Saturday, December 22, 2012

The Newtown shooting and the NRA

-->

However, what I found telling was the NRA’s failure to consider what it means to provide children with a psychological sense of safety. Armed guns will protect their physical security, but they threaten to bring into the child’s view and experience the belief and fear that the world is dangerous, filled with bad people who can harm them. Why else have armed guards in the school building in the first place? In other words, what the NRA did not recognize is our shared hope that we can protect a child’s innocence; that is, an experience of the world as a loving place, where strangers are friendly, authority is dependable, optimism is realistic, curiosity is rewarded, and of course armed guards are unnecessary.

But having noted this lapse, I can also ask, whether or not we adults, as bearers of our culture, any longer believe that children are entitled to their innocence. There is a sizeable literature, think of Neal Postman’s prescient, “The Disappearance of Childhood,” published in 1982, which argues that we have created a social world that undermines the experience of childhood innocence. Children are told to be wary of adults who touch them, lest they be abusers, and they are exposed to sexual stimuli as well as fantasies of violence throughout their childhood. In our anxiety for their future we overschedule their lives with programmed activities, and test preparation sessions, so that they experience little spontaneous play. Many children are also exposed to our psychological conflicts when, as parents, we divorce one another and then fight over their custody. The television series, “The Wire,” a story of Baltimore as a decaying postindustrial city, and widely regarded as realistic, highlights how some African-American children are far too soon introduced to the world of adult violence, ineptitude and corruption.

The list could go on, but do we care?  In others word are we committed to sustaining the experience of childhood innocence? One reason we might not be is because as adults we no longer feel psychologically, financially or physically safe ourselves. As a result we are pulled toward protecting ourselves rather than our children.  The psychologist David Bakan, argues in The Slaughter of Innocents,” that throughout history adults abandoned infants when faced with food shortages. Children in other words, potentially distract us from our own struggle for survival.  While in the developed world we have ample food, the anxieties associated with securing an adult role that confers dignity, purpose and a livelihood, have grown substantially. This may be one reason why birth rates are falling throughout much of the West. Perhaps the NRA's conviction that monsters threaten us and our children, represents, in an exaggerated form, a widely held belief that the world has become more dangerous for adults.  

If this is true, one question then is how one makes sense of danger? I want to suggest that the NRA’s philosophy, or perhaps theology, is based on the idea of an evil presence in the world, which, if and when acknowledged, makes innocence seem delusional. Harlon Carter, who helped “overthrow” the NRA’s “old guard” in 1977,  attacked it using the discourse of good and evil. “The latest news release from the NRA,” he said, "embraces a disastrous concept, that evil is imputed to the sale and delivery, the possession of a certain kind of firearm, entirely apart from the good or evil intent of the man who uses it.” This discourse of evil is also why LaPierre referred in the press conference to “predators and monsters,” rather than, for example, to mentally disturbed people. In this sense, the discourse of evil stands in contrast to the discourse of disease and health. The idea that Adam Lanza, was mentally disturbed, in other words, he had a diseased mind, can be usefully challenged by the idea that he, or much more likely, his mother and first victim, was evil.

Does the idea of evil have standing? Scott Peck, the psychiatrist and religious thinker, wrote a widely read book, “The People of the Lie,” based on the idea that evil people are hidden, their impacts insidious, and that through their failure to tolerate imperfection in themselves and others, they often drive others, particularly children, into acts of desperation. The book, published in 1978, in this sense might be read as a précis of the Newtown shooting.

The idea of evil is not compatible with the belief, that if social conditions are right, fair and just, people can be perfected. This belief has been the basis for much modern social policy as well as the foundation for tolerance and for a commitment to pluralism. My own sense however is that idea of evil remains unsettled within us, we are so to speak “bedeviled” by it, as we contemplate not simply the Holocaust, but more recently, the slaughters in Rwanda, in Bosnia, and the attack on women in parts of the Muslim world. Certainly, the psychoanalytic conception of character holds that loving and destructive feelings are comingled in our most intimate relationships. This is one basis for domestic violence. In other words, one hypothesis is that we are dishonest when we project our own struggle with the idea of evil onto people and groups, like the NRA, whose view of it we then label as extreme.

