The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
    Michael Maiello's picture

    Civilization and Its Armed Discontents

    By Michael Maiello on Thu, 01/31/2013 - 8:31am | Politics

    Josh Marshall flagged this Walter Kirn article already, so my guess is that some of you have read it.  I'm a big Kirn fan, and have been ever since he published the interesting and underappreciated novel, The Unbinding, in Slate.

    Kirn is a gunowner, of the type that I think many of you will relate to.  He has actually pointed guns at two people in self defense, though he seems to have no illusions of the risks he's taking by having such weapons available.  He's a hunter.  He's willing to give up the AR-15 in exchange for a revolver and legitimate hunting rifles.

    Josh liked the article because he's trying to understand gun culture.  I feel like I do understand it.  I grew up with it, too.  So, I glommed onto a different section of the essay than Josh did.  Here's what I think is the money bit:

    "Can we expect less violence altogether or merely less outrageous acts of violence? And if the answer is fewer catastrophes, fewer Auroras and Sandy Hooks, would that be a worthwhile accomplishment in itself? I think so. Horror and panic themselves are forms of violence, and diminishing them, restricting their dimensions, is itself a civilizing act.

    To civilize, I think, is the key verb. It's a crossover word, with a cultural legacy and a practical, specific meaning—to order; to, yes, "regulate"—that the gun-owning mind responds to and respects. In westerns, the gun (the gun in the right hands; and the gun owner thinks of his own hands as the right ones, which all who wish to engage him in conversation would be wise not to forget) is a tool of civilization, not a totem. It tames, the gun, but only if it's first tamed. Those who won't tame it, or can't—because they're unable to tame themselves—must face being disarmed. Especially hard-to-tame types of guns, moreover, must be closely, vigilantly watched."

    For some people, gun ownership is something of an act of civil disobedience.  Or, maybe in Kirn's view, uncivil disobedience.  This stuff really gets me thinking because I'm not the kind of person who believes one should be civilized all of the  time.  The human spirit needs to act out every now and then.  Some people just get drunk in public.  Others decide to scale the New York Times building.  People cover themselves in tattoos or piercings.  They dress to provoke. Too much civilization can make a person crazy.  Everybody needs to act out.

    But, as Kirn warns, the untamed gun carries special risks to others.  Also, as he says, the gun owner never feels untamed.  They think of "their own hands as the right ones," he says.  Of course they do.

    Kirn wants the gun community to willingly give up certain truly meaningless things.  Like, for example, the cosmetics of the AR-15 style weapon.  His theory is not that there aren't plenty of differently styled weapons that can kill a whole lot of people but that the "assault weapon style" provokes too many crazies for society to bear.  And... I believe him.  There are sports cars and family sedans that both have the same horse power.  But you're more likely to find a speeding Mustang than a speeding Volvo.

    I think this adds something interesting to the debate -- something important about civilization and aesthetics that we're glossing over in D.C. right now.

     

    Topics: 
    Politics

    Comments

    I'll wait. wink

    In the meantime; put me down as opposed.


    by Resistance on Thu, 01/31/2013 - 9:25am

    Opposed to what?


    by Ramona on Thu, 01/31/2013 - 9:55am

    I am similarly perplexed.

    I guess Resistance... resists.


    by Michael Maiello on Thu, 01/31/2013 - 10:15am

    LOL --  but do remember that you are quoting the Borg, 


    by EmmaZahn on Thu, 01/31/2013 - 11:56am

    Welcome to the collective owned by the Corporation; the end of free will and self determination?

    Can you find a picture of the first ape with a club and the erect man with one?

    Until you get to the root cause of the violence, it'll never end.

    We were warned "Safeguard the heart"


    by Resistance on Thu, 01/31/2013 - 4:05pm

    It is hard to stand firm and resist, when many of our brothers and sisters, have put faith in our current leaders, who lie and betray us.


    by Resistance on Sun, 04/07/2013 - 6:05am

    GOVERNMENT and Its Armed Discontents." or "GOVERNMENT and Its DIS Armed Discontents”

    Which one do you prefer?

    Look around; everyone knows; we have the best government money can buy.

    The rest of the world is rebelling against corruption in government and we continue to bury our heads

    The Government of, for and by, the people, is an illusion.

    (Listen to Diane Rehm show with Al Gore, explaining how Congress doesn’t listen to the little people anymore.)

    Congress follows the money and the money corrupted Congress.

    Kirn wants the gun community to willingly give up certain truly meaningless things.

