Mass shootings as a measurable indicator of degeneration
It's okay to take them seriously, even if you know the relative risk is low.
I. Columbine
I was in fourth grade during Columbine. I don’t remember hearing about it, but I do remember having a moment of silence for the kids who were murdered in my 5th grade class. During our discussion, a classmate of mine said he was scared he wouldn’t survive highschool, and the teacher empathetically agreeing with him. At the time, the idea that someone — kids themselves even — would go on a killing spree was beyond the pale. How could you make sense of a world where this sort of thing happens?
Years went by, and for some reason as a 20 year old I became interested in the story behind the Columbine shooting. Who were Dylan and Harris? What inspired them? In some sense, no one really knows, and I’m sure it was hidden even from themselves. What complex societal dynamics of alienation and estrangement, unique to our modern age impressed themselves on these two kids. What we do sort of know, is that Eric was a sociopath, and he seems to have convinced Dylan to go along with him. Even still, that’s not satisfying: sociopathy is not a new phenomena, what was it about our modern age that made Eric so murderous?
II. Probabilities
Despite the probability of being killed in a school shooting being vanishingly small, it captivates the entire nation in shock. We can march out the statistics of how you’re some percentage more likely to die from [common risk] as opposed to a school shooting (or mass shooting), and for the most part it doesn’t change anything. In certain situations, explained kindly, it’s a useful point to make to soothe or console the fears of a friend. Otherwise, it isn’t helpful. Most people are confused, and misunderstand their relative risk, and don’t want to be corrected. Or loosely realize that mass shootings are not common, but are emotionally unable to cope with the sheer force of the tragedy of mass shooting events (and if you’re a high-decoupler you should have empathy for those who are not, even if they seem hysterical).
I know how the probabilities work, and as a result I’m not worried for my daughter as she goes to school. Or at least no more worried than other common risks, which is to say chronically worried about everything. Yet I do still find the particular cruelty of school shootings to be deeply discomforting. For me, it hints at the unraveling of our social fabric. It’s a reminder that we have built a patchwork of norms to suspend us above unimaginable horrors, and there is no guarantee those will persist.
I’m aware that the overwhelming number of shootings, even of kids, don’t occur in these particular types of school shootings. There are entire sections of our cities where the status quo is a type of low-grade war. There are plenty of interviews on youtube of the state of affairs large swaths of our population lives in. If you’re interested in learning about the world in a more empathetic and interesting way than simply looking at statistics of shootings by race, you can watch some legitimately interesting and eye-opening interviews on youtube. Every day civilians die in the crossfire of the child soldiers on these streets. Urban decay and violence isn’t new.
This is the type of environment that drives the deaths of US children from guns, mass shooting events are relatively small. Skip to 19:00-21:00 of this interview to hear this gang talk about life, fear of living on the streets, and their desire to escape.
This type of low-grade war is a festering pool of misery, that is often confined to a region. It’s also understandable, as in we understand what’s going on. It’s terrible, but it’s a somewhat stable process. We know what urban decay looks like, how it’s formed, and in some cynical sense, how to contain it from ourselves. We also appear uninterested in solving it or ending the violence, but that’s another issue.
III. Degenerative Process
There is no obvious stability or understanding of our American mass shooting process. It’s a series of low-frequency extreme events. It also forces me to contend with the degenerative process of modern America that is completely failing to produce sane men. A mass murdering event is observable and measurable. These sorts of observable extreme events can often hint at something dark lurking in the shadows, since we can’t measure in the shade. Is there a subset of men who are almost mass shooters? That is, they never become quite deranged enough to commit a mass shooting event, but lurk among us, unstable and volatile? Or perhaps estranged and depressed?
Now let’s take this a step further: Extreme value forecasts are remarkably sensitive to new data, since you’re trying to extrapolate a low-sample size process. So if you are operating under a hypothesis that mass shooter events are a measurable signal of the degenerative alienation of young men, then could even a few more events than usual represent a meaningful reason to revise our forecast upwards.
The reason I’m worried this is true, stems from my readings of the ‘Columbiner’ internet community back in 2012, which was a weird fan group of Eric and Dylan. Perhaps what you’re thinking is it was from other bullied kids who felt Eric and Dylan represented their struggle. Except that wasn’t it. It was largely a group of Tumblr kids who felt some sort of tortured empathy with Eric and Dylan. They knew what they did was wrong, but they related to their pain, and often wished they could have been friends with them. They built an entire internet fandom and community around Columbine.
What exactly did they relate to? Where did this shared alienation flow from, that drew other damaged kids? Sure, (probably) none of these kids were going to go shoot up their school, but what was it about modern life that let them empathize with those who did?
I have my theories, but I’m not confident they’re right. What I’m more confident in is that the alienation of our kids, and more dangerously our young men, seems to be accelerating. And I think mass shooting events are a measurable signal of this degradation.
…And for all my system level theorizing, I just want kids to grow up to be happy and enjoy their lives in America.
> Is there a subset of men who are almost mass shooters? That is, they never become quite deranged enough to commit a mass shooting event, but lurk among us, unstable and volatile? Or perhaps estranged and depressed?
Well yeah, obviously. Newest stats say that 63% of young men in the USA are single. And it's not just the USA; in my country (Poland) it's over 50% too.
It's actually surprising how few incidents there were so far. It's not just that men are single - they're also treated with utter contempt.
Wikipedia on polygyny contains this:
> Other research shows that polygyny is widely practiced where societies are destabilized, more violent, more likely to invade neighbors and more likely to fail. This has been attributed to the inequality factor of polygyny, where if the richest and most powerful 10 percent of males have four wives each, the bottom 30 percent of males cannot marry.
30% of males cannot marry... a problem? These are rookie numbers, how about 60%, lol? Yet still, Wikipedia article on incels is blatantly hostile.
Supposedly _average_ human male is not "entitled" to interact with the opposite sex. He should just keep existing, maybe work (which benefits the opposite sex, given that taxes effectively transfer wealth from men to women) 'till he goes extinct. Totally reasonable expectations for a product of evolution.
I wonder if people who think so will change their mind if they have a son. Who, statistically, will probably not be the one with a harem.
Has the "age of discord" ever not ring a bell in these trying times? And are we in the 1920s/1930s all over again? What do you think are actionable (assuming that most of these shooters are culture-leaning middle class kids drugged up by psychiatrists and have abusive parents) https://peterturchin.com/age-of-discord/