Posted on 02/18/2018 7:21:00 AM PST by Kaslin
As we wade through the news reports and the commentary on the Florida shooting, we can’t help but think that nearly everyone – from journalists to politicians to gun control or gun rights advocates – is missing the point. Everyone is pointing the finger at someone. It’s President Trump’s fault because he practically handed guns to mentally ill people! It’s Speaker of the House Paul Ryan’s fault for not banning bump stocks. It’s the NRA’s fault – it’s always the NRA’s fault. Here’s the thing: you can blame anyone you want. You can make any argument you want about the importance or unimportance of this, that, or the other gun control measure. But none of it will change a thing. If we as a society want to figure out and address why this keeps happening, then we have to look beyond guns. Guns are the means of this destruction, not the cause. There is something deeper, sicker in the soul of our society, and it transcends the gun debate.
The link between young men and violence has long been established and is about as close to proven as anything in the social sciences can be. Young men are prone to violence. And in every generation, a certain percentage of those young men are going to deviate from societal norms and become a rather serious threat to society and its stability. As a general rule, over the last couple of decades, crime has dropped significantly in this country, and violent crime has dropped even more. Crime waves that experts expected never materialized, and most of the nation’s biggest cities remained among the safest in the world.
At the same time, though, the incidence of young men turning to mass murder and committing heinous acts of violence nevertheless became a far more pronounced phenomenon, dominating the public consciousness and driving a political agenda. Unfortunately, this paradox – dropping crime rates but increased frequency of high-profile shooting sprees – is explained at least in part by the fantasies that a handful of these young men create to compensate for the lack of real meaning or real human contact in their lives, to offset the nihilism that plagues their existence.
Psychologists who have studied violence in young men and especially young men’s willingness to forsake everything they know, everything they’ve been taught, and everything they might otherwise believe about right and wrong, say that there is a set of shared circumstances and “revelations” that link spree killers and self-radicalized terrorists. Faced with emptiness of their own lives, isolated from many of their contemporaries, and desperately in search of something substantive to give their lives meaning and purpose, young men – and especially young men who find refuge on the internet and in social media – tend to create fantasy lives for themselves, alternate realities in which they not only find the meaning and purpose they crave, but do so in heroic fashion.
Nihilism is a complicated and complex philosophical concept. The heart of it, though – both linguistically and metaphysically – is nihil, the Latin word for “nothing.” Nothing is real; nothing is important; nothing matters; nothing can be known; nothing is good; nothing is evil; nothing . . . well . . . is.
As any schoolboy knows, nihilism as a philosophical notion is most often associated with Friedrich Nietzsche, who notably pondered the concept, its causes, and its cures. Perhaps the most important impact of Nietzsche’s thoughts on nihilism was the effect that they had on Martin Heidegger, the 20th century German philosopher and Nazi-backer, who also just so happens to be the patron saint of postmodernism.
Heidegger, through his interpretation of Nietzsche’s nihilism, effectively fashioned what we understand today as postmodern thought and especially postmodernism’s examination of reality, values, and truth. In brief, Nietzsche’s interpretation of the purpose of being and thus the value in being helped form the foundation of Heidegger’s “da-sein” (i.e. “being projected into Nothingness”), which, in turn, helped form the foundation of postmodernism’s critique of objectivity and objective reality.
Nietzsche didn’t kill God. He merely noticed that the Enlightenment had done so. Heidegger, in turn, took God’s metaphorical death as an opportunity to insist that no one believe in anything. In practice, the Heidegger-led revolution against reality, against truth, against everything has led to the formation of a societal ethos that offers its citizens nothing substantive, nothing beyond immediate and material satisfaction. We saw the effects of this nihilism on a mass scale throughout the 20th century, and we are seeing it on a different, but equally deadly, individual scale now.
In the wake of Wednesday’s shooting, many people want to ban guns or certain types of guns or certain types of magazines. This, they insist will stop the violence. For our part, we think they’d be better off reintroducing mandatory prayer into schools. This isn’t a gun problem – appearances notwithstanding – it’s a belief problem and specifically, the lack of them.
>>Perhaps the most important impact of Nietzsche’s thoughts on nihilism was the effect that they had on Martin Heidegger, the 20th century German philosopher and Nazi-backer, who also just so happens to be the patron saint of postmodernism.
>>Heidegger, through his interpretation of Nietzsche’s nihilism, effectively fashioned what we understand today as postmodern thought and especially postmodernism’s examination of reality, values, and truth.
