Friedrich Nietzsche gave us the terms, causes, cures and repairs required when dealing with Nihilism. Nietzsche’s thoughts on nihilism, the belief that life has no intrinsic meaning, were important in the effect that they had on Martin Heidegger, philosopher and Nazi-backer extraordinaire. Heidegger took the idea of nothing, of emptiness, of the null set and produced the framework upon which postmodernism was built. Postmodernism took the nothing from Nietzsche and applied it to every concept and made everything irrelevant, worthless and simply nothing. The followers of postmodernism believe that G0d is dead or never had existed. This takes the postulation that the universe came out of nothing and thus everything within the universe is nothing. The premise behind postmodernist is that there exist no definite terms, boundaries, or absolute truths. Simply put, everything is relative and open to each individual’s personal definition and no definition is wrong because to claim there is a wrong definition would be to define what something was not. There is no reality other than what you personally believe reality to be but your reality exists no further than your existence. If you do not like your definition which describes your reality, you are free to redefine your reality and there are no limits to how many times you may redefine your reality as it is your reality and does not have any effect on everyone else’s definition of reality. Postmodernism, by its own definitions, removes any basis for religions because religions are all based on certain absolutes, defined morals, specific laws and other items which are defined specifically and as nothing can be absolute and definitions are all relative and must remain undefined, religion has lost its basis. Politics likewise has no real existence nor does nationalism or any other form of organization because any organization would have, by definition, rules which postmodernism portends that there can be no absolutes, no definitions and no rules. Postmodernism has one very dangerous and destructive conclusion, namely, life has no intrinsic value and is thus worthless making whatever one does of no real value, as there can be no real value.
This lack of meaning and lack of any intrinsic value of life and the emptiness of society with no rules and nothing such as right and wrong as we define such terms for ourselves has become the basis for what teachers teach in the public schools and throughout most colleges. They tell children that everything is of no worth and value is a figment of each individual’s mind and these values extend no further than their own thoughts. Then they take all of this a step further and teach that laws have no actual meaning and each of us can make up our own laws by which to live under. The laws of our societies are simple contrivances invented to control us and other than control, they are valueless. There is no morality about the societal laws because we each define our own morality and it does not require that it be restrained by the laws. What they leave out of these lessons is that breaking the societal laws has consequences, breaking the moral codes has consequences, breaking the traditions has consequences. The main consequence is that if your definitions, which they are taught are just as righteous and valid as anyone else’s and they need not care about what the rest of the world thinks, vary too broadly from what the majority accept, you will become an outcast with few if any friends and will very soon find your life empty and without other human sharing or contact. When a person with slightly deviant tendencies develops their own set of rules defining their social beliefs and structures and it is also deviant such that the person becomes ostracized, this is a recipe for a destructive personality to develop. These individuals are amongst the most likely to become a mass shooter, including a school shooter. These individuals who end up outside of the norms of the societal norms and has been counseled that there is nothing wrong with their deciding to be outside of the norms in no way makes them wrong and they should not face any real consequence for their beliefs.
Friedrich Nietzsche and Martin Heidegger
The problem is there are consequences for having such deviations from norms and telling such a person that they do not need to adjust to attempt to return within societal norms, sets them up for some very rough and hurtful rejection by their peers. Even in postmodernist thought, we know that rejection has effects and they are real. We know that rejection, if left untreated has some very nasty results. Consistently telling a person that the rejection is not their fault nor really the result of their different value system and wayward actions, but it is actually the problem of the rest of their peer group because they are being judgmental, something which is inherently wrong, about the only thing which is defined as wrong. So, the person being rejected will begin to blame their peers for their rejection because their wayward actions and differing beliefs have been validated by the counselors and teachers because of their belief in the absoluteness of their postmodern beliefs. Then, when the rejected person acts on their blaming their peers for acting scornfully against them and decides to punish them for their rejection and wrong and hurtful actions, when the counselors and teachers are asked about the shooter who also usually commits suicide, they claim they saw no reason as he was a quiet and well behaved, there is no such thing as wrongful behavior to these counselors and teachers, and they saw no real problem or any signals that such violence was imminent. They might note that the individual spent a greater amount of time alone off to the side but there was nothing wrong with this situation, despite this was not being a voluntary isolation but caused by peer rejection as this youth did not fit in nor did they act in a way which was acceptable as normal by their peers.
What does this tell us about these mass shooters? Well, it tells us that they are a direct product of our postmodern standard which is being foisted on the society by in large by the education systems throughout our society. Postmodernism has even crept into some of our religious institutions who have taken up the popular beliefs of our no rules societies and rejected their own teachings in their texts such as the New Testament, Old Testament, Torah, teaching of Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity, Taoism, Shinto and virtually every religion. This has led to the more Orthodox and traditional institutions central to these religions finding themselves in a war with the more liberated branches of their religions who through postmodernism have decided that the rules need be changed, loosened, liberated and even simply lost. Postmodernism has brought on problems which were probably never anticipated by those who originally took the teachings of Friedrich Nietzsche and applied the expanding of his concepts by Martin Heidegger and the other postmodernist philosophers. Teaching the youth that there are no absolutes have proven dangerous despite many refusing to blame the consequences found on their philosophy. Postmodernism, the way it has been used in many classrooms and universities has led to replacement of religion and traditional societal standards which had served Judeo-Christian and Far Eastern societies for centuries if not millennia with free wheeling variable rules subject to whatever feels good or seems appropriate at the time. These concepts have had consequences which are, more often than not, covered over and explained away often simply because those best qualified to see these results are also those most sold on the validity of postmodernism. They believe that postmodernism is a proven system under which a society will operate with maximum freedoms for every individual as long as each individual takes personal responsibility. This is where the system has not functioned, as the students do not have stressed that they take personal responsibility for their actions, instead they are stressed that each person can develop their own rules and structures in life but not that they need to structure them with some regard for the norms of the societal norms of their group. This is something that most adults understand, as they must cooperate in order to keep their employment, live in their neighborhoods, live with their groups, clubs and other organizations and groupings. Youths have not developed these structures nor do they understand the complications of social interaction and when they hit puberty, they face the strains that their changing physiology places on them and without definite rules and social structures, they can easily develop psychological problems with unfortunate deadly results. What is the repair for this is likely beyond our pay grade. Our only advice is that vulnerable youth require rules, standards of behavior, consistent expectations and structure in their lives upon which they can build purposeful and meaningful lives. Teachers, parents and counselors need to work together as a team to provide these and these requirements leave little room for such an advanced and adult philosophy as postmodernism. But what do we know?
Beyond the Cusp
Beyond the Cusp 