I apologize for adding to the sum total of posts about Jared Loughner. This will be the only one I do—I hope.
I found this post by Rich Horton at Blue Crab Boulevard extremely interesting. If you want a plausible scapegoat for the shootings, why not Jacques Derrida?
But if you absolutely need to blame someone else, why not look to the things that obviously did inspire Loughner? Like a lot of other people I too looked at Loughner’s YouTube ravings, and it became clear to me there was something Loughner drew upon as “inspiration” of a sort. Clearly Loughner had either been introduced to in college or read on his own something of the philosophical perspective known as “deconstructionism.” You can see this in his obsession with “grammar” and the supposed meaninglessness of language. Something like this was obviously the source of Loughner’s nonsense question to Giffords back in 2007. Loughner gets introduced to the idea that texts have no set meaning, and when confronted by a member of Congress whose very position and status is defined by a text (i.e. the Constitution) Loughner now believes is devoid of content, well, he begins to think of her as a charlatan or tyrant.
One of the most common accusations we hear from atheists is that religion drives people to violence. Many arguments against religion are framed in terms of religious people being inherently prone to murder, because we value dogmas over people. “Religion has killed more people than anything else in history,” we are told (such people never seem to notice the fact that, in the one century in which atheist governments have actually existed, they’ve managed to even—or better—the score).
But look at a non-religious methodology like Derrida’s deconstructionism. (I can’t claim to speak knowledgeably about deconstructionism. My comprehension of it is at the bonehead level. As is, without a doubt, Loughner’s). Deconstructionism, as I understand it, involves a belief that reality is so incredibly complex that we can’t actually know it in any way, that when we imagine we understand anything, we’re fooling ourselves. We can’t understand what words mean. We can’t be sure of our own experiences or memories. We can’t be sure that we interact with other human beings in any meaningful way. Under such a world view (at least as dummies like me and Loughner would understand it), we are utterly alone in the universe, adrift and unconnected.
Now please note my next point. I am not saying that deconstructionism leads inevitably to insanity and violence like the shootings in Arizona. I have no doubt that many deconstructionists are decent people, good neighbors, and caring parents. (Whether their lives are consistent with their philosophy is not the issue here.)
What I’m saying is that whatever world view you adopt, a metaphysic comes with it. And that metaphysic provides a form for the nut’s nutty ideas. Religion does not drive people to madness or violence. Religion—like ideology, and even literary theory—simply forms an armature on which the insane person builds his personal monster.
In fact, if a man must be insane, wouldn’t you rather he thought he was Jesus (and tried to act like Him) than that he thought he was Napoleon?
Heh. I keep thinking that I should not get involved in the whole debate either, but somehow I still haven’t quit.
What I think it really sad is that when anything happens these days, the political battle gets launched before we have a chance to just look at it as people. I notice that impulse in myself as well as many other people. In the words of Rodney King, “Can’t we all just get along?”
Lars
-Thankyou. Yours may be the single most simple (in the best sense) sane, reasonable, post on Loughner I’ve yet read.
A welcome change from the crowds whose cutting cultural analysis may or may not be well reasoned, but even when it is, is totally discredited in my mind by the way they’ve contributed to making a tragedy into a political point-scoring argument before we even understand or know all the details of what happened and why.
Ian B
Ah, but the wise-in-his-own-eyes atheist will point out 1 of 2 facts when you mention this.
1) Those rulers didn’t commit atrocities in the “name of atheism.” However, atrocities committed by religious people are done in the name of religion.
2) Those rulers were not good atheists. They were statists (worshipping the state). Therefore, it is still religion committing atrocities.
Pay no attention to the fact that neither option makes a lick of sense to anyone not already convinced of the argument.
I have heard both arguments from the same person at different times.
Lars,
Excellent post. Very well said.
I’ve heard some scary things about this guy, and it makes you wonder just how volatile and dangerous does a guy have to be before calling the state to handle it, if they are willing. Compare that to the fact that some parents are persecuted for slightly mishandling their kids and some foster parents are ignored while abusing their kids, and you have to wonder if the state can handle any family matter appropriately.
This is a good post, Lars. Have you heard the hand-wringing some leaders are doing, saying we aren’t worthy of healing our problems or words to that effect? One evil man makes the whole country shameful? Or are we waking up to the idea that mankind cannot redeem its own sins?
I once heard a Classics professor say, in a public lecture, that a major difference between the ancient Greek and modern mindsets is that the ancient Greeks actually believed that a person’s own individual nature was a reason/explanation for things, whereas the modern mindset looks for some further explanation. Thus the ancient Greeks would have said, “he did it because he was a murderer in his heart,” whereas moderns think it must have to with mental illness, or the Tea Party, or something.
Of all things this reminds me of “The Brady Bunch.” There was an episode in which one of the Brady brothers (I forget which one) had disturbingly adopted Jesse James as his favorite Western hero. As a solution, he was introduced to an old man who said that Jesse James had killed his father. Young Mr. Brady was shocked and asked, “Why would he do a thing like that?” The man replied, “Because that’s the kind of man he was, a mean dirty killer.”
Of course Mr. Loughner is entitled to his day in court, and evidence, circumstance, motives, etc. are legitimately a factor in the determination of guilt or innocence, as well as the nature of the charge and what penalty is appropriate. But our society and legal system need a dose of Brady Bunch realism, because sometimes there’s no other reason why people kill but that they are mean, dirty killers.
“Brady Bunch realism.” Now there is an entirely novel concept in my experience. 🙂
Don’t take any of what follows to mean I don’t wish this young man had been killed during the attack: I do. Since he survived, I want him locked up forever where he can’t hurt anyone else. But I have real pity for him. It’s a terrible thing to be so tormented by a belief in the meaninglessness of life. Maybe he was so cross-wired in the brain that it wouldn’t have mattered what kind of ethos he was raised in. Still, it’s awful to think of being that mentally ill while having no one around you who could show you that not everyone is hollow and faking. One real emotional contact can go a long way to dispel all that poop about how we can’t know anything and nothing can have meaning.
Michael,
The thing that disturbs me about the ancient Greek mindset is that Aristotle believed that some men are by nature slaves, and that generally Greek culture had no problem defining those sub-human people however was convenient. This is not to say that I’m offering a wholesale critique, nor do I like the modern assumption that a man isn’t responsible for his actions. But it seems one thing you have to accept if you’re a Christian (or, I think, a non-liberal Jew) is that there is a difference between one’s identity and one’s personal responsibility.
Rahab was a lowrer-class prostitute who in Greek culture would be by nature excluded from any sort of dignity, but for whom God made an honored place despite the fact that she was a low-down prostitute. The point (as I see it) is not that people are not responsible for our actions, but that since all are in need of grace we can’t determine if/that people are “by nature” exceptionally evil.
This doesn’t mean people can’t receive punishment or judgment for their sins; it just means that it isn’t the result of a different form of nature from the rest of us.
“Chester,” I agree with you, and I didn’t mean to say that I endorse every point of the ancient Greek mindset, only that on this point it was on the right track as compared to the modern mindset.
Deconstructionism seems to be far crazier than just thinking reality is too complicated to understand. See http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/01/death_by_deconstructionism.html.