Root Causes of Mass Murders

For John, BLUF:  Mass murders need a better explanation if they are going to be halted.  Or maybe they are just the cost of our current culture, a price we are willing to pay for the satisfaction of other ego issues.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

---

Mass Shootings:  A Materialist Horror

From The American Conservative, by Blogger Rod Dreher, 13 August 2019.

We are told that Mass Murders are not the result of mental illness.  The knifing spree in Garden Grove, California, the same weekend as the El Paso and Dayton shootings, suggests it isn't guns, or just guns that cause mass murders.♠  We need a better explanation.

From Mr Dreher's Blog we have this start:

Tara Isabella Burton is telling us something very, very important about these mass killers:

Domestic right-wing terrorists, like the man accused of the shooting last weekend in El Paso, are not so different from their radical Islamist counterparts across the globe — and not only in their tactics for spreading terror or in their internet-based recruiting. Indeed, it is impossible to understand America’s resurgence of reactionary extremism without understanding it as a fundamentally religious phenomenon.

Unlike Islamist jihadists, the online communities of incels, white supremacists and anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists make no metaphysical truth claims, do not focus on God and offer no promise of an afterlife or reward. But they fulfill the functions that sociologists generally attribute to a religion: They give their members a meaningful account of why the world is the way it is. They provide them with a sense of purpose and the possibility of sainthood. They offer a sense of community. And they establish clear roles and rituals that allow adherents to feel and act as part of a whole. These aren’t just subcultures; they are churches. And until we recognize the religious hunger alongside the destructive hatred, we have little chance of stopping these terrorists.

She goes on to describe how these ideological communities serve as pseudo-religions for their members. It’s hard to overstate the importance of what she’s seeing here. As I’ve been saying, Hannah Arendt says these factors are exactly the kind of thing that, when it went viral (so to speak), created 20th century totalitarianism.

Here is the last paragraph:

Tara Isabella Burton suggests that the apocalyptic violence we keep seeing in these mass shootings are social and psychological consequences of metaphysical materialism.  She’s right, I believe.

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff

♠  While our laws do need to be strengthened with regard to background checks and "red flag" actions, adding more laws will never be enough.  Politicians who promise "gun control" as the answer are liars, or so misinformed as to never be qualified for your vote.