Please tell me why the deaths of 120 people out of a total of 2.8 million is significant. — T Clark

Sure. It's a matter of social relations. The numbers have no importance here; the importance it has is the importance it is given, just as the value of money is the value people put upon it. This is called social construction. To put it another way, everybody dies, but how one dies is 'significant'. It matters whether my wife dies of natural causes or is murdered. And it matters to the whole society, because the whole society is structured to be concerned about such things, with police and courts and so on.

But this is so blatantly fucking obvious that I have to think you are just trolling the thread now because you have some axe to grind.

But this is so blatantly fucking obvious that I have to think you are just trolling the thread now because you have some axe to grind. — unenlightened

Trolling the thread = Disagrees with me.

And yes, I do have an axe to grind - I think this kind of hysterical reaction to this type of event hurts the country. The US is under the pall of a period of government by outrage and it is damaging.

And yes, I do have an axe to grind - I think this kind of hysterical reaction to this type of event hurts the country. — T Clark

Really? I mean REALLY? You think my discussion of international news from the other side of the ocean is a hysterical reaction that hurts the country? That's a seriously delicate little flower of a country you got there. Either that, or it's your hysterical reaction to my wanting to discuss something.

We focus on mass shootings because we're fascinated by them. For whatever reason, it's just more dramatic than the row of child abuse victims in the closest pediatric hospital.

Did you see the first season of American Horror story? It featured a character who is the ghost of a mass shooter. A living girl falls in love with him. Such is the way the concept has taken up residence in us.

On the one hand, this fascination is probably setting the stage for more of it. On the other, eeeevvvvveerrryytbody knows we need to reduce the number of firearms in the US. So that's another drama that seems to especially fascinate non-Americans. Who knows why? It's dramatic, I guess.

Echoing the title of the OP, even the parents of the kids are screaming about not wanting to go to school.

Suppose you have a young child and while you are out with them, a random stranger comes up and slaps that child in the face. You are outraged.

Suppose the same child gets cancer. You are deeply saddened. Now someone asks you why you are only saddened at a serious chronic disease but outraged at a temporary trauma. What do you say to them?

What do you say to them? — Baden

Nanu nanu. I think you must have been sleeping through Human societies 101.

Trolling the thread = Disagrees with me. — T Clark

No, trolling the thread = calling me silly and hysterical and presenting absolutely no argument or insight but rather attempting to shut down the discussion. Trolling the the thread is making a whole lot of noise about something else to drown out any possibility of learning anything about the topic.

On the other, eeeevvvvveerrryytbody knows we need to reduce the number of firearms in the US. So that's another drama that seems to especially fascinate non-Americans. Who knows why? It's dramatic, I guess. — frank

And here you are yet again. No one is talking about gun control in the thread. You bring it up to create another diversion, along with child abuse. What are you so scared of?

I think the answer to the OP is that you're overthinking it.

As for the rest, *sung in tenor* "I wasn't talking to you....."

:joke: I crack myself up. Sorry, I'm in a rare good mood.

Really? I mean REALLY? You think my discussion of international news from the other side of the ocean is a hysterical reaction that hurts the country? That's a seriously delicate little flower of a country you got there. Either that, or it's your hysterical reaction to my wanting to discuss something. — unenlightened

I either didn't know or forgot that you don't live in the US. Why in God's name would you care about what happens in another country when it doesn't have anything to do with you?

No, trolling the thread = calling me silly and hysterical and presenting
absolutely no argument or insight but rather attempting to shut down the discussion. Trolling the the thread is making a whole lot of noise about something else to drown out any possibility of learning anything about the topic. — unenlightened

I went back and checked. I didn't call you silly or hysterical. I called the Viking argument silly and the public and media reaction hysterical. I also read through my posts. I think they are thoughtful and to the point. It surprises me how angry they made you.

Is it a valid philosophical argument to question my motives for what I write? I don't think so. For the record, my motives are pure. You started a thread with statements that I think are misleading and, as I said earlier, lack perspective. I also think they mirror American public reactions, which I characterize as hysterical. Given that, it seems appropriate for me to comment.