The belief that evil is real and insidious can certainly give rise to the conviction that we must defend ourselves against evil at all costs. But one question is why we can’t rely on the state. the government, to protect us against evil. Certainly, in the NRA’s worldview, the state cannot be counted on, and in fact may become the enemy. This is why its leaders put such great store on one interpretation of the U.S. constitution’s second amendment; namely that it protects the right of people, “to keep and bear arms.”

It is tempting to dismiss this as paranoid thinking, but surely one trend in the wider world is the apparent decline of states and the rise of non-state actors, such as terrorist organizations and criminal networks fully capable of attacking and defeating police forces and armies. In the U.S. we need only look southward to our neighbor, Mexico, to envision a scenario of how criminal gangs, wealthy and armed, might defeat the state. Moreover the conspiratorial idea that the United Nations is the first step toward global domination by hidden powers, an idea that attracts some NRA members, bears a family resemblance to the idea that the global corporation, which under certain conditions can equip private armies, is growing more powerful than the states that regulate them. Truth be told, in the United States, outlaws have often successfully challenged, defeated and corrupted the state. Think of outlaws on the western frontier, the Mafia in Chicago, whose leaders undermined judges and policemen with bribes and threats, or local urban police who, in decaying industrial cities, abandoned high crime areas to criminals.

I am reminded here – of all things! – of J.D. Salinger’s classic novel, “The Catcher in the Rye.”  It shows how young people lose their innocence, and potentially their sanity, when they come to grips with adult hypocrisy, or what Holden Caulfield, its hero, called its “phoniness.” I think the book had such enormous resonance for two reasons,  First,  it raised the question of whether we could sustain the innocence of childhood long enough in the life of each child so that children could become optimistic adults, even as they had to confront, in their adolescence, the dirty secrets of the adult world. Second, it had resonance because, published in 1949, it was anticipatory, foreshadowing young people's loss of trust in the adult world some fifteen years later.  Some thirty years after its publication, Neil Postman argued in his own book that the idea of childhood innocence in the United States, had a hundred year run, from 1850 to 1950, suggesting, once again, that an artist’s antenna, in this case Salinger's, picks up signals from the future.

“The Catcher in the Rye,” is both the book’s title and Holden Caulfield’s fantasy of his life’s work. As he tells his younger sister Phoebe, “Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody’s around- nobody big, I mean – except me. And I’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff- I mean they’re running and they don’t look where they’re going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That’s all I do all day. I’d just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it’s crazy, but that’s the only thing I’d really like to be.”

Perhaps the Newtown shooting and the NRA’s response both raise questions we all face. Who, if anyone, will do the work of “child-catching” in a post-industrial world, how should they do it and how do we help them? 

21 comments:

  1. Your argument is rendered moot if those armed are armed in a concealed manner,yes? Seems like you were absent when this part of the solution was being proffered.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Rorge, maybe one question you are raising is whether or not my premise is valid. Namely; that if we suspend debate about the merits of the NRA's proposal we can learn something about about ourselves and the wider setting which influences us all. I think this is a premise consistent with a systems psychodynamics perspective. Perhaps you can debate that perspective.

