Uncouth PerspectivesNot on the rug, man.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this shooter in PA. This guy, whose narrative is horribly tragic, is full of unfulfilled [mythical] promises of fertility/dominance and self-defeat by failing to obtain those promises .  In his murderous act, he finds retribution against a whole class.  Being, as he sees it, rejected again and again has made this a battle with “women,” not a single person.  He finds no accountability in his own failures–this is so dangerous.

He posted his diary online and it’s an amazingly fascinating read.  Being the student of religion I am, the reason I looked at it was because I wanted to see if there was anything religious in it.  On the day of his shooting, I found this:

Maybe soon, I will see God and Jesus. At least that is what I was told. Eternal life does NOT depend on works. If it did, we will all be in hell. Christ paid for EVERY sin, so how can I or you be judged BY GOD for a sin when the penalty was ALREADY paid. People judge but that does not matter. I was reading the Bible and The Integrity of God beginning yesterday, because soon I will see them.

But that’s it, that is really the only religious entry.  Reading the entire diary, we find that he’s tried at least once before to do the shooting, but does not do it.  Is the thought of an afterlife and the forgiveness of sins what he needed to push himself to do it?  I don’t really buy it.  He says a couple of times that “religion is shit.”  I think his previous attempts–his online diary existing in the first place–were all cries for help.  He just wanted someone to love him.  Maybe he believed that God would love him, but I think we can make anything into a justification if we want to.

And feeling hurt, lonely, and deprived is the justification he used.  He, a strong, virile, white man, how could he not be without young, hot, vivacious sex action?  I said he just wanted to be loved.  No, he needed to be loved.  What he wanted was to have lots of sex and prove his worth as a man by his sexual conquests. No matter how far we have or seem to have progressed, in America we can’t seem to shake the superiority of men to women, especially sexually. Our myths support it, our rituals support it, and our ideas about love and relationships support it.

How can I say such sweeping generalizations?  Well, first, they are generalizations.  It’s true for everyone and it’s not true all of the time.  But it’s very prevalent and often under the covers, because we don’t want to talk about it.  One of the things that stood out the most for me in his diary, of all the things, is when he says:

Told by at least 100 girls/women over the years I was a “nice guy”. Not kidding.

For those of you who have never had these words spoken at you, this is the death sentence, this is the no hope for romance, this is the end of the line.  “You’re a nice guy” means “I’m not going to sleep with you and, by the way, since you’re so nice, would you mind doing this thing for me?”  This is as opposed to the mythical bad boy, the one who is hard, fast, and daring on the outside, but soft, sensitive, and caring on the inside.  Our knight in shining armor.  Our prince charming and his god damn white horse.

This kind of thinking is where I put on the brakes though.  Is it… really all about sex?  Really?  Is that all we, as progressive, advanced, rational, civilized people have at the core of our relationships with each other?  Yeah, I don’t buy that either.  Well, I believe this is how it is for a LOT of people, but I just don’t think it needs to be.  And this is where the guys like the shooter don’t understand what is going on.

Unless you want single nights of ugly, retarded sex, stay away from the girl who thinks “nice guys” are duds and the guy who think “hot chicks” are all that’s important.  You can get, have, and deserve much better.  He looked at all of these young college girls, all of these gym rats, and said “why can’t I have any of that?”  I ask–why would you want that?

I’m not going to let “society” take the blame for this.  I am pretty upset at the thinking and mythology that perpetuate not only the back-asswards relationships we seem to strive for but the kind of masculine machismo which makes it okay to walk into a place and randomly kill people for some kind of petty, symbolic retribution.  But, folks, it’s the individuals who perpetuate this thinking.  This guy was lonely, and tragic, and a gigantic fucking asshole.  He bought into idiotic cultural myths and let them control his life.  He then took his pain out on others, never accepting accountability for his actions nor, from what I can tell, ever thought of another human being, especially women, as an individual, as a person.

Don’t be this asshole and don’t perpetuate the asshole myths that made him believe he deserved to have lots of sex (and if he didn’t he was worthless).  Take some responsibility.

I have been thinking a lot about the stories we tell ourselves.

The tumultuous economy has affected many.  For a while I thought I might be untouched, but things are looking a lot more shaky than they were.  This affects me in very interesting ways.  Most of the problem is not actually my personal situation, though it is scary.  Mostly, people are just a lot more grumpy and cynical.  It wears.

Where I have been most affected is my plan to finally finish my Master’s degree in Religious Studies.  I finally got myself ramped back up to get it finished and now with pay cuts and bleak times ahead, I just can’t justify taking on the loans I now need to take on to get it finished.  I’ve paid for my school as I’ve gone along and taking on debt is just not appealing right now.

A good friend told me that I didn’t need an advanced degree to be legitimate.  While I’m not trying to get my Master’s in Religious Studies to legitimize anything–I’m doing it because I want the knowledge and the experience–it got the meat juices flowing.  Unless there is specific knowledge you are trying to get, degrees are mostly part of myth–a right of passage myth.  By going through the steps and the process, you prove you can participate in the process of advancing in society.  Note that I am not saying the degree process is false or wrong, but there is a mythical element to it.  While our educations provide foundations, it is our experience and our ability to learn from that experience that generates the bulk of our knowledge.

How many people define themselves by the degrees they have?  Or, more to what I’ve been thinking about, how many people look down at themselves because they don’t have degree X.  Or aren’t doing Y and so failure is the only thing in sight.

We all have an idea of who we are and who we want to be.  There is going to be a natural difference between who we think we are and who we are (in sum of our experiences).  It’s often too easy to overlook a bad deed or a poorly worded retort.  Let’s face it, it can be awful hard to admit “Wow, I really screwed that up and was not very nice.”  Most of us seem to learn to apologize, but I’m too aware of how many people seem to not understand there is a difference between just saying the words and meaning them.

I’m curious what happens when we let these ideas of who are or who we want to be get to mythical proportions.  It seems like it would be too easy to swing into grossly arrogant or pitifully depressed.

I know this happens to me, for example, when I think about past relationships or where I think I should be right now in my life with romance.  I always assumed that I would get married (once) and have a rich and happy partnership.  I feel like I have a lot to offer.  People around me like to be supportive and tell me what a great husband/father/potato I would make–I want to scream at them to stop saying that, because it just makes me feel worse about it all.

I’ve learned a lot about myself and how to be a good partner through the failed relationships I’ve had a long the way–and that’s also not sailing they are all failures just because they ended… but I’ve definitely had some failures.  But a lesson I am coming to see is how I struggle with myself because of the dichotomy of how I see myself versus how I really am.

But it’s not just pining about relationships.  Romance is just an easy go-to.  I think this happens with all kinds of things:  education, careers, personal achievement goals, whatever.  It’s important to have something to strive for.. and it’s incredibly important to hope.  But it’s also important to remember what those things are and not get so caught up that we forget either who we are or what we are doing.  Sometimes it’s good to just be yourself.  Sometimes it’s good to just enjoy the journey.

Ah, but the truth is, it’s always good to dream.