Socially Patterned Defects

[H2O Man]

" Our society is produced in such a way that we create hungry ghosts very young, every day, by the thousands, by the hundreds of thousands. They are everywhere, wandering around without anything to believe in, without anything to love, without anything that looks true and good and beautiful." – Thich Nhat Hanh; August 6, 1996

Today is a day that will stain our nation’s history. I sit, stunned, watching the news on MSNBC, listening to the reports about the killing spree on the Virginia Tech campus. 22 dead, 28 wounded.

My younger son is a college student. Last year, there was a stabbing on the sidewalk in front of his dorm. It’s not like when I was a student.

Last summer, a disturbed young man who was asked to leave a party my son was at left, and returned with a hand gun. No shots were fired, but again, that is a very different experience than I had in my years as a student.

My education included reading Emile Durkheim and Erich Fromm, and I am reminded of both of them today:

"One of the most penetrating diagnoses of the capitalist culture in the nineteenth century was made by a sociologist, E. Durkheim, who was neither a political nor religious radical. He states that in modern industrial society the individual and the group have ceased to function satisfactorily; that they live in a condition of ‘anomie,’ that is, a lack of meaningful and structuralized social life; that the individual follows more and more ‘a restless movement, a planless self-development, an aim of living which has no criterion of value and in which happiness lies always in the future, and never in present achievement.’ The ambition of man, having the whole world for his customer, becomes unlimited, and he is filled with disgust, with the ‘futility of endless pursuit.’ Durkheim points out that only the political state survived the French Revolution as a solitary factor of collective organization. As a result, a genuine social order has disappeared, the state emerging as the only collective organizing activity of a social character. The individual, free from all genuine social bonds, finds himself abandoned, isolated, and demoralized. Society becomes ‘a disorganized dust of individuals’." – The Sane Society; Erich Fromm; page 191.

[AngryAmish]

1. When were you young?

[TahitiNut]

6. When dirt was new and God was a child.

:evilgrin:

[Jackpine Radical]

8. According to the Fundies, God is still a child. Avery powerful child.

He has these tantrums, you know. Fits of rage. Sends hurricanes to punish the homasekshuls and people that neglect to tithe to Pat Robertson and all.

[H2O Man]

11. "When bellybuttons

were only knee-high." -- Lennon

[malaise]

2. Beautifully stated

Looks like anomie in the young and hubris in the adults.

[Fovea]

3. Durkheim

as well as White The Organization Man, Cox The Secular City, and Martin Buber I, Thou are also great in examining modern anomie.

There was another book, The Uncommitted , by Kensington which I find less useful and normative in all the wrong ways.

Thanks for bringing this up.

[H2O Man]

12. I have not read

Rev. Harvey Cox's "The Secular City." Thank you for reminding me of it. Years ago, the late Vine Deloria, Jr. had made a number of comments on it in his wonderful book "God Is Red."

[Old and In the Way]

4. It truly is a brave, new world.

Never had to deal with these issues when I was in school, either. My daughter is in school in Boston and we know she'll be affected by this. I'm sure this will be reverbing on all campuses over the coming weeks. I hope this starts a constructive dialogue on SAW-handguns and their availability in our country. Just another symptom of the social sickness that permeates our culture today.

[TahitiNut]

9. Even more, it's a "brave, new world order" ...

... and I seriously doubt Miranda would be inclined to make the same exclamation today.

[Hardrada]

5. The existentialists (Sartre, Camus et al) started from the

premise that life was meaningless and that one must create his own meaning. But this was allied to a leftist perspective which, of course, DID give meaning to one's life. I know this is the sequence I went through in the Sixties.

[Jackpine Radical]

7. Thank you H2O Man for bringing Durkheim & Fromm back

into my awareness. I think I was too young to understand them 40-odd years ago when I read them, and psychology itself was still too unformed to grant the insights I now have on contemplating them. In particular, I think of recent developments in attachment theory, and am very aware of how many in the current generation are damaged by failures of attachment, and how our "cocooning" compulsion (forgive my lifting a term from someone named Faith Popcorn) is allowing the injury to spread to all of us.

[LiberalEsto]

10. When I was in college, the violence was in Vietnam

and students were busy protesting, trying to keep from getting drafted, and looking for ways to get high in order to grab a few hours of respite.

