Authors: Brooks Brown Rob Merritt
So today I'm standing at that same spot where I watched as the end of my world came driving into Columbine's parking lot. I'm standing
alone, smoking a cigarette, the same way I did then. Thinking. Reflecting. Trying to make sense of everything.
Inside the school, our principal, Frank DeAngelis, is leading a collection of students and staff in a massive spirit assembly, reading aloud the words of President Clinton, telling everyone that we're all going to move forward, that the hate in our world “must turn to love.”
At least, that's what I would read in the papers later. I didn't see it. I didn't hear it. I wasn't interested—nor did I have much of an interest in the “closure stories” being prepared by the pool of media nearby in Clement Park, ready to close the door on Columbine and declare the whole thing as the work of two sick, deranged kids who represent nothing more than the work of the devil, or of violent video games, or just aberrations in an otherwise perfectly civilized high school.
I knew how ludicrous that was. I knew that we were nowhere near closure on Columbine. We still aren't. I knew Eric and Dylan far better than these analysts who were telling us about the harmful effects of Doom. I knew them far better than Principal DeAngelis, who behind his tears and speeches had no time for the kids like us, who existed outside the norm and were punished daily by our peers because of it.
I knew that there were more Erics and Dylans out there, and I knew why their disenchantment was growing. I could see the void they were falling into—and I knew that void was getting bigger.
So I'm mourning the dead today, standing in this spot—this spot that never used to be anything significant—for the first time in a year. But I'm not interested in praying for a solution. I'm interested in finding one right now, in the real world.
This book is my first step.
FROM THE MOMENT I CHOSE TO BEGIN THIS PROJECT, I KNEW THERE would be people criticizing me for it. Many people think that “Columbine is done”—that it's something not worth dredging up again, because we've heard enough about what happened. “It's time to move on,” they say.
The reason they say this is that the public has settled on what they think caused Columbine: two sick, crazy boys who killed people because they were completely different from the rest of us. “It's a tragic thing,” they'll say, “but not something that requires any further thought.” There are some who still question the behavior of the police that day—as well they should—but there aren't many who are still asking questions about the killers themselves.
Except, of course, for young people.
The people who are still in high school know what's going on. They know there's something much, much bigger behind Columbine than what the rest of the world has been led to believe. These folks want to know who Eric and Dylan were. They want to know why two kids who are just like the people they share the school hallways with every day would turn around and do what they did.
Why? Because they see parallels with Columbine at their own schools every day.
The kids asking these questions are the kids who play video games like
Doom
, but don't feel the urge to imitate them in real life. They're the juggalos who listen to Insane Clown Posse rap about brutality and serial killers, but have no desire to kill anyone. They're the “loner” kids who have exhibited all the “warning signs” that experts go on the talk shows about, yet are still doing fine.
These are the kids who hear politicians blaming TV and music and video games, and shake their heads, because they know that's not where the problem really lies. These are the kids who can feel the pull of something else out there—the real cause of Eric and Dylan—and are asking themselves what it is.
Many people aren't willing to get their hands dirty by probing the true reasons behind what happened at Columbine. It's easier to believe in quick fixes than to accept what the real problems might be.
After all, what's the easier sell for a politician: to go out there and tell people that they've screwed up, that they need to take better care of their kids, that they've created an ugly, uncaring society for the next generation, and that we need to search our own souls for a solution?
Or to just tell them that the evil entertainment industry is ruining our kids?
It's the second option that many seem to prefer. It gets big ratings on TV and high approval ratings for politicians, and makes everybody feel good by providing them with a designated villain. It's much easier to say that
Doom
and
South Park
are ruining our children than to think that maybe we have something to do with it, too.
Want to blame the entertainment industry? Consider this: The entertainment industry makes money by giving people what they want. The day that violent movies stop turning a profit, violent movies will disappear.
The day that fighting games lose their appeal is the day that games like
Mortal Kombat
will vanish. The day that teenagers no longer relate to the angry music of Limp Bizkit or Nine Inch Nails is the day those bands will cease to sell records. The entertainment industry doesn't impose some kind of evil personality on consumers that's foreign to us; it feeds on who we are and how we live.
Even so, the music industry was one of the biggest targets criticized after the attack on Columbine. Eric and Dylan were huge fans of German techno/metal. They were especially partial to bands like Rammstein and KMFDM; since Eric had taken German for years, he could translate the lyrics, and he liked the fact that others couldn't understand what he was listening to. Eric put quotes from his favorite bands on his Web site. He wore a KMFDM hat to school all the time. His co-workers at Blackjack Pizza say he was always singing the praises of his favorite bands and trying to get others to listen to them.
After Columbine happened, Rammstein and KMFDM became “villains” in the eyes of the pro-censorship folk. TV news reports pulled out one quote from Rammstein that went, “You in the schoolyard / I'm ready for killing.”
Yet music doesn't teach people to kill. Music creates an emotion, whether it's anger, sorrow, thoughtfulness, happiness, or humor. What people do with their emotions is up to them. But music doesn't tell people what to do.
Some have criticized Insane Clown Posse because their lyrics involve sex, murder, and brutality, laced with dark humor. But ICP themselves put it best: they're wearing clown makeup. If you take what they have to say that seriously, then you have something wrong with you—and that's not ICP's fault.
Marilyn Manson wears a $25 white contact lens in his left eye. He wears costumes onstage. These are not the sages of our age. They aren't leaders. They are entertainers. And although Marilyn Manson, ICP, and
Rammstein have some songs with a very powerful message, they aren't trying to change the world. They're just writing about what they think.
