I have inserted a post from Facebook below. Neil Murphy has posted there a link to an article from INTELLECTUALTAKEOUT.org which looks at the views of the great Hannah Arendt, whilst searching for an explanation for what seems like an inordinate number of “mass shootings” occurring recently.

My reading of the article is that Arendt’s views were not fundamental enough to be used as an explanation, although she was certainly on the right track. She is best known for her writings on the concept of totalitarianism.

But, political theories are not enough. The bureaucratization of society which is referred to is a consequence of ethics, which in turn rests on a view of existence and the nature of man.

Man requires freedom to survive properly, in accord with his nature. Freedom is, simply put, the absence of coercion. Man must be free to thrive or fail in his pursuit of knowledge of existence. This requires a recognition of the individual as the relevant unit of reality. Arendt has basically described the opposite of individualism. The common thread is the collective, in particular, “Statism”.

When the state is considered as the unit of reality and the individual merely a cog in that great machinery, the individual is eroded from society. Those individuals who choose badly in the resulting conflict society can develop serious psychological impediments to their proper functioning as rational beings.

Violence is not a primary. It is a consequence of the failure of societies to incorporate a valid code of ethics.