[OneBlueSky]

13. our food, our water, our air . . . they're all making us sick . . . some more than others . . . n/t

[Straight Shooter]

14. H20 Man, you remember 1966, Charles Whitman in the Texas tower, shooting students.

That was horrifying.

"Turning his attention to the area of campus known as the South Mall, he began with his most accurate weapon, the scoped 6mm rifle. His first target was Claire Wilson, a heavily pregnant eighteen-year-old. The bullet pierced her abdomen and fractured the skull of the baby she carried, killing it. When she cried out, an acquaintance, Thomas Eckman turned and asked her what was wrong. Just then he was hit in the chest. He fell dead across his wounded girl. Nearby, Dr. Robert Hamilton Boyer, a visiting physics professor, took a bullet to the lower back. He died quickly.

To the east of the Tower at the Computation Center, Thomas Ashton, a Peace Corps trainee, was shot in the chest. He died later at Brackenridge hospital. ... Charlie was still moving about the observation deck unhindered, and turned his attention westward, toward Guadalupe Street. Known as the Drag, the busy street was lined with businesses and formed the western boundary of the UT campus. Initially, people on Guadalupe Street thought the echoing gunshots were part of a college prank. Then Alex Hernandez, a newsboy on a bicycle, fell wounded. Seventeen-year-old Karen Griffin fell next, and would die a week later. Thomas Karr, who had probably turned to render aid to Griffin, was then shot in the back. He died an hour later. Those inside Guadalupe Street businesses huddled together away from windows.

Austin Police were arriving on campus and trying to make their way to the Tower. Officers Jerry Culp and Billy Speed were huddled, with others, under a statue south of the Tower, trying to figure their next move. Charlie shot Billy Speed through a six-inch space between two balusters, which were part of a rail that surrounded the statue. Though Speed’s wound looked superficial to those around him, it was in fact grave. He was dying.

Back on the Drag, the carnage continued. Harry Walchuk, a thirty-eight-year-old doctoral student and father of six was exiting a newsstand when a bullet entered his chest. He died at the scene. Nearby, high-school students Paul Sonntag, Claudia Rutt and Carla Sue Wheeler dove for cover behind a construction barricade. As Paul peered out from behind the barricade to see what was happening, Charlie shot him through his open mouth. He was killed instantly. Another shot hit Claudia Rutt, who died later at Brackenridge Hospital."

Detailed story at link.
http://www.crimelibrary.com/notorious_murders/mass/whitman/index_1.html

There is nothing to explain these occasional spikes of insanity. We can only hope that we, and our loved ones, are out of harm's way when it happens, and that someday we will learn how to prevent this.

[EFerrari]

16. There two consequences that I can think of that are a result

of not having a village square.

1) This shooter didn't just land on this planet. He came from a family. A village would know him and his tendencies/vulnerabilities because they'd already seen this DNA. Could it have been prevented? Who knows. But, there would be a better chance of prevention.

2) If community were more important to us, I bet you the communication at that college would have been more swift and more efficient. This is not to blame anyone in this terrible situation. But the closer a community is, the better the communication.

:(

/oops

[EFerrari]

15. This will be the most important OP on DU today, imho.

Thanks, H2O Man

[Manifestor_of_Light]

17. Bullying and grade pressure & obsession have always been around.

It's just that nobody started carrying a gun to school and shooting high school jocks who tormented the different kids, until Columbine.


I remember the Whitman shooting too. I was in junior high.

[pitohui]

26. "nobody" carried a gun to school in the 60s? they did but "nobody" reported it

a 12 or 13 yr old student brought a shotgun and tried to shoot my sister's middle school teacher in the 1960s, of course, in those days, such stories would not be put on the news, as i suppose they were too commonplace, i don't even think the story made the local paper altho it would have if he'd been a better shot and actually hit her!

i think even the "little house on the prairie" writer witnessed a school shooting when she was young, IIRC

[hootinholler]

27. I had a gun at school in high school ca '78

Daily during deer season, locked in the trunk of my car. Hunted before and after school.

