“Papa may have … Mama may have … But God bless the child who’s got his own.”

 

Ask the question: What’s the most important part of life; the universal answer will be: Relationships. We get this from the pulpit and the newspaper, from Washington and often from the Vatican. So, when someone goes into a school and kills children with an assault weapon, we say—even before we know whether it’s true—that he had a “troubled” relationship with a parent or some significant other, or (and this is worse) we say that he had no relationships at all, that he was a “loner.” The assumption, immediate and unquestioned, is that such behavior has to have its cause in dysfunctional or nonexistent relating. The same assumption provided all the immediate explanations for the shootings in Colorado and elsewhere. (That shooting people is itself radical non-functional relating is overlooked; effect is often confused with cause if the need to cite a cause is desperate enough.)

 

The collective We, interdependent as we are on our each-otherness, must explain these violent phenomena in damaged-relationship terms. Like the boss-man says in Cool Hand Luke, “What we have here is a failure to relate!” It used to be “a failure to communicate,” but what the heck—same thing. Either way, poor relating can kill worse than drunk driving.

 

Therefore, when it was discovered that the Connecticut shooter was not withdrawn or moody, aggressive or anti-social, there was momentary panic. The only acceptable alternative explanation to poor social skills and/or a damaged relationship is nascent mental illness. Fortunately, someone found out rather quickly that the shooter had Asperger’s Syndrome, a variation of autism. But Asperger’s doesn’t cause violent behavior—what to do? Then someone found a neighbor who testified that the shooter was upset because his mother had planned to commit him to some kind of professional mental health care. That, said the neighbor (and we promptly agreed) had to be what set him off.

 

And we were relieved—because it signified an aberration, a deviation from mutually agreed-upon Normal. When we have categorized someone as “abnormal,” we have preserved the sanctuary of Normal. We are safe because we have cast the abnormal into the outer darkness of Ab. If it’s established that the shooter is mentally ill, then we can talk about the tragedy of it all, and shouldn’t we keep guns out of the hands of such people? And shouldn’t we find better ways to identify and treat such unfortunate persons? Etc.

 

Everybody is relieved now—he was abnormal, not one of us. Our faith in ourselves and in our communal humanism is intact, and we are safe. Ah, but what a lesson for us all! Turn, said our president, turn to each other, said our pastors and our shrinks (who often play interchangeable roles), let us all now turn to each other and—hug. For, after all, the collective We are all that each of us has to save us from the outer darkness of Ab. Our allegiance to We is what saves us from hell. That’s the credo. All evil is explainable as some kind of violation of it. We don’t need God: We have each other.