      Delete
  2. I just saw "The Impossible." Apparent middle-class "safety" demolished in an instant, children taking adult roles, and love conquering. Some resonating themes here.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Larry, what policies does this lead to? I always thought the end of innocence for America (at least for me) ended on November 22, 1963. But living in a constant state of fear goes back much farther even in my lifetime - a communist under every bed and MAD in the 1950s, the domino theory in the 1960s, global terrorism today - yet the odds of dying from any of these causes (for those of us who live in the US at least) are infinitely small. The end of innocence - the climate of fear - is in large part a manufactured one, and LaPierre amplifies it with his lunatic suggestions. (There are 100,000 public schools in the US, most I imagine with multiple points of entry; I don't know how many private schools; not to mention shopping malls, places of work, etc etc - and of course the vast majority of homicides with weapons do not occur in such environments at all; an many shooting deaths (most?) are accidental or suicides. I think LaPierre's suggestions are not only whacko, and undesirable on the surface (create a police state with armed guards in every corner and school corridor), but serve the interest of the arms and munitions manufacturers who finance the NRA.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Rich, the fear that I am referring to is not the fear of death perse, but the anxieties associated with a person's "object relations" to use a psychoanalytic idea. These relationships both intimate and not, have become more fraught. This is partly stimulated by real changes in the socioeconomic conditions of our lives, and by our responses to these changes. The idea that they are manufactured feels a bit too conspiritorial, at least to me. I am drawn in this regard to the rise of extreme work environments and extreme sports. We are importing more threat into our lives. The question is, why?

    ReplyDelete
  5. I'm curious about how you might link this argument to our continued commitment to be the most militarized economy in the world and whether you see a connection to the America tendency towards exceptionalism. "Out there," are we good?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Katrina- I am not sure about this one. Perhaps there is a link to be explored between the sense of threat/chaos and the notion of a militarized economy. Something to think about

      Delete
    2. Katrina. Your insight in the phrase "out there," I feel is central --I address it below in term of an ethos of conquest and the Manifest Destiny (based on the gun) seeking a beyond "out there." Space, moon, Mars...Vietnam, Eastern Europe, Arab Spring.. I am interested if you agree with the ongoing process of implosion?

      Delete
  6. It does seem to me that childhood innocence is an interesting notion. I know what you are talking about. I used to go out riding my bike at 9am and come home at dark. I walked to and from school by myself in kindergarten. We knew our neighbors and all that, but, on the other hand, I encountered flashers on my rides through the lemon orchards (didn't tell my parents), my next door neighbor, my friend, who was 12 tried to run away all the time since her parents were always beating her and imprisoning her. Lots of women my age were sexually abused by their fathers, brothers, uncles, cousins and we were all scared to death of being destroyed by a nuclear war. I wonder if it has always been a myth.
    Judy

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Judy you raise an interesting point. Did the idea and the practices associated with childhood innocence mask child abuse. I think this hypothesis feels really plausible. Does this fully explain why the exposure of abuse in a systematic way (which I would date to the seventies) undermined the idea of innocence?

      Delete
    2. For me your description was palpable, Judy. America sure changed from the beauty and openness of which Whitman wrote in "Blades of Grass," 'Stranger, if while passing, you desire to speak to me, Why should you not speak to me. And why should I not speak to you." Now a new phrase has emerged for kids to learn, Stranger Danger. Larry cites literary work from the early 50's, Judy, Catcher in the Rye. The world then may have been reeling and still trying to digest WWII. Even a new vocabulary had to be invented. In 1953, the term Holocaust emerged from psychoanalysts at the New School (it is myth that it derives from Eli Wiesel). From the 1950's, it was from "A Streetcar Named Desire," I, too, recall a phrase, "I have always depended on the kindness of strangers." Without reading the work yet, at age 10, I started quoting the phrase, thinking it was meant for new immigrants to America. I am interest what you think of the male as the Primal Warrior of which I wrote, Judy.

      Delete
  7. The "right to bear arms" spelled out in the 2nd Amendment wasn't put into the Constitution as a protection against social chaos and fragmentation, a la Mexico, but rather against tyranny. The framers were concerned with the state taking on tyrannical powers, as it had in Europe, and depriving people of the basic freedoms spelled out in the Bill of Rights and the Constitution. The right to own weapons is seen as the means by which people could fight the government itself, if it became a tyranny. In this way the NRA state of mind can see government as a kind of monster. This is linked to the apocalyptic aspects of fundamentalism.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Jim. Agree. As in the bizarre foreign policy of Bush based on Og/Magog I site below. In Hungary, we had only recently become aware of it. The calcified views of the Constitution are the same.

