Mass Shootings & Alienation — A Crisis of Capitalism

“I am not a Superhero; I can’t save the world, but I wouldn't do it if I had a choice” so goes the lyrics from performing artist Tommy-Lee Sparta.

Of course, he is not a Superhero. But he has the potential to be a Super Villain. Why wouldn't he save the world if he had a choice? Is the world that fucked up? Are we that fucked as a world that he would not save us if he were in a position to do so? Is the world that bad? Well, the answer is yes, according to him. It's a messed-up world.

The singer is alienated. Whilst many are trying to save the world, many more do not really care if the world ends today, good riddance of bad rubbish, they will say. Many many people would gladly proclaim the end and stand on top of a hill celebrating the end of the world, even if it consumes them in the process. Why is that so?

Many people are alienated. It's a crisis. Many people feel like they don't belong. They don't feel they are part of us. They feel they don't belong here. They feel unwanted and estranged.

Whilst we are searching for aliens and extra-terrestrial life, aliens actually live amongst us, within us, and inside us. People we see every day, who look like us but are alienated, right here on earth. That is the crisis.

The Crisis of Alienation was put forward by Karl Marx a long time ago and has been somewhat forgotten about. It's not mentioned as a crisis, yet it is ever present under a global capitalistic economic model. You feel that you are alone. You feel that the world is against you, and you feel that you are living but somehow missing out on something. The feeling is universal among workers. You feel alienated. You feel like you don't really belong here. You almost feel like an alien. It is a crisis that has always been there but has been magnified by the current economic setup.

When Karl Marx mentioned Alienation, he didn't know what he was talking about. He had seen some things and had some ideas, but he hadn't seen what we have seen. We are seeing a real crisis of alienation playing out in real time. Marx focused on the proletariat worker. He did not visualize the entire spectrum of humans being alienated including school kids and teenagers.

Mass Shootings in the US are a crisis. What type of a crisis is it? It is a crisis of alienation. The crisis of alienation is a crisis of capitalism.

Mental Health Problems are predominantly a crisis of alienation

What makes a person pull out a gun and fire randomly at other human beings? The person is obviously not of a sound mind. No sane human being would do that in the absence of war. Surely the mass shooter is not mentally healthy.

Mental health problems have a variety of sources but one of the most common ones is the problem of alienation. When a person has been alienated from a section of society, he or she dehumanizes either himself/herself or that section of society.

The mental health problems most of us have today are a direct result of the competitive economic system that we live in. A system that does not value personhood and humanity since these cannot be valued in monetary terms.

Karl Marx identified three main ways in which the capitalist system alienates people. The worker is firstly alienated from his own labor and the fruits of his labor. The fragmented production process is itself alienating. The worker is secondly alienated from the others and thirdly alienated from the self. These sorts of alienations pose an existential crisis that needs to be resolved. The more capitalist the system becomes, the greater the alienation.

How does this trickle down to teenagers? It's via parents who are themselves alienated not having sufficient capacity to raise kids in a way that protects them from the alienation. In fact, capitalism doesn't respect parenting at all. Too much time is spent working (chasing money) leaving a little bit of time for leisure. Because life is no longer communal, collective parenting takes a hit. Then there is also parental alienation.

The effect of Parental Alienation on kids is devastating. We have parents who are alienated by capitalism conflicting with each other, then separating and proceeding to alienate one parent from the kids causing the kids to be alienated from one parent or even both. When these kids become a societal problem, we blame the kid or the parent. But it is we as a society who collectively create this problem because of the economic system that we love so much.

Mental health problems that are now endemic are driven by alienation which is something that is magnified by capitalism. It's the price we pay. The frequency of mass shootings is just the surface. It's the extreme end of alienation. There are millions more silently suffering from alienation with no ways to resolve it because it's not seen as a systematic problem.

Capitalism can Fix Alienation

Karl Marx was wrong in thinking that capitalism cannot fix alienation. This is a problem that capitalism can fix by trans-humanizing people. But to get to that solution, alienation has to (firstly) be seen as a problem and secondly as a problem that can be fixed.

Trans-humanization can happen by changing the mentality of each person, making people more machine-like, and reducing the natural humanity that is at odds with modernity and capitalism. By treating the human as the subject that needs to be transformed, the economic system becomes the object that does not need to be transformed. Transformed humans will be better at handling their role in the civilization without suffering from frictions of internal inconsistencies.

If this cannot be done, then capitalism itself needs to be edited to be compatible with the natural man. Even though technological advances might enable transhumanization, humans themselves might not want to be trans-humanized.

If capitalism fails to fix alienation, then it also fails to stop mass shootings.

People in the USA can blame the right-wing gun-trotters, blame left-wing policies, blame immigrants, blame Islamists, blame this one, and blame that one, but the root of the problem is the economic system that alienates us and widens our differences. We are all victims of the capitalist system that drives alienation to a whole new level. Mass shootings are only starting. Even if we take guns away, the pressure-buss-pipe principle will ensure that some other violent outlet will be available.

Most people don't really want to be trans-humanized. Thus, the mass shootings problem is a problem that cannot be easily fixed.

Ciao!