Suppose you have a young child and while you are out with them, a random stranger comes up and slaps that child in the face. You are outraged.

Suppose the same child gets cancer. You are deeply saddened. Now someone asks you why you are only saddened at a serious chronic disease but outraged at a temporary trauma. What do you say to them? — Baden

Well, I wouldn't be outraged unless you are using outrage just as a synonym for angry. Outrage is not just the same as anger. It also carries a meaning of indignation, resentment. What good does indignation do my child? I would be angry and afraid if someone hit her. I would take her away somewhere safe, make sure she wasn't badly hurt, and then decide what to do about the attacker. What more would you have me do? Making her safe is what really matters.

I didn't call you silly or hysterical. I called the Viking argument silly and the public and media reaction hysterical. — T Clark

Indeed, and here you are repeating it. And again you have no justification whatsoever, because there is no Viking argument, and there is no mention of the public or the media either. So what do you think you are addressing with these comments?

there is no mention of the public or the media either — unenlightened

The rush of attention to a mass shooting should be mentioned if the goal is to try to understand why close to the same scenario keeps repeating.

The rush of attention to a mass shooting should be mentioned if the goal is to try to understand why close to the same scenario keeps repeating. — frank

Keeps repeating? You mean like 'over and over again'? Is that why you brought up the media attention, or was it directed at me? You might have made that argument, but it would not have been an argument against anything that was being said, but, as I said before, an attempt to shut down the discussion.

But you have exposed yourself sufficiently and I will not bother to respond further.

Is that why you brought up the media attention, or was it directed at me? — unenlightened

I thought you were looking to understand US mass shootings. If that wasn't the point of the OP, what was it?

The media is mostly on the internet. I guess some of it is on cable for those lost in the stone age of non-streaming non-on-demand. The point is that if you commit a mass shooting, you'll be the news. For a moment you'll become a figure with the power to terrorize.

Whatever is going through the mind of a mass shooter, one thing is true: they are giving us what we love. Recognizing this won't lead to any solutions. Maybe a Nietzsche aphorism would be appropriate.

Maybe a Nietzsche aphorism would be appropriate. — frank

:death:

It's worth drawing a firm distinction between appropriacy and utility here. One does not necessitate the other. Feeling a mixture of anger and indignation at your child being slapped in the face by a stranger is an appropriate reaction regardless of utility. Conversely, not feeling much and being concerned only with utility could be considered inappropriate. Same with mass shootings. It's not about being reasonable, it's about being human. (But it's not very on-topic so I'll leave it at that).

The British are the Vikings, and we still describe people who go energetically and violently insane as 'berserk'. All you whiteys are European, and your horrible culture is all based on Europe's; the vikings are an influence beyond question. — unenlightened

The British are in part the Vikings, the Danes, the Jutes, the Angles, the Saxons, the Frisians, the Normans (Vikings again, but Gaels too), and more, and all those came from the east, once upon a time--interbred with the Neanderthals every now and then--the Brits are a mix. And besides, the Vikings are now the bland Swedes, Norwegians, and Danes.

We -you- humans have horrible habits and our various cultures round the globe all show the consequences of us bright and frustrated primates trying to square our pre-frontal cortexes with our highly reactive limbic systems. We all range from sublime to unrefined.

The thing about the rate of violence in the US is that it isn't a new thing, and it isn't unique to the US. The world, generally, has a steadily violent history. We humans obtain frequent episodes of peaceful co-existence with our neighbors, interrupted by the occasional episode of fratricidal rage.

Given the free-enterprise capitalism under which our economy is managed, which includes gun manufacturers making and selling as many guns as possible to maintain profits for their stockholders, it would be odd if 200 million guns scattered among 300 million people didn't lead to quite a bit of violence--that is what guns do, after all.

Gang bangers and drug dealers employing guns to settle scores we can understand. The fools wear their honor on their exteriors where it can be bruised ever so easily, and as often as not, their dubious personal honor is about all they've got. Then there are the drug debts that didn't get paid, and since they can't take it to small-claims court, what's a diligent drug dealer to do?

