It is now a week since the terrible happenings in the Amish community in Pennsylvania. That community's desire for privacy has spared us the usual voyeuristic and intrusive media frenzy. Not even photos of the dead little ones. The depth and privacy of their mourning is theirs alone and I for one am glad. At the same time few of us remained untouched by this, especially those of us with little girls of our own (even though mine isn't little any more, she remains my little girl). I don't romanticize the Amish. They are a closed community that has set themselves apart and can be guilty of terrible acts within their own community where individuals can be cruelly shunned for some religious deviation. But there is one part of their reaction last week that deserves special mention: their refusal to express any desire for revenge or to hate the deranged person who killed their little ones before taking his own life. They expressed sympathy for him and for his family and declared any donations given to them by the outside world will be shared with the killer's family.
People are in awe of the Amish for this act of "forgiveness." If you think about it, though, it is our reaction that is so very peculiar. The response of the Amish is completely rational. No one thinks their refusal to wreak revenge will encourage other deranged people to do the same thing to their community. The man was clearly psychotic and not in control of his actions. This was not an act of Evil but the act of a person who was diseased, not different than if he had given these little girls bird flu. It was an Act of God in the colloquial sense that bad things happen in this world, not in the sense that God did this or let it happen. This man's family was blameless and themselves were victims. Hating him and hating his family would have no practical effect, wouldn't bring back their daughters and wouldn't make their community safer. Probably the reverse. Sharing the generosity of the outside community with the killer's family was their own mirroring act of generosity.
Don't misunderstand me. Their reaction was extraordinary and deserves the praise it receives. At the same time, though, it is a damning indictment of the rest of us, that we should see this perfectly rational act as so unusual. It was an act that kept the terrible harm done to the minimum possible. It is we who are the unusual and irrational ones. We demand revenge for every harm, real or imagined, and like an immune system that turns against its own tissues we cause disease in our own society. Capital punishment is an act of retribution, purely and simply. So is the astounding rate of incarceration we have embarked on in thi country. The same scriptures the Amish use to explain their lack of hatred is used to justify our own irrational acts of revenge, saying more about scripture than it does about human nature. The Amish are people like us and have chosen a different way. We could too, but we don't. Nor do our religious leaders help us to act rationally.
Instead we dwell insistently on the harms done us. I passed a firestation today that had a banner over its doorway, "We will never forget," referring to their fallen colleagues from the 9/11 attack. But there is too much "never forgetting" in our culture. The determination to remember the victims of the slave trade, the Holocaust, the Armenian genocide, the victims of 9/11, each is a hair's breadth away from hatred of the (usually dead) perpetrators. "Not forgetting" is commonly used to justify further acts of violence. If we are to make memorials or museums about such terrible events, they should be memorials to the events we ourselves caused, not the ones done to us. That we were capable of doing these things is worth remembering, not that someone did them to us.
The reaction of the Amish community clearly has a religioius motivation (just as some of the worst crimes in history have also had religious motivations). But their (unfortunately unusual) reading of scripture shouldn't hide the fact that their response is supremely rational and contributes to the common good, independently of religious motivation. Nor should it hide the fact that our awestruck wonder at their rational act is evidence of our own irrational, stupid and harmful habit of perpetuating dangerous cycles of violence and counterviolence that hurts us all.
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Damn! I need my meds. I more or less agree with Revere. Not entirely, but close enough to avoid any quibbling. I need to rest. :-)
Well put. Sometimes we just need to forget the Alamo.
Yes. It's true that those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it - but those who will not forget the past are condemned to relive it.
As Gandhi said, An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.
We like to think we have progressed beyond stonings and witch hunts, but it is an illusion. The poor woman who drowned her five children, and how she was treated in the media and by people demanding retribution, was proof of that. One of the best things I ever did was work for a short while in a jail where I learned some compassion for the mentally ill, learning disabled, homeless war veterans, and others who are unable to make it in our "modern" society.
Do you say the reaction of the Amish clearly has a religious motivation simply because they are religious people? Maybe they're just being rational.
Rationality doesn't seem to be all or nothing with anybody. Religious people can be rational, just as irreligious people can be irrational. Along those lines, I happen to think it is irrational to believe that capital punishment inevitably perpetuates a cycle of violence. Sometimes it can, and should, cut that cycle short. Belief in inherent human dignity, given plenty of evidence to the contrary, is irrational.
Other than that, I agree completely. Well put.
Steve: No, I said "religious motivation" because they said it. I'd rather believe it was just rationality, but they specifically cite scripture for it.
