This is not my first attempt at threading the needle of timing, aiming to publish something on the subject within the ever-narrowing window between mass shootings; while avoiding charges of negligence or sensationalism. I'm optimistic that this time I will make it to the ‘publish’ button before another sociopath makes it into the chicken coop.
In the always heated debate around gun control, one aspect is often overlooked: gun ownership is a public good. The 2nd Amendment benefits us all, regardless of personal gun ownership or our stance on firearms. Whether you draw a distinction between the individual act of 'owning a gun' and the diffuse, collective 'right to bear arms', we all reap the potential deterrence benefits offered by the prospect that 'someone might have a gun' to shoot back at sociopaths.
And that’s coming from someone who’s admittedly not a gun enthusiast. I’ve never owned a firearm, hunting has never appealed to me, and my upbringing wasn't steeped in gun culture. My experience is limited to a few leisurely visits to shooting ranges, yet I still acknowledge the benefits that I indirectly enjoy due to the 2nd Amendment.
Guns are a cornerstone of free societies. Like any tool — be it books, shovels, or computers — guns amplify human potential. Which can be harnessed for both good and evil. Moreover, there’s no dichotomy between guns and books; the literary canon we cherish today was shaped by societies that held superior firepower.
Guns are a book’s best friends
Yet, the free societies that these tools helped to build, also give rise to unintended consequences that can be amplified by them. Many of these are tied to the collective cynicism that takes root in an era of abundance, when life gets to easy and people get too soft. The phenomenon of mass shootings cannot be disconnected from escalating rates of suicide, self-harm - which includes the normalisation of self-mutilation - and depression. There isn't a gun crisis; there is a moral and cognitive crisis.
In the wake of a mass shooting, it's tempting to place blame on fringe groups by observing the stripes of the shooter du jour (for example, ‘a trans person shot a group of kids’ or ‘a white supremacist massacred African Americans shopping for groceries’). However, such accusations often fail to withstand scrutiny, they are more of a defensive move akin to a skunk letting loose a cloud of stench, in a desperate attempt to vanish into the confusion.
Because these shooters aren't responding to a moral imperative, even a pretentious one; they're succumbing to the call of the void. They are not the heralds of a revolution-to-be, they’re the output of an assembly line that treats children as raw inputs and churns out sociopaths. The critical transformation involves the warping of a pliable mind, and the latest accessory is a loaded gun. The impact extends beyond those who openly adopt the underpinning ideology, affecting everyone who has been —even if unwillingly — exposed to it.
Shooters’ Row
“Aujourd’hui, maman est morte. Ou peut-être hier, je ne sais pas.
(Mom died today. Or maybe it was yesterday, I don't know.)”
Albert Camus, The Outsider
The surprisingly controversial opening line of The Outsider is a short story in itself. Much like the famously apocryphal six-word story by Hemingway (“For sale: baby shoes, never worn”), it provides almost all of the information we need to know —or better yet, can know —, to understand the story.
Meursault, the protagonist of The Outsider, is a person that is not associated to a personality. He is an outsider to himself, a map of nonexistent territory. He has no values or preferences. A white canvas, an empty office.
In the literary shooters’ row, another character stands in opposition to Meursault: Dostoevsky's Rodion Raskolnikov (Crime & Punishment). In many ways, and by Camus's own admission, Meursault revisits the themes that conflict Raskolnikov: the acts, judgment, sin, and law… only Meursault does so a century later, at a time when these were already sold a discount, thus experiencing no conflicts.
Raskolnikov meticulously plans his crime, driven by an intricate philosophy and a desperate need. His action stems from the belief that he can transcend societal norms and moral laws —he fashions himself a new, revolutionary Napoleon. After the murder, he is burdened with guilt, a strong indicator of the moral judgment that preceded his crime.
Meursault, on the other hand, killing of an Arab man is more spontaneous, driven by a moment of existential angst rather than a premeditated plan. There is no moral judgment, no philosophical reasoning, and, most notably, no subsequent guilt. His motive seems inexplicable, even absurd, his act appears as an unfathomable response to a sequence of pedestrian events, emphasising the inherent absurdity that took hold of life in the early 20th century.
Unlike Raskolnikov, Meursault is never given a first name, a deliberate omission that reinforces the sense of detachment and alienation inherent in The Outsider. Hence, I wasn't surprised that Meursault came to mind when I first heard about the 'transgender shooter' in Nashville, Audrey Hale.
Audrey Hale used to go by the male name 'Aiden' and preferred the pronouns 'he/him.' I wonder if Meursault's would have a preferred first name and pronouns. Like Meursault, Audrey Hale was an outsider. Meursault was an outsider not due to being a French man in Algeria, but because he was never present in his own self. He was in a perpetual existential crisis, embodying the zeitgeist during the secularisation of the West that was ongoing then.
Similarly, Audrey Hale was not an outsider because she fashioned herself as transgender — a man in the body of a woman — but because she wasn't inside herself anymore. She fell prey to an ideology that alienated her, a sort of psychological auto-immune disease, leaving her perpetually falling through the cracks of the rapidly decaying fabric of the woke society of the early 21st century.
While the parallels are too uncanny to ignore, there are potential key differences between Meursault and Audrey Hale. Hale was likely disturbed by the recent death of a close friend (or lover?). Her crime was premeditated. She also allegedly left a manifesto. She represents a troubling development: a hybrid of sorts, three-quarters Meursault, one-quarter Raskolnikov. Her actions might be a damning indictment of the civilisational shift we are living.
The Ugly Ducklings That Never Were
“What's in a name? That which we call a rose/ By any other name would smell as sweet.”
