Dave Cullen's new book

[injest]

Leonard Pitts: 10 years after Columbine, reflecting on evil

06:48 PM CDT on Friday, April 17, 2009

Ten years ago today, two boys, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, walked into Columbine High in Littleton, Colo. and unleashed hell, killing 13 people, wounding 23 and then committing suicide. In the process, they also unleashed a firestorm of speculation from media-appointed experts, jostling to answer what was suddenly the most important question in the world:

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"Why? Lord, why?" They told us video games did it. They said years of bullying did it. They said being ostracized did it. They said violent movies did it. They said bad parenting did it.

I said evil did it.

That observation was not especially popular. Small wonder. What do you say after you say evil did it? The very idea stops the discussion, forecloses the hopeful notion that there is something we can do, some measure we can take, to keep this obscenity from happening again. If you say bullying did it, you can seek ways to curtail bullying. If you say video games did it, you can pass laws to curtail video games.

But how can you curtail evil? What law can do that?

And yet, here we are, 10 years out, and I find myself reading reports on the new scholarship that has sprung up around the Littleton massacre, including a book called Columbine by Dave Cullen. And the consensus seems to be that everything we thought we knew about why those boys did what they did is wrong.

Turns out they were not bullied. Nor were they outcasts. Nor were they unduly influenced by violent movies. Nor were their parents bad.

Turns out they were simply two profoundly damaged boys.

Which brings us back to evil. It is, I grant you, a fraught and loaded word. It flies in the face of our innate belief in the perfectibility of human beings, suggesting as it does something that is beyond redemption, beyond correction, beyond our power to fix. Better to think in terms of psychological illness because illness, at least, implies an ability to be cured.

I am not saying psychological maladies do not exist or that they cannot help us understand why we do the things we do. What I am saying is that there are some behaviors so monstrous they dwarf our attempts to comprehend them with psychological verities.

Did Adolf Hitler murder 6 million Jews because he had a strained relationship with his father? Would it matter if he did? Yes, Harris and Klebold killed nowhere near as many people as the Fuhrer, but it was not for lack of ambition. While we are conditioned to think of evil as something that comes wearing a Snidely Whiplash moustache or speaking in a Darth Vader voice, it is more often a banal thing hiding in plain sight just like this, hiding in the incremental moral compromises, failed humanity and grandiose self image of ordinary men. Until their fury breaks upon us abruptly as a clap of thunder in a summer storm.

Thus it was with Harris and Klebold. Thus it was with Seung-Hiu Cho after them and Charles Starkweather before. Thus it has been. And will be. Being human requires living with the knowledge that sometimes human beings shatter. And yet, still "living." So I will not begrudge you if you seek the rhyme or reason in what those boys did, but as for me, I will give them not an hour of my one and only life trying to comprehend their incomprehensible deed.

They've taken more than enough already.
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/opinion/viewpoints/stories/DN-pitts_20edi.State.Edition1.2ca48ec.html

[Clyde-B]

It was writing off people and events as evil that allowed the ugliness of the world to go unchecked for centuries.

It was only when we started asking the question, "Why?" that we actually discovered that maybe evil is a myth, maybe there is only hurt and pain, and  maybe something can be done about that.  Perhaps if we keep looking and are clever enough, we may discover no one need ever hurt so badly that they must make the rest of us suffer too.

[Brown Eyes]

Dave Cullen was on the Rachel Maddow show last night.  I was on the phone with the TV on mute.  When my TV is on mute it automatically goes to closed captioning, but still I missed most of the content. 

[Front-Ranger]

It was writing off people and events as evil that allowed the ugliness of the world to go unchecked for centuries.

It was only when we started asking the question, "Why?" that we actually discovered that maybe evil is a myth, maybe there is only hurt and pain, and  maybe something can be done about that.  Perhaps if we keep looking and are clever enough, we may discover no one need ever hurt so badly that they must make the rest of us suffer too.

What you say is profound, friend. I agree with you. However, I believe the time to quell hurt and pain should come early in life, lest it be in vain.

[Front-Ranger]

I was on my way to work. It seems like not such a long time ago. If you travel that freeway even today, there are wide stretches of open ground. Unincorporated Jefferson County, they call it. An intensely car-based area where, to get to a Borders bookstore which you can see right in front of you at the corner, you have to make a right turn, go a half mile, make a U turn onto a frontage road, go back a half mile, make a right turn, go a half-mile, turn into a parking lot, go right 500 yards, and then go up and down looking for a parking spot.

The largest buildings are big barnlike Evangelical churches. Two other mega buildings have appeared recently: a Home Depot that stands on a bluff like a fort, and a liquor store that holds classes in winetasting and big networking events on Fridays.

