So much to digest here but another great piece of writing by DC. As someone who has and is struggling with the search for meaning, I am consistently seeking out works such as those mentioned in this article. I’ve read The Denial of Death and the analysis of Kierkegaard’s work resonated with me. I have not had nightmares like DC’s but do have them. The scenario is almost always the same. Not comfortable expressing this to a large group. Unfortunately, after reading some Kierkegaard, I got drawn toward some other of the existentialists/pessimists such as Schopenhauer.
Jun 15, 2022·edited Jun 15, 2022Liked by Darryl Cooper
I'm reminded of when I was going through depression. It was sometime near Christmas and I had decided I should spend the day getting drunk. I hardly drink, I've never liked it and it only takes a couple of bottles of unremarkable beer before I've had enough but I found myself in a store reaching for a bottle of something I can't call (might have been Southern Comfort or maybe Courvassier). Suddenly it hit me what path I was heading down and I was shaken to the core, absolutely terrified of myself in a way I've never experienced before or since.
I have to assume that moment of inflection doesn't happen. My moment was one of simple self destruction, imagine having the notion to shoot up a place full of people and not terrifying yourself.
Remember that guy a few years ago that stole a Q400 from Sea-Tac, did a few rolls and loops and then crashed it? The media really missed an opportunity to juxtapose him with a mass shooter. He made a conscious effort to make sure he didn't take anyone with him. He looped it out over the ocean where he knew no one could get hurt, then crashed it into a place where he knew there weren't any people. He just wanted to go out in style. There is an interesting documentary called "The Bridge" about people who have committed suicide off the Golden Gate Bridge. Same idea, they just want to go out in style. There are no shortage of nuts out there who want to end their life in some memorable way. The problem is that the seed has already been planted by mass shooters before. It's now an option. The guy who stole the plane, the people who jump off the Golden Gate Bridge; these people are like saints compared to the trash of human beings that take others with them.
Suicide can have some fantastical outcomes. I’ve never really thought of the perps of mass shootings as people that want to die and come up with a high-exposure way to do it. The way to make their mark. To finally pin a legacy to their self-perceived meaningless lives. Sadly, this country forgets quickly about mass shootings. The people will not be remembered.
There's a great book about the Columbine shooting by journalist Dave Cullen. Those boys documented the why behind it meticulously through journals and videos recorded in one of their parents' basements. They both hated the world and wanted to kill themselves, but their hatred and narcissisms outweighed their purely suicidal urges. They dreamed of inflicting as many deaths as possible (it was actually a massive planned bombing that thankfully failed), destroy the 'world' and then go out in a blaze of glory by dying in a hail of police gunfire.
Well, with suicides, there’s definitely a point where they are “dead men walking”. The Matrix talks about how we make decisions long before we understand why...Here’s the thing that cooks my noodle: part of being a sociopath, means you never have that “coming to Jesus” moment. Relatively normal people project that on sociopathic people. Hitler probably never had a moment of regret. Stalin. Ted Bundy proved it himself in court. Zero remorse. So these shooters walking around with a blank stare could just be how they are everyday. We just see the lack of emotion, contrasted against fear of survivors, and fear of people in immediate danger, and mayhem and death...then there’s this one person, devoid of all that. If they’re true sociopaths, then maybe that look is not the weight of the act, but the weight of the life that got them to that point....
I think they’ll be remembered because of the endless studies we do on them. They’re remembered everytime another mass shooting happens and it all comes bubbling back up to the surface.
The ATC conversation with the guy who crashed that plane is on Youtube. The guy seems very friendly and jovial, but you can tell there's some serious pain behind what he's saying. I feel bad for the ATC controller that now has to go through life wondering if there was something else he could have said that could have prevented that outcome.
The thing that struck me about that video was the comments underneath from people hailing him as a hero and and someone to be revered for their courage. That sentiment seemed to be more common than pity or horror.
I remember that guy who stole the plane. I had the impression, listening to the conversation he had before he put the plane down, that he was kind of disappointed in how it turned out.
I think a lot of people, getting up in the morning and facing another day, look at a guy like that and think, well, at least he had the balls to go out on his own terms. They are probably thinking of the moment when he actually got the plane off the ground and the elation he must have felt. They would have no way of understanding the disappointment that probably came crashing in when he realized that there was literally nothing else for him to do in life. And he was wrong about that, or at least I think he was wrong, but he found himself trapped in self-created boundaries he could not transcend.
Geigerich stated: "Here the numinous is an immediate reality, as a tremendous breaking through the indifference and banality of everyday life and as an overwhelming power, religiously observed by the individuals committing these crimes who usually give up for their passion any hope for future happiness."
I make the assumption that the process by which a culture changes at its most profound level can be linked to the every shifting balance of controls and releases which basically serve what one could call a system of moral demands. One type of cultural revolution which has occurred in my/our life time and which is presently accelerating is that releases/impulses have grown more compelling ( as an example, the increased proliferation of mass shootings) than any inhibitions or thou shalt nots. Geigerich gets at this dynamic with his comment about such an individual in his criminal act, " breaking through the indifference and banality of everyday life,"--and acting in support of his internal impulse/passion.
Such a breaking is totally in sync with our present general cultural condition which permits more and more and demands less and less. I would argue that whenever such impulses overwhelm constraints/taboos/ the culture is in jeopardy.
It seems that Roman culture may have been moving towards such a breaking point when Christianity appeared as a new symbolic order of inhibitions and controls. ( But I am also quite skeptical of any such a similar development happening today).
Very thought provoking, I can relate deeply to guilt over a lack of devotion and can identify with the idea that the new religious experience is just whatever absorbs you totally. I feel like this is a point where one should recommend going to see a good concert with friends or trying out combat sports to get some sanctity and THE EXPERIENCE ITSELF back into our lives
It might be a bit presumptuous of me to push back on an observation or opinion of someone who was closer and probably more knowledgeable about Jung’s thoughts, but from my readings of him I get the impression that the ‘happy assumption’ was more like a part of his (incomplete) attempt at figuring out how modern man could try to find meaning in a world dominated by rationalism and one in which ‘God is dead’. I sense from him a more pessimistic, sober analysis of how effective something like a ‘choose your own symbol’ method of finding meaning would be, especially if it’s chosen in a desperate ’reaching’ way.
