Self Censorship and the Parkland Shooting
Before I start, I am going to talk about the murder of children. There are probably not going to be any jokes and the links will all be serious ones. Also, I am afraid that if I edit this post I will edit out things in fear. I am taking a stand, misspellings and poor grammar included.
It has taken me some time to decide whether or not to talk about the subject of the most recent school shooting in the United States, for one reason only; a crippling fear of saying the wrong thing, or pissing the wrong people off.
We have turned a corner in society and landed ourselves on a double edged sword. With the way social media works nowadays, if you say the wrong thing before bed, you will likely be fired before you wake up. People have sent out a tweet before boarding a plane and been fired by the time that plane lands.
While this situation can be great for weeding out the actual bad apples of society, it also has the potential to drag people into a harsh light of criticism that is not always warranted. Sometimes we let our own perceptions miscast the actions of others, and with the speed at which the internet operates, this can be a dangerous thing. We also have a habit of eating our own, but that is a topic for anouther day.
I have been afraid to speak out about things, or share my point of view on recent news because I have a life to protect, and I job I do not wish to lose. I fear that people will react tpoorly to something I say, not because it is inflammatory or one of the hated -ists, but because their perception of my thought runs that way.
I recently wanted to tweet something out about the wau my cat treats my wife in the middle of the night. I am going to share that with you now so we can deconstruct my reason for fearing the perceptions of others, despite my intent and my personal feelings on the issues.
Is my wife able to join the hashtag metoo movement because of what the cat does to her head at night?
A weak joke to be sure, but where do you think my fear lies? I was trying to point out how gross cats are and how we put up with a lot from them. My fear was that I would get called out for belittling the metoo movement and the experiences of women. My first though was to remove the actual hashtag and just put in the word hashtag, that way I wasn’t piggy backing on the movement. Yet, still I feared if the wrong person saw it, I would be roasted alive for being a cis white male hetero patriarchal slime ball. It doesn’t matter that my experiences with women and rape (one of which I wrote about here) make me a person who strongly opposes the abuse of women, or that I have worked with victims often, tr ying to help them through what has happened to them, what matters is the surface of the thing, and the observer’s perceptions of the world. My fear of saying something dumb has prevented me from saying a lot of things of late.
No more. I am so very passionate about what is happening that I must stand up and add my voice, even if that voice belongs to a Canadian with little skin in the game. My skin comes from the fact that my day job is in education here in Canada, and every day I go to a place not so different than Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and I have to look students in the eye, who are not so different than the ones impacted by this event.
Before I get in to my actual statements about the murder of 17 children, I want to talk about one Austrian named Erwin.
Due to the popularity of geekery today, I am reasonably confident we have heard of Schrodinger and his cat, so I am going to go with the short strokes version of the famous thought experiment.
Take a cat, put it in a sealed environment box. Rig a device to the box that is equally likely to kill the cat as to not kill the cat. Before you open the box, tell me, is the cat alive or dead? Your answer at this point can only be based on your schema and perception of the world. Until observed the cat is neither, or both. While this was meant to discuss the state of matter in the universe, I am going to do one of those silly writer things and dumb it down to the point where I can use it to explain how my world view works.
On any given subject there can be any number of positions; although, in our world we are constantly attempting to ease things in to the state of yes or no, black or white, supersized or not. While I am a fan of the grey area of life being the spot in which the most answers can be found, some issues can be shrunk down to the two polar opposites.
In the aftermath of the latest school shooting, it seems that politicians have tiny sized the problem. The infamous American President Donald Trump has come up with two main points, both of which I would like to debunk a little.
The first point is that video games and other violent media are causing violent acts. While this point could be dismissed out of habd by the entirety of recorded history prior the invention of moving pictures, I am not going to be that lazy.
While study after study has shown a link in the fact that people who commit violent acts are attracted to violent media, no study to date can show a causal relationship. Looking at Schrodinger’s cat, if we open the box and we find the cat dead, can we be sure the poison device is what killed the cat? All cats put in the box will eventually die, but it isn’t necessarily the box that killed them. It might be the poison, it might be the lack of food, it might be the lack of oxygen, it might be the soul crushing lack of attention. Until we examine the cause of death, there is no cause of death, just the state of death.
