Phocus Insights - thoughts from Rodney Collins

Death in Numbers

The area's MP, Jamie Reed, said: "Things like this don't happen around here." Visibly shaken, he added: "What is happening is completely beyond our experience." 

Excerpt from article regarding the Bradford prostitute killings

 - Andrew Hough, Telegraph.co.uk; May 27, 2010

For those of you that haven't noticed, 2010 is a year that will go down in British history as one of the worst ever for spree killings.  First, there was the capture of Stephen Griffiths who allegedly killed up to six prostitutes in Bradford. Then, Derrick Bird apparently committed suicide after killing 12 people in the naturally wondrous Lake District.  Finally, Roaul Moat also decided to take his own life after killing his former partner, her new partner, and a police officer.  Even harder to believe is  that these events all came to a head within a period of shortly more than a month.

Has the world gone mad?  Is there any way to gauge when this will happen again and who will be the next perpetrator, the next victim?  The short answer to these questions is no.  Although I don't believe life is as random as many make out, being able to call when a troubled individual is at the tipping point - one traffic ticket, one insult, one infidelity away from mass homicide - is a difficult task.  Several noteworthy points have emerged from these terrible tragedies, however.

First, it seems apparent that these men could not contain their inner turmoil any longer and felt compelled to project it onto the rest of the world.  Bird's dissatisfaction with a family will and Moat's anguish over his ex-partner's new relationship were probably final straws placed on lives built on brittle identities that couldn't withstand another let down. In the end, the world had to be turned into a uniformly blank screen on which to project their furore.  The innocent, the unknown became the guilty with lightning speed because the external world had to be modified to form an appropriate canvas on which to paint the ugliness that smouldered within the men's bodies and minds.  Even Bird, who ostensibly targeted his victims, seemed to conflate all past transgressions into one capital category of resolution.  One could easily dismiss this behaviour as the domain of the criminally insane, but the same process underlies the homophobia, racism, classism, and sexism of daily life.  I don't think any of us escape its use.  So, in this way, I think the MP in the quote above is wrong.  Violent serial murder may not be an everyday occurrence, but the mechanism which underlies it certainly is.

Secondly, it's not lost on me that each of the three people discussed is male.  It makes me wonder.  Are men biologically determined to react to extreme stress with aggression?  Or, is it the social construction of manhood, and its internalisation with little thought, that is responsible for murderous rampage?  A third possibility - the answer is a combination of both biology and the social definition of masculinity.  I don't know the answer.  I just think it's time to start learning from these horrible displays of manhood and to begin to create a new masculinity which is more sensitive to the pains of the suffering bruiser and nebbish loner alike.

Finally, the compressed time period in which the events occurred makes me wonder if there's something special about the past months or year which has concentrated the violence.  Can we implicate the economy's decline, the shift in political landscape to the right in the UK, or some other factor of note?  My gut says no.  If such a factor does exist, it's simply a catalyst and not the cause of this year's terrible violence.  Even so, there may be lessons to be learned.  There's clearly an unmet demand for psychological services in Britain that seems unlikely to be met anytime soon given the nation's debt crisis.'  Perhaps, there's also a need for us to collectively take greater stock in the warning signs that our loved ones, friends, and neighbours may be displaying when they're struggling.

Yes. Ultimately, it's noticing and addressing the difficulties of others in our communities that has the best chance of preventing social violence.  It's within our power.  It's in our best interest.

Alexander McQueen

It goes without saying that all deaths have profound meaning. A life that has ended leaves behind a hole in the social fabric felt by family, friends, and casual acquaintances alike.

When someone in the public eye dies, that hole stretches a bit wider.  More times than not, we all identify with notable figures in some way - sometimes peripherally, other times more meaningfully.  Add to the mix a death by apparent suicide of someone with rare talent and the hole becomes a jagged tear.

I knew very little about Alexander McQueen except for what I gleaned from the occasional glance at his shirts and suits as I shopped from time to time.  The words that come to mind are 'colourful', 'vivid', and 'stylishly cut' when I think of ways to describe his creations.  McQueen designed with a structured whimsy that was hard not to notice and was even harder not to appreciate.  I never thought once about buying any of his clothes.  They were too expensive and a bit too 'out there' for me.  But, I did enjoy those fleeting moments of examining his work on the rack.  He was expert at displaying the buried insides of men on the outside.

In reflecting on his death, two things come to mind.

First, the circumstances of his demise demonstrate that the notion of the self-contained individual is fantasy.  Each and every one of us is a part of a web of social contacts that help to contextualise and define us as human beings.  Although I don't know it for a fact, it is likely that McQueen was troubled by life before the death of his mother.  Her death, however, meant that a psychological pillar had been removed, and the associated pain was, perhaps, too much for him to bear.  In reality, the psychological pillar represented by his mother was still there in one form or another.  After loved ones die, their influence on our lives is still an internalised part of us capable of providing support and guidance through life's difficulties.  How many of us have recalled wise words offered by a grandparent, parent or significant person from our past who is no longer around when faced with a difficult situation?

The difficulty with bereavement is that the natural process of mourning takes an extended period of time and forces us to live with the immediate pain in the interim.  Depression intensifies this experience since it can envelop us and distort our sense of time in a way that extends the pain of the here-and-now into perpetuity.  The notion of riding out the pain succumbs to a need for immediate relief to quell its sharp edge.  Some in deep despair turn to alcohol, cocaine, and other substances.  Others, unfortunately, choose a more immediate and permanent response.

The second thought that McQueen's death inspires is that when it comes to personal happiness it's what we think about ourselves that matters and not what others think of us.  Few in his field were as revered, and McQueen still had decades ahead of him to place his imprint on fashion and contemporary culture.  However, in the end it wasn't enough. 

We owe it to ourselves to make sure that we work hard to value who we are, what we've done, and what our future may bring.

I extend to his family, friends, and colleagues my deepest sympathies.  We've all lost a truly gifted individual.