I’m sure your books-to-read list is impossibly long, but I’ve thought to recommend one of my favorites of his (if you haven’t already read it). It’s a short book that he wrote late in his life called ‘The Undiscovered Self’ (an unfortunately new-agey sounding english title). It might be right up your alley as it focuses on the problem of the individual in modern / mass society…the dangers of succumbing to ideological possession without some kind of spiritual grounding or meaning. Plus he rails on communism / collective ideology quite a bit : )
“The Communist revolution has debased man far lower than democratic collective psychology has done, because it robs him of his freedom not only in the social but in the moral and spiritual sense.”
To your question of what must be going through the minds of people who have made the decision to commit mass murder when they are at the moment the plan becomes action, I would surmise they have reached a point of complete numbness so that their minds are a blank, their bodies animated by muscle memory auto-pilot. The pent up anger, frustration, and hatred that has built up to the point of madness propels them to instigate and carry out their plan. The point at which the killing begins they are dead men walking-turning back is no longer an option. The song "Empty" by Ray Lamontagne comes to mind.
We don't talk enough about Breivik, maybe the most horrible shooter of our time. Carefully planned, thoughtful, complex. Killed so many children and remains proud of it.
He doesn't look empty, he looks pleased. What is going on in his head? What brought him there?
Reading these comments from you somehow makes me understand Houellebecq's writing more. Something that I don't think you and Jocko touched on (it may have been mentioned in some of the comments though not sure) is the role played by free and easy access to pornography. As a parallel to the meditations on violence, the onanistic orgasm has become one of the easiest and most repeatable ways to achieve some feeling of transcendence. Sexual liberation allowed for social roles to be relaxed/undermined such that sex with many partners was possible, but that was never the reality for most people, and now, with the melding between sexual liberation and the free market in the form of dating apps, a few men have the lion's share of the sexual interactions while the rest... I'm not necessarily saying there's some scientifically (or at least #science) provable means of linking mass pornography consumption and violence, but I think there's a link in terms of the search for meaning and transcendence.
This quote works way too often for too many things, but hey, that's what happens when you say something profound as the foremost philosopher of the century: "Only a God can save us" - Martin Heidegger
Interesting thought on violence and porn/sexuality. I read somewhere that monogamy might have been Christianity's greatest innovation. A sexually deprived and frustrated underclass of young men is detrimental to a society because they can become restless and plot revolution/violence.
Think of a pre-Christian tribal society where the elite males take multiple wives/sexual partners. The young men at the bottom of that food chain had the 'option' to wage war on external enemies for loot and booty (hehe - sorry, bad joke). As you say the sexual liberation of modernity has once again returned us to a state where few men dominate the dating market, and we have some angry and frustrated young men without a purpose or outlet.
Yes the 'enforced monogamy' of which Jordan Peterson spoke several years ago is the notion that monogamy should be the norm as enforced by social mores. A society in which there was less promiscuity would also lessen (though, of course, not wholly eliminate) mimetic rivalry which could conceivably reduce at least some of this jealousy-fueled mass violence (I admit that this formulation is simplistic, but there is a core of logic to it).
I do think that statistics on rape/sexual assault demonstrate that increased access to pornography has coincided with decreased amounts of sexual violence, and of course the sort that you mention - victorious warriors carrying off captured women - is not something that I think most of us would condone as a better alternative, especially now. But if the current state of affairs leads to some additional number of mass casualty events, we can at least surmise that there are tradeoffs under any set of circumstances, and we should be able to evaluate which of the tradeoffs is least bad. For me, easy and free access to internet pornography plus the unregulated sexual marketplace are known evils, but they're also the world I live in, so of course I'm going to be biased. I suppose it's tempting to imagine we can thread the needle between increased amounts of sexual assault and increased amounts of porn-induced masculine enervation - but I think we could do it. If that means we need to re-Christianize our society, laws, and mores, then so be it! So be it!
Ah so Peterson talked about it before, I might have picked it up from him. Not a huge Peterson fan tbh but I have dipped in and out of listening to him. Even went and saw him debate Sam Harris a few years ago, moderated by Douglas Murray - who I think was the real star of the show. Peterson and Harris mostly talked across each other in language that my tiny brain couldn't comprehend, while Murray continually got them both back on track and spelled things out in layman's terms.
Tucker Max and evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller used to do a podcast years ago promoting a new book and I remember them talking about a brief time period in, I think, New Jersey where prostitution was legal through some loophole in legislation. I can't remember the specifics but sexual violence and male-female assault went down during this period. You seem like a pious Christian and may object to this, but I think legalising prostitution would help alleviate some of the sexual frustration issues we are seeing. It's an interesting thought experiment at the very least.
Yeah I think JP was and still is a good gateway drug to get one started reading the source material that he's drawing on. I know many people who began as JP fan boys (I was definitely in that category for a lot of 2017 - it was a life-changing period for me in many ways) and have since moved on to engage with the themes and thinkers he mentions in a more direct way. And yes, he's a much better lecturer than he is a debater or conversationalist, whereas DM has that classic high-class English repartee which makes his ability to glide through both conversations and debates much more enjoyable. Not a big SH fan at this point - to paraphrase Thomas Dolby, he's been blinded by science.
I think I'm flattered to be seen as a pious Christian so thank you! I am neither pious nor Christian however. I would actually be open to some form of legalized (or, probably better, still illegal but with the laws poorly enforced) sex work though. This would be one means of regulating the sexual marketplace, especially if it coincided with social pressure to marry/stay married and for there to be less promiscuity (among the non-sex working majority) before marriage. Although I'm probably not considering many other real-world factors that would make all of this impossible to achieve, it is an interesting thought experiment!
I've heard this put forth as an explanation for the easy violence and messianic nihilism on display in Arab culture- harems create an underclass of angry young men in which the procreative urge is replaced by the destructive one. Hence 72 virgins.
If a ship has no rudder, then it will not stay on course.
"Everyone who comes to me and hears my words and does them, I will show you what he is like: he is like a man building a house, who dug deep and laid the foundation on the rock. And when a flood arose, the stream broke against that house and could not shake it, because it had been well built. But the one who hears and does not do them is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation. When the stream broke against it, immediately it fell, and and the ruin of that house was great." Jesus Christ
Excellent quote. But...Going to church not necessary to learn and teach this lesson. You could put Henry David Thoreau’s name after that quote, and it would hold the same weight.