William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliette
Irrespective of their reactions to past external tragedies, both Audrey Hale and Meursault are defined by tragedies of their own making. Did Meursault specifically set out to kill the Arab man at the beach? Did Audrey Hale aim to target specifically Christian kids at a school? Both remain unclear.
While the shootings were certainly not accidents, we cannot be fully convinced that the shooters were entirely aware of their actions in both cases. Their alienation was so extensive and pervasive that their actions likely resulted more from external influences than their own internal judgment, if any.
Meursault is probably history's first Non-Player Character (NPC). This concept is crucial: Meursault as an NPC that has no psychological markers. Throughout the entire novel, he wanders from point to point, performing seemingly mundane, if not random, actions. At times, reading The Outsider can feel like you are following a random NPC around in Grand Theft Auto V.
However, Meursault can only exist as the first NPC to break into the limelight because he follows a tradition of characters with defined personalities guiding their actions — like Raskolnikov, Macbeth, or even Don Quixote. Similarly, Audrey Hale can only exist in her pseudo-existence because of bridge shooters like Dylann Roof or Omar Mateen.
Much like Camus, the Nashville PD also deliberately neglected crucial details about the shooter's motivation. Her manifesto was never released. Not that I expect her manifesto to contain anything original, intimate, or introspective about her motivations. It likely just contains unadulterated trans ideology nonsense. After all, it's not her manifesto but the woke culture’s manifesto, broadcast daily on live TV, featured in Disney movies, displayed on beer cans, and rapidly encroaching into classrooms.
Just as Modernism redefined the life cycle of literary characters from a succession of events to a succession of ideas, our own real-life cycles are transforming from a succession of actions into a succession of experiences. That's why life feels so normal in front of a TV or computer screen.
When your judgment no longer maps to your actions, you cease to refer back to a 'central self' that could be called a personality, or even personhood. You stop being an individual belonging to a family and become an NPC that belongs to a group.
Like Meursault, you don't think much about what you're doing, blunting the sharp edges of remorse or regret. When you commit an evil act—knowing it is evil—but must deal with the moral consequences (like Raskolnikov), you can still strive for salvation. It's a different matter entirely when you commit a crime and don't even bother with the moral fallout because good and evil are subjective, and every perpetrator is also a victim if you twist the narrative just enough.
That's the siren's call of contemporary society, shouting 'jump' to any person on the brink of a building’s roof. 'Jump' here can mean many things: 'change your name,' 'cut your genitals,' 'take hormones to self-castrate.' Be 'yourself,' just not the one inside you.
In the end, Audrey Hale and Meursault are ugly ducklings that never became swans. They ended as merely ducks, fated to remain unremarkable and insignificant. The hidden tragedy is that Audrey Hale remained an ugly duckling because her wings were nipped in the bud by dilettante wokeness.
Eros, Thanatos, Persephone and Hades
“Pride goeth before destruction: and the spirit is lifted up before a fall.”
Proverbs 16:18
It's entirely possible that a run of the mill progressive might read The Outsider and not even realise that Meursault is a sociopath. They might consider him just a normal, average person. When amorality becomes so chronic and constant, people begin accepting it as the new normal.
They will — correctly — say that Meursault is not driven by a supposedly higher moral standard and that he is not a revolutionary. They will then conclude — erroneously — that he is not acting under the influence of a militant society and his actions aren't even political. Sartre, for that matter, was not a revolutionary himself. He wanted others to be revolutionaries on his behalf. And Meursault, of course, is the quintessential other.
In our day and age, the sociopath assembly line has streamlined Sartre's dream: schools have become preemptive reeducation camps. The perpetual existential crisis of subjectivism has weaponised suicidal thoughts as a panacea, the ultimate way to avoid dealing with the consequences of one's actions. A goal for which any means is justified.
While progressives see Audrey Hale’s generation as a step towards a Meursault-type ubermenschen, free from morals and judgment; conservatives hold onto the hope that a sign of moral consciousness will arrive spontaneously to halt the process. But it doesn’t happen, so conservatives grow frustrated. Not because they are politically (or even culturally) opposed, but because they see Reason being exterminated from public life. And that's not because progressives are ignorant, but rather because they have renounced any objective moral standards.
And that's why it's so hard to reach out to and dialogue with the ‘Audrey Hales,’ because they lack a chunk of their souls. They can't even dialogue with themselves. It's hard to tell if Meursault or Audrey Hale are out of touch with reality, because they simply aren't interested in interacting with the objective world. They are suffering, but they prefer not to know they are suffering.
In Freudian terms, Audrey fell prey to the hedonistic Eros instinct, a pursuit of experiences delivering quick bursts of irrational pleasure in the form of societal validation (to be a good girl, Audrey needed to be a boy). When it fails, it leads to a profound sense of alienation, an existential suffering that can only be relieved by the death instinct (Thanatos), a drive to self-destruction, and the return to an inanimate state.
Audrey Hale maxed out (or overdosed) on Eros, as evidenced by the fact that she was driven to the idea of becoming a man, even though she could never be a man. She was already so numb to experiencing reality that the result was self-hatred. At a more fundamental level, she didn't want to be a man, she just didn't want to be herself anymore. Society just offered transgenderism as a cop out.
And when the Eros-to-Thanatos pipeline becomes the cultural norm, we are inserted into a context of what Emile Durkheim called ‘anomie,’ a state where there is a breakdown of moral values and ethical standards in a society. A society that doesn’t map into a community, made up of people who don’t map into personalities.
The question that remains is: what's the maximum proportion of sociopaths in a society before sociopathy becomes the norm? What's the tipping point on the sociopaths' march towards a Pathocracy?
P.S.: Since this text is already much longer than I intended, I will break it into two parts and address this question over the next week. Thanks for reading it!