The OregonianSocietal shift, deadly arms a toxic mix for troubled
April 22, 2007 By: LARRY BINGHAM No, we're not crazier than ever. No, ours is not the most violent time in America. And no, living in modern society won't necessarily drive you to murder. But after yet another mass killing, the question remains: Why now? In interviews with health experts nationally, The Oregonian found two persistent themes: access to more powerful guns and the effects on personality of a modern, high-tech, mobile life. David Duncan, clinical associate professor at the Brown University School of Medicine, said modern America is not as violent as the two most violent eras in American history: the time of Prohibition and the time immediately after the Civil War. But mass killings get Duncan's full attention: "I don't think there are more dangerous people around, but I do think the amount of harm a dangerous person can do is accelerating. Why are the numbers getting worse? Because the number of guns is increasing. It's getting easier and easier to get more potent guns." James Alan Fox, a professor of criminal justice at Northeastern University and author of "The Will to Kill," says society poses challenges to mental stability, and dire outcomes become more and more possible. "I don't think we're crazier than ever, but there are conditions in our society that allow people to act crazier than ever," he said. Statistics show no rise or decline in the numbers of people with severe mental illness, such as those that afflicted the Virginia Tech shooter. But the number of Americans who are anxious and depressed has increased, said Jennifer Connor-Smith, assistant professor at the University of Oregon department of psychology. And underlying much depression and anxiety is the social dislocation many health experts associate with the phenomenon of mass murders. "When you look at the perpetrators in these horrible incidents, there's no one clear profile, but you can also see in every case these were socially isolated, lonely, and they felt rejected by their peers," she said. The collision of society with expanding technologies may in part be to
blame. In a world in which many children have their own TV and cell phone, and anyone with ear buds can dive into the solitariness of his iPod, the lack of human connection is increasing. Public spaces are becoming private aggregations of solitary individuals. Add to that the isolation born of postwar mobility, and you have a toxic stew for people who are mentally unstable and vulnerable. America is a place on the move, tearing us away from "home." The average American moves once every five years. In pre-World War II, pre-interstate highway America, that didn't used to be. Forty-five million Americans now move every year. "We tend not to count the relational cost of our mobility when we are moving from the people who know us best, the people we love, and the people who love us," Sparks said. Having a diminished sense of "home" can amplify loneliness. Technology offers comforts but then makes it easy for newcomers to avoid forming relationships. Instead of going to the trouble of making new friends, we can turn on the TV and watch "Lost." A Duke University study last year found that the number of Americans who do not have a best friend doubled in the past decade. That can mean no one to confide in, no support system and fewer methods of coping with stress, said Connor-Smith, who studies depression and anxiety and coping. "When you're isolated, you don't have a reality check," said Fox, who has studied mass shootings. "The nature of our society allows these people to exist with very few people watching out for them." Fox pointed to the Columbine shooting as one example. For the two boys involved in that mass shooting, their "Trenchcoat Mafia" served as a sort of support group. Though technologies such as instant messaging, e-mail and long-distance
calling enable us to connect with people far away, several people interviewed
said, they don't provide the more satisfying interaction of face-to-face
communication. Other elements of modern society only add to the equation. "I'm really surprised this doesn't happen more often than it does," Dr. Stanley Teitelbaum, a psychologist in Manhattan and author of "Illusion and Disillusion," said of last week's tragedy at Virginia Tech. He said the violence saturation of modern times contributes to the toxic situation for someone who is mentally unstable. He said mass school shootings give other troubled and isolated loners a relatively new format for expressing themselves and making a statement. "Before Vietnam, we had no guerrilla warfare. We didn't know about it," he said. Similarly, mass school shootings breed more of the same. Role models for violence If guns are more readily available than ever before, so are more violent role models, said Dr. Karen Dill, a professor of psychology at Lenoir-Rhyne College in Hickory, N.C., who has studied video games and their effect on players. If studies show even mentally stable people are more aggressive afterward, it's not hard to imagine the effect on a dangerous mind. Dill said society does not yet know the full cost of video games that took a turn toward graphic violence in the early 1990s and today depict the most realistic deaths possible. None of that even mentions the way violence is glamorized and celebrated in modern society, shifting our cultural sense of what is normal and acceptable behavior toward other people. Video games reward killers. Television, books and movies humanize them. The media quote their manifestos. "In earlier generations, people who struggled and failed had a safety net," said Fox. "We are no longer sympathetic or tolerant of losers. In popular culture, we absolutely praise people who succeed, no matter how they get there. We love 'American Idol' not to see who's good but who's bad. We don't have compassion anymore for losers." As a society, we don't yet know the full impact of that.
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