The problem is not the teachings of Jesus, it’s the requirements that go along with it. It’s the necessary shame when you fall short. And you’re doomed to perpetually fall short. It’s a logic trap that only God can resolve. Again, we fall in life. Dust yourself off. Failure and losing is a necessary part of success. That’s logic of life. But in the church, you’re so much less than God, than Jesus, even your pastor. Yes the pastor is imperfect...but he must be less imperfect if everyone goes to him, and everyone looks to him on Sunday. You can get baptized or eat a wafer and wash it down with wine to “take on a part of Jesus”. But you’re not Jesus. You can’t bear that much weight. But God is empowering so you can handle the weight that God gives you. Circular argument. It’s just drive some people insane inside.
It’s too much abstraction versus what we see and have access to in the modern world. I bet church goers rarely admit it openly. To much “You can never be Michael Jordan” and “You are never gonna be Michael Jordan without vigilant practice”. Again, Geigerich is clearly stating the folly in this pursuit. A truly religious experience is so far out of the norm in the modern world. Information has allowed our eyes have been opened to possibilities...and limitations.
I'm with you & Geigerich up to the face-smacking passage. Up to that point, what you / he describe has been elsewhere called the "God sized hole" at the center of our being. We know (or at least, suspect) that there is an Infinite that existed before and will continue after us. We are finite in lifespan and capability, and therefore desire connection to that Ultimate Reality, where every religious says we find our origin and ultimate destiny. Of course, we want to control our reality ("my truth"), and this often brings us into conflict within ourselves and that Infinite. The more divided we are internally, and the more we act in ways at odds with reality, the more unhappy. And again pretty much every religion says the path to peace is understanding & accepting reality as it is, surrendering our misguided desires / vices, and living virtuously in that reality.
Soooooo, far so good. Where I lose the thread is his claim that "under conditions of modernity", religion loses its meaning and dignity, such that only murder or sadism seems real. Is he saying modernity as such is a distorted / artificial frame? Or is modernity somehow "correct" and the religious insights noted above are wrong?
You've written elsewhere about human sacrifice, sublimation, etc., and how that connects to religious practices. But it seems important to point out that the major paradigm of the West - Christianity - totally inverts all of those pre-Christian concepts. The Old Testament firmly rejects human sacrifice & idolatry, but then the New Testament doubles down & the Son of God allows himself to be sacrificed by his creatures, in order to save them. Point being, I don't see how you can connect the school shooter's search for meaning via mass murder as somehow enacting a 'sacred' religious impulse - unless that religion is fundamentally Satanic.
No, I don’t think he’s saying modernity or religion are right or wrong, only that the uncritical acceptance necessary for profound religious experience is all but inaccessible to a person well-adjusted to modern conditions. So, whatever problems it solved our purpose it served then, the modern attempt to replicate it sets an impossible goal, the seeking for which we experience as spiritual pain. Joseph Campbell said that, being a scholar of world mythologies, he was able to appreciate many things unavailable to someone from the Middle Ages, but that the doubt, relativism, and different relationship caused by his wide education means he will never have the mystical experience felt by a Medieval true believer.
As for where the Bible & Christianity are situated w/regard to human sacrifice, we agree. The emergence of Christianity is, in an important sense, the story of man leaving behind that barbaric compulsion, and repairing the spiritual damage that it fostered.
That said, I'd like to better understand why you personally buy the premise - that "uncritical acceptance is necessary for a profound religious experience" (or that moderns don't uncritically accept lots of things). George LeMaitre said discovering the Big Bang increased his faith in God. Jordan Peterson routinely stretches the limits of what he calls a "psychological" understanding of the religious impulse, flirting ever closer to metaphysics and / or theology.
Maybe it depends on how you define "modern" - if it just means someone living right now, then I'd argue profound religious experiences are open to all (as in every age). If 'modern' is a pejorative, meaning Bug Man addicted to his phone and shallow consumerism, then maybe I agree with you.
Maybe what you / Geigerich mean is that moderns reject strong-form fairy tale myth, which once served as a low-resolution or 'good enough' religion? Meaning, I won't kill my neighbor because I'm afraid Mardoc will punish me in the next life, or that his widow will cast a spell on me? Versus as a well-educated 21st century human I can accept religion as a completely rational understanding of reality, without suspending my reason or accepting something silly.
Not just doing this to get those #dclikes, but this is yet another instance where invoking the thought of Rene Girard is useful, both in terms of addressing the comment about the apparent similarity between pagan human sacrifice and the crucifixion of God as well as the search for meaning via mass violence as a mimetic phenomenon. Mass shooters are elevated in our culture even if they come in for near-universal opprobrium and damnation - everyone talks about them for weeks or months after, and their names are evoked even decades later (we still talk about Harris and Klebold, and Roof, and Breivik, etc.). A search for meaning can take many forms, some of them self-/destructive, but as this essay and DC's comments on it suggest, perpetrating violence has been and can still be a means of accessing something that is all together rare in the modern world.
As I noted in my comment on the previous post, this should not be used as a justification for suppressing the aggressive nature of young men. That would seem to me to merely encourage this sort of terroristic and destructive violence as one of the few remaining avenues to pursue a higher purpose.
As a religious person, it's interesting for me to read critiques of religion that engage matters of faith purely through the filter of secular functionalism. The religions of the world are best understood on their own terms, but I suppose it's a lot easier to throw stones of critique than to immerse oneself in theologies so intricate and vast that some of them are still being pondered and argued after millennia of already doing so.
That said, I agree wholeheartedly with Geigerich's assertion that the most wantonly evil, senseless acts are probably profoundly religious. It's not enough for the school shooter to end his own life, he takes his revenge on the God who is perceived to be sovereignly responsible for his sorry state by destroying what he thinks must be most precious to that God. Christian theologians use the term federal headship to describe Adam's rebellion against God being passed on to all members of the human race that have come from him. In this framework, every human has struggled against God (this is what the name Israel means), and every human contributes to the process of throwing the world into a less good, more chaotic state. Some people shoot up schools, some people beat their kids, some people just gossip about their coworkers, but we've all contributed in some sense. The more a person is inclined to shake their fist at God, the more likely people around them are going to suffer the consequences of that rage.
This is how I understand the problem, but I must admit I have no idea how to stop a society that regularly turns out young men who inflict this kind of pain on their neighbors. Sweeping policy changes might lower casualty numbers, but won't change the fact that there's a serious subset of the population that exists in a state of pervasive misery.