-Hoot

[EFerrari]

28. We already knew you were dangerous.

[hootinholler]

30. HEY! I'm very nonviolent.

Just raised in the sticks.

<Cue Banjo>

-Hoot

Edit because apparently, I can't spell Cue

[EFerrari]

32. Good to read you, Hoot. n/t

[hootinholler]

33. Yeah, I'm King O the Lead Thread ;)

Like this one

:hi:

-Hoot

[EFerrari]

34. One day, my son came home and told me there was a gun

at school. I called the police -- and not in a loud way, but trying to be quiet and they didn't believe me. They had officers going into that school and they didn't take my report seriously. Denial runs pretty deep.

[hunter]

18. Yeah. Hungry ghosts.

Reminds me of this:

Santa Barbara - A University of California freshman, who witnesses said shouted "I am the Angel of Death" after killing four pedestrians, may have intentionally rammed his car into a crowd, according to authorities.

http://wc.arizona.edu/papers/94/108/01_4_m.html

[nashville_brook]

19. "disappearance of social order" will be used as an excuse for everything except

reform that could possibly prevent such tragedies. Reagan emptied mental health institutions leaving the mentally ill to fend for themselves. it was a dissolution of social order that allowed this happen, and this one "de-regulation" of social order will never stop reverberating until we make it right again.

[EFerrari]

29. It's also the disappearance of communal space.

I grew up in Sunnyvale when it was just being developed. We had no town hall at all. We had one bus that went to the mall only. We still had vigorous public schools and my family went to Mass on Sunday. But even then, there was only the school holding the community together. I doubt the same is true today, with a decline in funding, birth rate and so on.

Is Sunnyvale a place? If "place" means a space with social meaning, I'm not at all sure it is.

[FloridaJudy]

20. Excellent post!

Suffering is suffering.

Posters who say this is less important than Darfur or Baghdad miss the point. They're all part of the same pathology.

[Recursion]

21. Nietzsche called us "the last man"

And Fukuyama took him up on that. Very interesting arguments.

[EFerrari]

22. kick

[EFerrari]

23. H2O Man, the shooter was carrying no identification.

They can't identify him.

If that doesn't illustrate you point, I don't know what will. :(

[H2O Man]

25. Right.

That stands out.

[spuddonna]

24. K&R - thank you! n/t

[maxsolomon]

31. great post

i am always struck by the similarity of the fundamentalist critique of "late" capitalism & that of philosophers such as durkheim, illich, or even the jokesters at Adbusters.

we have lost the sacred.

[ismnotwasm]

35. Quiet desperation.

So very, very sad.

Thank you

[EFerrari]

36. kick

[undergroundpanther]

37. sigh

" Our society is produced in such a way that we create hungry ghosts very young, every day, by the thousands, by the hundreds of thousands. They are everywhere, wandering around without anything to believe in, without anything to love, without anything that looks true and good and beautiful." – Thich Nhat Hanh; August 6, 1996

Major Tom (Coming Home) Lyrics


Standing there alone,
the ship is waiting.
All systems are go.
"Are you sure?"
Control is not convinced,
but the computer
has the evidence.
No need to abort.
The countdown starts.

Watching in a trance,
the crew is certain.
Nothing left to chance,
all is working.
Trying to relax
up in the capsule
"Send me up a drink."
jokes Major Tom.
The count goes on...

4, 3, 2, 1
Earth below us
drifting, falling.
Floating weightless
calling, calling home...

Second stage is cut.
We're now in orbit.
Stabilizers up,
running perfect.
Starting to collect
requested data.
"What will it affect
when all is done?"
thinks Major Tom.

Back at ground control,
there is a problem.
"Go to rockets full."
Not responding.
"Hello Major Tom.
Are you receiving?
Turn the thrusters on.
We're standing by."
There's no reply.

4, 3, 2, 1
Earth below us
drifting, falling.
Floating weightless
calling, calling home...

Across the stratosphere,
a final message:
"Give my wife my love."
Then nothing more.

Far beneath the ship,
the world is mourning.
They don't realize
he's alive.
No one understands,
but Major Tom sees.
"Now the light commands
this is my home,
I'm coming home."

Earth below us
drifting, falling.
Floating weightless
coming home...
Earth below us
drifting, falling.
Floating weightless
coming, coming
home...
home.....