So why is their music so violent? Simple—our society is a violent culture in and of itself, and our music is a reflection of that.
Ayn Rand wrote, “Would you follow the advice of someone who told you that you must fight tuberculosis by confining the treatment to its symptoms—that you must treat the cough, the high temperature, the loss of weight—but must refuse to consider or to touch its cause, the germs in the patient's lungs, in order not to antagonize the germs? Do not adopt such a course in politics.”
Music is the same way; it's a symptom, not a cause. Violent music did not just appear one day and unleash violence upon the world. Society created violent music, because there was something happening in society that made that kind of music appealing.
So the bigger question is this: What is happening to make society want this kind of entertainment? What do kids see happening in real life that makes violent video games so appealing?
Every day on the news kids can see that we're living in a violent world, where adults murder, rape, and steal from one another on a regular basis. Real life is far worse than anything Hollywood or game manufacturers have to offer.
If real-life violence is the problem, would tougher gun laws prevent another Columbine?
Not really. Existing laws already state that guns cannot be sold to youths under eighteen, and Eric and Dylan found a way around that. Three of their guns were purchased at a gun show, with the help of a fellow student who was eighteen. Their TEC-9 handgun was bought illegally through a network of friends; the final transaction took place behind a pizza store.
No matter how strict the gun laws were, Eric and Dylan were determined to find a way around them. If people want to buy weapons illegally, it's only a matter of time before they succeed.
Did Eric and Dylan succeed in getting the guns because their parents weren't paying attention? Were the desire and the means to kill a result of parental negligence? After violent music and media, the parents are the next-favorite target of those looking for quick answers.
I can't speak for Eric Harris; I didn't know his family well enough to comment one way or the other. But I know Dylan Klebold came from a good home, with two loving parents who were far better to him than many other parents I know. It doesn't make any more sense to blame them than it does to blame Marilyn Manson.
Perhaps the answers lie a little deeper. Perhaps we have to look toward ourselves.
A human being is only that which he or she experiences. The human mind at birth is a “tabula rasa”—in other words, we come into the world with a blank slate. We learn from all that we see and hear, and this shapes our beliefs.
What Eric and Dylan saw happening in the real world shaped them more than any movie or video game. In my opinion, what they experienced in the real world is what we should be investigating.
Kids today are growing up in a world that can only be described as “the blind leading the blind.” It's a world where parents, both of whom are working outside the home and wrapped up in their own lives, are leaving the upbringing of their children to public school teachers—who are unprepared both emotionally and logistically for such a feat—and television, where programs teach complicated, skewed morals that kids' young minds aren't yet ready to digest.
Kids are raised on the playgrounds of their schools, where they learn that “might makes right” and that physical brawn is a far more important asset than intelligence and cunning. Yet they also learn that when they fight back, they are punished by the people who are supposed to protect them and to dispense justice.
Dylan was harassed by kids who had never been taught why it's wrong to beat up another classmate, or whose own self-esteem was so crushed that they felt they had to destroy his, too, so theirs could be pumped up a little more.
The world, at its heart, has logical rules. Yet young people today are being taught that the opposite is true. Kids grow up in a world where they learn through experience that life is cruel, that their fellow human beings are mean-spirited bullies, and that basic questions about right and wrong are answered with rules that have no basis in reason other than “Because I said so.”
As a result, they hunt for something else to believe in.
Dylan was a smart kid who could see the injustices of the world as clearly as I could. He was frustrated by them, and, like many other kids, he saw a bleak future for our generation.
Eric Harris felt much the same way.
Eric had been moved around all his life, and had known the difficulties of trying to fit in at one strange school after another. Like Dylan, Eric was exceptionally smart. And like Dylan, Eric saw the injustices of the world quite clearly, even as he was getting beat up in the high school locker room or jumping to avoid the glass bottles thrown at him out of the passing cars of Columbine football players.
The difference was, Eric had a dark side. He had a mean streak that was only fueled by the injustices he saw. He chose to take revenge, in the most destructive way he could think of—and once he had that solution in mind, he convinced Dylan that it was a revenge that was deserved.
Why? What made them cross that line? What made it possible for Eric to convince Dylan that they should murder thirteen innocent people? Why were Eric and Dylan's morals and ethics so depleted that they came to this point? Why were they capable of killing on such a grand scale?
These are the hard questions, and the answers do not come easy.
Yet, no matter how hard it may be to find those answers, we have to start the search. The fact of the matter is that school shootings are continuing to happen. We can just sit back and call the shooters “sick monsters, completely different from us,” and decide that the problem will be solved by censoring music and violence in movies. Or we can accept that there are more Erics and Dylans out there, who are slowly being driven by society down the same path—and that if we act now, we can still reach them before it's too late.
This book represents a piece of closure on this chapter of my life. I'm finally getting my story out—a story of growing up labeled as an “outsider” in the school system, trying to get by each day in the face of cruelty and indifference.
It's a story of living in fear even before the killings, the object of Eric Harris's death threats. It's a story of being labeled a suspect by the police after I dared to suggest that they could have stopped the killings by acting on the information I'd given them.
It's a story of being powerless to get answers from the police once the investigation was underway, and watching as one lie after another emerged about that day.
Most of all, my story is one of growing up with a friend I thought I knew, then watching him become something I never imagined he could be.
My hope is that the people who read this will look at the big picture behind Columbine, and see where things need to change. I hope they
recognize that they're not alone when they question what happened that day, or when they wonder what's really wrong with our society.
I hope that people will open their eyes.
LONG BEFORE ERIC HARRIS EVER ENTERED THE PICTURE, DYLAN Klebold was my friend.