A few days ago, I’d say Friday, I spoke with a man from Chicago on a forum (the URL escapes me at the moment) about the tragedy in Fort Hood. He expressed his disappointment and anger at what he felt were religious zealots of whatever faith. The radicals, the fanatics, he said, were ruining religion for the regular people who are just trying to get by in life. I hadn’t really heard much about the events at Fort Hood at that point, the investigation still in its early stages at that point. I didn’t match the other man’s point of view about religious zealotry, but simply offered the point of view that perhaps the suspect had gone crazy. Now, what I was told, and this is from a self-proclaimed political conservative (important to note because more often, liberals will be concerned about understanding why a crime happened and about rehabilitation and prevention while conservatives have a greater propensity to be focused on punishment and determent) was that saying that the Fort Hood shooter may have been crazy was too easy.
I don’t believe that at all. Of course, the only thing that I could say at that point anyway would be speculation. That he may or may not have had some deteriorated mental faculties had no less validity than to suggest, as the other commenter did, that it was a case of a Muslim terrorist who infiltrated the U.S. military. I had no reason to believe that until an investigation by trained professionals on the scene could say anything one way or another. However, for me, the important thing is that the possibility of “crazy” is “too easy.”
Believe me, I’ll be the first to admit and agree that many times when it comes to human nature, saying that something or someone is crazy is more of a defense mechanism for the speaker. Without any clear understanding of what’s in front of them, perhaps without the willingness to understand, saying that something is “crazy” as in simply being beyond the accepted normalcy happens all the time. What I believe, though, is that there is a right and wrong way to bring up the matter. If you say that something is crazy as a way to put it out of mind without thinking about it deeply, without having to truly analyze and comprehend what happened… that is not the correct way of looking at it. Even in the case of true dementia leading to loss of life, there are still lessons to be learned: early warning signs and manifestations of abnormal behavior that, seeing those conditions in the future, someone may be able to act ahead of time and help avert another disaster. Something can be “crazy” and still be used as a learning experience.
Part of the issue, for those who wish to say that they want to “understand” what happens when an individual decides to go on a rampage and take the lives of as many people as possible, is that saying that someone is insane feels like a cop-out. As though allowing that person to have a dementia somehow excuses their behavior. That couldn’t be further from the case. Even if the justice system states that an individual declared legally incompetent to stand trial should not be pushed forward into the same prison population as a sane convict, at no point is anyone saying that the crimes that the insane person committed are any less bad or wrong. Insanity doesn’t diminish the gravity of the crime committed, so that’s not the issue.
Still, I don’t prejudge whether somebody who makes the decision to shoot many innocent bystanders may be insane, simply that such an option should be on the table for investigative purposes. Let the professionals rule that out. After all, we can look at the tragic shooting incident at Virginia Tech as a case study in how a suspect’s legitimate mental illness was considered taboo, even as psychiatric evaluations in the past clearly indicated that the individual could potentially be a danger to others if left unchecked. And that’s the important part… not that the VT shooter was an inherently bad person, but that he didn’t have the capacity to fully appreciate what were appropriate behaviors. And that’s the important lesson here. Not that the Fort Hood shooter is or is not crazy, I still don’t know enough about that. But if we’re unwilling to accept the consideration that there are, in fact, high-functioning individuals out there who may nonetheless have some unfortunate mental condition and could do the wrong thing… by not allowing that possibility we inadvertently become complacent about whether such a person could end up hurting somebody.
That’s all I have to say about that. All well wishes go out to the survivors and surviving families in Fort Hood.
– Sky
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