Re: Violence in Colorado

["LUCIEN X. LOMBARDO" <llombard@xxxxxxx>]

Just some quick thoughts to share:

>From the preliminary reports on the Littleton slaughter (it 
certainly doesn't do to call it an incident; and tragedy is an after 
the fact judgment, appropriate certainly but not descriptive of the 
what was happening as it was happening) a "culture of difference" and 
"odious comparison" seemed to be at the center of the dynamics 
shaping the interactions between the students who carried out the 
slaughted and their victims. 

This morning's newspaper (draqwing on the Washington Post and 
Associated Press reports reports the folowing:

"A dedication to the Trench Coat Mafia in the 1998 Columbine yearbook 
list 13 members and carries the following message: 'Who says we are 
different? Insanity's healthy!REmember rocking parties at Kristen's, 
foosball at Joe's and fencing at Christopher's. Stay alive, stay 
different, stay crazy."

On student at Columbine was quoted as  follows:

"I never saw them threaten anybody or bully anybody, but we avoided 
them because they were different, 'she said'. Anyone dressed in 
blackyou're scared of because it signified Gothic or death." 

A facinating book with a very appropriate title in light of your 
question is Peter Gay's THE CULTIVATION OF HATRED: THE BOURGEOIS 
EXPERIENCE VICTORIA TO FREUD. NY W.W. Norton, 1993.  This is an 
historical account of how hatred of the different was "cultivated": 
that is nurtured and helped to grow by a variety of forces at work in 
the 19th century society of Europe. As Gay writes in his 
introduction:

"In carrying on their heartfelt disputes, Victorians developed what I 
call alibis for aggression: belief, principles, rhetorical platitudes 
that ligitimized verbal or physical militancy on religious, 
political, or best of all, scientific grounds." (p.6).

Deborah Tannen's THE ARGUMENT CULTURE (Ballentine, 1999)  documents 
many of the same processes at work, cultivating hatred and difference 
and legitimizing aggression and violence in our contemporary culture. 

This is the world we present to children.

Difference + justifications+an age at which people struggle with 
identity + a perceived lack of salient alternatives in which to forge 
identity + weapons and explosives availability = a pretty potent 
growing medium for violence. 


Lucien Lombardo