Enjoying the conversations these essays spawn, and I'm looking forward to hearing more of your thoughts on this topic Darryl.
Maybe this isn't exactly the format or place to do this, but as a religious person (and forgive me for being presumptuous about what religion that is) what do you make of the teaching of felix culpa? That the Fall in the Garden was a felicitous event because it brought about the conditions such that the Son of God could redeem the sins of fallen humanity?
This probably isn’t the format or place to discuss such things, but I cannot resist such an interesting question. Felix Culpa is embraced by many protestants but is a bit more emphasized in the Catholic tradition, so it’s not something I’ve interacted with much. I think that it’s really hard to look at the fallenness of our world and conclude that everything is great because Jesus’ grace then gets a chance to really show what it can do. God’s goodness and grace are not dependent on the bad (or good) things human beings act out. So on one hand, God is working and moving through the ups and downs of history and bringing things to the point where His ultimate glory will be realized, and Jesus returns to rule His kingdom in the flesh. On the other hand, mankind has really made a mess of things, and that has caused and continues to cause untold pain and requires serious lament.
Felix Culpa makes more sense to me from the perspective of the experience of the believer. The depth of God’s goodness and grace become more apparent to the person to understands just how utterly rotten they truly are. That God meets us in our unworthiness through Christ is something that for me, is too wonderful to really understand.
A smarter person would give you a better answer than that I’m sure, but you’ve asked for my thoughts, and I suppose you now have them.
This was really insightful! The way you described the sins committed by all humans sounds like the theological equivalent of entropy, which as we know from the Second Law of Thermodynamics can in practical terms only increase.
Yeah this pretty much recapitulates the opposite of Ivan Karamazov's position in the chapter "Rebellion" - we cannot justify evil but nor can we blame God for it because God is incapable of committing evil acts. (By the way, I'm sure this also frustrates you as a Christian in a similar way it does for me as a metaphysicist, but the objection that people of Ivan's persuasion raise to God's essential goodness based on the existence of evil is an error of epistemology from those who are too steeped in mechanical thinking and presume that grace must operate as some sort of physical and measurable force or else it's superfluous.) I think the term is 'prevenient grace' and as you say that seems to be necessary to explain the behavior of man (though again forgive me but don't certain Protestant sects believe more in something like predestination with some subpopulation of elect being the receivers of grace?).
I like the framing of felix culpa as something seen as good from the point of view of the fallen and not as something necessary or part of God per se. Any attempts to know the mind of God will always have serious problems, but something that interests me is what the Devil brings up in a late chapter in Brothers K: that he is eternally sentenced to being a 'negation' (a very Hegelian word) and as being necessary for there to be any events/history (also very Hegelian). I understand that, unlike Hegel, Christians do NOT believe that God contains negation within himself (because then he would have the capacity to do evil), but how do you/others think about the unfolding of history from the Fall to the Second Coming if not in this self-contained dialectical form?
The idea of negation within God reminds me of the account of Augustine and Fortunatus going head to head. Augustinian theodicy walks the tightrope between God’s sovereignty, man’s free will, and the problem of evil pretty elegantly, but Fortunatus argued that God was complicit with bringing evil into the world by bestowing free will upon mankind. Augustine’s arguments have certainly won the theological popularity contest through the ages, and have been refined by John Calvin, and defended notably by Alvin Plantinga.
Regarding the Christian views on the unfolding of history, there are obviously many, and many opinions on what the role of a Christ follower is in the present age. In general, I think there’s consensus that God’s plan for His creation is restorative. It’s to do away with all evil, and to reflect His omnibenevolence. The end result isn’t a manichaeistic balance between good and evil, but the ultimate and final triumph of good over evil. The hope of the Christian isn’t to find harmony with the universe as it is, but of a radical restoration of the universe to its ideal state. Jesus’ proclamation of the arrival of the kingdom of God is the announcement that the gears are in motion to bring this about.
Thanks again! I hope that Christian theology can be part of the near-term restoration that appears to be necessary for our civilization to avoid some number of catastrophic outcomes.
Thank you, my friend. Always a pleasure to bump into you in these parts.
I have serious doubts that Christian theology for all its charms (and there are many) is the answer to society’s problems in the near term. At least not all by itself. The shooter in Uvalde was in a community filled with pious people, and yet did anyone reach out? Did anyone just put their arm around this kid? I don’t know for sure, but I suspect not, and that makes me angry. And it makes me ashamed that I probably would have done the same thing were that guy in my orbit. If Christianity is to make a serious dent in society’s ills, it won’t be primarily from masses of people acting on newfound theological information or spiritual enlightenment. It would be from the people who already profess Christ to be people of His character, following Him with more sincerity and earnestness.
This idea, of awakening is it from a dream in the midst of such an experience, puts me in the mind of the more mundane forms of disappointment that attend to our desires and our achievements. It is a frequent event that we set a goal, or pick out a thing to purchase, or choose a travel destination, and tell ourselves that this will make us happy. And then, when we reach the goal or the place, or buy the thing, we look around and think something along the lines of “this is it?”
Of course, the awakening moment of the person committing the final, unredeemable act is far more profound, and far more disappointing. It may be that those who go down this road end their lives in a state of utter despair and disconnection. It does not seem to be a coincidence that this is, in some terms, the definition of hell. There is certainly something here about carrying out an act that is completely outside of what a community will allow or forgive; the appeal lies is its inherent notoriety and power, yet the only possible end is a severance of all ties. The same could be said of many temptations of what we might consider evil.
So much to digest here but another great piece of writing by DC. As someone who has and is struggling with the search for meaning, I am consistently seeking out works such as those mentioned in this article. I’ve read The Denial of Death and the analysis of Kierkegaard’s work resonated with me. I have not had nightmares like DC’s but do have them. The scenario is almost always the same. Not comfortable expressing this to a large group. Unfortunately, after reading some Kierkegaard, I got drawn toward some other of the existentialists/pessimists such as Schopenhauer.
I'm reminded of when I was going through depression. It was sometime near Christmas and I had decided I should spend the day getting drunk. I hardly drink, I've never liked it and it only takes a couple of bottles of unremarkable beer before I've had enough but I found myself in a store reaching for a bottle of something I can't call (might have been Southern Comfort or maybe Courvassier). Suddenly it hit me what path I was heading down and I was shaken to the core, absolutely terrified of myself in a way I've never experienced before or since.
