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We are uncomfortable in confronting randomness in our lives. When something terrible happens we search for "explanations" in the same way that primitive people did when puzzled by the complexity of the universe. Why does one person kill another, or 13 others? The fact that murder has always been a routine phenomenon of human existence does not dispel the horror that it implies, or our desire to reassure ourselves that we are not likely to die this way if only we can understand the "motive" for such acts.
We can better grasp the idea of murder in certain contexts. We can accept that jealousy or greed or hatred drives some people to kill. Or when the killing takes place on the streets of the inner city and is perpetrated by those with long criminal records. What can be said of a mass murder by a high-status professional trained to help others?
The events in Ford Hood, Texas are not unique. We don't have to look very far to find plenty of examples of alienated loners who finally become so angry at their inability to get what they want from other human beings that they get a gun and start killing those who they see as having or being what they cannot. Columbine and Virginia Tech come to mind (as do, more recently, a Pittsburgh health club and an immigrant center in Binghamton, N.Y.). Eighteen years ago, Killeen, Texas, nearby Fort Hood, was the scene of one of the most deadly shootings in American history when George Hennard crashed his truck into a Luby's cafeteria and began shooting, killing 23 people and wounding 20.
The fact is that we live in a murderous society. These mass killings are simply the worst examples. The United States has the highest homicide rate of any advanced democracy, nearly four times that of France and the United Kingdom. Still, guns are freely available and we, almost alone among the nations of the world, cling to the death penalty. Since 1976 more than a thousand people have been executed -- ironically, a third of them in Texas.
Does the shooter's Muslim heritage explain this crime? Or, born and raised in Virginia, is he as American as the rest of us? He apparently lived at the lethal intersection of religion and politics, unhappy at the stories he was told by returning veterans of our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Is post-traumatic stress disorder something you can catch from your patients like a virus? Or did his faith finally bring him to see his fellow soldiers as the enemy? Was this American doctor, who apparently wrote an Internet post sympathetic to suicide bombers, a terrorist?
I fear we will be disappointed in our search for a moral to this awful story, an answer that will allow us "to make sure this does not happen again." It will happen again, of course. (As I write this, something similar is happening in Orlando, Fla.) All manner of hatred is abroad in the land. On the same day as the Fort Hood massacre, thousands of our fellow citizens gathered at the Capitol to wave signs accusing the president of simultaneously being a Nazi and a Socialist, and threatening to come armed next time.
We are all hanging by a thread. Any of us could be a victim of inexplicable violence perpetrated by someone with a festering grievance who loves death more than life. All any of us can do is contribute in our own way to maintaining a respect and tolerance for those who disagree with us. The madmen and fanatics who populate the outer fringes of our world retain their random ability to hurt and horrify us. But they will not carry the day.
Gordon Livingston, a Vietnam veteran and psychiatrist who lives in Columbia, was an Army doctor who did part of his training at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. He is the author of books including "Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart." His e-mail is gslcvk@aol.com.
We can better grasp the idea of murder in certain contexts. We can accept that jealousy or greed or hatred drives some people to kill. Or when the killing takes place on the streets of the inner city and is perpetrated by those with long criminal records. What can be said of a mass murder by a high-status professional trained to help others?
The events in Ford Hood, Texas are not unique. We don't have to look very far to find plenty of examples of alienated loners who finally become so angry at their inability to get what they want from other human beings that they get a gun and start killing those who they see as having or being what they cannot. Columbine and Virginia Tech come to mind (as do, more recently, a Pittsburgh health club and an immigrant center in Binghamton, N.Y.). Eighteen years ago, Killeen, Texas, nearby Fort Hood, was the scene of one of the most deadly shootings in American history when George Hennard crashed his truck into a Luby's cafeteria and began shooting, killing 23 people and wounding 20.
The fact is that we live in a murderous society. These mass killings are simply the worst examples. The United States has the highest homicide rate of any advanced democracy, nearly four times that of France and the United Kingdom. Still, guns are freely available and we, almost alone among the nations of the world, cling to the death penalty. Since 1976 more than a thousand people have been executed -- ironically, a third of them in Texas.
Does the shooter's Muslim heritage explain this crime? Or, born and raised in Virginia, is he as American as the rest of us? He apparently lived at the lethal intersection of religion and politics, unhappy at the stories he was told by returning veterans of our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Is post-traumatic stress disorder something you can catch from your patients like a virus? Or did his faith finally bring him to see his fellow soldiers as the enemy? Was this American doctor, who apparently wrote an Internet post sympathetic to suicide bombers, a terrorist?
I fear we will be disappointed in our search for a moral to this awful story, an answer that will allow us "to make sure this does not happen again." It will happen again, of course. (As I write this, something similar is happening in Orlando, Fla.) All manner of hatred is abroad in the land. On the same day as the Fort Hood massacre, thousands of our fellow citizens gathered at the Capitol to wave signs accusing the president of simultaneously being a Nazi and a Socialist, and threatening to come armed next time.
We are all hanging by a thread. Any of us could be a victim of inexplicable violence perpetrated by someone with a festering grievance who loves death more than life. All any of us can do is contribute in our own way to maintaining a respect and tolerance for those who disagree with us. The madmen and fanatics who populate the outer fringes of our world retain their random ability to hurt and horrify us. But they will not carry the day.
Gordon Livingston, a Vietnam veteran and psychiatrist who lives in Columbia, was an Army doctor who did part of his training at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. He is the author of books including "Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart." His e-mail is gslcvk@aol.com.
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Of course killing an intruder is a homicide; homicide, however, is not a crime: murder is. Homicide is killing another person: kill an intruder, & you kill another person. But you won't always be charged with murder. & It's not "difficult to decide," since homicides are investigated by police & prosecutors & not by newspaper editorialists. As for "law-abiding citizens," I'm sure all those drivers I see coast thru stop signs & zip thru red lights think of themselves as such.
Hexexis (11/14/2009, 8:49 PM )