I have read several reports which suggest that one of the victims, a 13-year-old girl, specifically suggested to the killer that if he was absolutely set on killing someone, that he should shoot her and let the younger children go.
I stand in stunned awe of her courage.
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Although I am not opposed to capital punishment, I otherwise agree with Revere and also want to say that I too, was stunned by the courage of the 13-year-old who asked the shooter to kill her and let the others go free. Imagine that from a young girl in such a sheltered, bucolic community, not a trained Marine, from whom we might expect it. Wow.
Good post.
I see that self sacrifice has become exceptional, due a weird badge of courage.
Besides that, Marines may stand up for their buddies, but they kill a hell of a lot of innocents, such as 3 and 13 year old girls. (In modern wars, 90% or more victims are civilians.)
Never mind about that place in Texas - remember the Maine?
But less facetiously, the Amish seem to have understood what Socrates was saying a while ago - the "normal" person wants to return evil for evil, while the philosopher (or "follower of Christ" - to distinguish such a person from a "worshipper of Christ", if you get my meaning) strives to do no evil at all.
Marines, by the way, work hard to be a band of brothers - but their main job is to kill people.
Ironically, "never forgetting" the original atrocity sometimes gets in the way of remembering those who were lost. If you take this idea to the extreme, flesh-and-blood victims can become mere bit players in the larger morality play.
When you retell the story as being about your responsibility never to forget, you risk recasting the story as a grudge match between you and the terrorists, not an elegy for the loved ones who actually died. I think I know which firehouse Revere is talking about, and I'm almost certain that a lot of those guys knew people who died on 9/11. The social script for expressing grief has become impersonal. All the firehouses and all SUVs with yellow ribbons are about "never forgetting"--even for people who never knew anyone who died. In a way, it bugs me that the firefighters who lost colleagues would seem odd if they put a banner that said, "We miss you, brothers and sisters."
Today, as I was standing in line with my fellow vigil keepers, holding a sign that gave the number of
Americans wounded in Iraq, a man in his sixties rode by on his bike. He yelled, "Don't you people have anything better to do on such a nice day as this?" But somehow, I really don't think he would advocate forgetting 9-11.
Just a small quibble, there were no indications that the killer was "psychotic" as you so diagnose him, nor "not in control" of his actions. Many people do incredible violence while quite rational. In one account, one of the girls asked him "why?", and reportedly said he was mad at God. Unless we are going to start labeling entire countries as psychotic due to their actions based on religion, it is an inappropriate label. Many of my truly psychotic patients, who are more often recipients than perpetrators of violence, resent being lumped into such company.
Dr. C. I have no doubt he was psychotic and he has been described as delusional. Psychotic doesn't mean violent, so your patients need not feel slandered. But that he was truly ill, I have not doubt, and I do not think it is inappropriate to say so, less so than to say he was a well, rational person intent on doing harm for the sake of doing harm.
Yes, many people do incredible violence while being quite rational. Donald Rumsfeld, Henry Kissinger and George Bush come to mind. They are not psychotic. This man was.
The Amish doctrine of total forgiveness has also been cited as a contributing factor to the problem of child sexual abuse in their communities. Once a perpetrator has asked the community for forgiveness, he is generally neither prosecuted nor sanctioned, and his victim is exhorted to forgive as well. The alleged impact this has on recidivism is disturbing.
The simple truth is that most human decisions are irrational ones, made for irrational reasons. Sometimes those decisions are congruent with what rationality would indicate - sometimes not. Sometimes - usually by chance - they are correct. Frequently they are not. Neither our love of vengeance and retribution nor their love of unlimited forgiveness strikes me as particular rational, nor as adaptive. In this particular case, it is probably the appropriate reaction, but that does not justify the reasoning behind that reaction.
Caledonian: "The simple truth is that most human decisions are irrational ones, made for irrational reasons. Sometimes those decisions are congruent with what rationality would indicate - sometimes not. Sometimes - usually by chance - they are correct. Frequently they are not. Neither our love of vengeance and retribution nor their love of unlimited forgiveness strikes me as particular rational, nor as adaptive. In this particular case, it is probably the appropriate reaction, but that does not justify the reasoning behind that reaction"
Simple, yes, truth, well, maybe. I'm not sure what kind of decisions we are talking about that "most" are irrational. In this case, I was pointing out that their decision was rational but not that they arrived at it rationally. On the contrary, appeals to scripture here are quite irrational, since scripture is also used to dictate vengence. Cherry picking.