I have to assume that moment of inflection doesn't happen. My moment was one of simple self destruction, imagine having the notion to shoot up a place full of people and not terrifying yourself.
Remember that guy a few years ago that stole a Q400 from Sea-Tac, did a few rolls and loops and then crashed it? The media really missed an opportunity to juxtapose him with a mass shooter. He made a conscious effort to make sure he didn't take anyone with him. He looped it out over the ocean where he knew no one could get hurt, then crashed it into a place where he knew there weren't any people. He just wanted to go out in style. There is an interesting documentary called "The Bridge" about people who have committed suicide off the Golden Gate Bridge. Same idea, they just want to go out in style. There are no shortage of nuts out there who want to end their life in some memorable way. The problem is that the seed has already been planted by mass shooters before. It's now an option. The guy who stole the plane, the people who jump off the Golden Gate Bridge; these people are like saints compared to the trash of human beings that take others with them.
Suicide can have some fantastical outcomes. I’ve never really thought of the perps of mass shootings as people that want to die and come up with a high-exposure way to do it. The way to make their mark. To finally pin a legacy to their self-perceived meaningless lives. Sadly, this country forgets quickly about mass shootings. The people will not be remembered.
There's a great book about the Columbine shooting by journalist Dave Cullen. Those boys documented the why behind it meticulously through journals and videos recorded in one of their parents' basements. They both hated the world and wanted to kill themselves, but their hatred and narcissisms outweighed their purely suicidal urges. They dreamed of inflicting as many deaths as possible (it was actually a massive planned bombing that thankfully failed), destroy the 'world' and then go out in a blaze of glory by dying in a hail of police gunfire.
Good points. I wonder how many go in with that intention and how many kind of "wake up" as DC describes and realize they have no other way out.
Well, with suicides, there’s definitely a point where they are “dead men walking”. The Matrix talks about how we make decisions long before we understand why...Here’s the thing that cooks my noodle: part of being a sociopath, means you never have that “coming to Jesus” moment. Relatively normal people project that on sociopathic people. Hitler probably never had a moment of regret. Stalin. Ted Bundy proved it himself in court. Zero remorse. So these shooters walking around with a blank stare could just be how they are everyday. We just see the lack of emotion, contrasted against fear of survivors, and fear of people in immediate danger, and mayhem and death...then there’s this one person, devoid of all that. If they’re true sociopaths, then maybe that look is not the weight of the act, but the weight of the life that got them to that point....
I’m definitely of the opinion that shooter suicide/no way out, and realizing the weight of their acts, are two different things.
I think they’ll be remembered because of the endless studies we do on them. They’re remembered everytime another mass shooting happens and it all comes bubbling back up to the surface.
The ATC conversation with the guy who crashed that plane is on Youtube. The guy seems very friendly and jovial, but you can tell there's some serious pain behind what he's saying. I feel bad for the ATC controller that now has to go through life wondering if there was something else he could have said that could have prevented that outcome.
The thing that struck me about that video was the comments underneath from people hailing him as a hero and and someone to be revered for their courage. That sentiment seemed to be more common than pity or horror.
A telling observation. Makes it even more sad.
Considering that it was a Q400 maybe he was just trying to do us all a favor and get rid of one of those things
Lol
I remember that guy who stole the plane. I had the impression, listening to the conversation he had before he put the plane down, that he was kind of disappointed in how it turned out.
It was interesting for me to see how many people held him up as a hero in the comments underneath the video
I think a lot of people, getting up in the morning and facing another day, look at a guy like that and think, well, at least he had the balls to go out on his own terms. They are probably thinking of the moment when he actually got the plane off the ground and the elation he must have felt. They would have no way of understanding the disappointment that probably came crashing in when he realized that there was literally nothing else for him to do in life. And he was wrong about that, or at least I think he was wrong, but he found himself trapped in self-created boundaries he could not transcend.
Geigerich stated: "Here the numinous is an immediate reality, as a tremendous breaking through the indifference and banality of everyday life and as an overwhelming power, religiously observed by the individuals committing these crimes who usually give up for their passion any hope for future happiness."
I make the assumption that the process by which a culture changes at its most profound level can be linked to the every shifting balance of controls and releases which basically serve what one could call a system of moral demands. One type of cultural revolution which has occurred in my/our life time and which is presently accelerating is that releases/impulses have grown more compelling ( as an example, the increased proliferation of mass shootings) than any inhibitions or thou shalt nots. Geigerich gets at this dynamic with his comment about such an individual in his criminal act, " breaking through the indifference and banality of everyday life,"--and acting in support of his internal impulse/passion.
Such a breaking is totally in sync with our present general cultural condition which permits more and more and demands less and less. I would argue that whenever such impulses overwhelm constraints/taboos/ the culture is in jeopardy.
It seems that Roman culture may have been moving towards such a breaking point when Christianity appeared as a new symbolic order of inhibitions and controls. ( But I am also quite skeptical of any such a similar development happening today).
Very thought provoking, I can relate deeply to guilt over a lack of devotion and can identify with the idea that the new religious experience is just whatever absorbs you totally. I feel like this is a point where one should recommend going to see a good concert with friends or trying out combat sports to get some sanctity and THE EXPERIENCE ITSELF back into our lives
Great stuff. Can't wait for the five hour podcast on this topic.
From your lips to Daryl’s ears
It might be a bit presumptuous of me to push back on an observation or opinion of someone who was closer and probably more knowledgeable about Jung’s thoughts, but from my readings of him I get the impression that the ‘happy assumption’ was more like a part of his (incomplete) attempt at figuring out how modern man could try to find meaning in a world dominated by rationalism and one in which ‘God is dead’. I sense from him a more pessimistic, sober analysis of how effective something like a ‘choose your own symbol’ method of finding meaning would be, especially if it’s chosen in a desperate ’reaching’ way.
I’m sure your books-to-read list is impossibly long, but I’ve thought to recommend one of my favorites of his (if you haven’t already read it). It’s a short book that he wrote late in his life called ‘The Undiscovered Self’ (an unfortunately new-agey sounding english title). It might be right up your alley as it focuses on the problem of the individual in modern / mass society…the dangers of succumbing to ideological possession without some kind of spiritual grounding or meaning. Plus he rails on communism / collective ideology quite a bit : )
“The Communist revolution has debased man far lower than democratic collective psychology has done, because it robs him of his freedom not only in the social but in the moral and spiritual sense.”
