The Death Drive and the Media

What are we to make of the recent spate of guys shooting other guys? It is now one shooting per week and I’m horrified that a lot of them are so young.

It is no use saying these are crazy people. Many are just vulnerable young guys who had had enough. The Virginia Tech gunman was 22. The earlier Virginia Tech gunman was 23 and the Craigslist killer was 23. Last weekend, after the name of the Hollywood gunman was published I googled him and there he was on Facebook, living in Hollywood, having come here earlier this year from Carlisle, Pennsylvania. He had 356 “friends” and he was 26. The media were doing the same research in real time and the LA Times facebook comments were appalling. Here’s an example: “He got his 15 minutes of fame. Isn’t that why everyone comes to Hollywood?”

This is the usual fallback position for those who embrace the lone wacko theory. This theory is common to talk radio and Fox News, and celebrity TV shows like TMZ and ET, and prime time dramas and cop shows. The cynicism and indifference to the plight of others make for really bad karma for all the rest of us. I’m not blaming the media, but if Americans are going to celebrate their gladiator culture where we get fed to the lions if we screw up, remember that we are more mobile than ever and young adults are at ever greater risk of spinning out. A few of them pick up guns. The media feeds on this and so we should try not to feed them.

Misery loves company.

There are other theories. Susan Faludi argued in “Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man,” her 1999 book, that American men – especially working class men – have been betrayed by economic and cultural change, where who they are is no longer valued. There is something to that. Then there is Freud, who speculated that a deathwish or death drive – the “Todestrieb” – is in all of us. He came up with this concept after reflecting on the carnage of World War I and the traumas that persisted. However, it is one thing to say this came about because of the War; it is quite another to say that the Death Drive is inherently there in all of us, where it contradicts our drive to seek pleasure and affirm life.

Freud’s idea was not well received at the time, yet it is not that far-fetched to suggest that many of these young guys have a form of PTSD from modern life itself. In past centuries, guys with a strong Death Drive would have channeled it into becoming warriors. They were the berserkers of their day. Nowadays there are so few outlets for berserk rage. The military, gun clubs, videogames, sex, sport and heavy drinking and drug use are simply not enough to channel that energy. And so we have the killings.

Photo: Wikipedia - Landscape with the Fall of Icarus (1560’s)