Scott,
Your fine question is deeper than I am qualified to address - but (lacking
personal control
) I’ll take a shot at it. (Insert standard disclaimer about
not being a “shrink”.)
A “rampager” may perceive a tempting target, but what makes him
rampage? Something overwhelmed “normal” values.
All of us get angry but we don’t shoot people who merely slight us. We bring
about change or ignore the problem.
Some people are unwilling or unable to cope with their problems. They may
feel inferior or impotent and become so frustrated that they fall prey to any
“empowering” element. In well-balanced people, this “I’ll show them”
response may bring about high achievement (e.g. Colin Powell and Theodore
Roosevelt). Other frustrated people try to find empowerment through
membership in organizations (e.g. military forces, law enforcement,
churches, labor unions, HCI, NRA, etc.). Unfortunately, some people turn to
destructive organizations like the UAP - as the Littleton shooters may have
done. The need to “belong” can overwhelm some people - especially the
young, the uneducated, and the inexperienced. (Puberty, menopause, and
other crises frequently exacerbate such problems.)
The root causes of such unbearable frustration may be hereditary,
intellectual, environmental, something else, or “none of the above”! We may
not know the causes, but we all recognize something has changed in our
society.
Fist fights have become gun fights. “Hissy fits” have become mass murders.
Personal industry is scorned, thwarted by our government, and considered
unnecessary - even naive. The values of past generations such as integrity
and truth have been replaced with “situational ethics” - moral silly putty.
Many of us have become fat and lazy - physically, morally and intellectually.
At one extreme we show heart-rending emotion over trivialities. At another
extreme we have become truly heartless. Personal responsibility has been
replaced with finger-pointing; etc.
Our self-serving, paternalistic government has created a bureaucratic Hydra
- increasingly ruling over us as “subjects”, further destroying our privacy,
values, and initiative.
Increasing population density restricts many of our earlier freedoms and
activities and unites fringe groups of every ilk.
Achievement and individualism are given mere lip service as our children are
educated downward to the lowest common denominator in the name of
Equal Rights - frequently creating social parasites out of potential achievers.
Many families no longer have time (or make time) for their children. With
both Mom and Dad working, many homes are little more than sleeping
quarters; fancy status symbols; showplaces representing albatross-like
financial burdens; morally empty shells devoid of values, solace, or sense of
“belonging”.
In many homes, children are treated as expensive irritants, disturbances
interfering with parents’ “time off”. Such children may never learn virtuous
values or realistic coping abilities, so (for example) we find a single
UNemployed mother who neither knows nor cares where her children are at
two o’clock on a weekday (i.e. schoolday) morning.
Happily there are exceptions - frequently in the homes which are most
time-pressured! For example, many single parents work full-time, may even
have an additional part-time job, and still find time to shower love, affection,
and training on their children.
We, as a nation, are reaping the whirlwind we have sown by spending
excessive time and money on “escapes”; by ignoring our children, and by
relying upon the government, schools, and other babysitters to raise our
children for us. If we denigrate values and refuse to teach them, we can not
expect our kids to have them.
Scott, I believe the answer to your question is that the Littleton rampagers
reached the end of their rope. They felt pressures (real or imagined) too
great to describe, to analyze, or (tragically) to cope with.
Overwhelmed people frequently leap at any apparent solution - too
frequently some charismatic person or group.
If the individual is lucky, the chosen solution provides good values. If
individuals are unlucky, having no internal values themselves, they may be
taken over by bad values and follow a Hitler, Jim Jones, etc. For some such
people violent films, TV programs, and computer games affect personal
values - desensitizing them to violence, developing the thought processes of
violence and revenge.
From there it may be a short step to any “final solution” - a brief moment of
recognition or revenge; suicide; or even mass suicide.
Obviously many of us have or had hard lives but, from some intrinsic or
extrinsic source, we have developed values, coping mechanisms, self-worth,
etc. Other people, frequently with lesser travails, can not develop such skills
and sink into some form of aberrant behavior.
I’m sure there is no 100% cure to such problems - but we could be doing
much, much better. Where may the answers be found? I have only
personal opinions about where to search. Rest assured, I will not rely upon
the self-serving bureaucracies of our paternalist government or the
mush-minded, touchy-feely drivel of most academic “institutions of higher
learning”.
But we must find and correct the root causes of our problems rather than
merely address the symptoms. Or mass murders and tyranny will increase
and, paradoxically, may become the least of our problems.
