LarrySanger.org

On the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting

I think the most relevant cause of the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting has relatively little do with guns or mental health.

I think it’s because our society is seriously ill–not mentally, but morally–and many of us are in denial about it. We rarely talk unironically about honor, morality, or shame, or otherwise give signs that we take seriously an objective morality and a commitment to freedom and personal responsibility. Our society’s elites simply don’t think that way anymore, preferring to think of incidents like this as sociological phenomena with collective solutions, rather than individual/ethical issues with individual solutions.

The very tendency we have to ignore issues of personal responsibility and morality, to regard events like this as merely pathological and not under anyone’s control, allows people to feel free to act without conscience. It’s as if they say, “What I do is not under my control. I’ve had it, I’ve snapped, I can’t stop myself…” and then they proceed to act out as if they really couldn’t stop themselves and there’s no need to.

Guns are not going to be banned. More mental health care will not stop people from acting out. The only solution to this sort of thing, in this country, is to reinvigorate our sense of personal responsibility, and to shut down the idiots who say we have no free will, who think that there are no problems for individual morality but only for psychology and sociology.

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Larry Sanger

“Internet Knowledge Organizer.” Currently President of the Knowledge Standards Foundation, started Wikipedia and various other educational and reference sites. Ph.D., Philosophy, Ohio State, 2000. [read more]

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7 responses to “On the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting”

  1. brian t

    We already have Mike Huckabee and other religious types blaming this on a lack of religion in Public schools – as if that translates automatically in to a “moral vacuum”. When all you have is a hammer (religion), everything looks like a nail ..

    Reply
    1. Larry Sanger

      I’m an agnostic. I can defend my views on strictly irreligious grounds.

      Reply
  2. Thomas E. Nuzum

    How do you propose to reinvigorate a persons sense of personal responsibility or teach morals?
    Isn’t the way a person thinks a part of psychology? You are confusing society with sociology as well.
    That kid was clearly isolated for many years and really needed mental health.

    Reply
    1. Larry Sanger

      I indeed think we need to teach morals–probably not in schools, as they don’t understand moral theory and need to be educated on the subject themselves. But as a society we need to reinvigorate our understanding and use of moral categories such as virtue, obligation, and the good (well-lived) life. In educated, business, and other “elite” circles we rarely hear this sort of talk; it sounds old-fashioned and gauche. On popular and news media such talk is limited to pro forma legalistic discussions, e.g., of political and business leaders.

      As a society most adults do not understand ethics as a subject. If you were to ask most people, even many college-educated people, “Why shouldn’t I just steal from stores? Why shouldn’t I lie?” you would elicit bland platitudes in most cases, along with quite a bit of cynicism–which I think is rooted as much in ignorance as it is in anything else.

      These sorts of issues should be understood well by children by the time they graduate from high school. They used to be part of religious education, and as we have become increasingly secular, nothing–or, nothing that teaches some classic principles of ethics–has filled the gap.

      There is a difference between morality and psychology. Too many people think that psychologists are the experts about morality. But they aren’t.

      Reply
    2. Dick Navidad

      “Intelligence is the only moral guide.” — Robert Green Ingersoll

      http://www.robertgreeningersoll.org/?page_id=127

      Thank you ^_^

      Reply
      1. Larry Sanger

        Considering the large number of utterly amoral but highly intelligent people in the world, intelligence alone can’t be the only moral guide. The history of ethics will tell you the same: ethics is not purely an intellectual matter. It concerns emotions and values, which are not strictly matters of our intellectual faculties.

        Reply
  3. Laragene Williams

    Perhaps it is not so much teaching a child to be moral or ethical, but doing the more difficult task of modeling it in all of life’s most challenging circumstances. Children are always watching, they pay attention. Do we notice to what they are paying attention?

    Reply

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