Every new school massacre in the US – and we’ve had quite a few – confronts us with the same question: How could anyone commit such a cruel act? The strangeness increases when we know that most of the shooters are teenagers or young adults.
There are probably several reasons. The first is the context in which they live: North American society is a heavily armed society, jealous of its self-defense because it is supported by the paranoid proposition that the other is always a potential enemy. It is a statement rooted in their culture, in the epic of the conquest of the West, where everyone had to defend themselves without the state coming to their aid.
Possession of guns and their inclusion in the Second Amendment of the Constitution taps into this survival instinct. Hence the support of a large part of the population, in addition of course the lobbies of the NRA (National Rifle Association) and the Republican Party.
The discourses that the far right propagates about violence and rejection of minorities are elements that undoubtedly legitimize many subsequent actions. And the easy access to the purchase of weapons, as we have seen in the case of Salvador Ramos, is another easy incentive to commit these acts.
But in addition to these collective and objective conditions, there are always specific reasons in any case. Some we know quickly and for others we have to wait to know more data.
We can point out the most relevant features that are repeated in many of these murders. The first is that all these adolescents (mostly men) feel internally violated, stressed by their own demons and fears, problems that come from far away.
Sometimes they evoke the bullying they themselves received from their peers at school. Salvador Ramos seems to have been mobbed for his stuttering and unusual aesthetic. On other occasions, this harassment is doubled with a violent family environment where there are common situations of child abuse or gender violence.
Situations of social exclusion due to economic insecurity, disability, mental illness or immigration are another ever-present element that determines the perception these young people have of themselves and of the future that awaits them. For them, as for everyone else, obtaining social registration, a place in the community, becomes psychologically necessary in order not to remain in the margins.
We know its importance because it is a justification that often accompanies their violent act, in the form of an advertisement or statements on social networks. They want the act to leave a trail of themselves that transcends them and gives them a later existence, as the final result cannot but be their own death, either by suicide after the massacre or by the demise of the security forces.
That internal violence that disturbs and disturbs them, that separates them from the group – most of them are lonely and people barely notice around them – forces them to look for ways to calm and soothe the tension they experience. The first formula – we’ve also seen it in the case of Texas – is self-harm, cuts or blows they produce themselves in an effort to end the fear that flows into their bodies. Self-harm hurts their skin and tries to neutralize the thoughts that continue to torment them.
Ramos played with knives to cut his face in a desperate attempt to end an emotional escalation that was hurting him. Sometimes these cuts can lead to suicide attempts, many of which seem inexplicable because they cannot be associated with those hidden feelings.
When these autolytic formulas don’t work, the violence is carried out on the other person’s body through aggression, be it beatings or murder. It is only through this transition to the act that destroys the other, when the subject finally gets rid of that violence and that includes, as we said, his own disappearance. Thus they murder their own youth and their families in a dramatic reckoning.
The most recent novelty of these massacres and of their authors, as we said, is the mark they leave on the social networks where they live their world, less lonely than in person, and where they announce their plans, even create some links , to regain some of the precarious sense of life that overwhelms them. There they are more talkative and daring than in real life, listing their likes and tastes, challenging those they consider bullies and making their own names, leaving the anonymity in which they themselves have sought refuge.
Is this violence inevitable? As a whole certainly yes, but that should not make us forget the need to reflect on collective responsibility at these events. That of politicians who promote hatred of others and increasingly polarize society, that of governments that do not invest enough in mental health policies, that of some families who are far removed from the real problems of their children and that of some professionals who are reluctant to talk and oblivious to the suffering of their patients.
This article was published in ‘The conversation’.
Source: La Verdad
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