To my heart...
We are only human in the end of it all, a small piece of spirit that has the potential of all; if we feel miserable and cut-off; isolated and desperately lonely, our actions will reflect it. About people who snap and take the lives of others in a vain attempt to make a change, how long were these people considering doing what they did? How many people did they talk to, but yet, no one really tried to talk, or listen to them.

How psychopathic were they? Were they incapable of seeing their actions as as wrong as they are?

If the tragedy was motivated by pain, how helpless must they have felt that the only "rational" course of action for them was to kill people?? Do you not think some of them felt much the same as many of us do, helpless, depressed, betrayed by their leadership, totally without any stock or value in this world of ours.

Or the other option was they were psychopath children of empire and oblivious and uncaring about the pain their rampage would cause.


It is down to us to try and change our own perceptions to reach out and help those we see who are in need, who may feel the same as ourselves, but not have anyone with whom to share their awful isolation. And it is up to us to put boundaries upon the psychopaths who walk among us, the abusers and bullies and say NO, you cannot DO that to a person, no you cannot say that, it isn't funny it is verbal abuse.

The Empire has never ended but you can think your way out of it; it is not a real state,it is an empty sound. Empire isa mental state, a belief system and only through changing and learning why you believe as you do, will you be able to escape the empire.

The ones of the Empire, They cannot understand love, compassion or kindness, they are anathema to this. Only through the love and compassion we can show and act upon for our fellow beings on this planet, human or otherwise, and begin to go home by making one for ourselves and each other.
An empire cannot stand a community within it's cancerous kingdom.A conscious community that cares for each other's well being that is exactly what we need..And the empire/state will do everything in it's power to take that away from us because that empty hole where community should be the commecial state seeks to fill with the market and consumerism.Hungry ghosts grow up to become addicts,even if adddicted to fantasies that lead to murder.

[sicksicksick_N_tired]

38. But, we are benevolent, aren't we,...in spite of being, "abandoned, isolated,...

,...and demoralized,..." and disconnected?

I miss the sense of community I grew up in. I specifically remember when, "it takes a village to raise a child' was villified to the point that, community became a bad thing,...isolation, imperative.

Fromm was an astute observer of human existence. He acknowledged and embraced the notion that, we need eachother to get through the mystery of 'life'.

[H2O Man]

39. Fromm ....

his books are outstanding.

[nadinbrzezinski]

40. Anomie

time to look at the whole of society and look at the elephants in the room staring back at us

[H2O Man]

41. The news today ....

"I can't believe the news today
Oh, I can't close my eyes
And make it go away
How long...
How long must we sing this song?
How long? How long...
'cause tonight...we can be as one
Tonight...

And it's true we are immune
When fact is fiction and TV reality
And today the millions cry
We eat and drink while tomorrow they die"
-U2


The information being reported on the news today is intense. It seems evident that the guy who was responsible for this massacre put a serious amount of planning into it. The person who I think is bringing the most interesting Q&A is Cliff Van Zandt, the retired FBI profiler, who is on MSNBC.

There are a number of topics related to this tragic event that deserve our attention. The ideas about safety on campuses; issues of "gun control"; and many others come to mind.

[EFerrari]

42. Yesterday Van Zandt talked at length about catching "warning signs"

before these terrible events happen. This young man was only 23. It occurred to me that because of his youth, there may have been few or none. Or maybe I'm not understanding the "signs" Van Zandt meant.

[H2O Man]

44. There are a number

of them. There were, of course, a number of factors that would make it difficult to catch the warning signs.

Two of those difficulties would be his young age, which you point out, and that he was apparently a "loner." Thus a relatively few people might have been in a position to catch the warning signs. And those who might have, including his family, may not have had the skills to take an objective measure.

One of the things being mentioned, both in the media and here on DU, is the possibility that he was mentally ill. And it is possible that he had a serious mental illness.

It will be interesting to learn if he indeed left a note, and what it said. Also, if possible, to learn how he experienced life: did he have rigid ideas on right and wrong; did he set extreme standards for himself; how he viewed male-female relationships; cultural factors that may have come into play; and if a specific event triggered his violence (such as his apparent belief, true or otherwise, about a break-up of a relationship with his first victim).