      Delete
  8. Jim I accept your distinction. It is also true that the NRA at one point began arguing for the right to bear arms based on social chaos. Ironically, the arming of the Black Panthers, was a factor here (Recall, they marched into the California state legislature fully armed. This lead Reagan, as governor, to advocate and sign very strict gun control legislation in the state). I think a larger question is whether or not the conception of the apocalypse is in fact widely shared or is simply the expression of an extreme sensibility. For example, the discourse around climate change has some of these qualities.The same goes for the discourse around technologies- the interconnection of everything threatens catastrophe. An alternative hypothesis is that the apocalypse is a widely shared sensibility.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Larry, congratulations on writing at least an intelligent, considered response to the NRA's statement. You raise the "object relations" psychoanalytic perspective: I wonder if you have considered the possibility that blaming the guns for the Newtown catastrophe (along with widespread calls for increased gun control) is symptomatic of a massive case of denial about the nature of the human condition and the forces that shape the ways individuals behave? This line of psychoanalysis might view the gun as a convenient projective device on to which we can all project our anxiety and blame. This defensive reasoning enables us to hold onto our view that the problem doesn't lie with other aspects of the culture of our modern societies.....its those damned horrible guns that cause all of this grief...and all we have to is control the damn things and everything will be alright.

    In Australia, where I live, mass murderer Martin Bryant was the catalyst for much stronger gun laws. Most law abiding gun owners in Australia felt personally scape goated, and resentful that tougher gun laws are only obeyed by people who obey the law. Most non-gun owners felt that the gun laws were a good thing....and didn't go far enough.

    Like Adam Lanza, Martin Bryant possessed a collection of ultra violent or X rated videos. In Australia there was absolutely no consideration of restricting access to these kinds of consciousness shaping media.

    The point I am trying to make here, and this is why I liked your essay, is that calls for gun control and energy channelled into that quest may make the focus on the gun like other transitional objects.....just a comforter or dummy to relieve anxiety, and an example of defensive reasoning that helps us to avoid looking more deeply at a complex problem.

    Perhaps we should consider the role played by Hollywood and media producers generally for the misuse of firearms symbolically in shaping the semiotic meaning we now attach to guns in popular culture? In responsible gun owning households a firearm is no different to any other dangerous power tool....it is meant to be used in a particular way...and absolutely even pointing an empty gun anywhere near a person is strictly forbidden. But in the media of popular culture, guns are very rarely used for anything other than shooting humans. Is it too much to hope that debate about the use and misuse of guns might include the way film makers and gaming designers depict and attach meaning to guns?

    In terms of actual guns, a starting point for Americans, from an Australian perspective, might be to consider the difference between "weapons of concealment" (mostly pistols) versus hunting weapons.

    Larry, thank you for challenging and stimulating essay.

    [ Footnote: For those who are really serious about looking beyond blaming an inanimate object for the Newtown tragedy and considering how American culture shapes young Americans, a good starting point might be Richard Neville's now somewhat dated but still relevant "Amerika Psycho" essay. See: AmeriKa Psycho Published in the 'Good Weekend ... - Richard Neville
    www.richardnevillefuturist.com/.../RichardNeville_Amerikaarticle.pd...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks bill I am going to read the Neville piece.

      Delete
    2. Bill. The concern is not so much over hunting, but actual assault weapons. As in Austria, no one goes hunting deer with a machine gun. Each child was hit by at least 4 bullets. That of the over 300 million guns in possession, over 100 million are assault weapons is of greatest concern. Let us hope for and back Biden/Obama.

      Delete
  10. Larry,

    I am a true lover of your mind and words. I sit and read you with relish and so much pleasure. Thanks.

