The Fruits of Division
On Saturday, ten people were killed and three wounded by an armed individual in Buffalo, NY.
Eleven of the thirteen were black.
As I've learned to do over the years when it comes to in-the-moment reporting (and not just of mass shootings), I resisted forming snap conclusions or early opinions... and was comforted to see that such were less emergent in the press than in times past, where rush-to-judgment and partisan talking points was the norm.
Inevitably, while I waited for the particulars, questions percolated through my mind. Who was the shooter? What motives? Why there? Was the victims personal or random? How did he get his weapon? Were there warning signs? Did he have help? Was he on anyone’s radar? And on and on.
The facts that have emerged so far are troubling in many ways. An eighteen year old male, overtly racist (and we're talking fringe-loon manifesto-scribing conspiracist racist), with a history of weird/aberrant behavior, who had fantasized doing this for who knows how long and planned this for months. Who traveled over three hours from his home town south of Binghamton, NY. And who live-streamed the massacre on social media. Who wore a full hazmat suit to his high school classes for a week. Who spent a day and a half in a hospital for mental issues at some point. Who passed a NICS background check in purchasing a NY SAFE Act compliant ‘non-assault-weapon.’ Who, despite several red flags, was reportedly not on either FBI or state police 'radar.'
This information didn't sate my questioning.
The "why" remains, beyond the overt understanding that this kid fell down a rabbit hole of racism, and built up enough hate to commit such an atrocious act. Obviously, we'll learn more as time goes on, but I think there's a germ of an answer in some of the social media response to the shooting.
Whenever someone who can be tagged as "of the Right" commits such an act, the answers and remedies are treated as obvious. 'Ban all guns!' 'Throw Republicans in jail!' 'Stop the hate!'
Whenever someone who can be tagged as "of the Left" commits such an act, the answers and remedies are treated as obvious. 'Liberalism is a disease!' 'Throw Democrats in jail!' 'Stop the hate!'
The flavor of response varies, but the "blame the other side" feels inevitable, and usually one side goes quiet while the other chest-thumps its righteousness, with the irony of “stop the hate!” lost on them. Glen Greenwald does a yeoman's job covering that "game," as he calls it, on his well-worth-subscribing Substack feed.
This "other side" business is wired into our DNA. Tribalism is an evolutionary mechanism, and it's theorized that we aren’t wired to view populations beyond a certain size as "us."
Tribalism doesn't work well for advancing human civilization and living standards. Most of human history has been that of conflict and war, and most of human history has been that of poverty, misery, and subsistence living for all but a very few. It is in the supersession of 'other' by advancing forms of societal organization and governance that has elevated our living standards. As the Great Man, Milton Friedman, observed:
[T]he record of history is absolutely crystal clear that there is no alternative way so far discovered of improving the lot of the ordinary people that can hold a candle to the productive activities that are unleashed by a free enterprise system.
This is the system of cooperation, of mutually beneficial interaction. It goes hand in hand with individual liberty.
These conflict with tribalism and distrust of "other," which means it takes effort to institute and maintain. 'Eternal vigilance' and all that. The biological imperative toward tribalism is always there, always ready to erode the cooperative institutions that have elevated us. Overriding it is and will always be a choice that each of us has to make and hold to.
Each of us can also contribute to the pursuit of unity, though our behaviors, and through the system and representatives we support. Each of us can also, unfortunately, contribute to tribalism, by rejecting, in part or en toto, the freedom-based cooperative system that has given us lives that are so markedly superior to what our ancestors experienced across almost the totality of human history.
People don't think of things that way, in no small part due to the ease of present-day living, and that ease serves to mask the toxic effects of tribalism and divisiveness. Social media, a by-product of the information age that has been such a boon to us in so many ways, may well turn out to be one of the great destroyers of civilization. Social media feeds our worst inclinations, including the tribalism that drags us back every time we take a step forward. It lets us find "our own" more easily, it lets us isolate from "other" more easily, and it offers endless Trojan horses, wherein we can engage in tribalism while pretending to do the opposite. Countless overtly tribal messages and behaviors are portrayed as the opposite (I'm looking at you, DEI, 'woke,' social justice, and CRT).
Many would have us actually teach tribalism and divisiveness to our young. Some of those young will accept the inculcation, but others will accept the mirror-image of what's being demanded. And, some may react to this "unite by dividing" incoherence in violent ways.
It remains to be seen if the Buffalo shooter turns out to be according-to-Hoyle mentally ill. We could argue that, definitionally, someone who'd commit such an act is, but there's a lot of nuance in such matters, and such a tautological assertion isn't of much use. It's hard to ignore, however, the potential role that our increasingly divided society - division abetted by too many of our politicians and other leaders (usually for cynically personal gains and benefits) - in tipping such as this monster over the edge.
As for remedies? There's no easy fix for this phenomenon. There may not even be a difficult fix, especially when mental illness is in the mix. We also have various other contemporary phenomena to question, including whether the COVID lockdowns contributed. But, through all of it, I see the growing embrace of division and tribal rejection of "other" as an increasingly manifesting problem, one that cannot be remedied by simply winning the culture war and crushing opponents.
The advice, especially early in such matters? Resist the temptation to make partisan hay while waiting for the facts. And, accept that sick and evil people exist in all tribes, including your own.
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Yours in liberty,
Peter.