I don't know what, exactly, sends a few young men over the edge so that they decide to kill by the random batch. Peevishness over immigration stats don't quite account for it. I suppose it is dark fantasies unchecked against reality. Dark fantasies coupled with the medium of the rapid fire method leads to bad results.

But @T Clark is right in objecting to the disproportionate response of the media, et al. Ten people being executed by one killer seems worse than ten people being executed by ten killers, but the one-on-one death rate by individual armed killers is immensely worse, and the consoler-in-chief does not offer the country's "thoughts and prayers" on behalf of the several shot and killed every day--nor to many more who are "only injured".

Maybe it worked the first few times, but "our thoughts and prayers" has become about the lamest thing to say to the bereaved.

It's worth drawing a firm distinction between appropriacy and utility here. One does not necessitate the other. Feeling a mixture of anger and indignation at your child being slapped in the face by a stranger is an appropriate reaction regardless of utility. Conversely, not feeling much and being concerned only with utility could be considered inappropriate. Same with mass shootings. It's not about being reasonable, it's about being human. (But it's not very on-topic so I'll leave it at that). — Baden

As the kids say, this.

@unenlightened Making sense of the OP, in terms of hero worship - America as the place where people jostle for their 15 minutes of fame. Germane or not?

I would like to also say that the berserker phenomenon is most consonant with a culture that is not just military-centric (as the US is) but also warrior-in-action-centric ( as the US hasn't been, at least since My Lai, and maybe never was. We support the troops, but we support them for, e.g., sacrificing their lives in order to raise a flag - Iwo Jima, sacrifice for an ideal. The vikings came up with Valhalla - violence here is not only a means but an end in itself.)

Which is to say the berserker phenomenon must necessarily play a different role, in the land of Self-realization. The aurora shooter, i think, or one of them said : the message is there is no message. This alone makes in terrorism in a precise sense : its a challenge to the official, avowed, economy of meaning. That this challenge dovetails with the actual american practice of shining a temporary spotlight is interesting, and is a turn of the screw that frustrates my compulsion to convert horror into insight.

its a challenge to the official, avowed, economy of meaning. — csalisbury

I think it must be remembered that school shooters are just as embedded in this economy of meaning; only they seem challenged enough by it to act as they do. I imagine, though I have little to no data supporting this, that such acts of domestic terrorism are acts of revenge against (scapegoating representations of aspects of) that economy of meaning. Localised at their centre of trauma, or a symbolic representation of it.

I agree - 9/11 wouldn't happen if the perpetrators weren't 'in it' enough to grasp why the twin towers were a symbolic target. Or, another lens, all the prophetic ranting against Israel that the OT has transmitted us comes from Israelites. 'the meaning is that there is no meaning' seems to me to really be saying : the meaning is that the current system of meaning is inadequate (specifically here: the system of meaning can't help me make sense of what is happening to me.) Yeah, I think we agree, it is an act of revenge. (I think philosophy channels similar energies less destructively. We only question a hammer when it breaks, we only question an economy of meaning for similar reasons. I sometimes think about what would have come of me if, when my bubble burst, I didn't have the capacity to slowly put stuff back together novelly in a meaning-arid space.)

(I think philosophy channels similar energies less destructively. We only question a hammer when it breaks, we only question an economy of meaning for similar reasons. I sometimes think about what would have come of me if, when my bubble burst, I didn't have the capacity to slowly put stuff back together novelly in a meaning-arid space.) — csalisbury

I think you can do philosophy in a way which inspires transformation of whatever domain you're dealing with; I think another way of doing it is more exegetical and rooted in wonder, travelling along some domain and chronicling what's there. The two aren't mutually exclusive of course, but I think they can be.

Probably not super relevant to OP.