Your view seems to be that we are at the mercy of -- I'm not sure exactly. You have some idea of what constitutes "human nature" (having a sure idea of what human nature is isn't exactly unusual; history is littered with these "truths" about human nature), but where you got it from and what it is remains a mystery. I guess you decided that people can't be rational about policy. Is that a rational decision on your part? Because it will lead you to do certain things, like vote in certain ways.
The shooter may have claimed he was "mad at God," but he decided to take his wrath out on little girls. Revere is a bit obfuscatory in his write-up above, which isn't surprising, based on the way the story has been reported in the US press: All the victims were little girls. This incident is just another example, like the 1989 Montreal Massacre, of misogynist violence that ends with multiple female dead.
The really sad thing is how unremarkable that fact is in terms of the news coverage.
I don't altogether agree. Let me offer an example of an atrocity you didn't mention, one which is relatively recent but which has no lobby group to keep its memory alive.
Leo Coburg was wealthy and well-connected. He was a public supporter of international human rights, and lobbied for the establishment of a new model development program in Africa. The plan was to use gather natural resources using local labor, and export them to the West in exchange for hard currency. The profits from this self-sustaining exercise would bring freedom and literacy to the impoverished Bakongo tribespeople living near the borders of Rwanda and Angola.
In reality, Leo turned the area into a sort of African Auschwitz with the overriding goal of extracting as much profit as possible. He created a militia using soldiers from militant tribes, and instructed them to execute rebels and bring back their hands as proof of their grisly work. The soldiers didn't always bother finding rebels. The hands of women or children would do. Baskets of hands became a sort of currency that would buy favors or excuse falls in production.
The enormity of Leo's inferno gradually began to leak out and he was stripped of his franchise, but during a quarter-century of absolute rule as many as thirty million people may have perished. Although his empire was reformed and it was eventually given political independence it suffers civil unrest and political violence to this day.
Some readers will have realised that I'm talking about King Leopold II and the Belgian Congo, now known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It was the inspiration for Joseph Conrad's _Heart of Darkness_ and the atrocities were really unimaginable. Although the Belgian administration and its servants were not motivated by a desire to commit genocide they were literally Nazi-like in their disregard for human life. Words will not do justice to the evils of King Leopold's administration; I urge readers to take a look at this website which has some photos and eye-witness accounts:
http://www.boondocksnet.com/congo/congo_kodak.html
To come back to my topic of memory, there are several lessons to be drawn from King Leopold's atrocities which (if they had been well learned) would have prevented a great deal of misery. The first is to distrust reformers, particularly those with great plans. The second is that when there when someone in authority tells you to ignore rumors of atrocities, always keep in mind that here would be no rumors if there were no secrecy. The last, which should really be the first, is that there really is no level of evil which is too repulsive, too bloody and too evil for humans to engage in. It only took a decade for Hitler to persuade most Europeans that their former friends and neighbours should be dispatched. Knowing that we *can* be persuaded to these evils is necessary for us to know that we must fight this tendency in ourselves.
Joe: I'm not sure where you are disagreeing with me (except that you always disagree with me?). If you want to build a memorial to that atrocity (and it is worth remembering, I agree) it should be built in Belgium, not in Congo. If you build a Holocaust Museum it should be in Germany, Austria and Poland, not in the US or Israel. If you want a memorial to the dead of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it should be in the US, not in Japan. That was my point.
Then you have bigger problems than can be dealt with in a blog entry.
Caledonian: It was a pretty simple question. People make thousands of decisions daily, big and small. Are you talking about all of them, or just the "big" ones, and what is a big one in your mind if that is the reference. I wasn't being arch or intentionally obtuse. I am surprised by your non-response.
Ironically, "never forgetting" the original atrocity sometimes gets in the way of remembering those who were lost.
Exactly right. Hatred and revenge are actually escapism, IMO. By contrast, the Amish are confronting the situation head on.
Terrific post, by the way.
Modern people have difficulty accepting that some things cannot be undone, made right or understood. It is proof that for all the rhetoric about religion and faith, we actually have very little. Real faith accepts that part of the human experience is beyond our understanding. I am an antique dealer and spend a lot of time with the Amish in Lancaster County. They have a practical attitude toward life that is more akin to the American of a hundred years ago-before every wrong was answered with legislation. We falsely believe that we can control all things, the way we control the temperature in a room. Unfortunately, some things are beyond our control and sadly, no amount of legislation will restore life.
Revere states in his Commentary:
"The man was clearly psychotic and not in control of his actions. This was not an act of Evil but the act of a person who was diseased, not different than if he had given these little girls bird flu."
I DISAGREE TOTALLY WITH THIS REMARK.