    SO WHAT? Maybe kim likes exercises that include, touching his toes (in a stock) or kneeling exercises (with a yoke on his back).

    Maybe Kirn wants to visit one of our countries rendition hot spots or Guantanamo for a vacation?

    I don't, do you?


    by Resistance on Thu, 01/31/2013 - 4:27pm

    That article was brilliant.  Put me down as a new Walter Kim fan.  Your clip resonates, along with so much more from that article, but this one struck me as the answer to why there are so many people, including non-gun owners, supporting and protecting the NRA line:

    Guns can turn you into an insider even if you're an outsider by nature, recruiting you into a loose fraternity of people who feel embattled and defensive and are primally eager to win allies. For the apprehensive newcomer, this process of ingratiation happens in increments, through a series of pats on the shoulder and other encouragements.

    The folks at the NRA know this all too well.  They know how to get inside those people and twist them to suit their own needs.  Diabolical.


    by Ramona on Thu, 01/31/2013 - 10:25am

    People also hate being told what to do, particularly when they haven't done anything wrong. A very minor issue, comparatively, but you should hear the passionate opposition to  Bloomberg's proposed ban on super-large sugary drinks.  Same thing happened when he banned trans-fats years before.  I dare say that none of these people cared about access to super-sized sodas or trans-fats before banning them became an issue.  Then people became strangely impassioned.  Go figure!


    by Michael Maiello on Thu, 01/31/2013 - 10:36am

    Civilization and aesthetics as it relates to guns and violence is definitely something that shouldn't be ignored. 

    Of course, we all should probably start by reading or re-reading Freud's Civilization and its Discontents. 

    In this seminal book, Sigmund Freud enumerates what he sees as the fundamental tensions between civilization and the individual. The primary friction, he asserts, stems from the individual's quest for instinctual freedom and civilization's contrary demand for conformity and instinctual repression. Many of humankind's primitive instincts (for example, the desire to kill and the insatiable craving for sexual gratification) are clearly harmful to the well-being of a human community. As a result, civilization creates laws that prohibit killing, rape, and adultery, and it implements severe punishments if such rules are broken. This process, argues Freud, is an inherent quality of civilization that instills perpetual feelings of discontent in its citizens.

    Freud's theory is based on the notion that humans have certain characteristic instincts that are immutable. Most notable are the desires for sex, and the predisposition to violent aggression towards authority figures and towards sexual competitors, which both obstruct the gratification of a person's instincts.

    The thing that I find interesting in the whole debate that has arisen since Newtown is the relationship between individuals and the violence not only outside of themselves (and how that is experienced) but the violence in themselves (and to what extent its existence is repressed or denied).

    There is much of what is going on in this debate and what is debated that is a reflection of American culture, or gathering of various sub-cultures.  But there is also much that has to do with human nature, whatever that is, that has nothing to do with John Wayne and the Wild Wild West.  Aesthetics is also significant and undeniable facet of human nature, as the cave painting demonstrate, and so it is undeniable that humans would filter their violence / aggression through their aesthetics - at the same time, and what is important, the aesthetics is influenced and shaped by the impulses of violence and aggression. 


    by Elusive Trope on Thu, 01/31/2013 - 11:29am

    That is a very, very good article.

    It struck a number of chords, but like Ramona, I particularly noted the description of how outsiders become insiders, without having to do much besides adopting a hobby.

    I think this is also the appeal of the "conservative" Tea-Party mindset, in which, if you're feeling grumpy and annoyed about how things are, you're a member, by golly! You and your buddies can grouse about things and offer unhelpful suggestions, leaving the actual governing to be done by all those other people that your "man card" allows you to despise.

    When it comes to guns, I think we could do ourselves a favor by pointing out the difference between being a pissed-off hanger-on, and a responsible gun owner. But it's for responsible gun owners to do, and they'll get no support for the effort from the NRA, which is comfortable in its practice of selling guns to criminals and then arming the rest of us for self-defense and constitution-guarding. It will be interesting to see if responsible gun owners can get any traction.


    by erica20 on Thu, 01/31/2013 - 11:38am

    Frankly, I am tired of hearing from responsible gun owners as if non-gun owners are somehow unpatriotic neophytes who have no intelligence or skin in the game of murder by gun. Some non-owners may have owned a gun, shot a gun and got rid of them as a lethal hazard.

    The lesson I take from Kirn's 'gun owner' blather is never to rent a storage unit across from the Mint Bar in Livingston, Montana. And if a meth-head guy stares at you outside of the Mint, ignore him, don't egg him on by staring back, just so you can point your gun at him and feel like Dirty Harry.