I had no sooner arrived at work when I was called up to my supervisor's office. I was ushered into a conference room with two other coworkers. There was obviously going to be some heavy shit happen and I felt my lungs constrict. The subject at hand was the previous Friday, when a proposal was being prepared to ship out on deadline, there was a heavy spring snowstorm, and I was at home on leave. Since my staff was having trouble with the proposal, I talked with them by phone several times during the day and they faxed me parts of it to work on. Twice I had offered to put chains on my tires and make the trip into the office but my staff had said they had everything under control.

However, my supervisor and coworkers weren't aware of this and assumed I was off skiing or lying on a bear rug eating bon bons and watching soap operas on TV. After I straightened them out, a colleague, meaning to try to make me feel better, said, "All this happened because you were away from your desk. We just can't do without you, Lee." Then, my supervisor made a pronouncement that from now on, whenever there was a deadline, that I was to be at work, no matter what my schedule might be. I emerged from that meeting to learn that during it, there was a crisis at a school only a few miles away from my children's school, and that 13 children were dead.

[injest]

It was writing off people and events as evil that allowed the ugliness of the world to go unchecked for centuries.

It was only when we started asking the question, "Why?" that we actually discovered that maybe evil is a myth, maybe there is only hurt and pain, and  maybe something can be done about that.  Perhaps if we keep looking and are clever enough, we may discover no one need ever hurt so badly that they must make the rest of us suffer too

I completely disagree. There are truly evil people in the world that hurt others purely because they want to and will use people asking 'why' to continue causing pain.

Treat if you want to but remove them from the general population. The kids that are not psychotic shouldn't have to suffer at the hands of these people. Society should not have to suffer them. Sending someone like these two to 'anger management' and letting them continue in school as if nothing is wrong harms the other kids.

Do you really think 'understanding' Jeffery Dahmer would have stopped him? would it comfort his victims? what about Manson? does 'understanding him' make him safer? would you have him living in your apartment building? would you have him teaching at a school? I mean if he is just 'sick' and needs a little love and understanding why not?

it is all well and good to be all bleeding heart. Seems a shame we are willing to sacrifice hundreds of kids so a handful of EVIL people can be 'understood'

what have we learned from Colombine? and would the parents of the kids that died be willing to have the lessons NOT be learned and have their kids back alive? if these boys had been put in "reform school" like they used to put people like this (back in the bad ol days) those kids would still be alive.

I don't' think the lessons and the 'learning why' were worth it.

but that's just my opinion. I am sure others think that protecting psychos are much more important

[Clyde-B]

 Understanding does not absolve responsibility, it does not make the dangerous less so, it does not mean that they should not be isolated from the rest of society, but it is the first step in helping them to have meaningful lives for themselves, if that is what they want.  There was a time when rapists were not treatable, where pedophiles were not treatable.  That is no longer true, if they wish to change their lives, many can.

That wouldn't be true if we simply kept writing them off as evil.

I'd like to see your proof that there is evil in the world, but I'd rather hope that we will continue to increase the number of people that can have rewarding lives like everybody else.

If you want to see the world as an ugly hopeless place, that is your choice.

[Monika]

Understanding does not absolve responsibility, it does not make the dangerous less so, it does not mean that they should not be isolated from the rest of society, but it is the first step in helping them to have meaningful lives for themselves, if that is what they want.  There was a time when rapists were not treatable, where pedophiles were not treatable.  That is no longer true, if they wish to change their lives, many can.

That wouldn't be true if we simply kept writing them off as evil.

I'd like to see your proof that there is evil in the world, but I'd rather hope that we will continue to increase the number of people that can have rewarding lives like everybody else.

If you want to see the world as an ugly hopeless place, that is your choice.

I agree. To use the word evil when it comes to human beings is way too easy. Much easier than dealing with complex, difficult issues for example.

[injest]

Understanding does not absolve responsibility, it does not make the dangerous less so, it does not mean that they should not be isolated from the rest of society, but it is the first step in helping them to have meaningful lives for themselves, if that is what they want.  There was a time when rapists were not treatable, where pedophiles were not treatable.  That is no longer true, if they wish to change their lives, many can.

That wouldn't be true if we simply kept writing them off as evil.

I'd like to see your proof that there is evil in the world, but I'd rather hope that we will continue to increase the number of people that can have rewarding lives like everybody else.

If you want to see the world as an ugly hopeless place, that is your choice.

really? pedophilia is treatable? prove it. Everything I have ever read said it wasnt'.

and what do you do when people DON"T want to live happy productive lives?

I will continue living my life, if you choose to believe that the whole world is wonderful and the guy that buried a little girl alive was just a misunderstood man in pain...and if you could just wrap your arms around him for a minute, he'd never hurt anyone ever again...

 

[injest]

I agree. To use the word evil when it comes to human beings is way too easy. Much easier than dealing with complex, difficult issues for example.

no, blaming yourself is easier. It is called codependency. you think that if you would just try a little harder everyone would be nice.

it is harder to be a grownup. to require people take responsibility for their OWN actions.