If it were only that simple . . .
School shootings are unthinkably horrible and we all want to somebody to do something to prevent them. It seems simple and obvious that we should ban guns, or some particular class of guns. It also seems simple that if we just armed teachers (maybe students too?) then attackers would be deterred. Maybe we only need to ban gun ownership for people who are mentally ill — but when and how are people diagnosed and who gets to decide which mental illnesses disqualify gun ownership. Or what about if parents would just do their job? A little more discipline will whip these kids into shape, right?
The proposed solutions are simple, and obvious, which makes them appealing. I wish it were really that simple, but I don’t think it is. I think our society is sick; American culture is diseased; and mass shootings are just the most heinous symptom of an insidious virus of thought that has infected us all.
Remember when it seemed obvious that if cholesterol was clogging your arteries you needed to stop eating foods with cholesterol? How quaint, simple and obvious it was — but it was wrong. The human endocrine system is more complex than that and that advice is now passé. Turns out that cholesterol levels in our blood aren’t just a reflection of how much we ate — we have to understand how the complex interactions of how our bodies manufacture and regulate cholesterol in order to know what to do.
Treating the symptoms is not necessarily a bad thing — doctors intentionally do this all the time. If you have the flu or a cold, usually treating the symptoms while waiting for the disease to run it’s course is the normal treatment. Maybe we could have a temporary impact on the symptom of mass shooting by banning guns, but I think the underlying malady will just surface elsewhere
I have a friend who was afflicted with a mystery illness a couple of decades back. He would get these horrible painful lumps on his skin. The dermatologist couldn’t figure it out. He treated it with skin creams, tested for allergies, tested for fungi, and it went on for months where it would subside on one part of his body only to pop back up in another spot. Treating the symptoms wasn’t working and focusing on them was actually drawing attention away from the root cause. Turns out he had a systemic staff infection and a course of some bad-ass antibiotics cleared it up. In the end it there was a disarmingly simple solution to the problem, but it certainly wasn’t obvious and came only after the actual root cause had been found.
I believe we are suffering from a cultural disease. It’s like in the movie Inception — an idea has been planted in our individual and collective consciousness that has poisoned us and we don’t even recognize it. It’s like the story of the two young fish who were swimming along one morning and passed by an old fish who asked “How’s the water back there?”. The young fish looked at each other and one of them said “What’s water?”. We have grown up with this infection for generations and it has become “normal” to the point it is hard to even recognize it.
But there’s hope! The #MeToo movement is an example of how the undiscussed everyday maltreatment of women has gone from being just part of the water we swim in to something that is being openly discussed and debated. The missing element there is a complementary #IwasThat Guy campaign where upstanding good men openly reveal that we’ve been that guy who said or did something that fits the definition of harassment, coercion, or assault. That’s another story for another day — but the reality is that I believe every man in this country, with some self-examination can begin to see the perpetrator in himself. As we begin to do this, we begin to see our actions through the eyes of women who have been affected by our words or behavior and to question the assumptions and ideas that led to it.
Just as men have been infected with ideas about the inferiority or subordination of women, we all have been infected with the idea that violence can solve problems. And just like every man with adequate self reflection can find his own #IwasThat Guy story, I think we all can, with some self reflection, find our own story as perpetrator of violence.
Violence is not just physical. It is mental and emotional and the scars left from that violence don’t heals as quickly or simply as our bodies do. Bullying has been a big topic of debate in the past decade. It is no surprise to me that the debates over bullying coincide with the rise of social media. Social media is the perfect playground for bullies and it’s hard to police. Bullying in all of its forms is using violence to solve a problem … and villifying the bullies just perpetuates the problem. We all have been the bully in some way at some time. What’s needed is self examination to recognize this truth. We need an #IwasThe Bully campaign to foster this self-recognition.
So what is the point of this self awareness? How will it help lead to positive change in our society? It’s back to why I think the simple solutions fail. We want to externalize the problem — to find the monster and kill it or at least fence it out. Problem is — the monster is us. We cannot eliminate the symptoms until we cure the disease, and to cure the disease, we have to start with ourselves. I’m not saying some kind of gun isn’t a good idea, I’m just saying it’s not really solving the problem. To cure the disease of violence in our society, we have to look inward, see where we are being the perpetrator, and work to make a change in the place where we have the most influence — within ourselves.
