What Should Come Next?

Surely by now, no one has been left ignorant of the tremendously devastating tragedy that occurred in Florida this past Wednesday. Truly, I cannot imagine even a fraction of the grief everyone impacted is currently enduring. In situations like this, we often turn to the need for answers - how could someone do this? Why would they wish and proceed to inflict so much pain on so many people? And most frightening, what will happen next? I'll try not to make this political because I think those conversations are readily happening everywhere, and necessarily at that. But what I do wish to discuss here however is the manner in which we make sense of an occurrence such as this. Personally, I have no idea what that looks like. As I've observed the results of this tragedy over the past few days, I am still, and will likely remain unable to fathom a complete thought on the matter which isn't entirely composed of either terror or sadness. But, we ought to do our best to process the things that happen around us and hopefully grow to be a little wiser as a result. Alex and Ben are probably the point people to think about the shooting in terms of morality and its impact on the status of humanity at large but I think I may be able to draw some parallels to neuroscience which hopefully will prove to be a somewhat valuable perspective.

Part of neuroscience, possibly one of its largest enigmas, is understanding how the biochemical interactions encased beneath the Blood Brain Barrier translate into the voluntary choices we make and actions we do. For us science nerds, sometimes the only things that make sense are those unthinking, clear-cut processes so we ask ourselves, how does cellular communication become human action? It's a branch of the discipline called behavioral neuroscience and you probably consider such ideas more often than you think. Essentially, dwelling on questions like "why did you do that?" brings one to the core of seeking to understand the actions of others around us. Now, I understand I am treading a slightly obscured line by leading with this as many believe the shooter at Douglas High School had some form of mental illness which caused him to commit such a horrendous crime. Obviously, I am not a certified expert to try and claim the truth or falsehood of this but the fact remains that whether or not gunman Nikolas Cruz suffers from a mental illness, 17 young people were killed in his deliberate attempt to cause harm. This tragic event, being of such extreme nature demands of us to stop, think, and try to understand. If we as a society are doing everything we can to prevent it from happening again, that means we must first understand what the problem is. So even in the case of his being declared mentally ill though, we can still try to make sense of Cruz's behavior. Taniya can probably tell us much more about this, but I believe it would be a little over reaching to say that the sole and all-encompassing cause of this tragedy was Cruz's mental illness.

We must remember that the way our brains are wired is unimaginably complex and consequently, almost inexplicably diverse. The brain is where our internal genetics meet our external surroundings in a marriage that determines the manner by which we conduct ourselves. The term "mental illness" then becomes collaterally complex because it poses the question of an explicit definition for what the contrary, "mental health" denotes. Certainly, not all those who aren't deliberately hurting others are mentally "healthy." And at the same time, not all those consciously inflicting the same or similar pain are mentally "ill." We each have a brain that is unique from the brain of the person sitting beside us. But sometimes this uniqueness manifests in extremely variant, often malicious ways as we observed on Wednesday. Does that mean then that "mental health" is a constantly fluctuating set of parameters that change to match the society in action at any given point? I don't really know. But what I do know is that whether we completely understand it or not, there is a specific duality which we can perceive across humans at large. We are all capable of good and evil. The question then becomes, what motivations cause someone to choose such an infuriatingly evil course of action?

The most prominent thing that has come to mind when I try and wrap my head around all of this is a novella titled The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde written by Robert Louis Stevenson. We have just about finished a reading and some discussion of this work in my literature and composition class. Briefly, this story delineates the constant struggle of a person between choosing to embody the "normal" version of himself (Dr. Jekyll) - although imperfect, a man who is of good reputation and is a generally benevolent person - or the entirely evil version of himself (Mr. Hyde). The premise of the story revolves around an uncovering of this character's duality from the perspective of others around him. The narrative follows a series of documents and interactions that ultimately lead the reader to a point-blank acknowledgement of the fact that Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are really just one and the same. One of the questions Mr. G asked our class to consider was whether or not we thought the novella had a clear moral takeaway. Personally, I felt that the work lacked such because the resolution consisted of not much more than a sort of "aha" moment where the reader finds out Dr. Jekyll's proclivity and ability to embody the wholly evil version of himself. Even though I didn't necessarily come out with a defined moral lesson, I think this ambiguity actually added to the novella's impact. I believe that it preserved the undeniable complexity of human life, interactions, and personality. Surely, it would take far more than a short story to outline the multitude of nuances present in the sciences of humanity. By not presenting a clear resolution, Stevenson does something far more valuable - he provokes the reader to arrive at their own conclusions on the matter. I think one of the most important truths to recognize, in this novella as well as in real life, is that we can and should only control our own actions. In the story, it is unclear as to why exactly Dr. Jekyll continuously becomes Mr. Hyde - we can’t trace a reason for the crimes committed by the evil character. But we notice the efforts of the other characters as they work towards protecting those in harm’s way. We can’t control others but we can control ourselves and we ought to encourage others to do the same - being a positive impact on those around us, being available for anyone who needs us are certainly ways to “do our part” as they say.

And so, where does that leave us? Undoubtedly, sentiments of confusion, anger, and grief will remain long after Cruz's horrendous crime and its direct aftermath. We can try, with all of our intellectual might to make sense of anomalous events such as this. We can try to resolve the question of why. But throughout all of this strife to understand, we will likely find ourselves conceding that we don't know everything. Questions get us closer to answers but they certainly will not uncover everything we'd like to know and discover about the things which we observe. At some point, we pause. We stop and analyze our findings - what have we been moved to do? What course of action does this thought process engender within me? If you’re anything like me, observing social media and listening in on politically charged conversations over the past few days has been pretty overwhelming. I have learned that maybe there isn’t one right way to fix this; maybe it shouldn’t just be about gun control or mental illness. Whatever the correct way to react and respond to this may be on a large scale, I do think we can all do what we think is right on a smaller, more personal scale. As we've discussed before, everyone thinks and reacts to events in different ways - that's the result of diversity in neurology. Sometimes, this means we see the Mr. Hyde's of our communities but at other times, this means we can see a real, interconnected web of simultaneous, small but nonetheless important changes happening across the board. The point is; whatever you do, however you react, it’s simply human to feel like we all have to do something. But with this need to act, we must make sure that our actions are informed by thorough thought and reflection of our capabilities.

Last Wednesday's tragedy has left multitudes devastated, shaken, and in fear. What I've realized through my attempt to understand these recent events is that whether you think about things in terms of neuroscience, robots, paintings or even stand-up comedy, we can all bring something to the table. There is no voice which is not worth being heard, and no small act that goes unnoticed. And so, it is my hope that all of us really take this to heart. When we see something that is not right; something that is not justified, we ought to liberate our thoughts, I’m all for that. But when we liberate our thoughts, we ought to then realize that maybe reaching out to the person beside us is crucial before we will be able to reach the people in power above us.