A World of Moriarty Wannabes and the Horrible Alternative

Sher­lock Holmes: Peo­ple have died.

Jim Mori­arty: [shout­ing] That’s what peo­ple do!

Sher­lock The Great Game 2010

Jim Mori­arty: STAY­ING ALIVE!!! SO BOR­ING, ISN’T IT??!! Just staying…all my life I’ve been look­ing for dis­trac­tion. You were the best of dis­trac­tion and now I don’t even have you. Because I’ve beaten you. And you know what? In the end, it was easy. Yeah…t’was easy…now I have to go back to play with the ordi­nary people.

Sher­lock The Reichen­bach Fall 2012

A few days ago I got an e-​mail from Joy McCann about a new blog she had called Tea Cozy Mys­ter­ies and the cur­rent post is on the plethora of new Sher­lock Holmes series/​movies out there, the best of which is the BBC’s Sher­lock that I quote above.

Today Cyn­thia Yockey argues against gun free zones and their dan­ger and makes a point that needs mak­ing

Most mass mur­der­ers include sui­cide in their attack plan. This fact is extremely use­ful in pre­vent­ing mass mur­ders and reduc­ing the death toll of those that occur. Why? Because we need to accel­er­ate the killer’s sce­nario for the cir­cum­stances in which he has planned to kill him­self. Isn’t that always when the armed respon­ders have arrived and he’s cor­nered? That’s why we need plenty of civil­ians in schools, uni­ver­si­ties, churches, the­aters and shop­ping malls who have con­cealed carry per­mits, weapons and the skill to use them. The sooner there’s return fire, the sooner the sui­cide is trig­gered and the killing stops. In addi­tion, I pre­dict that there will be a tip­ping point when there are enough peo­ple with guns and con­cealed carry per­mits that would-​be mass mur­der­ers won’t like their odds and will give up on their plans.

This is a pow­er­ful argu­ment for my school pro­tec­tion plan but it raises an impor­tant point.

Peo­ple have talked a lot about the var­i­ous psy­cho­log­i­cal roots of killers such as the one in Ct. When these events occur the ques­tion is asked over and over again: What was in their mind? What drove them? What did they have inside them that took them over the edge? What made them so bored, so in need of dis­trac­tion so void of pur­pose that they see no point in “Say­ing Alive” or any moral imper­a­tive in not end­ing the lives of others?

Strangely enough I find the answer to this ques­tion in…MeTV

About two years ago MeTV. Mem­o­rable Enter­tain­ment Tele­vi­sion joined the ranks of the hun­dreds of TV net­works out there. Locally there is a Boston and a New Hamp­shire ver­sion in my cable pack­age and they show a vast col­lec­tion of shows from the 50 thru the 80.

I’ve been look­ing at the shows from the 50’s and early 60’s such as Daniel Boone, Donna Reed, Gun­smoke, the Big Val­ley, The Bev­erly Hill­bil­lies, Pet­ti­coat Junc­tion, The Rifle­man, Star Trek and Hogan’s Heroes.

Tele­vi­sion was still fairly young and these pro­grams influ­enced the cul­ture if you don’t believe it ask Rus­sell John­son how many time he was told by peo­ple their move toward sci­ence started with the Pro­fes­sor, how many peo­ple thought of space sci­ences after see­ing Mr. Scott or how many young peo­ple today see NCIS and think Law enforce­ment & foren­sics or the Big Bang The­ory and think Physics & science.

But there were other val­ues rein­forced, honor, the virtue of hard work, per­se­ver­ance, respect par­tic­u­larly for women and the role of faith in life.

In short they rein­forced a moral base, the Judeo-​Christian Cul­tural moral base and the val­ues it advanced.

Now two gen­er­a­tions later after that most nar­cis­sis­tic gen­er­a­tion, the baby boomers ban­ished the val­ues of their par­ents from schools and TV and our pop­u­lar cul­ture by peo­ple like the Metal Group Lamb Of God, whose lyri­cal themes are described in Wikipedia: They fre­quently use bib­li­cal ref­er­ences, but often con­vey anti-​religious sen­ti­ment was shocked SHOCKED by their absense:

a dis­turb­ing num­ber of con­cert­go­ers made noise, talked and gen­er­ally dis­rupted the oth­er­wise peace­ful moment.

That moment being a requested moment of silence for the dead in Newtown

I am so dis­gusted right now– if you were one of those who wouldn’t shut up for SIXTY LOUSY SEC­ONDS to honor twenty MUR­DERED CHIL­DREN– go look in the mir­ror. You are look­ing at a piece of sh**.

Your par­ents are obvi­ously pieces of sh** too, because they raised you to behave with no dignity.

Dig­nity? Dig­nity is defined by cul­ture, the cul­ture of dig­nity has been rejected by many like your­self and replaced by the one where main­line online mag­a­zines defend sex with Don­keys.

The truth is very sim­ple, one of the things that Chris­tian­ity and the Judeo Chris­t­ian Cul­ture pro­vides is a soci­ety that has pos­i­tive val­ues. That indi­vid­u­als and insti­tu­tions haven’t always lived up to those val­ues doesn’t make the val­ues any less valid than a cor­rupt cop means the police should be disbanded.

For the last 50 years our media, our pop cul­ture and those cel­e­brated by both have told us over and over again how the Judeo-​Christian cul­ture that was once the norm has led to oppres­sion and held peo­ple back. Those who have for gen­er­a­tions urged and pro­moted its aban­don­ment for the sake of nar­cis­sism now are shocked that young peo­ple with no cen­ter, no faith and no cul­ture that rein­forced those pos­i­tive val­ues are so anx­ious to kill them­selves either on their own or via sui­cide by notoriety?

Peo­ple are talk­ing about how first per­son shoot­ers may have an influ­ence on peo­ple, vio­lent lyrics, sui­cide wishes, misog­y­nis­tic rap, and more has on the cul­ture today. Obvi­ously if these things alone were the root cause of this type of stuff we would have more shoot­ings then we do, but for some who are weak or dis­turbed or in despair Judeo-​christian val­ues pro­vided a cul­tural fire­wall that can help restrain those who need restrain­ing, even if you don’t buy the under­ly­ing reli­gion behind it.

Marx once said that reli­gion was the opi­ate of the masses, even if you don’t believe in reli­gion in gen­eral or Chris­tian­ity in par­tic­u­lar I think a stronger dose of this opi­ate might have done some real good here.

I think Cyn­thia Yockey’s point above is very valid, but wouldn’t it be nice if it wasn’t? Wouldn’t it be bet­ter if we had a cul­ture where the very thought of sui­cide among youth, let alone sui­cide cou­pled with mass mur­der wasn’t even on the table?

I sub­mit and sug­gest that the return of those val­ues rep­re­sent a greater hor­ror to those baby boomers lead­ing our cul­ture, cry­ing for the dis­ar­ma­ment of all but their body­guards, than the shoot­ings in New­town ever will.

They will accept gladly inflict a new gen­er­a­tion of Mori­arty wannabes than admit their par­ents were right.