Our trouble with mass violence

“Religious extremists try to kill dissenters and control governments.  Atheist extremists write books and give lectures.”  For years I have confidently repeated this mantra.  In my lifetime, I have not seen one example of someone citing their nonbelief as a reason to justify murder.  I have seen and read about plenty of religiously inspired killing.  I am unsure whether or not this confidence should waver. 

In light of the recent Chapel Hill shooting, some folks have suggested that it was based in the perpetrator’s antitheistic views.  Police initially suspected that it was a mere parking dispute.  This looks dismissive but it is not entirely unreasonable.  Such incidents are not without precedent.  However, further evidence of previous encounters between the departed and this killer have challenged this view.  The people were shot in the head, like executions.  The parking dispute is more likely a catalyst, not the underlying issue.  I am still not clear on whether or not this was racially/religiously motivated as I am unaware of evidence which would confirm prejudice.  However, I presume to be stating the obvious when I say that a hatred of specifically Middle Eastern Muslims is too common in the U.S. and it is certainly not specific to non-believers.  This noticeable trend appears to be some of the basis for calling this attack was racist or Islamaphobic.  Come to think of it, do you such a specific and thorough killing really just about parking?

Some have suggested or stated, as others have erroneously done before, that modern atheism is to blame.  Lines of accusation and rebuttal which have become routine in theist vs. atheist debates occurred in the wake of these murders.  People accused Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins of inciting violence.  Atheists pointed out that there is no Atheist bible which justifies such behavior.  This is true that non-believers do not have a particular book that we all adhere to but there are some that are widely read.  And it is among these pages that you can find quotes such as… “Some propositions are so dangerous that it may even be ethical to kill people for believing them.” –Sam Harris. 

We see the defense that quotes were taken out of context, which is especially strange in this case because quotes like the one above were already sufficiently explained.  People say that accusers cannot understand complicated ideas.  Many atheists sound like every religious apologist ever.  We see again, albeit with unexpected population, what happens when people try to blame members of a label rather than certain pathologies.

I think this recent event is a setting in which to bring up an observation that I have been mostly silent on.  I think it is time to talk about killings where we might know the motives, but wish we didn't.  I would like to pose the immediately following question with my own answer and explanation.

Why is it that when people commit acts of mass violence, we do not consider their justifications to be true when they give them?

I think it is because we are unwilling to accept our own culpability and unwilling to examine our own beliefs.  Allow me to start with a few examples.

-We try to find other reasons even when fundamentalist terrorists explicitly tell us that they killed for religious reasons.  We say that it must have been economics, or politics, or any other possible factor.  If it were religion then we are also potentially influenced by similar ideas.  How uncomfortable.

-When some dude says that he killed people because he was rejected by women but feels entitled to them, we say he was mentally ill.  It couldn’t possibly have been misogyny.  It couldn't have been the influence of a culture that treats women as flesh for men’s consumption.  That would mean that we also participate.

-When a person says they shot up their school because they were driven to it by bullying, we say they had social issues.  Clearly the years of torment at the hands of their peers couldn't be the issue.  That would suggest that we are responsible too for not doing enough to stop the daily suffering of these individuals.

Even as other factors were surely involved, I do not think we should ignore people’s admissions.  But we do.  We can’t fathom that these humans can be thinking mostly like ourselves.  Allow yourself to consider how we deal with any other criminal or immoral/unethical behavior.  When someone robs a house and gets caught, we accept their account of why they committed the crime.  If a parent’s religious beliefs drove them to not accept their child’s transgender identity and not provide what the child needed, we accept that their religious beliefs were part of the problem.  When a person murders their spouse, we accept their admission that they did it for insurance money.  Why should we treat mass murder any differently?

I would like to suggest that this is an attempt to remove ourselves from the equation.  It says a whole lot more about us than it does the murder(s).  We don’t want to think about how we might also exhibit potentially troubling tendencies.  We don’t want to criticize the institutions that we know.  So we shift the blame to something that we can say has nothing to do with us, like mental health.  Appeal to an afterlife hits very close to home and at the very core of some many peoples’ worldview.  An admission that we still have enough misogynistic bigotry within our various cultural and social structures to lead to violence is a startling realization.  It is extremely uncomfortable for people who would rather pretend that sexism doesn't exist and persist in the delusion that we have already achieved gender equality.

The thing is, none of these cases involve people with mental health issues or uneducated or impoverished people, as apologists would have you believe.  Notice how the public expertly diagnoses American killers as mentally ill, even with no prior history on which to base this claim.  The individual was evaluated by experts who found nothing.  People just assume he was mentally ill and interpret the lack of evidence as evidence of his craftiness.  That’s not exactly following a rational line of thinking.  Among the people who committed the atrocities on September 11, 2001, were highly educated people.  These were men who knew exactly what they were doing.  Bin Laden even made explicit his goals.  And I couldn't help but notice that when someone expressed that “god is great,” while killing cartoonists, we still say that the motive is unclear.

Let me use a quote from another person who is narrowing in on this same observation.  I should state that I disagree with the assertion of a mental health issue regarding Elliot Roger.  This quote is in reference to people who appear to be motivated by outright misogyny.

“Certainly, mental health is a critical part of the equation in these cases. Not all lonely masturbators set out to commit mass murder. Most pose a far greater threat to tissues than women. But we should be alarmed that these outlier men are driven by attitudes that are everything but outlying. We should be concerned when a mass murderer’s — or attempted mass murderer’s — manifesto reflects widespread beliefs. The rants about girls not going for nice guys and the bile directed at women for being slutty? It’s all utterly familiar. Take away the actual threats of murder and these remarks could just as easily have come from an unremarkable college virgin, hapless online dater or Salon commenter — sorry, but it’s true! — as Moynihan, Rodger or Sodini. In fact, you can even leave in the threat of violence and still have something uncannily resembling what many women encounter daily online, if not also in the real world.”

When you watch killers' videos or read their writings: their reasoning, minus the calls for death, seem all too ordinary.  People hope for paradise and wish to privilege their religion above any other paradigm.  People are upset because their romantic life is not what they want.  Other peoples’ hatred drove bullied people to the breaking point where they just wanted it to stop.  These motivations are almost pedestrian.  I think that is our issue.  
These killers are laying their individual thought processes bare for us, but we are not listening.  And why would we when they seem so similar to us?  We cannot fathom that they might think like us.  Maybe it says something bad or troubling about our values.  For now, I will ask you how many more incidents must we suffer before we examine ourselves?