And that, folks, is the whole problem! Every other indicator and contributor comes from that.
CBS just had a crying plea to do something... just not what would stop such killings... armed teachers and principals. For the actual first responders... police are second responders... those involved are the first responders.
“Nietzche said, “Out of chaos comes order...”
Reason and faith have been replaced by emotion, a step backwards in the evolution of civilization.
Gun control is a flawed attempt to treat the symptom but does nothing to cure the disease.
Yes, correct. The intellectual elite have convinced the uneducated that it is illogical to believe in God ( a mere fairy tale) and to follow His laws for the good of mankind..when in fact the opposite is true.
This is the TRUTH that the Leftist Progressives live in.
If there is no God then all is permitted.
If there is no God, we will be gods. We will tell the people what is right and what is wrong. It will be our commandments that will rule the people’s lives.
If there is no God then who will judge? We will.
And they expect with no eternal judgement that their rules will contain the rath of a young man who sees no future for himself.
In any publicized shooting, be it The Texas Tower, John Lennon on the street, or any of this century’s current crop of mass shootings, the core problem is the human condition, not the mechanisms by which the shootings were performed.
(mind you, other than Kennedy, no other attempt or performed shooting of a sitting U.S. President engaged the Democrats to scream about gun control.)
Choosing to “blame the NRA”, is as stupid as affixing the blame for anything Trump, upon Mr. and Mrs. America. The NRA has, time and again, always come out against these sort of shootings. ALL the gun owner associations have ALWAYS stood for RESPONSIBLE gun ownership.
It has ALWAYS been the PERSON PULLING THE TRIGGER who should be held responsible, and not the entire populace of America for the action of one.
The talk shows and the media are busy blaming guns and politicking the incident shifting the blame when they should be furthering the need for student security.
Particularly since there have been examples occurring of such episodes worldwide the sources of which the media refuses to identify let alone acknowledge. Because it doesn’t fit their political NRA anti gun agenda .
One who comes to mind is John Howell of am890 WLS Chicago. Which prompted the inspiration for the following observations who got it so wrong left me screaming at my radio . John Williams of WGN am 720 used the killing of a popular police commander which occurred at the same time to launch an attack on the NRA
In the Broward county case, that high school security system should be brought to public discussion particularly because this school has a so called “gun free zone”. It does have an officer who may be armed assigned to patrol the multi acre site in a golf cart, but bans guns from the rest of its internal security Also it also calls for investigating how student vs student, and student vs teacher altercations, vandalism, and thefts, which are bound to occur were being dealt with.
Because in an educational unit this size it’s pretty clear their security system failed . In a secure system Cruz would have never gotten inside.
“Guns are the means of this destruction, not the cause”.............
Guns are only tools in the toolbox, as are hammers. Its the bad carpenter that strikes and misses the nail, NOT the fault of the hammer.
“Nietzche said, “Out of chaos comes order...”
And just about ANY order will do. Nothing’s worse than chaos.
“If there is no God then who will judge? We will.
And they expect with no eternal judgement that their rules will contain the rath of a young man who sees no future for himself.”
But in many ways Europe is more godless than the US, yet they don’t have anywhere the level of this type of violence. So there must be other or additional factors at play.
In Europe, that freedom was taken away a long time ago. Even though they don't have ruthless, brutal dictatorships over there, they are definitely totalitarian cultures where people see themselves as subservient to the state.
“Here in the U.S. we have a lot of people who are hell-bent on abusing the freedom they have.
In Europe, that freedom was taken away a long time ago.”
One way of interpreting that is that we have too much freedom, if too many people are abusing those freedoms.
How do you go about keeping people from abusing their freedoms. Force is one way. Are there other ways?
We have showed the disaffected what hurts us.
We have also showed the disaffected that we refuse to protect that weak spot.
And so they attack it.
Furthermore, it’s also very easy for those ostracized to become angry and vengeful towards an entire school. Kids are cruel, and they tend not to realize the consequences of anything that they do.
Make them earn it. And treat them like subjects -- not citizens -- until they do.
This country was founded by men who would have been appalled by the idea that anyone 18 and older who is capable of breathing on a mirror would have the right to vote.
I didn’t read anything about parents’ responsibility.
They have tried to cure it with mind-altering medications. How’s that working out?
So it’s the victims’ fault? Did some student hurt Nikolas feelings, causing him to kill 17 poeople?
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