It's worth drawing a firm distinction between appropriacy and utility here. One does not necessitate the other. Feeling a mixture of anger and indignation at your child being slapped in the face by a stranger is an appropriate reaction regardless of utility. Conversely, not feeling much and being concerned only with utility could be considered inappropriate. Same with mass shootings. It's not about being reasonable, it's about being human. — Baden

I don't agree. My kid doesn't need me to be indignant - she needs me to keep her safe and take care of her. Indignity doesn't help anything. For me, at least, it doesn't even make me feel good. I think that's what indignation is all about - it makes you feel like you've done something when you really haven't. Also - I think indignation leads to doing things that make it harder to effectively deal with the problem.

I have no criticism at all for the families of the people who were hurt or killed. I'm not talking about them at all. It's the politicians and newspeople that infuriate me.

I think you can do philosophy in a way which inspires transformation of whatever domain you're dealing with; I think another way of doing it is more exegetical and rooted in wonder, travelling along some domain and chronicling what's there. The two aren't mutually exclusive of course, but I think they can be. — fdrake

Boringly, I agree again. I think you can enrich your tradition from within. There's a part of me that's very sad I'm cut off from that. Sentimentally, I like the idea of a Rabbi being not only like 'you get it [conceptually] but 'you're a good kid' or something similar. but what are you gonna do. At this point, I wouldn't believe him if he said it.

I think this kind of hysterical reaction to this type of event hurts the country. — T Clark

Random murders occurring where one ought be safe is cause for alarm. We should feel. confident when we drop our kids off at school or go to the mall everyone should come home with the same number of bullets in their head than when they left.

Sure more die in such mundane events as car accidents, but we realize that danger, so we pack our cars with airbags and we buckle ourselves in and perhaps we don't drive on some roads late at night. Is it not cause for concern when we now must have the same thoughts and take all sorts of safety measures just to go to a public event? I would think that if you grew up during a time when the roads were not treacherous and taking a carefree leisurely drive was possible, you'd be outraged if nowadays cars were falling off the sides of cliffs due to new societal attitudes and government ineptitude.

Our hysteria is a sign of health. How do you propose we behave when we bury our children?

Random murders occurring where one ought be safe is cause for alarm. — Hanover

The world is full of random negative consequences where one ought to be safe. That's part of what's known as the human condition. Is it cause for alarm? I think only if you want to live your life hiding out. Solution? Suck it up. Take your chances. Try to be fearless. Most important, try to teach your children to be fearless. Fearlessness is more important than safety.

Sure more die in such mundane events as car accidents, but we realize that danger, so we pack our cars with airbags and we buckle ourselves in and perhaps we don't drive on some roads late at night. Is it not cause for concern when we now must have the same thoughts and take all sorts of safety measures just to go to a public event? — Hanover

As I've said, I think this represents a misunderstanding of the real risks we face in our lives.

Our hysteria is a sign of health. How do you propose we behave when we bury our children? — Hanover

I can't think of any time when hysteria is a sign of health. We're not talking about burying our children. Your children in Atlanta are at no (read infinitesimal) risk from the events in Dayton and El Paso. Hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of children are afraid to go to school, not because of the risk, but because of the public reaction. As I've said, the current reaction represents a vast misunderstanding of the true risks we, and our children, face in life.

America as the place where people jostle for their 15 minutes of fame. Germane or not? — csalisbury

Well yes, of course, but they do it in a context that, from the lonesome cowboy of Clint Eastwood through Chandler's Marlow, super-spider-bat-iron man and a million other heroes, financial, sporting, whatever, pitting themselves alone against the cruel world. One jostles for fame because fame is virtue, and so one is dependent on society for the acknowledgement of one's independence. The best of the culture explores this irony.

Hence Thatcher's response to the IRA, 'denying them the oxygen of publicity' well rehearsed in the thread already. It would make sense if one could arrange for society to negate its fundamental character when convenient. But a man with gun becomes a person of importance to those around him even with a media blackout. And the culture is that a person of no importance is no person at all. What America lacks is the notion of solidarity.

So the argument that the number of deaths is 'insignificant', is to be expected - you want to be a proper American mass killer, you gotta get a tank at least, and maybe some missiles.

I may have linked this paper once before. I don't remember. But I thought you'd find it interesting @unenlightened -- it seems to get along with what you've written.

government ineptitude. — Hanover

Woe. Hanover has become a Democrat.