Brody's Scribbles... The Mind Balks

By Bart Vogelzang VANCOUVER ISLAND, B.C., CANADA -- Sometimes one encounters something that is, at least at first, incomprehensible, and the mind balks at trying to even integrate it. Such a thing was the sight of a jet flying into one of the World Trade Center towers. Another is learning about the shooting of 20 small children (and 6 adults) in a supposedly safe place, their school in Connecticut. One has no choice but to accept that it has happened, but reels at trying to understand.

It would be easy, but almost certainly wrong, to try to blame such a travesty on ‘mental illness’. For sure, people have become deranged, for medical reasons, including illness or chemical reactions (drugs or allergies), but those have almost invariably been limited to one or two victims as the perpetrator’s delusions take control. 

Likewise, it would be easy, and wrong, to blame cartoon violence in videos, video games, movies, cartoons and comics. At most those could desensitize someone to not feel any remorse, or even recognize the victims as being discreet living and breathing human beings. In some situations, such as war, it might well be necessary to desensitize the troops like that, in order to have them follow orders to kill innocents.

In a similar vein, dehumanizing people is part of the strategy for religious fanatics all around the world. If ‘they’ are not your own religion, ‘they’ are not fully human and therefore not worthy of existence, therefore can be eliminated without serious concern.

One cannot even blame the lack of gun control, as the weapon could just as easily have been a homemade bomb.

None of these reasons can account for the actions of this gunman. There is only one real conclusion that I personally can come to; that it was done in a targeted way, with thoughtful and hate filled deliberation. And exactly what can motivate someone to kill small innocent children this way? Seeing them as ‘the enemy’. And what can make small kids the enemy in someone’s mind? Extrapolation.

Extrapolation is a big word, but basically it means that one takes something tiny, and extends it endlessly, often WAY beyond anything reasonable.

Obviously I have absolutely no idea of the motivation involved, being many thousands of miles away, and living a completely different life, but one thing I know for sure, and that is that unrelenting abhorrent bullying could cause this type of reactive behavior. 

Imagine if you will, a young lad at school, bullied for years by his peer group, with none of the authorities taking any action to stop it. Many kids, in similar situations, crumble and/or commit suicide, and the “It Gets Better” program takes off. But what about the others, those who don’t crumble, but harbor a festering anger? That anger simply gets stronger and stronger as they encounter cumulative abusive attacks, even into their twenties. Imagine then, that they may have a child in school, or a younger sibling, niece or nephew, even know a neighbor’s child, who weeps at getting the same bullying, by their own peer group, and once again the authorities do nothing, possibly because their ability to do anything at all is irrationally prohibited. 

The now twenty something, his anger having built for more than a decade, snaps; the triggering cause being any one of many. He recognizes that those children are not those who bullied him, but they are bullies. He recognizes that those adults are not those who did nothing to help him, but they are those allowing the bullying to continue. His despair at the lack of change and his anger at the system are extrapolated into seeing that the persecution will be going on forever, and only he can stop it. Not everyone will conveniently kill themselves when goaded too long and too often.

In the coming days we might, if we are lucky, find out what the real cause of all this was, but, no matter whether we do or not, we will all feel an overwhelming sadness at the horrible futility and devastation of this massacre, but of course, none so agonizingly as the relatives and friends of the victims. My heartfelt condolences go out to all.