To your question of what must be going through the minds of people who have made the decision to commit mass murder when they are at the moment the plan becomes action, I would surmise they have reached a point of complete numbness so that their minds are a blank, their bodies animated by muscle memory auto-pilot. The pent up anger, frustration, and hatred that has built up to the point of madness propels them to instigate and carry out their plan. The point at which the killing begins they are dead men walking-turning back is no longer an option. The song "Empty" by Ray Lamontagne comes to mind.
They certainly all have that “numb” look in the aftermath.
We don't talk enough about Breivik, maybe the most horrible shooter of our time. Carefully planned, thoughtful, complex. Killed so many children and remains proud of it.
He doesn't look empty, he looks pleased. What is going on in his head? What brought him there?
I'm super excited about your interview with Astral - it's going to be like those old crossover TV episodes where your favorite characters from different universes interact. (This show was really impressive: https://astralflight.substack.com/p/the-astral-flight-simulation?s=r#details)
Reading these comments from you somehow makes me understand Houellebecq's writing more. Something that I don't think you and Jocko touched on (it may have been mentioned in some of the comments though not sure) is the role played by free and easy access to pornography. As a parallel to the meditations on violence, the onanistic orgasm has become one of the easiest and most repeatable ways to achieve some feeling of transcendence. Sexual liberation allowed for social roles to be relaxed/undermined such that sex with many partners was possible, but that was never the reality for most people, and now, with the melding between sexual liberation and the free market in the form of dating apps, a few men have the lion's share of the sexual interactions while the rest... I'm not necessarily saying there's some scientifically (or at least #science) provable means of linking mass pornography consumption and violence, but I think there's a link in terms of the search for meaning and transcendence.
This quote works way too often for too many things, but hey, that's what happens when you say something profound as the foremost philosopher of the century: "Only a God can save us" - Martin Heidegger
Astral and I talk about Houellebecq in the interview.
Interesting thought on violence and porn/sexuality. I read somewhere that monogamy might have been Christianity's greatest innovation. A sexually deprived and frustrated underclass of young men is detrimental to a society because they can become restless and plot revolution/violence.
Think of a pre-Christian tribal society where the elite males take multiple wives/sexual partners. The young men at the bottom of that food chain had the 'option' to wage war on external enemies for loot and booty (hehe - sorry, bad joke). As you say the sexual liberation of modernity has once again returned us to a state where few men dominate the dating market, and we have some angry and frustrated young men without a purpose or outlet.
Yes the 'enforced monogamy' of which Jordan Peterson spoke several years ago is the notion that monogamy should be the norm as enforced by social mores. A society in which there was less promiscuity would also lessen (though, of course, not wholly eliminate) mimetic rivalry which could conceivably reduce at least some of this jealousy-fueled mass violence (I admit that this formulation is simplistic, but there is a core of logic to it).
I do think that statistics on rape/sexual assault demonstrate that increased access to pornography has coincided with decreased amounts of sexual violence, and of course the sort that you mention - victorious warriors carrying off captured women - is not something that I think most of us would condone as a better alternative, especially now. But if the current state of affairs leads to some additional number of mass casualty events, we can at least surmise that there are tradeoffs under any set of circumstances, and we should be able to evaluate which of the tradeoffs is least bad. For me, easy and free access to internet pornography plus the unregulated sexual marketplace are known evils, but they're also the world I live in, so of course I'm going to be biased. I suppose it's tempting to imagine we can thread the needle between increased amounts of sexual assault and increased amounts of porn-induced masculine enervation - but I think we could do it. If that means we need to re-Christianize our society, laws, and mores, then so be it! So be it!
Ah so Peterson talked about it before, I might have picked it up from him. Not a huge Peterson fan tbh but I have dipped in and out of listening to him. Even went and saw him debate Sam Harris a few years ago, moderated by Douglas Murray - who I think was the real star of the show. Peterson and Harris mostly talked across each other in language that my tiny brain couldn't comprehend, while Murray continually got them both back on track and spelled things out in layman's terms.
Tucker Max and evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller used to do a podcast years ago promoting a new book and I remember them talking about a brief time period in, I think, New Jersey where prostitution was legal through some loophole in legislation. I can't remember the specifics but sexual violence and male-female assault went down during this period. You seem like a pious Christian and may object to this, but I think legalising prostitution would help alleviate some of the sexual frustration issues we are seeing. It's an interesting thought experiment at the very least.
Yeah I think JP was and still is a good gateway drug to get one started reading the source material that he's drawing on. I know many people who began as JP fan boys (I was definitely in that category for a lot of 2017 - it was a life-changing period for me in many ways) and have since moved on to engage with the themes and thinkers he mentions in a more direct way. And yes, he's a much better lecturer than he is a debater or conversationalist, whereas DM has that classic high-class English repartee which makes his ability to glide through both conversations and debates much more enjoyable. Not a big SH fan at this point - to paraphrase Thomas Dolby, he's been blinded by science.
I think I'm flattered to be seen as a pious Christian so thank you! I am neither pious nor Christian however. I would actually be open to some form of legalized (or, probably better, still illegal but with the laws poorly enforced) sex work though. This would be one means of regulating the sexual marketplace, especially if it coincided with social pressure to marry/stay married and for there to be less promiscuity (among the non-sex working majority) before marriage. Although I'm probably not considering many other real-world factors that would make all of this impossible to achieve, it is an interesting thought experiment!
I've heard this put forth as an explanation for the easy violence and messianic nihilism on display in Arab culture- harems create an underclass of angry young men in which the procreative urge is replaced by the destructive one. Hence 72 virgins.
If a ship has no rudder, then it will not stay on course.
"Everyone who comes to me and hears my words and does them, I will show you what he is like: he is like a man building a house, who dug deep and laid the foundation on the rock. And when a flood arose, the stream broke against that house and could not shake it, because it had been well built. But the one who hears and does not do them is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation. When the stream broke against it, immediately it fell, and and the ruin of that house was great." Jesus Christ
Excellent quote. But...Going to church not necessary to learn and teach this lesson. You could put Henry David Thoreau’s name after that quote, and it would hold the same weight.
