Planning not Snapping
A few days ago I made a blog post entitled WHY WE SNAP? That post addressed the reasons and circumstances under which people lose their cool, become overwhelmed and resort to extreme dramatic and violent actions in a way that feels completely out of character. But today i am adding another post, about how sometimes violence is planned, and studied, and reflected upon, as a solution and a statement rather than an impulsive explosion suddenly happening without any kind of motive. Media shows that many people are endorsing Mangione's actions as a statement in that way, rather than seeing him as a person overwhelmed by the more primitive amygdala, called sometimes the reptile brain. The more that is learned about this young man, the more it looks like he planned out this murder, and studied writings by other violent extremists like Ted Kasynski, the unibomber, as a solution to unjust social situations. Below this paragraph I am reposting a thoughtful article from Psychology Today by the author Sheila Kohler, who muses on the uses and motives behind violence described in literature as a way to provide some context and reflection on our current climate.
Verified by Psychology Today
ANGER
What Makes People Resort to Physical Violence?
Why is there so much aggression in the air?
Posted November 15, 2016
THE BASICS
This morning in a yoga class the yoga instructor stalked up to a student who was not moving as she was asking him to. She told him to stand up as everyone else was doing a posture. Afterwards she said, "If we cannot even follow instructions in a yoga class, how can we come together as a people and unite?" Others spoke of acts of violence they had witnessed: someone hit in the face for voicing a political opinion. Why is so much aggression in the air? What makes people, I wondered, resort to physical violence?
Perhaps literature can give us some clues. I have been teaching a class on crime in the great novel this semester. We have read "Crime and Punishment" by Dostoevsky; "The Stranger" by Camus; "The Collector" by Fowles, and tomorrow we will discuss "Chronicle of a Death Foretold." In each one of these books there is a murder, surely the most egregious of criminal acts of violence. What is the motivation for these murders in each of these books? Of course, there are many: Raskolinkov kills ostensibly from poverty, a need for money to continue his studies, to help his family, to leave his coffin-like room. Yet is this his main motive? He wishes to prove to himself that he is superior, above the law, someone like Napoleon who has conquered the world.
Meursault, in "The Stranger" who kills an Arab on a beach seems to commit an absurd and motiveless crime simply because of chance events. Invited to spend his Sunday with a friend, Raymond, on the beach, a man who has beaten up the Arab's sister savagely, Meursault takes away Raymond's gun to stop him from firing but ultimately fires himself, when the Arab pulls a knife that glitters in the sun.
The Vicario brothers in "Chronicle" commit a brutal honor killing, murdering a man whom they believe has violated their sister's honor.
So many motives: poverty, a misguided idea of honor, a narcissistic attempt to prove one is exceptional, chance, and under all of this man's basic aggressive instinct that will latch onto almost any excuse for violence if fanned by incendiary words.
Sheila Kohler is the author of fourteen books amongst them: "Cracks" and "The Bay of Foxes." Her memoir, "Once We Were Sisters" will come out in January with Penguin.
