Nihilism Rears its Ugly Head

In the wake of the Safeway shooting in Tuscon yesterday, there is going to be much hustle and bustle and likely legislative action regarding the control of guns, ammunition, and access to political leadership by citizens in this nation. 

There will be much hubris in the talking circuits about the dangers of right wing anti-government radicals (Despite his military commitment) and their counterparts in the media. 

There will be soliloquies on the harsh political climate that brews such a foul action.

What there will not be is acknowledgement of what drove this man, Jared Lee Loughner, into this. His actions were his own, and they are wrong. But much like James Lee, he was acting only on the logical end point of his worldview. 

Watch his farewell video here.

This is a man who believed that there are no absolutes, except that he was wronged. A man who believed that words had no meaning, that his mind was the only constant that could be trusted in this shifting universe, and that there is no God. 

With no constants, with no meaning, and with no God, there is no basis for right and wrong. Nothing is wrong, nothing is right. There is only the mind of the individual, and even that is suspect to the ebb and flow of phsyiological shifts. 

With this philosophy at the core of Loughner's belief structure, there should be no surprise at this action. This structure of belief is not uncommon, and it is a fortunate protection for society that people want to be liked by their peers which leads to less of this. Friends don't like friends killing people, so it is rare that one will go as far as Lougher in action. 

How do we treat the root of this problem? Teach that there are absolutes in this universe, that there is right and wrong, and that there is a God who has created this universe and in whom we have meaning. 

Will this happen in the public sphere? Unlikely. Certainly not in public education nor in higher education. It has to be, as all great social changes are, from individual to individual. Fortuitously for the rest of us, reality exists to be known.