The problem is not the teachings of Jesus, it’s the requirements that go along with it. It’s the necessary shame when you fall short. And you’re doomed to perpetually fall short. It’s a logic trap that only God can resolve. Again, we fall in life. Dust yourself off. Failure and losing is a necessary part of success. That’s logic of life. But in the church, you’re so much less than God, than Jesus, even your pastor. Yes the pastor is imperfect...but he must be less imperfect if everyone goes to him, and everyone looks to him on Sunday. You can get baptized or eat a wafer and wash it down with wine to “take on a part of Jesus”. But you’re not Jesus. You can’t bear that much weight. But God is empowering so you can handle the weight that God gives you. Circular argument. It’s just drive some people insane inside.
It’s too much abstraction versus what we see and have access to in the modern world. I bet church goers rarely admit it openly. To much “You can never be Michael Jordan” and “You are never gonna be Michael Jordan without vigilant practice”. Again, Geigerich is clearly stating the folly in this pursuit. A truly religious experience is so far out of the norm in the modern world. Information has allowed our eyes have been opened to possibilities...and limitations.
Thanks DC. Your writing and podcasts have help me (attept) to make sense of this life we share. I look forward to hearing and reading more.
While reading this post I was struck about how similar Geigerich's thought process and thesis was to that of C.S. Lewis the great English writer of 1930-1960. His book The Most Reluctant Convert parallels from a Christian perspective the search for reality in modern society. I highly recommend that anyone searching for meaning in life read the book and view the recent movie based on the book. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0830832718/ref=x_gr_w_bb_sout?ie=UTF8&tag=x_gr_w_bb_sout-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0830832718&SubscriptionId=1MGPYB6YW3HWK55XCGG2
I'm with you & Geigerich up to the face-smacking passage. Up to that point, what you / he describe has been elsewhere called the "God sized hole" at the center of our being. We know (or at least, suspect) that there is an Infinite that existed before and will continue after us. We are finite in lifespan and capability, and therefore desire connection to that Ultimate Reality, where every religious says we find our origin and ultimate destiny. Of course, we want to control our reality ("my truth"), and this often brings us into conflict within ourselves and that Infinite. The more divided we are internally, and the more we act in ways at odds with reality, the more unhappy. And again pretty much every religion says the path to peace is understanding & accepting reality as it is, surrendering our misguided desires / vices, and living virtuously in that reality.
Soooooo, far so good. Where I lose the thread is his claim that "under conditions of modernity", religion loses its meaning and dignity, such that only murder or sadism seems real. Is he saying modernity as such is a distorted / artificial frame? Or is modernity somehow "correct" and the religious insights noted above are wrong?
You've written elsewhere about human sacrifice, sublimation, etc., and how that connects to religious practices. But it seems important to point out that the major paradigm of the West - Christianity - totally inverts all of those pre-Christian concepts. The Old Testament firmly rejects human sacrifice & idolatry, but then the New Testament doubles down & the Son of God allows himself to be sacrificed by his creatures, in order to save them. Point being, I don't see how you can connect the school shooter's search for meaning via mass murder as somehow enacting a 'sacred' religious impulse - unless that religion is fundamentally Satanic.
No, I don’t think he’s saying modernity or religion are right or wrong, only that the uncritical acceptance necessary for profound religious experience is all but inaccessible to a person well-adjusted to modern conditions. So, whatever problems it solved our purpose it served then, the modern attempt to replicate it sets an impossible goal, the seeking for which we experience as spiritual pain. Joseph Campbell said that, being a scholar of world mythologies, he was able to appreciate many things unavailable to someone from the Middle Ages, but that the doubt, relativism, and different relationship caused by his wide education means he will never have the mystical experience felt by a Medieval true believer.
As for where the Bible & Christianity are situated w/regard to human sacrifice, we agree. The emergence of Christianity is, in an important sense, the story of man leaving behind that barbaric compulsion, and repairing the spiritual damage that it fostered.
Thanks - saving me the 50 page Jungian read :)
That said, I'd like to better understand why you personally buy the premise - that "uncritical acceptance is necessary for a profound religious experience" (or that moderns don't uncritically accept lots of things). George LeMaitre said discovering the Big Bang increased his faith in God. Jordan Peterson routinely stretches the limits of what he calls a "psychological" understanding of the religious impulse, flirting ever closer to metaphysics and / or theology.
Maybe it depends on how you define "modern" - if it just means someone living right now, then I'd argue profound religious experiences are open to all (as in every age). If 'modern' is a pejorative, meaning Bug Man addicted to his phone and shallow consumerism, then maybe I agree with you.
Maybe what you / Geigerich mean is that moderns reject strong-form fairy tale myth, which once served as a low-resolution or 'good enough' religion? Meaning, I won't kill my neighbor because I'm afraid Mardoc will punish me in the next life, or that his widow will cast a spell on me? Versus as a well-educated 21st century human I can accept religion as a completely rational understanding of reality, without suspending my reason or accepting something silly.
Not just doing this to get those #dclikes, but this is yet another instance where invoking the thought of Rene Girard is useful, both in terms of addressing the comment about the apparent similarity between pagan human sacrifice and the crucifixion of God as well as the search for meaning via mass violence as a mimetic phenomenon. Mass shooters are elevated in our culture even if they come in for near-universal opprobrium and damnation - everyone talks about them for weeks or months after, and their names are evoked even decades later (we still talk about Harris and Klebold, and Roof, and Breivik, etc.). A search for meaning can take many forms, some of them self-/destructive, but as this essay and DC's comments on it suggest, perpetrating violence has been and can still be a means of accessing something that is all together rare in the modern world.
As I noted in my comment on the previous post, this should not be used as a justification for suppressing the aggressive nature of young men. That would seem to me to merely encourage this sort of terroristic and destructive violence as one of the few remaining avenues to pursue a higher purpose.
(Though of course #dclikes are appreciated!)
Great stuff DC! Already excited about whatever’s next!
As a religious person, it's interesting for me to read critiques of religion that engage matters of faith purely through the filter of secular functionalism. The religions of the world are best understood on their own terms, but I suppose it's a lot easier to throw stones of critique than to immerse oneself in theologies so intricate and vast that some of them are still being pondered and argued after millennia of already doing so.
