Self-control

First of all: I do have to thank everyone for the kind and interesting comments. I guess I'm not a big one for commenting-on-my-own comments, so there's rarely a "conversation" that gets going a la Sheila's blog, but I do read the comments and think about them and appreciate them.

And on to the blogpost:

I'm still thinking about things and stuff (As opposed to Stuff 'n' Thangs), and I'm still musing on what it is that triggers a person to do the kind of thing that that kid at VT did last Monday.

Evil is part of it. I think we're afraid to say "evil" in this culture; that it seems too medieval, too superstitious - that saying somethiing is evil is seen as being somewhat like saying someone is ill because they have a demon.

But I do think there's something else to it. And Mamacita has a post about it.

Self-control.

Or rather, the lack of. I think that's one of the sicknesses of our society. How many of the FFOT comments are directed at people who talk in movie theaters, or drive while chatting on the cell phone when they can't do that safely, or park so as to take up 3 spaces (so their precious new car won't get scratched)?

How many people seem to forget that they share the planet with others? And how many seem to think that if things don't go their way, they're somehow OWED? And that they can go in and take what they're owed, and no one can say boo to them?

And how many people go into debt because they "have to have" that new car, or bigger house, or new electronic gadget? And how many of us (and I'm pointing a finger at myself too, here) weigh more than is really ideal for us because we see food, delicious food, and decide we want to eat it?

Now, I realize: there's a difference, a giant difference the size of the distance from the Sun to the Earth, between someone who takes two donuts out of the box at work (that way ensuring that some latecomer will be forced to go donutless) and a guy who kills people. The difference is probably largely attributable to mental illness.

But. Most of us, luckily, do not come into contact with that kind of deranged lack of self control. However, all of us come into contact with the little daily incivilities, the person who gets into the 20-items-or-less checkout line with 32 items because they're "really in a hurry," the person who pushes ahead at the cafeteria, the person who runs a red light and makes you slam on your breaks.

It's a sort of blind spot, I think - a failure to SEE the other people there. Or a failure to see them as PEOPLE rather than obstacles to one's own happiness and fulfillment.

And I think that's a big and a common human weakness. I know I catch it in myself a lot - it is probably the sin (and yes, I'm going to call it that) that I commit on the most regular basis.

It's too easy, when you're rushing, when you're tired, when you just want to get home and eat dinner and take off those shoes that are pinching your feet and see if the check you're expecting came in the mail, to write off the person driving slowly ahead of you, to scream silently at them from your car.

I think most people do that kind of thing sometimes.

The next step - the point where it would become a sort of psychosis - would be if you tried ramming their car with yours. Almost no one would do that - but there is that odd person, that one out of a thousand, who would. And that's the type of person that can make modern life dangerous and scary (as opposed to merely less civil.)

I think, though, that the lack-of-self-control is a big contributor to the lowered levels of civility we see: the attitude of "I want it, I deserve it, I should have it, whatever anyone else says be damned."

For most people, that never rises above, perhaps, eating the last of the ice cream in the house. Or using up the t.p. and not bothering to replace the roll. Or throwing a drink cup out your car's window because you can't be arsed to take it home with you and put it in the trash.

But for a small minority of people - people who may be flawed since birth, people who perhaps have evil in them (if, as I said, it's permissible to say that in this day and age) - the lack of self-control carries further, with tragic circumstances.

I guess the other two things I have to say with this are these:

1. I am tired of the "childhood being bullied + teasing + lonerhood = deranged killer" meme. Okay? I was bullied when I was a kid. Granted, not to the extent some kids were or are. I was never beaten up. I did have the books knocked out of my hands on a regular basis, I did have my homework trampled in the halls, or ripped, or stolen. I was teased pretty much every day of my life in school. I had things happen from a peer that would pretty clearly equate to sexual harrassment (if not, in one case, outright abuse) today. And I didn't grow up to be a psychopath.