    I am left thinking about Bion's and later Eigen's work on madness and murder. They go something like this, " we are all murderers, we kill, we are killers, we murder each other in order to survive."
    Eigen refers often to the parts of his analytic practice that are about supporting people as they come through their murderous tendencies with their loved ones, and recover from being murdered by them as well.
    Bion goes so far as to encourage us to become enlivened by coming through the part of our nature that kills and is killed.

    Somehow I dream if we responded to each other with these sensitives something might change with gun and other forms of physical violence.

    Margy

    ReplyDelete
  11. Thank Margy for these thoughts. As I suggest in my blog in looking at the psychology Adam Lanza I wonder about the relationship between him and his mother. Of course this is complete speculation. But influenced by Peck I wondered what role his mother played in his behavior. That is because Peck opens his book with s scene of parents who leave a gun around the house even though their son is suicidal.These parents are in Peck's sense "the people of the lie." If the mother believed he was crazy, and apparently she was planning to commit him to an institution (or at least bring him to the notice of mental health professionals- he was over 18 years of age) why did she have so many guns lying about?

    ReplyDelete
  12. In response to your thoughtful analysis, Larry, I draw on Erickson and address several earlier comments and also a question you posed some time back, „Why did Erickson’s work on psychohistory fall to the wayside?“ The recent work of a close friend, Colin Woodard suggests it has not, but rather gains a new importance. Framed in terms of psychohistroy, our forefathers took on the form of what you often call the „Stoic Warrior,“ Primal Father, perhaps also to be feared.

    In „American Nations,“ Woodard points to the constancy over hundreds of years of regional ethos drawing on integrity of geographic location, regional history, regional culture over time. Woodard points out that there is a predetermined DNA-like regional effect which resists change (even in voting patterns across 100’s of years) to the ethos of such regions. But when forced to change, chaotic turbulence is loosed. Such is the case now with America.

    Diverging only some from your intrapsychic argument, Inter Group relations argues that in face of unrelenting dysfunctional forces, living systems die by implosion or explosion. The demise of innocence you point to speaks for the changes of American by implosion, ironically with by means of explosion, the gun. Not one child died with less than 4 lethal wounds!!!

    A process of change over time in what Katrina Rogers calls „out there,“ concurs with James Krantz explanations dating to the drafting of the Constitution. You and others experience the process in terms of innocence lost, some recall childhood violation. The forefathers had not only fled away from Europe, but were seeking „outward“ also toward something --a new freedom and frontier which required conquest (with the gun). The guiding ethos of the Manifest Destiny which shaped the pioneer is well known. That along the way „out West,“ toward the Pacific, the use of the gun was primal is also well known. If we are to talk of internal object relations, the gaining of the Pacific did not quell the thirst for conquest. We moved further „out there,“ to Mexico, to Alaska, toward the Pacific islands. In face of geographic limitation, later to space, the moon, mars and further outward. When geographic confines finally shrank, the need found other means: Go East.

    The recent history of the 1989 Changes, the fall of Communism, and subsequent failed democratization as it impacted Eastern Europe can be similarly understood. The western businessman as the new soldier in a largely ideological and economic Cold War over ran „liberated“ Eastern Europe. A conquest and reshaping of new markets, came hand-in-hand, and step by step by armament with NATO.

    But for Americans back home the quest outward had its limits and one sees now a shift in American hegemony toward America imploding. In serious manners it has become self-injurious, even with its children. Immediately clear, it is arming its insane. Self-injury is also clear in the national debt –beyond control --and in danger of causing economic implosion.

    In your past essays on the Primal Father, I kept thinking you will eventually write of Bush. As he turned our military East, and a mask of denial fell across the face of an injured 9/11 Generation, so we now see rage imploding in self-injury. The mask covers a festering wound of the father killed, and an impotent son who denied the wisdom of the father, chose to listen instead to fundamental mystics to divide the world, leashing unutterable horror onto hundreds of thousands in a foreign policy based on a two liner from Ezekiel. We in Eastern Europe only recently heard of Og/Magog, and that our fate (as yours) would be shaped by the thin line between mysticism and mental illness.

    ReplyDelete