I am very impressed with what Alex has said, and how well he expressed himself. He's a gifted writer, good at expressing himself, and he was at the top of his form when he wrote this. Nevertheless, I don't think that he said all that should have been said...so here are a few things from me. There are some other things that I have said on this general topic before in my comments on On The Turning Away.

There are several things that can lead to this sort of tragedy. Someone who kills a number of people at once, however, has almost certainly bought into the notion, on some level or another, that the people he's killing are not really human--are not the same sort of being that he is. (Please don't give me any grief about the use of the masculine pronoun to refer to a hypothetical individual whose gender is unspecified. It's common usage in English, and this is not the time or place for discussing whether that is as it should be.) As soon as you stop looking at people as people and start looking at them as targets, or obstacles to your ambitions, or anything else that denies them humanity in some way, you are taking another step towards a massacre yourself. Overly dramatic? Perhaps so. But the fact is that most of the soldiers that worked at the Nazi death camps (for example) were probably reasonable, personable individuals that you wouldn't mind having a beer or two with--with just this little character flaw: that they were willing to help to kill people by the thousands for their country's political ends.

So many little things lead to this dehumanization. Stereotyping is one. Any time you use shortcuts to come to a conclusion as to what sort of person someone is, you deny them a little individuality. This is so endemic you hardly notice it happening any more, but that doesn't mean it isn't damaging--quite the opposite.

Alex makes some very good points about educating children to help them to learn to make choices that they can live with, on all levels. I don't think that he goes far enough. This does not simply apply to children. If you are convinced that you have learned all that you need to know in order to make rational and moral decisions for any situation, you are wrong. Learning--taking in new information, thinking about it, integrating it with what previous information you have had, and evaluating it--is a process that should never stop. Show me someone who thinks that they know all the answers, and I'll show you a dangerous lunatic.

Certainly there is a limit to how much information you really need in order to make a properly informed decision. Perhaps I err on the conservative side; I like to have a lot of information at my disposal before making evaluations or major decisions. But I am, frankly, frightened by all the people I know and have met who seem to think that a thirty-second description of a situation by a talking head on television is enough for them to be able to evaluate the situation and form an opinion with no consciously realized reservations.

"Violence never solves anything"...I think that this is a fine example of fuzzy thinking that expresses some high-minded ideals using a statement that is clearly false. Violence often solves things much more thoroughly than any other known method. The problem is that the solutions are often irreversible, and the quality of the solutions tends to be terrible. (I am aware that Alex wasn't using this philosophy...just mentioning it.)

All of these things are linked together. Stereotypes, dehumanization, fixed attitudes--all of these shortcuts will take you down the road to hell if you let them define how you think and feel. I am not talking about some path to religious damnation in a hypothetical afterlife--I am talking about creating hell here.

Well, no doubt I've left out some things that are just as important as the ones that I thought Alex should have said...so if you think that I have, and you have some additions of your own to make, please make them, and I'll link to them.

30 May 1998