Tom Matlack wonders what would make a teenage boy go into a school cafeteria and blow away three innocent kids he barely knows?
I’ve spent the last three years talking to thousands of men, from Sing Sing to Bagdad to Harvard, about manhood in general and male goodness in particular.
The picture that has emerged from all those men’s stories is that men are adrift like never before, craving meaning and purpose that our popular culture has systematically undercut when it comes to machismo.
The men we all talk about are either billionaires or sex addicts or both, none of which provides any guidance to the unemployed father looking for inspiration or the returning vet with PTSD.
What I hear from men consistently is that we are supposed to be present fathers, husbands capable of intimacy, and bring home the bacon while being characterized as characters in a Bud Light commercial or a factoid in a female sociologist’s book on the “end of men.”
This confusion about manhood, and the yearning for some answers, is even more profound amongst our boys. I stood in a chapel filled to capacity with 400 boys telling the truth of my experience as a man, warts and all, and you could hear a pin drop not because I am such a great speaker but because someone was finally taking about what’s on those buys minds every day as they try to process porn and poverty and war. “The last time they paid attention like that was during a lecture on oral sex,” the headmaster confessed to me afterwards.
Coming of age as a man has always been framed in terms of violence, being old enough to hunt or fight. But that framing has gone through a massive change in the current generation of boys. My dad was a leading Quaker pacifist in the movement against the Vietnam War. My son wants desperately to go to West Point.
Our male heroes now aren’t Martin Luther King Jr. or Abraham Lincoln–men who dealt with the reality of violence by facing its worst consequences. No, the heroes of our boys are the nameless Navy Seals who stormed Bin Laden’s compound and massacred him. Or the pilots of army drones somewhere in a stateside dark room with a joy stick in their fingers and real guns at their command thousands of miles away.
We are coming out of a decade of armed conflict that is unlike any other in that it’s almost as if we as a nation would prefer to deny that those wars ever occurred. And that fits perfectly with our young men’s mindset. They don’t watch television anymore, they all play Call of Duty or some other Massive Multi-Player Online Role Playing Game (“MMORPG”).
That wasn’t a war we were in, it was a video game.
So what happened in that young man’s mind to cause him to shoot his classmates? I don’t know. But I do know that it was influenced by what is happening to us as a nation of men, and boys aspiring to be good men.
We don’t talk about compassion enough. We don’t talk openly about the nuanced reality of the expectation men and boys face. We don’t talk about real men who are heroes not because they started Facebook or run around with hookers and cocaine but because they are stay at home dads or working to keep inmates coming out of prison from going back or are caring for an autistic child.
There are good men in our midst and a growing sense among men that we are redefining ourselves in new and better ways. But until that conversation comes out of the closet and includes our boys we are all at risk of more tragedy.
Read more from Tom Matlack on the Ohio shooting tragedy
Photo: AP/Mark Duncan
“My dad was a leading Quaker pacifist in the movement against the Vietnam War. My son wants desperately to go to West Point.”
Wow! What a shift in only two generations!
I certainly sympathize with efforts to reduce un-controlled access by minors to any firearm. In my state, Texas, it is a felony offense to allow minors such access and it is a popular law with juries and they do vote to enforce it. The solution, if you are rightfully afraid of imminent home-invasion, is to carry at all times your well concealed carry pistol and (as you always should) keep all other arms and ammo in a locked safe or gun room. No exceptions. It is not as craxy as it sounds. Uncontrolled firearms should always be locked up tight.… Read more »
You can get biometric safes I believe now, use 1st finger 1 hand for the gun safe, ring finger other hand for the ammo. Safe storage would be a fully sealed gun storage, bolted to concrete if it isn’t over 150kgs I believe (Queensland gun law, Australia if I recall correctly), ammo stored separately along with the bolt if possible. I’d also teach gun safety to the members of the house. Not sure I’d use a gun for home-invasion safety, maybe a pistol in a quick-biometric-lock container but I don’t think it’s legal here to have the ammo in the… Read more »
archy. Last story I saw had the kid stealing the gun from his grandfather. Given the thought that went into this, the likelihood is that only a safe with a combination the kid didn’t know, which is always closed, which is likely to have nothing in it the kid could legitimately ask to see, would have been safe storage.
Couple of kids dead in CA several years ago while the older sister struggled with the gun storage arrangement. Perps got in to do their thing before she was in a position to defend them.
Two sides.
School shooting, take your pick of possibilities. Maybe the victims represented someone who had bullied the kid? Maybe the kid was abused heavily at home and just wanted to take someone out? Maybe some people just want to watch the world burn? It’s quite possible that he himself doesn’t know why he shot them. It’s good to know why people do these things but there may not be an answer, or an answer we want to hear. I truly am surprised it doesn’t happen more often just with the bullying that goes on in schools and think we should be… Read more »
According to news reports this AM, the kid had a previous arrest for disorderly conduct after beating up another kid. His home life was “unstable and violent” and neither of his parents showed up at the court hearing.
Unfortunately, then, it appears his actions were not caused by some cosmic wrong “we” as a society are doing to young men, especially in the definition of masculinity.
Leia,
You might be comforted to know that friends and family always say the perp in whatever was “quiet”, a “loner”, “kept to himself”.
Stories about teenage boys shooting their fellow schoolmates scare the cr-p out of me….I am raising an 11 year old boy, who is so sweet and lovely and kind (but he also loves playing “Call of Duty” and Nerf Guns!)….I keep a close eye on him and his best friends (whom he has known since kindergarten)…and I can see trouble on the horizon: (1) E. = raised by a single mom, although there is a “step-parent” in the picture…he is a really sweet kid, but he does on show some anger issues on occasion…and both parents are heavy drinkers, (2)… Read more »
Rum. Rare. Correct. Still need to know the issues, if only for curiosity’s sake, in case there’s nothing to be done.
Tom, who’s this “we” who are doing or not doing all this stuff? I must run around with a different crowd.
BTW, OBL was not “massacred”, but was killed when preparing to shoot at a SEAL. Quaker pacifism is all very well as long as there are Orwell’s rough men on call, but it doesn’t cover for misstatements.
The story that the victims were chosen at random apparently came out after the kid had lawyered up. Earlier versions had him shooting the guy who was dating his ex. It is easy to see which would be better for an insanity defense but of course that is all speculation.
School shootings are extremely rare and are getting more rare. More kids die of inhaling peanuts than school shootings.
Rare? One is too many and these people have lost a beloved child. Please don’t make it sound so cut and dried!! Thanks