It sounds as if this person had prepared extemely well for this massacre. It seems unlikely that the thought of killing people first entered his mind in April of 2007. Looking back, people who knew him may recognize clues that they did not really pick up on before. That is, of course, different from being able to recognize them before hand. Certainly there are many people who are troubled who do not kill others.

Note: the things being reported as "possibly true" on MSNBC now, about his note and prior behavior, is chilling.

[EFerrari]

47. I had to stop watching cable news yesterday. n/t

[H2O Man]

48. It can be hard to watch.

I remember when John Lennon used to quote his friend Harry Nilsson, who liked to say, "Everything is the exact opposite of what it really is." So I find myself going back and forth -- when someone says "it's society that failed," or "the police screwed this up," I think it's important to recognize the gunman is entirely responsible. And when I read a DUer saying the photo of the kid being shown shows an angry, vicious man, I find myself thinking that he looks like an unremarkable young man. (I also find myself firmly disagreeing with people on both sides of the gun-control issue, though I am oh so happy that at least one DUer has granted that not all men are mass murderers).

I will turn the tv off when the president attempts to access the good will of the nation later today. I do not have mixed feelings on that.

[EFerrari]

49. I have to thank that DUer on behalf of my sons. lol

There is always more than one layer to these situations and, that gives us more than one point where an intervention might be made or where small but important adjustments might be tried. I tend to think gun control wouldn't end these shootings where the perpetrator seems so determined even though in general, I do favor it.

I hope that campus gets better comfort than Junior today.

[H2O Man]

50. From an AP report ...

Police and university officials offered no clues to his motive in the massacre, the deadliest shooting rampage in modern U.S. history. "He was a loner, and we're having difficulty finding information about him," school spokesman Larry Hincker said.

Professor Carolyn Rude, chairwoman of the university's English department, said she did not personally know the gunman. But she said she spoke with Lucinda Roy, the department's director of creative writing, who had Cho in one of her classes and described him as "troubled."

"There was some concern about him," Rude said. "Sometimes, in creative writing, people reveal things and you never know if it's creative or if they're describing things, if they're imagining things or just how real it might be. But we're all alert to not ignore things like this."

She said Cho was referred to the counseling service, but she said she did not know when, or what the outcome was. Rude refused to release any of his writings or his grades, citing privacy laws.

(This is, obviously, significant .... People in the university's english department picked up on some of the warnings, and reportedly took the correct steps. But that does not always result in the outcome that we as society hope for.)

[EFerrari]

51. Shame? There was a situation in our English Dept at Cal

that was known at HR -- who proved to have an open complaint file on an instructor but as a community we were largely unaware of it because no one could find a way to talk about it.

I also am remembering two of my students today. One had a very flat affect that could be mistaken for calmness. I could tell he was a graffiti writer from his penmanship. He was hard to "reach" in any way although he seemed pleasant. I never saw him with another student in a social setting.

Another student was a football player on a scholarship. He came to class wearing a Walkman which I thought was to buffer some kind of learning issue. He seemed very remote and I had no luck reaching him, either. Looking back, I knew how to address the common problems of campus life but mass murder never crossed my mind.

[EFerrari]

43. An Antidote: Cememony

Ceremony

I will tell you something about stories



They aren’t just entertainment.

Don’t be fooled.

They are all we have, you see,

all we have to fight off illness and death.

　 　 　

You don’t have anything

if you don’t have the stories.
　
　 　 　

Their evil is mighty

but it can’t stand up to our stories.

So they try to destroy the stories

let the stories be confused or forgotten.

They would like that

They would be happy

Because we would be defenseless then.
　


He rubbed his belly.

I keep them here



Here, put your hand on it

See, it is moving.

There is life here

for the people.
　　
　

And in the belly of this story

the rituals and the ceremony

are still growing.



from Ceremony, Leslie Marmon Silko




　

[H2O Man]

45. I have heard

a few people on tv today say that "ceremony" is one of the most important things for people to do, in order to help deal with this tragic event. I agree, 100%.

One thing that I have learned in life is this: be thankful for the people in your life. Those you see today can be gone in the blink of an eye.

[Me.]

46. K &

R