A few weeks back, after the Virginia Tech shootings, I wrote a fairly long post about how I was concerned that a precedent had been set for teachers to essentially “profile” problem students by what they wore or wrote. In writing that post, I realized I was overreacting and perhaps a bit paranoid. So I shelved it.

In the writing of it, I had worked through a few things for myself and understood that posting it was unnecessary.

Or was it? Today I read about this situation in Chicago and I can’t help but wonder. As I read the story, I was reminded of a passage from what I wrote a few weeks back…

Disturbed people do, say, and sometimes write disturbing things. No argument. But disturbing writing is not “proof” that someone is dangerous.

For much of high school and college, I wore a long black trench coat and moped around incessantly. I listened to music and read books with darker themes. I wrote plays, stories, and poems with fairly dark themes as well. I wasn’t by any stretch a “loner” but, at a glance, I looked and acted a hell of a lot like the profile for a typical school shooter — not unlike, of course, thousands and thousands of other students out there.

Also, I agree with Brian Crecente that the utterly, utterly predictable reaction to name video games as the cause of violent behavior is, well, bullshit. Violent behavior — of any kind — is not a natural by product of violent media. Violence is common to human experience. We should not be surprised or shocked when it shows up in our art.

An obsessive interest in violence and violent media, however, can serve as a fairly good indicator that someone has a problem. And it’s always a good idea to assume that someone else’s problem could end up being your problem, eventually. When that’s the case, it’s good to try and help solve the problem.

I still believe that. But the mentality of One = All is a dangerous tendency that we can too easily slip into. As a result, innocent people end up going to forced counseling, to jail, to internment camps.

No, I don’t think that’s a stretch. I don’t think it’s paranoid. It has happened in the past, it is happening now, and and there’s no reason to think that it won’t happen in the future.

This is not a political statement. This is not a cultural issue or a social response. This is a behavior hardwired into our DNA. In its proper execution, it helps us survive. Too often, however, we consume and enslave ourselves.

Which is not to say that we should not be diligent. As parents, as teachers, we should pay attention to what our children are watching, listen to what they are saying, and be mindful of what they are creating.

They should be free to have that expression and we should freely and, with love, have an ongoing conversation with them about it. That’s the only way we’ll know how best to understand and help them.

The lesson to be learned from all of this is not to react with fear and suspicion, but with love and respect.