INTENTION, INTENT, PURPOSE, DESIGN, AIM, END, OBJECT, OBJECTIVE, GOAL mean what one intends to accomplish or attain.
PREMEDITATE:
transitive verb : to think about and revolve in the mind beforehand.
Charles Roberts was a functioning person with a job, wife, and three children.
I have seen no media reports of any delusions Roberts had before this horrible day. He functioned perfectly normally until he walked in and brutally shot ten girls---five of whom are still alive.
He shot Naomi Rose Ebersol twenty times.
http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2006460303,00.html
He planned an elaborate sexual fantasy to inflict on the girls which was not carried out.
It is time people realize that EVIL is real.
EVIL is not some red-horned devil playing a fiddle up in the corner of the ceiling making you do evil things.
EVIL is not mental illness or demon possession.
EVIL lurks in the minds and hearts of PEOPLE, and it needs to be fought---not fed.
The Amish deal with all conflict the same way. Everything is "God's will"--both good and evil. The Amish are passive to the extreme. They know forgiveness works, and hate and revenge just poisons the self.
God did give humans a WILL, however. God is love. He cannot control an evil heart that has turned away from Him. God would never will the slaughter and shooting of little girls in a one-room Amish Schoolhouse.
Earl: Yes, you and I disagree. But your disagreement totally misses the point of the post. Do you disagree with the main point?
Revere,
Please repeat your main point. I think I know what it is---but I am not sure.
Earl: Revenge, retribution, hatred of the perpetrator (and characterizing him as Evil leaves no room for compromise) are counterproductive. Dwelling on wrongs done to us usually is harmful. If we want to memorialize horrible events, it should be the ones we have done to others and they should do likewise.
Revere:
I agree with you completely here:
"Dwelling on wrongs done to us usually is harmful."
I know this is true from past experience.
I did not say Charles Roberts was an EVIL person. He committed an EVIL act with premeditation and intention.
At this very moment I do not dwell on him or hate him because right now he is dead. If he was alive, I doubt that I would have been able to let the pain go so quickly. I know I will never forget.
People memorialize for reasons I do not know.
I think they do it because it makes them feel better.
It makes them feel like they did something to help the victims.
Interrobang: "This incident is just another example, like the 1989 Montreal Massacre, of misogynist violence that ends with multiple female dead. The really sad thing is how unremarkable that fact is in terms of the news coverage."
Your last sentence, "The really sad thing is how unremarkable that fact is in terms of the news coverage," echoed my response and my fears perfectly.
Why do you think this is so?
"Joe: I'm not sure where you are disagreeing with me (except that you always disagree with me?). "
I don't usually comment unless I feel I have something worth saying.
"If you want to build a memorial to that atrocity (and it is worth remembering, I agree) it should be built in Belgium, not in Congo."
There probably *is* one in Belgium, but why should they have a special interest in remembering it? Hardly any Belgians from that era are still living, almost certainly none who were involved in the atrocities. The people most likely to keep this memory alive are the Congolese. Similarly, the Armenians are most likely to keep the memory of the Turkish atrocities alive, and the Jews are most likely to keep the memory of the Holocaust alive. The memorials need to be built where the demand is, where the survivors and their descendants want them.
"If you build a Holocaust Museum it should be in Germany, Austria and Poland, not in the US or Israel."
There's no reason why it shouldn't be in any or all of those places. I think Germany in particular has done a great deal to commemorate the Holocaust. If you accept (as I do) that it's a good thing to remember and study these atrocities then there's no reason to say that there should only be one memorial or that it should be in a particular location. It should be wherever it does the most good, or in more than one place if necessary.
I don't believe the Holocaust memorials stir up hatred against Germans or the Nagasaki memorial stirs up hatred against Americans. They keep the memory of an atrocity alive so that we can remember it and draw lessons from it. The Amish were totally right to forgive the shooter's family and (whatever good it does) to forgive the shooter himself. None the less, if a memorial would help people recognise similar symptoms in other psychopaths then the shooting should absolutely be memorialised - not out of vindictiveness or even out of sentiment, but to use human nature in the service of improving human behavior.
IMO well said, Revere and Joe. There is no use in taking revenge, but still I think we can make some sense out of these losses by learning from them. Although it's very hard to keep in contact with some psychiatric disturbed people, we should try to do so and not abandon them altogether. The public mental health system could, if politics would give it the opportunity, be of support by providing regular professional attention, not only to these disturbed people but also to the social system where they live in; to inform and educate about these disturbances in order to grow some respect to the person and to take seriously the disturbance and to offer some ways to handle it.