The same is true of causation of violent acts. Since violent video games have proven to be a poor predictor of actual violence, can we be sure it has a causal link? Remember the case in Norway involving the game World of Warcraft?
At the time, millions of people played the game, and only one killed a bunch of people. Is that causal? What is the breaking point for causation? Howe many people who do thing A have to also do thing B in order to say thing B is caused by thing A? On the other hand, how many people who do only thing B are out there? If 90% of users are fine, than we might have to look at something else as the cause.
What we know for sure is that 100% of school shooters had access to a gun. I spent about half an hour trying to find actual numbers on how many school shooters played violent video games. I was unable to find hard numbers. It appears to be less than 100%, but how far less is unknown.
For fairness sake, I do have to concede that nowhere near 100% of gun owners shoot people. I think this does mean that technically, the guns don’t kill people argument holds some validity. However, guns have but the one purpose, to kill stuff. To make dead the cat in the box, just like the poison. This implies heavily that guns should not be easily attainable. Should we restrict video games? I don’t believe so, if only because the purpose of video games is not to kill stuff. While that may be the mechanism of the entertainment, it is not the purpose of the game. If games are ever used to kill actual people I will change my mind. Until then, I will look to restrict the thing that actual kills people.
Here are a few articles on the subject.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/01/180116131317.htm
https://www.cnn.com/2016/07/25/health/video-games-and-violence/index.html
Some articles I have read are linking violent games with the access to the means to commit violent acts. The premise being, more people would commit more violent acts if they had weapons with which to commit said acts.
This brings me to the second issue, or point that is being made, and the thing that caused me to lose my ever loving shit.
The old argument is, we just need more good guys with guns. Trump has suggested arming teachers and or putting armed security in the achools.
Thing is, there was an armed deputy posted at the school. There was a person with training and the responsibility to act, and the tools to act. This man did not. Trump has rightfully questioned the man’s courage, but that is not enough. The argument becomes completely invalid if the example you can show is opposite to what you are saying.
You cannot open the box, see the dead cat and say, we need more cats. Each time you put the cat in the box, the cat is going to die. You cannot solve violence with more violence and the threat of violence. It occurs to me that the majority of mass killers go in to the thing with the realisation they are going to die, sometimes with the expectation. We already have suicide by cop, is suicide by teacher the way we want to go?
Putting more guns in schools increases the likelihood of death by gunshot. All the training in the world does not guarantee the outcome. Look at the deputy in this case, who failed each and everyone of those 17 children, and each and every survivor too. When push comes to shove and a person is staring at death, you cannot truly know what is going to happen until you open up the box and look at the cat.
If we put a student in a school with guns, it can be said that until we observe what happens to the student, we do not know if the student is going to be shot or not; however, like with Schroding, if you put the cat in the box with the poison, you have exponentially increased that cat’s likelihood of dying by poison.
Should we put our children in a box with poison? Would we ever?
The solution to a problem is never more poison.
Many people might say that the position I have taken is not exactly controversial, and they are likely right. The things is, this is just me dipping my toes in the water of personal opinion on current events. It may be a bit timid, but in the end, it marks a begining, not an end. I truly want to make a living as a writer some day, and to this point I have been somewhat shy about exposing my current self in favour of over sharing my past. I have been afraid because I am trying to build an audience, not alienate one. Well fuck that noise.
In the end, if something I say puts someone over the edge, then fuck ’em. I didn’t want their 5 bucks any way. On the other hand, I welcome criticism and dialogue. It is ok to disagree. It is ok to comment and say so. Hell, I want that! I want healthy debate in this world. If you can change my mind, then that means we have made progress; conversly’ the same is true if I change your mind.
Debate is how the world becomes better. I am not afraid of that. I am afraid of no platforming and bigoted label tossing.
I have to not be afraid of that, and the same is true of you.
And lastly, why stand on a silent platform?