Entry 17:

Ginger,

I did call you Ginger, but no, I'm not mad at you. You told me not to use your pet name in public, and I ran out of spices.

The Fraysters are roiling over violent socialization. I think I'd better offer a few comments on their comments before they burn out the fiber-optic lines.

First off, a lot of Fraysters evidently can't read very well. We said brutalization ISN'T the same as abuse. It's a technical term Athens coined to collect three conjoined kinds of social experiences: being violently subjugated, seeing intimates violently subjugated, and being coached in a personal responsibility to use violence. We also said brutalization ALONE isn't enough to make someone seriously violent: They had to VOLUNTARILY move through three further stages (belligerency, violent performances, virulency) before they emerged as malefic, violent individuals. And since these three further stages are voluntary, becoming violent is, we said, a CHOICE some people make. Which explains why the vast majority, thank god, of people who are brutalized don't end up violent and why violent socialization isn't an excuse: Violent people are RESPONSIBLE for their violent acts. Of course they are. Who ever thought otherwise?

So no one's making excuses. (Thanks, tony d.) We're offering an explanation. Frayster "128sl" has it exactly right.

Athens' work was NOT statistical. It isn't based on statistical correlations (but your, Ginger's, statistical study supports his CAUSAL study). He followed the method once known as the "method of universals" and known today as "analytic induction": Identify people who display the behavior, and then see what they all have in common that is different from people who don't display the behavior. That's the way diseases are identified. Malaria was identified from ONE case, and no one disputes the causality. Athens had several hundred violent criminals, both men and women. The four stages of violent socialization were common to them ALL but were not common to criminals without violent histories, whom he interviewed as controls. So when I described how Harris and Klebold showed the same pattern, I was adding two more cases to the evidence base, not excusing them or making something up. The pattern is there in their backgrounds for anyone to see who cares to look. Since Athens worked retrospectively, his model is always provisional, but it ain't statistical. These days a lot of people don't seem to know the difference because it's evidently no longer taught in school. Causation is different from statistical correlation. Correlations don't prove anything; they just tell you where to look for possible causal connections.

As for Octavius' question, "Why do some kids ... become violent and others do not?" the short answer is, they made different choices along the way. Brutalization isn't a choice, obviously (and that's what Ginger meant, I think, when she said we're all responsible, because we ARE as a society responsible collectively for protecting children from being brutalized, are we not?), but belligerency, violent performances, and virulency ARE choices, and most kids fortunately have better guidance and make OTHER choices. But Octavius, I haven't found any cases of violent individuals who have happy backgrounds. If you find any, let me know, and I'll bet you dollars to doughnuts there's a missing piece to your information. But remember that violent socialization doesn't always happen in childhood. McVeigh's may well have happened in the military (no, no, I'm not BLAMING the military, go back and read the previous paragraphs). It certainly looks as if he completed it in the military, or at least formed his fatal grudge against the government in the military when he was rejected for Special Forces training.

So, Fraysters, I'll tell you what. Much as I respect your sovereign right to blow off while hiding behind the anonymity of your nicknames, if you're serious about these questions, I'd suggest you start by reading my book Why They Kill, which confronts all the issues you raise, or, better, read Lonnie Athens' original studies, The Creation of Dangerous Violent Criminals and Violent Criminal Acts and Actors Revisited, both published by the University of Illinois Press.

Ginger wants to thank Wayne Butler for the first paragraph of his message.

On a cheerier note, I hope Debra Norville got over her laryngitis.

Whew, long day.

xox,

Rhodeman