what to do, what to do
Apr. 18th, 2007 12:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sophiaserpentiaWhat to do about people who go on mass shooting sprees?
For one thing, we've got to start thinking "This could happen here" before it DOES happen here. We want to have an armed society and at the same time live in a cloud-cuckoo-land of denial that people ever get senselessly violent. I've been thinking that bulletproof doors and windows with good locks in schools and offices might be a good start. Maybe panic rooms too. That, plus intruder alert systems in big buildings, so that when someone does go in and start shooting people, everyone else in the building isn't a sitting duck; they can barricade themselves in their office.
But besides that, it's time to have a radical conversation about why this happens. I like the wayxephyr says we need whackjob control more than we need gun control, but i'd like to take it even further than that. For one thing, i'm concerned that a "watch your neighbor for disturbing signs" campaign would devolve into a witchhunt against dissidents, nonconformists, people with Aspergers and other neuro-atypicalities, and people with PTSD.
We need to simply admit that the reason this happens is that society breeds people like this. It is not JUST a matter of, as Kurt Vonnegut put it, bad brain chemicals plus bad ideas. The reason does not start and end with the individual and his life circumstances, though these are important.
We ask "why do these things happen?" as if we really don't know. We know, we just don't want to talk about it. So there's this conspiracy of silence, where we agree to pretend we don't see things we see every day and which mash our brains into goo.
What is it about our way of living -- besides the isolation, anomie, breakdown of the extended family, overcrowding, chemical exposures, bad nutrition, noise pollution, desensitization to violence, slow-motion cannibalism (which includes racism, sexism, and classism), overwhelming constant demands for our attention from all sides, soul-killing jobs, exploitation, governments that lie -- that could contribute to mass killing sprees? I just don't know. I can't imagine.
For one thing, we've got to start thinking "This could happen here" before it DOES happen here. We want to have an armed society and at the same time live in a cloud-cuckoo-land of denial that people ever get senselessly violent. I've been thinking that bulletproof doors and windows with good locks in schools and offices might be a good start. Maybe panic rooms too. That, plus intruder alert systems in big buildings, so that when someone does go in and start shooting people, everyone else in the building isn't a sitting duck; they can barricade themselves in their office.
But besides that, it's time to have a radical conversation about why this happens. I like the way
xephyr says we need whackjob control more than we need gun control, but i'd like to take it even further than that. For one thing, i'm concerned that a "watch your neighbor for disturbing signs" campaign would devolve into a witchhunt against dissidents, nonconformists, people with Aspergers and other neuro-atypicalities, and people with PTSD.We need to simply admit that the reason this happens is that society breeds people like this. It is not JUST a matter of, as Kurt Vonnegut put it, bad brain chemicals plus bad ideas. The reason does not start and end with the individual and his life circumstances, though these are important.
We ask "why do these things happen?" as if we really don't know. We know, we just don't want to talk about it. So there's this conspiracy of silence, where we agree to pretend we don't see things we see every day and which mash our brains into goo.
What is it about our way of living -- besides the isolation, anomie, breakdown of the extended family, overcrowding, chemical exposures, bad nutrition, noise pollution, desensitization to violence, slow-motion cannibalism (which includes racism, sexism, and classism), overwhelming constant demands for our attention from all sides, soul-killing jobs, exploitation, governments that lie -- that could contribute to mass killing sprees? I just don't know. I can't imagine.