    Kirn's baloney that "guns alter your reflexes, your neural pathways', is not true, unless you are a sociopath, or find yourself on the wrong end of one.

    The gun culture will not give up military style weapons because of some theory that it 'provokes crazies', which it very well may do. That is a theory. Like evolution or climate change. What's worse, it denies them the God given freedom to buy those guns. They flocked to buy them after the school slaughter by the tens of thousands.

    And then they will say, as usual, this rationale is just another slippery slope to gun confiscation anyway.

    Yesterday, a woman testified before the Senate that a woman needs a "scary-looking gun” (as it) deters violent male criminals during home invasions. She needs an Ar-15 to protect her 6 kids. These folks and their GOP rep's are not rational people.

    At the Fatal Gaps website, the number of felons/adjudicated mentally ill individuals who have been submitted to the FBI is listed by state. Oklahoma has sent 3, Mississippi 3, and Louisiana 2. California is over 700,000. Some parts of the nation don't give a crap about keeping guns out of the hands of those who shouldn't' be able to buy them,

    The only thing one needs to know about the gun culture is they will not change. They will no more give up scary looking guns, 100 round magazines, or agree to background checks at gun shows then they will agree to outlaw 'assault weapon style' weapons.

    It will only happen when enough of those who want to reduce gun violence stop the blather and the talking and demand, and vote for, action.


    by NCD on Thu, 01/31/2013 - 7:12pm

    Great article, and I appreciate your highlight. The distinction came up in our dag discussions a few weeks back, but the media and the politicians mostly ignore it, blurring the various crimes into an amorphous category called Gun Violence.

    The only trouble is that I'm not sure anyone knows how to curb outrageous acts of violence--as opposed to reducing overall gun violence, which seems more feasible. As DF pointed out, a killer can carry out a mass-shooting with a few .38s almost as easily as with a Bushmaster. The almost is important when it comes to the body count, but when it comes to horror and outrage, I'm not so sure. A mass-knifing is in some ways more horrifying than a mass-shooting even if it kills fewer people.


    by Michael Wolraich on Thu, 01/31/2013 - 2:57pm

    I think the difference really is in terms of style.  If, and I know this assumes a lot, we're dealing with people for whom the Rambo stylings of the assault rifle are important or who are incited to violence by the Tech-9, the Uzi or a paid of  millimeter pistols fired Matrix style, then Kirn is saying "call the NRA out on this."

    Obviously, I respect DF's intellectual honesty, but the NRA has made the same argument.  If one rifle can kill as easily as the AR-15, then why ban the AR-15 based on its looks alone?  You have to suspect, as Kirn does, that a substantial number of disturbed individuals will not, in fact, "find a way to kill," but that style is somehow important to the ultimate decision.

    It's going to be tough to find a lot of evidence for that though I believe some have argued that neutral school uniforms did actually curb gang violence during the height of the "colors" years.  Partly, that just made it harder for rival gangs to pinpoint members they hadn't yet met.  But it also kind of changed gang violence into just plain old violence, removing some of the motivtion.

    People are weird, right?


    by Michael Maiello on Thu, 01/31/2013 - 3:43pm

    It's possible, sure, but I don't think it's a good idea to drive public policy according to unsupported assumptions.


    by Michael Wolraich on Thu, 01/31/2013 - 9:18pm

    Research uber alles is what I am telling my Congresspersons I want.

    It would be nice if they could get it at the same time as a much bigger database of licensed/registered gun owners, but if that's not possible, and it's probably not, then still research uber alles with what they've got, unrestricted by NRA nonsense. No more dumb gun laws that were some kind of compromise which started out with emotional irrational reaction to another event, ending up  basically doing shit or being evaded in legal ways..go for the data uber alles.

    Use the data later to enact smart laws, and do that through promotion of the results, which will also assist in actual cultural change that will make those laws respected. Right now everyone just plays "he said;she said," and "you're lying; no you're  lying," and "you're absurd; no  you're absurd." There is little real data, but our knee-jerk reaction cup runneth over.


    by artappraiser on Fri, 02/01/2013 - 1:08am

    YOU LIE!

    Sorry, strong coffee this morning.

    Love ya!

     

     


    by Michael Maiello on Fri, 02/01/2013 - 9:09am

    Hear hear


    by Michael Wolraich on Fri, 02/01/2013 - 11:52am

    There it is.

    Policy based upon changing why certain bad things keep happening.


    by moat on Fri, 02/01/2013 - 9:03pm