Rothenburger — ‘Senseless’ acts aren’t senseless at all

COLUMN — “Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us.

“That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”

Anybody who went to high school knows those words — they’re from Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, and they’re about evil versus innocence, and the fact evil acts often make no obvious sense.

Whenever somebody does something incomprehensible to us, we call it “senseless.”

As in, “senseless vandalism,” or “senseless slaughter.”

The “senseless slaughter” of elephants in Africa is decried as a “killing spree.” Stories are written about the “senseless slaughter” of dolphins, seals and whales.

“Together, we can put an end to the senseless killing of baby harp seals in the name of ‘fashion’,” writes People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

On Dec. 14, 2012, 20-year-old Adam Lanza shot and killed his mother in Newton, Connecticut, then drove to Sandy Hook elementary school and killed 20 children and six adult staff members.

Even Psychology Today wrote about “the senseless violence” perpetrated by Lanza.

Sadly, there have been many more Sandy Hooks.

But there’s really no such thing as a senseless act. There are always reasons people do bad things. We use the word “senseless” in an attempt to express our shock and abhorrence; some things are so awful they just can’t be explained, we reason. They have no purpose.

Yet the sense behind killing seals, dolphins, whales and elephants is easy to determine — money. Sometimes, as in the harp seal industry (which has fallen on hard times as hunting white coats is no longer allowed), it’s legal. Other times, such as the poaching of elephants, it’s illegal because it threatens their very existence.

“The senseless killing of these majestic animals is the result of rampant demand for ivory in Asia and elsewhere,” a change.org article stated, in the same sentence calling the act senseless and then explaining its sense.

I was surprised that only about 30 people showed up for TRU prof Derek Cook’s forum this week to discuss why a student would join ISIS, which surely must be the most bloody, heartless and violent terrorist group on the planet.

Nevertheless, it was a good discussion. Cook posed the question, “How could a TRU Business student be fooled into joining the ISIS terrorists?”

The question contains an assumption by Cook that the student didn’t understand what he was getting into. Regardless, those at the forum struggled to find an answer.

Perhaps he felt excluded from the university community. Maybe he was simply seeking adventure. Or became convinced of ISIS’ extreme radical philosophies. Or maybe it was money.

Probably not the latter, said Cook, since ISIS terrorists are sometimes given to strapping on belts loaded with explosives and blowing themselves up in crowded marketplaces in the name of their cause.

Cook noted that one person’s terrorist is another person’s freedom fighter, and there are many examples of those whose definitions have been revised over time. That doesn’t make it OK, however, to cut somebody’s head off in front of a video camera.

I asked what he thought about engaging with the TRU student-turned-terrorist on social media, since this fellow seems to be very active on Facebook and Twitter. Cook pointed out there’s no proof that whoever is writing under his name is actually him; in fact, it probably isn’t.

But it’s the old question of whether to engage in communication/ negotiation with the enemy, or not. There’s little to learn if you don’t, but I wonder how else one can make sense of what’s going on.

What Adam Lanza did wasn’t senseless. It was an atrocity, but there were reasons for it. Unfortunately, we don’t know what they were. He didn’t explain it before he killed all those people and then himself.

Maybe we’ll never be able to understand why ISIS does what it does, either, or why a TRU Business student would ship off to Syria to fight alongside people who cut innocent victims’ heads off with knives.

That is truly frightening.

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