I would suggest that 99% of people who experienced my type of childhood grew up to be fairly normal adults. (In fact - go to almost any academic department and ask the younger faculty if they were teased and bullied in school as kids. Just ask them. I'd bet cash money that at least 3/4 will launch into monologues about their experiences as being an outcast. I tend to think that anyone who was a "smart kid" in the past 30 years or so would have been bullied - unless they were exceptionally physically attractive, a sports star, or, perhaps, good with their fists).

And lonerhood, too - Look, I am somewhat of a loner. I like being alone. I like thinking my own thoughts. I don't need to sit around and endlessly rehash what Diego did in high school or how Tamara has totally let herself go after having children. I like to read. I like to work in my garden. I like to let thoughts flit through my head and to try and make sense out of this thing called life. And, I hate to say it, but a big proportion of the conversation people make kind of flits along the surface of the questions I like to ponder without ever going deeper. And so - I'd rather sometimes listen to my own thoughts than other people's chatter.

I spend all day around people. It's a relief when I come home at night not to have to talk to people.

Again - that does not equal psychopath. What it equals, I think, in my case is "Basically an introvert who gets exhausted by listening to people and their problems and their pettiness."

I think it's kind of dangerous to equate people who do the kind of violence we saw last week with lonerhood, or introversion, or having been teased as a kid. Because that can lead to witch-hunts, that can lead to people who are basically good but shy being hauled out blinking into the world and being told "you MUST be with people. You MUST do this and have fun. We do not want you to close in on yourself because we believe that then you will become violent."

There is a big difference between being weird and shy and being a psychopath.

I've known an awful lot of weird people. I've known people who were weird in wonderful and amusing ways, who made me laugh and delight in their obscure interests. And I've known people who were sort of creepy-weird, that made me edge away from them a little bit. But I've never known anyone I'd point to and go "psychopath."

Look, we're all kind of damaged. But the vast majority of us are in no way dangerous.

2. Mamacita says, "Let us ever strive to be kind. Everyone we meet is struggling....Let's notice one another. Let's smile."

I think that's basically true for MOST people. Most people will be helped through lift by people showing them basic kindness. (And - by showing kindness you can get out of your own head. I can't remember who said it but there's a saying that the best cure for sadness is to help someone else).

Being kind to people - as I said in a prayer I made this morning, "recognizing the people we come into contact with are all children of God, even if they don't recognize that themselves" - is also a good counteract against self-centeredness and lack of self-control. Try to SEE the person. Recognize that they are another human being, just like you - someone who is struggling ("Be kind, for you know not what burdens others are carrying" - Plato), someone who loves and is loved, someone who's somebody's kid or somebody's parent, someone who's as bound for the grave as you are.

It's hard. It's something we all (and I include myself in this) have to work at all the time. It's something I will catch myself up in - realizing that I'm seeing a person not as a person but as an obstacle - and I will feel that pang of guilt, that "I've done it yet again."

(I will say, however - that advice, of being kind, works on MOST people. I am not so much of a Pollyanna that I believe someone on the road to commit violence can be stayed just by giving them a big-assed smile when you see them in the hall. There are some people who have just become twisted beyond the ability to twist back. I do not know if it is genetics, or neurotransmitters, or early experience, or some combination of the three. There are some people upon whom kindness will not necessarily work. And Mamacita points that out - you shouldn't blame Cho's dormmates and say they didn't reach out enough, you shouldn't blame his parents [and remember, they lost a kid too, and they have the added horror of knowing he was the one responsible] for not catching it earlier. Apparently people DID try reaching out to him and were rebuffed...but anyway).

On one of Nightfly's posts I made the comment that I saw the human soul as partly having the purpose of being sort of a "governor" on our desires, something that reminds us that some of the things we want we should not necessarily have. And I do think that. I think self-control, in whatever it is, is somewhat of a practice of the soul.

I also think that self-control, in many aspects, is kind of out of fashion these days. (Think of the "diet plans" where they claim you can lose weight while "still eat[ing] all the things you love!"). Perhaps it needs to come back into fashion more than it is.