tragedy begets tragedy.

I’m not liking the fact that people are starting to draw causal lines between this nutjob’s bad and violent writing and his killing spree. To suggest that creative expression is linked to antisocial violence is dangerous–as dangerous as suggesting that playing bloody video games is linked to such acts. To use the anecdotal evidence of one guy who pretty much by definition lies outside the boundaries of basic humanity as proof that a characteristic of one’s personality makes you violent is not just bad statistics, it’s ridiculous.

It sounds like everyone around him did their best to reach out to him, took his poetry and other writing as warning signs, and he refused all approaches. It just didn’t work, because something deep inside of him was broken beyond repair. What are we supposed to do, lock up everybody who writes a screenplay with violence in it? For every one of these guys there are literally hundreds (and probably more like thousands, or millions) of people who use art to accomplish all sorts of positive things–not the least of which is addressing and mitigating antisocial, violent feelings that couldn’t otherwise be expressed in a safe way.

I’m sorry to say this, because at moments like these it’s completely natural to search for Explanations and Reasons, but I doubt there are any big lessons to learn from this episode beyond the fact that every once in a while a human being goes truly and completely crazy and does something horrible. And as long as we want to live in a society that permits us all the freedom to come and go as we please, there’s no way to stop an occasional tragedy. The question is whether that freedom is worth it to us. I’m doing my best not to draw any political parallels here, but you get my point.

There is one point that a friend of mine made which I did appreciate. This massacre was the work of a “loner,” an outsider. And it was our society and, I’d argue, our basic social instincts, that put him in that position. As long as we have cool kids, Hollywood, political parties, and religion, we’ll always have demarcated groups–and we’ll always have people who don’t fit in. And although I don’t think that’s ever going to change, it may well be that it’s our responsibility now to try to do something to make everyone feel relevant, significant, and human. You can definitely file that one under “easier said than done,” however.