That said, I agree wholeheartedly with Geigerich's assertion that the most wantonly evil, senseless acts are probably profoundly religious. It's not enough for the school shooter to end his own life, he takes his revenge on the God who is perceived to be sovereignly responsible for his sorry state by destroying what he thinks must be most precious to that God. Christian theologians use the term federal headship to describe Adam's rebellion against God being passed on to all members of the human race that have come from him. In this framework, every human has struggled against God (this is what the name Israel means), and every human contributes to the process of throwing the world into a less good, more chaotic state. Some people shoot up schools, some people beat their kids, some people just gossip about their coworkers, but we've all contributed in some sense. The more a person is inclined to shake their fist at God, the more likely people around them are going to suffer the consequences of that rage.
This is how I understand the problem, but I must admit I have no idea how to stop a society that regularly turns out young men who inflict this kind of pain on their neighbors. Sweeping policy changes might lower casualty numbers, but won't change the fact that there's a serious subset of the population that exists in a state of pervasive misery.
Enjoying the conversations these essays spawn, and I'm looking forward to hearing more of your thoughts on this topic Darryl.
Maybe this isn't exactly the format or place to do this, but as a religious person (and forgive me for being presumptuous about what religion that is) what do you make of the teaching of felix culpa? That the Fall in the Garden was a felicitous event because it brought about the conditions such that the Son of God could redeem the sins of fallen humanity?
This probably isn’t the format or place to discuss such things, but I cannot resist such an interesting question. Felix Culpa is embraced by many protestants but is a bit more emphasized in the Catholic tradition, so it’s not something I’ve interacted with much. I think that it’s really hard to look at the fallenness of our world and conclude that everything is great because Jesus’ grace then gets a chance to really show what it can do. God’s goodness and grace are not dependent on the bad (or good) things human beings act out. So on one hand, God is working and moving through the ups and downs of history and bringing things to the point where His ultimate glory will be realized, and Jesus returns to rule His kingdom in the flesh. On the other hand, mankind has really made a mess of things, and that has caused and continues to cause untold pain and requires serious lament.
Felix Culpa makes more sense to me from the perspective of the experience of the believer. The depth of God’s goodness and grace become more apparent to the person to understands just how utterly rotten they truly are. That God meets us in our unworthiness through Christ is something that for me, is too wonderful to really understand.
A smarter person would give you a better answer than that I’m sure, but you’ve asked for my thoughts, and I suppose you now have them.
This was really insightful! The way you described the sins committed by all humans sounds like the theological equivalent of entropy, which as we know from the Second Law of Thermodynamics can in practical terms only increase.
Yeah this pretty much recapitulates the opposite of Ivan Karamazov's position in the chapter "Rebellion" - we cannot justify evil but nor can we blame God for it because God is incapable of committing evil acts. (By the way, I'm sure this also frustrates you as a Christian in a similar way it does for me as a metaphysicist, but the objection that people of Ivan's persuasion raise to God's essential goodness based on the existence of evil is an error of epistemology from those who are too steeped in mechanical thinking and presume that grace must operate as some sort of physical and measurable force or else it's superfluous.) I think the term is 'prevenient grace' and as you say that seems to be necessary to explain the behavior of man (though again forgive me but don't certain Protestant sects believe more in something like predestination with some subpopulation of elect being the receivers of grace?).
I like the framing of felix culpa as something seen as good from the point of view of the fallen and not as something necessary or part of God per se. Any attempts to know the mind of God will always have serious problems, but something that interests me is what the Devil brings up in a late chapter in Brothers K: that he is eternally sentenced to being a 'negation' (a very Hegelian word) and as being necessary for there to be any events/history (also very Hegelian). I understand that, unlike Hegel, Christians do NOT believe that God contains negation within himself (because then he would have the capacity to do evil), but how do you/others think about the unfolding of history from the Fall to the Second Coming if not in this self-contained dialectical form?
The idea of negation within God reminds me of the account of Augustine and Fortunatus going head to head. Augustinian theodicy walks the tightrope between God’s sovereignty, man’s free will, and the problem of evil pretty elegantly, but Fortunatus argued that God was complicit with bringing evil into the world by bestowing free will upon mankind. Augustine’s arguments have certainly won the theological popularity contest through the ages, and have been refined by John Calvin, and defended notably by Alvin Plantinga.
Regarding the Christian views on the unfolding of history, there are obviously many, and many opinions on what the role of a Christ follower is in the present age. In general, I think there’s consensus that God’s plan for His creation is restorative. It’s to do away with all evil, and to reflect His omnibenevolence. The end result isn’t a manichaeistic balance between good and evil, but the ultimate and final triumph of good over evil. The hope of the Christian isn’t to find harmony with the universe as it is, but of a radical restoration of the universe to its ideal state. Jesus’ proclamation of the arrival of the kingdom of God is the announcement that the gears are in motion to bring this about.
Thanks again! I hope that Christian theology can be part of the near-term restoration that appears to be necessary for our civilization to avoid some number of catastrophic outcomes.
Thank you, my friend. Always a pleasure to bump into you in these parts.
I have serious doubts that Christian theology for all its charms (and there are many) is the answer to society’s problems in the near term. At least not all by itself. The shooter in Uvalde was in a community filled with pious people, and yet did anyone reach out? Did anyone just put their arm around this kid? I don’t know for sure, but I suspect not, and that makes me angry. And it makes me ashamed that I probably would have done the same thing were that guy in my orbit. If Christianity is to make a serious dent in society’s ills, it won’t be primarily from masses of people acting on newfound theological information or spiritual enlightenment. It would be from the people who already profess Christ to be people of His character, following Him with more sincerity and earnestness.
This idea, of awakening is it from a dream in the midst of such an experience, puts me in the mind of the more mundane forms of disappointment that attend to our desires and our achievements. It is a frequent event that we set a goal, or pick out a thing to purchase, or choose a travel destination, and tell ourselves that this will make us happy. And then, when we reach the goal or the place, or buy the thing, we look around and think something along the lines of “this is it?”
Of course, the awakening moment of the person committing the final, unredeemable act is far more profound, and far more disappointing. It may be that those who go down this road end their lives in a state of utter despair and disconnection. It does not seem to be a coincidence that this is, in some terms, the definition of hell. There is certainly something here about carrying out an act that is completely outside of what a community will allow or forgive; the appeal lies is its inherent notoriety and power, yet the only possible end is a severance of all ties. The same could be said of many temptations of what we might consider evil.