MSN News Special Report
Worldwide shock at Conn. school shooting that claimed 28 lives(12/14/12)

Dr. Levy's opinion:

(I have no political or religious agenda.)

Why?

Who's fault was it?

What was the reason it happened?

What, or who, should we be angry at?

 

I am a neuro-psychiatrist.  My area of expertise is brain-behavior relationships.  I know and understand the profiles, as best as we can know them, for individuals who do mass murders such as the one that happened recently in Connecticut.  I also understand human behavior and our evolutionary history as it pertains to violence.  So, here are my thoughts on this most disturbing of topics.

First of all, we must understand that an occasional mass killing is a natural side effect of a large agrarian and free society.  It cannot be avoided unless you want to live in a hunting/gathering small group or you want a strict draconian ruler who allows zero personal freedoms. However, this opinion piece is more about how our brains have evolved to function.  It is a brief explanation about how a small percentage of homo sapiens's brains do this type of behavior.

Of course, it would be great if we could do something to decrease the frequency of mass murders. If updating gun laws would curb child killing, I would be all for it...but it won't.  If erecting gates and walls around schools and requiring retina ID to enter would work, that would be great...but it won't.  If arming teachers with 44 magnums would do the trick, that would be wonderful...but it won't.  If you could reliably determine who will do a mass murder and when and where, we would all want to do that...but it is not possible.  If even 0.01% of mentally ill individuals did mass murders, then we could simply punish and restrict the mentally ill...but that won't help either.

I'm sorry to present reality so harshly and to suggest that we might be helpless to stop such tragedies.  I understand if you want to stop reading this essay.  Most of us go to great lengths to live in a world where we can control what is real.  A world where we think we understand cause and effect relationships.  There is evil...there is good...and it is easy to know the difference.  And we should stand up for GOOD!

If reading the cold hard truth is too difficult, then I advise that you don't do it.  I would not want to cause anyone to go bezerk and do something stupid, like killing a bunch of school children.  That is, if the media could realistically cause you to do that. 

The purpose of this essay is to offer some understanding about how and why these things happen.

I am not suggesting that there is a simple solution.  What I am offering is knowledge.  Sometimes it helps us to at least understand why something happens, even if we can't control it. 

So, if you are still with me, let me explain.

Let me start by asking, "How did such a caring and loving species such as our own come to be capable of such unmitigated horror?"

To fully understand how our species behaves we have to travel a considerable distance back into our evolutionary past. 

At one time we lived in the jungles of Africa.  If we had stayed there, we might not have evolved very much.  However, the forefathers of hominids ventured out onto the savanna and evolved to chase herd animals and run in small groups of hunter/gatherers.  This turned out to be a bad idea.  Selective pressure out in the open is much more intense.  Lots of hominids did not survive.

Selective pressure is what causes a species to evolve.  The more intense the selective pressure, the more evolution occurs. 

Among the characteristics that enabled our survival was sociability.  We became an unusually social animal.  Not social in the sense of simply belonging to a herd or a flock, lots of species do that, but social in the sense of being able to share complex information in order to enhance teamwork.  We became able to network our brains so the small group would be a more successful killing machine. 

Think of a group of Navy Seals who are infiltrating a target in the middle of the night.  That is what we evolved to be able to do.  A small egalitarian group that share an empathic understanding of each other and sacrifice individuality in order to contribute their unique talent to the group.  This is what we do best.

The problem is that sometimes a species may change too much and too fast.  For example, we are designed to be running in small groups out on the savannah and having combat with other small groups.  We are not designed to be living in large agrarian societies with governments and rules. 

Our brains, specifically the pre-frontal cortex, evolved to be empathic but went so far as to develop some ability to think outside our programming.  Thinking outside one's programming is not all it's cracked up to be.  As a result, we became aware that some of our behavior had to be curtailed in our current environment. We became self-conscious.  We figured out that rape, murder, lying, cheating, stealing, etc., had to stop. 

We used to do these things to the out-group but in a large agrarian society it is often difficult to figure out just who the out-group is.

Also, the human pre-frontal cortex is a newly evolved structure and the circuitry is not very redundant.  It is, therefore, more prone to malfunction.  This is a bit of an oversimplification but the idea is that the part of our brain that processes information about how to behave appropriately in polite society is prone to malfunction.  It is prone to not being fully developed or to developing incorrectly. 

It is also prone to being knocked out rather easily.  Things like intoxication, anger, anxiety or fatigue make using these newly evolved programs more difficult.  For example, a recent study found that people outside a bar at 1:00am give gut level responses to political questions.  Then, when everyone is sober the next day a percentage are able to give more logical responses. 

One way to think about it is that conservative viewpoints tend to be more deep seeded in our cognitive programming and liberal ideas come from thinking outside our programming. Yeah, I'm going to take some heat from that statement and when I do I plan on backtracking really fast.

OK, let's relate this to an individual who might do a mass murder.

Suppose that you are born with a brain that over does paranoia, over needs attention, under does anger control and under does empathy.  Then, you are presented with a situation that causes you to experience anger, fear, blame, and extreme disconnection from other humans. 

Do you think it is possible that someone like this might have been socially inept as a child?  Do you think he might feel less remorse for killing because his brain does not do empathy very well?  Do you think his brain responds impulsively because his newly evolved frontal lobe does not perfectly inhibit impulsivity as it is supposed to?  Do you think that when he becomes angry he fails to experience what we would consider to be a normal level of behavioral inhibition?  Do you think his defense mechanisms are on a hair trigger due to fear that is secondary to having too much paranoia?

OK, this guy fails repeatedly in social situations and is ridiculed and becomes angry.  He is not thinking logically and has less inhibitions about killing due to a lack of empathy.  Can you imagine someone like this becoming a school shooter?

I made up this scenario as an example. I don't mean to say that this is exactly how it happens.  I generalized characteristics of lots of mass murderers.  What I am doing is trying to present some possibilities for you to consider.  We are trying to understand how these mass murders might happen and why. 

Obviously, we need more knowledge to better understand how these puzzle pieces fit together.

We are a species that has evolved out of sync with our current environment and we have newly evolved parts of our social brains that malfunction easily.  Therefore, we must force ourselves and others to not do things that we come pre-programmed to do and we must try to understand how our brains malfunction.  In regards to people who do mass murders, the best we can do is to determine the social and situational contribution and it's interplay with both common brain programming and aberrant brain function. 

We cannot figure this stuff out unless we fund research by the right people.  I'm talking about social scientists and brain scientists.  Not political action committees.  And we have to stop suggesting that mental health or large clip semi-automatic assault rifles are the "cause" of the problem. 

Why don't we assure the NRA that we won't take their guns in exchange for them agreeing to fund this type of research? 

Yeah, that probably makes too much sense.

Morgan Levy, MD

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