🔭 The senseless tragedy essay

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…mid-sentence, but why not? Reasons are legion if you bother looking. Put your faith in causality, which, if not true, is at least convenient. Claiming any act is “senseless” is as lazy and irresponsible as starting a simile and just droning on and on, without concrete, relatable images, weaving in and out of pseudo-psychological, quasi-intellectual, and absurd hyperjargon to lull your yellowed audience into endogenously opiated potatoes suckling the edge of a velvety tableau, and not even bothering to cater dessert at the bitter, bitter end. (Tangentially related book-half-finished review of David Foster Wallace’s “Infinite Jest”: So amazing I put it down midway and will never pick it up ever again.^[1])

If capital-T-Truth exists, I suspect it’s in superposition. Like light, both a wave and a particle, unclarified, only focusing to reveal the distinct half of a dichotomy (excluded or overlapping middle be damned) following outside interference—i.e., observation, and, more to the point, interpretation. This is quite shocking, or, rather, it should be. One notable axiom might be that unobserved Truth has more potential than observed Truth. But the Truth a truth is, we’re aswim in so much multiverse/simulation theory/hat-on-hat shenanigans you’d have to sex that up to eleven if you wanted to turn heads, let alone glue eyeballs for more than two-point-three bouncing-titty-less seconds. (Tangentially related book-series-I-read-more-than-a-decade-ago review for Robert Anton Wilson’s “Schrödinger’s Cat Trilogy”: The world needs more Markoff Chaneys. Maybe.)

But quantum logic isn’t particularly insightful or inciteful when it comes to violence. (Wave goodbye.) And, if you’ve read/heard/overheard whatever passes for REAL NEWS these days, you’ve got plenty of raw, examined rage ready to aim at the nearest convenient scapegoat that won’t get you locked up or ostracized to the point of hermitage. Incidentally, hermits have almost nothing to do with Hermeticism and only a little to do with that museum in St. Petersburg. (Tangentially related outcast-but-actually-quite-popular-book review for Patrick Süskind’s “Perfume: The Story of a Murderer”: Great lists, vivid synaesthesia, but Grenouille should’ve stayed in the cave.)

Ever heard of someone “running amok”? The urge to lash out isn’t new or unusual. Guns sure embiggen the scale, though. While America appears to be the OG for enshrining weapon ownership in its founding documents, it’s not alone. According to an op-ed in The New York Times following the Sandy Hook school shooting, only nine countries have ever given their citizens the explicit right to bear arms. (Hey, that quick Ctrl+A, copypasta trick still works! Build the paywall! Build the paywall!) Six of those countries have since repealed those rights, leaving only three today (or, at least, in 2013). High five Mexico and Guatemala! (Tangentially related tandem-grindy-crusty-albums review of Deshuesadero’s La Producción Precede a la Existencia and Neurotóxico’s Formol: ¡Brutal, brutal, brutal!) Need more American exceptionalism in your life? Our amigos south and double-south of the border have—hold on to your many hats, folks—restrictions; at least on paper. Like many (or perhaps most) laws, these are only suggestions until you get caught poor or poorly connected.

If you made it through (or scrolled past) all that bullshit, I’ll level with you. Suppose Mr. Tarsitano, a substitute teacher and vigneron, hadn’t caught me reading Nietzsche in high school and lent me a literal box of philosophy and psychology books. In that case, I might’ve gotten locked up for planning a school shooting. I’m not saying I would’ve been a school shooter—I’m a neurodivergent trauma survivor with enough acronyms to start my own alphabet; I had (and have) a hard enough time taking a shower (most) every morning without curling up into a ball and drowning—but I certainly fantasized about it back then.

Because I was powerless. Because I grew up with X-Cutioner’s Song comics and Desert Storm trading cards. Because of the Bible Belt, the Rust Belt, and my spiked belt. Because of divorce. Because of the O.J. Simpson trial and The Simpsons. Because of Marilyn Manson, underage drinking, and ditch weed. Because of… all that other stuff.

Violence isn’t senseless. It’s not even special. It’s the an easy, one-size-fits-all answer we wish someone would just give us an excuse to exercise. Ever seen an action movie? A flying saucer on my right shoulder informs me of a fellow named John Wick. The ghost of Charlton Heston on my left shoulder remains uncharacteristically silent. Maybe he’s napping. (American Airlines had all the John Wick movies last summer, but I was traveling with my daughter, so we watched “Nacho Libre” and twenty minutes of “Flow.” Tangentially related feature-and-a-half movie review: ¡Quiero ver sangre!)

Stop pretending tragedies come out of thin air. You know very well that violence makes a very particular kind of sense. Instead of being apathetic or scapegoating, try being nice to people. The little things really do count. You might even save some lives.

I’ll be waiting for you in the asylum.