Are we ever surprised at trash cans we fill every day at our homes? We’re not. It is a normal part of our daily life. The way humans produce goods and services always ends in trash and we have accepted it as the normal way of living. As it turns out and I will explain the foundational reasons for its existence, killing students at schools with guns is also a “societal trash” we create and need to get used to its presence.
So let me turn to foundations of human life to explain why killing students with guns is OK.
First Foundation: Throughout history every society has recognized that “brute force” and “harm” go together. That is why all societies seek to find ways of avoiding brute force in daily human life. Second Foundation: Every human sees life through personal views I call “few-agree positions.” Each individual enters the society with a reservoir of few-agree positions. To manage the immense diversity of few-agree positions humans develop “many-agree positons” that bound and limit the presence and application of each individual’s few-agree positions. In the ultimate, some many-agree positions get declared “all-agree” and are forced on every individual in the society. We call these force-backed all-agree positions “rules and laws.” All rules and laws bound and limit how humans can apply and use their few-agree positions.
Combining these two foundations we quickly arrive at the conclusion that to avoid brute force, individuals need to be skilled in managing few-agree and many-agree positions. They collectively need the wisdom of choosing and declaring certain many-agree positions as societal rules and laws. When you read my books, one of the first things you notice is that I do not like using words like “law.” Instead I prefer “force extension.” This is because the word law rarely creates the image that we are dealing with societal management of brute force, but the “force extension” immediately declares it a device that “extends” force and in doing so distances the human from direct exposure to brute force. Every society backs its force extensions with societal concentrated brute force. In that arrangement, in theory, so long as individuals remain aligned with force extensions, no one will be exposed to brute force.
On earth, today, many societies lack the skill of managing few-agree and many-agree positions. They lack the wisdom to choose force extensions such that no one would use brute force against others. Thus, many societies, failing to distance themselves from brute force, remain in the brute force domain, harming and killing one another.
The US situation is different. It is not a lack of skill to manage few-agree and many-agree positions. Instead it is a purposeful design that keeps the individual’s brute force and lets it be directed at anyone according to few-agree positions. Why? In the ideal setting, every individual’s brute force is shared to create the societal concentrated brute force. The individual vows not to use brute force against others and in return receives the protection of the societal concentrated brute force. The US has deviated from this ideal arrangement. It has individuals share part of their brute force to create the societal concentrated brute force, but allows them to keep part of their brute force for themselves and use it as they wish. Why would the US adopt such a method of force management?
The US method of force management originates at one of its many-agree positions. This many-agree position is concerned with the possibility that the societal concentrated brute force—the shared force of everyone—might become despotic. It might turn against those that created it. To counter that possibility, the US has adopted the many-agree position that individuals can keep part of their brute force to apply against the brute force of a despotic government.
None of this changes the character of brute force as killer of humans, as inflictor of harm on humans. The logic here is that killing and harming humans is OK when facing a despotic government. Such arrangement wants the human to be “free”—free to kill the despotic other. This many-agree position often highlights words like liberty and freedom. The reality is this. This many-agree position provides the liberty and freedom “to kill others.” The only stipulation is that those being killed would be despotic.
The problem with this many-agree position is its societal management. Every individual pursuing liberty and freedom through application of brute force has to be managed societally. Yet, that is an impossibility. The individual’s few-agree positions come in infinite variety. The individual’s brute force is amplified through guns. In fact it is exactly for this reason that the ideal arrangement wants every individual’s brute force shared to create the societal concentrated brute force and no individual using brute force against others. Yet the ideal arrangement does not exist in the US. One of the many-agree positions concerned with despotic government constantly unleashes many individuals’ brute force against others.
What is the outcome?
About 100,000 Americans are shot every year. Every year, around 10 to 15 thousands of those shot die. When the use of brute force against others becomes a mass shooting, like shooting 20 children and teachers in the classroom, or shooting hundreds at a concert, there is a societal outcry. There are vigils. There are prayers for those wounded and killed. There are explanations that this is because human darkness has invaded human light. A popular explanation declares the shooter not human, a deranged, troubled being that once was human.
What do all such responses have in common? Only one thing—ignorance. Ignorance of how the society manages its brute force. The ones that go through the ritual of “shocked” are totally ignorant of how their society manages brute force. They do not comprehend that allowing the individual to have the freedom and liberty to kill others in preparation for the possibility of a despotic government is the cause of harm to humans who thought they were living in a receded force network and instead find themselves in the brute force domain.
When individuals are made free to kill, they kill according to their few-agree positions. True, at some point in the future they might kill in response to many-agree position that counters a despotic government, but as long as there is no despotic government, that many-agree position sits idle. The only continually active thing is the individual’s few-agree positions. At a randomly chosen moment, one chooses to go and shoot people at a nightclub. The other at a classroom. The other at a concert. The other at a neighbor. The other, shooting at self. All these are individual few-agree positions using amplified brute force in the form of a gun.
The ones that fully understand the US style of force management feel no shock when an American kills other Americans. This is the price to pay for the many-agree position that wants the individuals to be free to kill others when a despotic government shows up. Those that are shocked are ignorant humans. They lack an understanding of how their society manages brute force. The equation that makes school shooting OK is quite simple:
few-agree positions + amplified brute force of individual = random harm
It is such a simple equation. Only the ignorant looks for another explanation when the random harm shows up at a school, a concert, a night club, or at home.