Little Boy at the Dike

It is always difficult to know if more terrible things are happening in this century or if the media are just reporting those things more often. One can never know if there are actually more hurricanes, tornadoes or volcanic eruptions in the world than in earlier times or if the media are just responding to our apparently insatiable desire to watch other people's disasters. It would seem however, that in the past 12 or so months there has been a rise in the number of people - generally male and generally young -who in the process of committing suicide (either by killing themselves or forcing the police to kill them) have decided to kill as many other people as possible. While some of these mass murders have said that they have allegiance to ISIS or Al Qaeda and still others whose acts have been claimed by ISIS or Al Qaeda, there appears to be little evidence that this long and dispiriting list of mass murders has any real connection to any terrorist organization.

What is clear - is that there is a new symptom or at the very least, a new indicator of a profound mental illness.  This symptom is very similar to what some communities (most notably some of our First Nation communities) experience where suicide happens in waves as one person after another - in their despair and hopelessness - take their own life. There is some understanding of the contagion that can consume a community as friends and relatives decide to take their own lives, following the example of people who they have known and loved.  The singular difference between those individuals who have a history of generations of oppression and lost opportunities, and these mass murders/suicides is that the latter want not only some escape from their perceived horrible lives but also still want their fifteen minutes of fame as well. The former just want to escape the pain.

Parts of Europe are in, and in fact have been in for some months, a state of higher anxiety and military alert. Thousands of people are investing significant resources in monitoring the thousands of people who have been put on specific watch lists - and yet these acts continue. I have this image in my head, left over from some child's story book of a boy trying to stop the dike from breaking by sticking his finger in one hole as other holes appear just beyond his reach. It would seem that even if there were enough watchers to watch everyone - it would not stop the problem. It is impossible to predict who will do what next.

While it might be somewhat useful to keep an eye on someone who has clearly made allegiance to a terrorist group - how does one protect society from someone who attacks a long-term care home for individuals who are disabled, or a gay nightclub or a regular children's school or a black church? These attacks as well as some of the attacks that on the surface have some connection to the on-going strife in the Middle East need to be seen not as acts of terror (although they do cause terror) but rather as acts of people who have neither the resources or the capacity to find the resources to at least feel as if they have some control over their lives. As a society, we need to recognize when people are living with and not coping very well with a mental illness, despair or depression. We need to ensure that there are supports in place that enable the individual. We need to be hyper-diligent - not looking for the next mass murder - but for that individual whose life is so full of anger at the despair that overwhelms them that they can no longer perceive a choice.

The problem of people killing a number of other people before they kill themselves will not go away because we give more powers to the police or the army. The little boy at the dike will never be able to plug all of the holes. The holes will plug themselves when we create a society where the individual is more important than making money, where the rights of the community are more important than that of a corporation, where individuals can envision a future that is not full of despair.

And oh yes, we need to stop making/selling guns and we need to help those who live in the Middle East to find a solution.