Sprees Trace To Unbound Narcissism

For reasons obvious to all except those who’ve been on an extended media fast, the 1997-98 school year may well become known as the “Year of the Gun.”

How distressing to think 1998-99 may bring more of the same! In fact, the handwriting has been on the wall for quite some time. Teen crime in general has risen dramatically over the past 30 years, but most chilling is the fact that teenagers are now committing violent crimes once associated exclusively with hardened criminals

If one is to believe what a good number of pundits are maintaining, the problem in Paducah, Pearl, Jonesboro and Springfield was guns. Gun control, therefore, is the solution.

In mulling that over, it occurred to me that in 18th- and 19th-century America, nearly every male child who grew up in a rural area had access to a gun from an early age and knew how to use it — and well — by early adolescence. Nevertheless, children in those times didn’t take guns to school and open fire on classmates and teachers.

So, guns are not the problem. Furthermore, Paducah, Pearl, Jonesboro and Springfield are not the issue. They are the tip of the iceberg. The issue is that America’s kids have been escalating out of control since the late ‘60s. In the halcyon days of my adolescence, teens — especially those of the male persuasion — were mischievous.

Today, teens have become downright dangerous to themselves and others. That’s what we need to come to grips with, and fast.

I think it’s this simple: Americans, by and large, no longer understand children. Once upon a time, it was implicitly understood that every child comes into the world carrying a “Pandora’s Box” of his or her very own. Contained in this “box” is pure, unbridled narcissism — the “I want, I deserve” impulse that drives every anti-social evil. With this went the understanding that adults must keep the lid of the box closed until the child is capable of keeping the lid closed on his own.

That very realistic appraisal has been replaced by a very romantic one that says, in effect, every child is embodied holiness sent from heaven to grace us with his or her presence. According to this New Age outlook, only the benighted believe every child is capable of evil acts.

The New Age view has it that children commit anti-social acts not because of congenital spiritual imperfection but because of either biological imperfections (i.e., bad genes, allergies, bio-chemical imbalances) or socio-familial forces (prime among which is the ubiquitous dysfunctional family). In either case, the causative mechanism is beyond a child’s control.

The old-fashioned view has it that a child’s potential for evil (not all, mind you, but part of every child’s nature) can only be contained with liberal amounts of unconditional love and firm discipline. The New Age view posits that love is enough; further, that the misbehaving child needs not discipline, but understanding and “help.”

And so, because the New Age view has prevailed (albeit, in many individual instances, unwittingly), American children, by and large, have not been properly disciplined for more than a generation. They’ve been worshipped; at the least, treated with kid gloves. Instead of subduing the narcissistic impulse, adults have unleashed it. What today’s child wants, he thinks he deserves.

In a May 27 letter to the editor, a Charlotte, N.C., teacher relates asking his high school civics class what could justify going to school and killing a classmate. To his horror, his students reeled off an “enthusiastic” litany of reasons, including “someone ‘dissing’ you,” “a guy taking your girl,” and “someone embarrassing you.”

The teacher, a Vietnam vet, astutely comments, “The problem we have is not with guns, it’s with what has happened to kids.”

Yep. And what’s happened to kids is narcissism, unbound.