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Published on 05/05/1999 All articles from this issue

The Columbine massacre: constants and variables

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By Jim Tonkowich

Other Voices

Blood on the walls, bodies on the floor, teen-agers fleeing in terror, the smell of gunpowder in the hallways. "Outcasts" with access to firearms take out their schoolmates. My son, a ninth grader, reported that one of his teachers heard the news of the Columbine High School massacre during his commute home. He pulled his car onto the shoulder of the road so he could get out and vomit - a fitting response.

The towns in Silicon Valley are too much like Littleton to allow us to ignore the killings or to write them off as an unfortunate aberration. The seventh aberration in 20 months is seven too many.

Could it happen here? Yes. What can we do to prevent it? First sort out what has changed from what has remained constant.

School cliques are a constant. The students at Columbine were taught from kindergarten to play well with others, to be kind to everyone, to tolerate differences. They developed competing cliques as surely as our kids were taught the same platitudes. Cliques were part of school when I was there and will be a part when my grandchildren are there.

Access to weapons may not be constant, but neither is it new. The boarding school I attended had a rifle range and a skeet field. If we wanted the guns, they were there for the taking. No one seemed to want them.

Finally human nature remains the same. Violence, hatred and murder always have been and will remain part of the human condition. Those who believe that progress and science will fix these problems have only to examine the history of the twentieth century. The most "advanced" century to date is also the cruelest and bloodiest.

But something has changed in order for a Quentin Tarentino movie to come to life at Columbine.

First, we have lost our transcendent values. If all values are equal in the great tossed salad of multiculturalism, no one's world and life view may be singled out as inferior to any other. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were nihilists. And without transcendent values, who can criticize or correct them? Criticize and correct based on what? Like Dmitri Karamazov in Dostoyevsky's novel, Harris and Klebold discovered that if there is no God, all things are permissible. They acted consistently. If life is meaningless and thus valueless, why not laugh as you take it away from others?

Our Declaration of Independence speaks of "the laws of nature and of nature's God." We need to rediscover these first principles. Then we will be in a position to guide ourselves, our families, our communities and our nation toward the good rather than the merely attractive or comfortable or radical.

This loss of transcendent values allows us to tolerate huge quantities of fantasy violence. We watched "Pulp Fiction." Some of us allowed our kids to watch. We play video games that are awash with gore and smile with satisfaction as our victorious fighter rips off the head of the foe.

In a report originally published in 1972, the surgeon general concluded that viewing media violence increases aggression in everyone, especially those who are predisposed to aggression. Harris and Klebold devoured violence. At some point the line between fantasy and reality blurred. Then it disappeared altogether in a volley of bullets.

Those who wish to tinker with tolerance, the availability of hand guns, or some new scheme for changing human nature will find limited success. Those are constants. The variables in this tragedy, those things that have changed over time need to be addressed: our loss of transcendent values in our culture, the accompanying tolerance for violence and that which promotes it.

Tonkowich is pastor at Peninsula Hills Presbyterian Church in Los Altos.