Now, I'm not generally interested in the macabre details surrounding shootings, bombings, and other violent spectacles. But in reading a book-length treatment of Columbine, some things jumped out as relating to discussions about community we've had on this site. First of all, there is the relationship between the attackers (Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold) and their parents. Harris was, in Cullen's estimation, a genuine clinical psychopath, with massive delusions of grandeur, extreme narcissistic tendencies, and an absolute lack of true empathic emotion. He was a master manipulator and charmer, fooling his teachers, parents, therapists, and law enforcement authorities. He was fairly popular with girls, and was trusted by employers. But his journals and video tapes of himself show Eric to be a true psychopath, in the technical sense. An FBI investigator rated Harris as meeting almost every trait detailed in the official description of psychopathy. This was not just a pissed-off kid who wanted to get back at bullies and jocks. Harris was a real-deal monster.

Dylan Klebold, by contrast, was a classic depressive. Yes, he also conveyed some startlingly brutal images in his journals and schoolwork. But the more prominent feature of Dylan's last years was his incredible desire for true love. A girl named Harriet was the object of his desire. His writings are almost constant longings for a real relationship with Harriet, complete with copious heart drawings in the margins. Dylan was shy and somewhat withdrawn, with very low self-esteem, and he harbored suicidal thoughts. He legitimately wanted to die, when his deep desire for love went unfulfilled. But Dylan still managed to pull off good grades for most of his time in high school, and he also held down a steady job.

Not surprisingly, Harris did most of the heavy lifting when it came to the attack plan. As Cullen repeatedly reminds us, the Columbine incident was above all a failed bombing. The boys had planted two large bombs in the cafeteria, which were timed to explode during the most crowded lunch period. Hundreds of people were supposed to die in the blast, and then the library, which was situated directly above the cafeteria, was supposed to collapse down, killing many more. Eric and Dylan had planned to just stand outside near the student exit and pick off fleeing kids with their guns, after the bombs went off. But the bombs did not work, forcing the attackers to improvise. They thus started shooting students at random, and then began throwing smaller bombs all over the interior of the school. All in all, the whole thing went very quickly, over in just 17 minutes. They actually seemed to grow tired or bored with the killing very quickly, especially Dylan. They committed suicide while there were still many helpless targets all around them.

So we've got two kids who were mentally ill or unbalanced: one psychopath and one depressive. They are each plagued by severe personality disorders, and substantial details of their problems are provided in each of their journals and even their schoolwork. They are fairly popular, and hold down jobs. But they also get busted several times by parents and cops -- for booze, bombs, vandalism, fighting, and threats to friends. Should their parents have seen it coming? Should the cops? Who knows? But one interesting thing is that the boys kept their guns and bombs in their rooms and cars. And they made their video tapes in their own houses as well.  This really speaks to the isolated nature of the current social form; that teenage kids can plot an enormous attack, and store the substantial supplies for it right under their parents' noses. I'm not saying that parents should always snoop through everything in their kids' rooms all the time. I'm sure Eric and Dylan would have found alternate hiding places, had their parents forced them to with excessive snooping. But the more noticeable thing is the social isolation and distance that allows something like this to escape parental notice. In our current suburban arrangement, parents and kids alike spent many hours away from home, between working, commuting, and buying stuff. And true to form, Eric and Dylan both worked at the local shopping mall, the ubiquitous symbol of American sprawl and consumption. 

What if Eric and Dylan had lived in a more collective social form, one with a constant intermingling of adults, elders, teens, and younger children? First of all, would Eric have actually developed his psychopathic tendencies? As discussed in an earlier post, the great ecologist Paul Shepard described how our modern industrial civilization actually freezes the personality in a permanent stage of adolescent narcissism. Deprived of rich natural surroundings and intimate tribal social groups, modern people never make the proper transition into adulthood, because they never truly experience the power of the external Other. As social primates and natural animals, we need certain kinds of environmental stimuli to mature properly. Evolution has mapped out an appropriate interactive path for human development, but it can only happen in the correct surroundings. Eric Harris is an extreme but good example of what happens when the ancient human animal is imprisoned in unhuman surroundings. Narcissism runs amok. For more well-adjusted but equally frozen people, this narcissism gets channeled into regular consumption and minor personality blips like anxiety (which can be medicated). But given a more extreme edge, and armed with explosives and automatic weapons, this maladjustment is showcased in ultimate destructive power.

What about Dylan, the depressive? He was the ultimate victim of a relentlessly competitive, uber peer-oriented social form. By all accounts, Dylan was intelligent, creative, and surprisingly social. He was, as many attested, actually less shy than Eric. And despite his incredibly low opinion of his own appearance, he really was not a bad looking young man. He had the usual teen angst and interior terror over his own inadequacies. And he apparently never even talked to his beloved Harriet, aside from maybe one or two hallway greetings. I remember this kind of free-floating infatuation from my own teen years, the intense desire and fixation on girls that I had never even talked with. There is incredible competitive pressure in high school (and earlier) to pair up, so awkward boys end up searching around flailingly for that one girl they are supposed to be in love with, whether or not they have any remote chance of getting her. Obviously, some of this is just natural adolescent stuff. But in the profoundly unnatural setting of suburbia, with its age-segregated schools, what might just be an amusing failure in a more tribal situation becomes a life-destroying matter. The human being is designed for constant, intimate contact with scores of close friends and relatives, in an intergenerational milieu. Social awkwardness is possible in such a situation, but not the crippling sort that Dylan experienced. Yes, there will always be competition for mates. But in a more cooperative social form, there are more options for social contact in general, both sexual and non-sexual. So failures with the opposite sex are embedded in more supportive overall structure. The sheer intensity and ubiquity of relationships smoothes away the rough parts of any particular one. Someone like Dylan would literally not be able to withdraw from everyone into his private self-loathing. His love would be constantly needed and engaged by the entire group, and his depression would have been salved or even healed.

One final note on Columbine and community. The principal of Columbine High was a high-energy guy, and was intimately involved with his students on a day-to-day basis. He took great pride in getting everyone psyched up for events, and he was the student body's rock of strength in the horrible months and years following the attack. By all estimates, he truly created a sense of community at Columbine. But as Columbine and other school shootings make abundantly clear, the American school is anything but a real community. We yank kids out of their homes very early, and thrust them into age-segregated, hyper peer-oriented situations, and tell them to start competing for attention, rewards, and success. And no matter how sensitive a school tries to be to the less-talented, it quickly becomes obvious which kids are destined for "success," and which ones will be wiper-blade replacers at Jiffy Lube. All the pep rallies in the world cannot really convince life's apparent losers that the Johnsonville Cougar is a symbol worthy of their devotion. As an adult, I have been back in high schools on a few occasions, and I am always kind of skeeved out by the artificial, strained spirit amongst the students, the teachers, and the parents. Because we all have to make our way through these educational institutions, we delude ourselves into thinking that they are good, and natural, and right. But objectively considered, the school is a physically ugly, psychologically terrifying place, and is about as far afield from a natural human setting as can be imagined. 

One can only hope that if a more collective social form does emerge, the faux community of the American school is replaced with a more integrated form of real learning.