quickly made it clear it would not listen to Bloomberg’s plea. Aboard Air Force One this morning, Press Secretary Jay Carney said that “the president believes we need to take common-sense measures that protect the Second Amendment rights of Americans while ensuring that those who should not have guns under existing laws do not get them.”

    The problem is that, thanks to years of dedicated lobbying by the National Rifle Association, “existing laws” are simply inadequate. The existing laws in Colorado likely allowed the shooter, James Holmes, to obtain these guns—including an assault weapon—with ease.

    We don’t yet know the details of when or how Holmes purchased the guns, but consider these scenarios:

    If Holmes bought the guns in Colorado, he did not have to register them. The state prohibits gun registration.

    Holmes reportedly drove up to the movie theater with his arsenal. That too was entirely legal in Colorado—as long as the guns are visible, you don’t need a permit. Permits are only required for concealed carry.

    The assault weapons ban that expired under George W. Bush allowed Holmes to purchase the high-powered weapon that he reportedly used, an AR-15. President Obama campaigned on renewing the ban, but quickly dropped it from his agenda and “won’t even talk about” renewing it.

    If Aurora had decided prior to this shooting that it wanted to enact tougher gun control laws, it wouldn’t have been allowed to. Since 2003 it has been expressly illegal for any local government or law enforcement agency in Colorado to “enact an ordinance, regulation or other law that prohibits the sale, purchase or possession of a firearm that a person may lawfully sell, purchase or possess under state or federal law.” (Nearby Denver has been contesting this law in court).

    Holmes was arrested with an assault rifle, a shotgun, and two pistols. But authorities could have never noticed he was stockpiling weapons during his short time in Colorado, because it is prohibited for any law enforcement in the state to build databases of gun buyers or gun owners.

    If Holmes bought the guns outside Colorado, there are no laws restricting bringing them into Colorado.

  17. The American public has been treated to new and ever increasing levels of fear over the last 10 years and the attacks on home soil on 9/11. Much of it is deliberately manufactured and serves to defeat conversations that could lead to productive problem solving. The home grown fear mongering by fundy religious groups, privately owned and self serving news-media and the draining economics blah blah blah has compounded the unease. Who hasn’t been affected? I am so amazed we haven’t seen more of this young mans generation go on the offensive. They are being taught this violence as it is being capitalized on while they are victimized.
    I would also really like to know what other pressures he was battling in his life, if there were prescribed or non-prescription meds involved, what caused him to drop out of University so close to completing….so many questions…..

    I would also like to know what medications my Congressmen and Congresswomen take, the Senators, the Lobbyists, the Military leaders. I want it all out on the table…..these so called leaders who cannot even work together without name calling and finger pointing. The Palinesque mentalities and the creepy worshipping of all profit no matter the exploitation factor.

    I also now believe, full heartedly, that the sale and manufacture of weaponry should be massively de-profitized…… and criminalized. That oughta keep your prisons occupied and profitable for a good long time……

  18. The NRA owns the republican party and many democrats are afraid of them including Obama although they are waging a 40 million dollar campaign against him. Unfortunately there will be very little discussion of gun control among the politicians and the gun violence goes on. It is waged in the city of Chicago nearly every night.

  19. Sensational journalism at its very heights….. Create news coverage…. Create a need and validation for a job….. This is sorta like Nancy Grace but without the yelling……

    Soon someone will pander its the parents fault…. The mom a nurse and the dad I recall is an engineer…..

    These people inside and outside the theater have lost a great deal….. As has been pointed out…. Both political parties are going to play it to the max to push eachs agenda…… This is where I quit listening……. Great posting Gene….

  20. I have chosen to ignore it after the first facts were presented.

    Analysis? Isn’t that another word for propaganda?

    I came here direct after getting an email tip, and checking the headline articles. No discussion. Things as usual. No spontaneous OT thread.

    Did all know that GeneH was preparing his blog? And were thus waiting in abeyance?

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