Psychology Today, in a column categorized as "Evolutionary Psychology":
The measure of a civilization is how it treats those who have hurt it.
Major Nidal Malik Hasan was not a bad person. He was even possibly a good person. But he was a very sick person who did a terrible thing.
The Major Hasan incident is a test, one which exposes which elements of our society are truly good or enlightened, and who are morally retrograde or repugnant. Oh yes, there are moral judgments aplenty to be made. But it is you, dear reader — it is all of us who are on trial here. If we're all nice to the murderer, well, that shows what great people we are, eh?
And which divine relation or oracle imparted to us this unshakeable maxim of absolute moral certitude? I believe he (or the editor) pulled it from some random bodily orifice, to put it nicely.
The second sentence is telling also. For weeks we have heard that the man's motives are utterly inscrutable — or that all motives are fine to consider except religious motivations. Ah, but now we've gone from inability to judge his motives, to a completely accurate and perfect assessment of the man's deepest inner disposition. He could not possibly have had malevolent intention.
We save such concepts for Richard Cheney.
If you are someone who disagrees with that, then I would suggest you stop reading now.
We must ensure we preach only to the choir! The unconverted will please leave and stop applying critical thinking to what I'm about to write.
If however you do agree with me, in addition to being as upset as I was by the Ft. Hood killings -- which were evil acts...
Ah yes, we can judge "acts" as evil. But not Major Hasan. Why are certain acts evil? Why is Major Hasan not subject to similar moral categorization? A psychiatrist appealing (vaguely) to an evolutionary model apparently doesn't have to explain. (Coherently, anyway...) (Even more hilariously, the word "evil", after the italicized "were" — implying certitude — links to a page which assures us that morality is "subjective". He didn't get the memo, apparently.)
...you'd be as curious as I was and am to understand how and why and when Major Hasan did what he did and what if anything we can learn to prevent this from ever happening again.
Well, Dr. Goulston, I have no idea why he did what he did, but I'm pretty sure, from what the media reports have told me, it could not have had anything to do with his religion. Exposure to bad pop tarts? Planetary alignments? Alien mind control? Something attributable to George Bush? Can't rule those out. But I'm absolutely sure it had nothing to do with his religion.
My first presupposition is that nobody is born bad, but everybody is born vulnerable...
Presupposition? Gee, I thought we were getting science here. See my point above about bodily orifices. Remember, boys and girls, this is hard, rigorous science! We can toss around "good" and "bad" with wild abandon, but not explain the basis nor criteria for these purported moral absolutes.
Next I must add a disclaimer that what follows is empirically based on thirty years as a practicing psychiatrist and psychotherapist...
Oooh! His personal experience is empirical! You know why "data" isn't the plural of "anecdote" for me? Because I'm not a practicing psychiatrist, that's why! I'm not, like, all science-y and smart, an' stuff!
And I *looove* his new usage of "disclaimer." Normally, we use "disclaimer" to mean: "Well, this might be a problem." But noooo, Dr. Goulston uses the word in a new, Orwellian fashion, somewhat akin to: "Baby, before we go out on this date, I must add a disclaimer that you'll find me utterly amazing."
Yes, we're being warned that what he's about to write is absolutely not based on fluffy, subjective criteria.
How did it happen?
Central to nearly all the people I have treated or spoken with who suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (in preparation of my book, "Post Traumatic Stress Disorder for Dummies") is the "fear of re-traumatization" and their efforts at any and all costs to avoid it often results in the symptoms they develop.
Um, he wasn't yet in a war zone. Is it rude to point this out? Am I screwing with the data by noting something this obvious?
Soldiers enter basic training as "loosey goosey" enlistees who are then broken down and built back up into fighting machines devoted to fulfilling a mission and the well-being of their fellow soldiers.
Ah! I see! A couple weeks' basic training (not even the regular stuff, this guy was an officer) and *wham* the military almost surgically removed his ability for moral agency (which is located in the "loosey goosey" section of the brain), rendering him as a mere killing machine. Okay! I get it.
So, um, did Mark Goulston's much more extensive training render him as some kind of machine too? Did it imprint upon him indelibly, and beyond his own volition, the pervasive assumptions of the institution and his professors? And if not for him, then why not others?
Oh yes, he's got a more powerful mind than the grunts. Like, um, Major Hassan. Who was completely unaware of the nature of psychological manipulation. Not being a trained psychiatrist and al... oh, what? He was?
After they finish basic training, it's pretty heady, adrenaline driven stuff that can make soldiers feel nearly superhuman. Add to that the notion that they are going to fight evil and they can feel like a band of superheroes out to rid the world of villains.
Villains, like, um people, people who would make our society look bad by rendering moral judgments against Major Hassan? Oh, he's being ironic in his use of "villains" here! Bad me.
Even Hollywood has jumped on this metaphor with the popular Transformer movies where rattling cars and trucks are broken down and reconfigured and rebuilt into monsters of good and evil. Get the idea?
Yes, quite clearly. Psychology Today has moved itself to a level of intellectual credibility somewhere between Weekly World News and People.
But then they hit the reality of war...
Yeah, if a Texas army base isn't "the reality of war" then what ever could be?
Our dear Doctor continues to write about "Humvees" and "mine-laden" roads, "snipers" and "shredded" children — the gruesome carnage in Virginia and Texas in which Major Hasan undoubtedly lost his mind (poor soul).
In the end, Dr. Goulston "explains" by asserting, confidently, that the military must have "broken" the wiring between Major Hasan's Reptilian and Neomammalian brain — an "explanation" which raises far more questions than it answers. Why then, for example, do most soldiers, who receive much more extensive training that Major Hasan's few weeks for officers — and many who have see the kind of actual carnage Dr. Goulston imagines in Virginia and Texas — not, similarly, snap? Why do these seem to have, on average, a lower murder rate than the general population? And what about Dr. Hasan' own apparently pervasive belief that he was acting from religious motives? How did that get into the mix?
Oh, I know, I'm citing facts, reason, and evidence, so I'm not being "empirical" here.
Let's review, shall we? Major Hasan wasn't "evil". Evil is passe. But our society could be bad, apparently, if we say he's evil. Because it's bad to say people are bad. Unless they're "society." (Or perhaps right-wingers.) And how do we know what's "good" and "evil" — or not? Because training reprograms people. (But, Doctor Goulston, also a psychiatrist, has not been programmed to say this.) And the trauma of "snipers" and "shredded children", in Virginia and Texas, thus caused Major Hasan — who has no moral agency mind you (though Dr. Goulston does, apparently) to mindless kill everyone around him. Just like all soldiers do. To avoid being re-traumatized. Though Hasan wasn't being sent to fight, hadn't actually even been in a war zone himself, and apparently had very little empathy for others who had been.
Clear? Good. He's got more for us in an upcoming blog entry!
I found this on the front page of Google News, by the way.