Even though one of the foundations of this site is to stay positive, I can't ignore some of the ugly things that happen in society. As much as we try to affect the world in a positive way, sometime it seems like the world is pushing back.

Of course, that's not really the case. I believe that most people do want peace and prosperity, but the overwhelming violence caused by individuals can shake that perception sometimes.

The recent violence and death on the campus of Virginia Tech by what appears to be a lone shooter is a senseless act that many people are trying to make sense of. Something like this is so far outside the realm of what is acceptable human behavior that no sense can be made of it. Different segments of society will try to blame guns, blame social stress, blame who-knows-what.

In trying to make sense out of the senselessness the natural reaction is to try and find out what caused a person to snap like that and take steps to make sure that doesn't happen again. I'm not a social scientist, so when I look at society and the individuals in it as a system I come at it from a logical point of view. The problem with that is that people tend to be hugely illogical. That's actually a good thing, otherwise we all just be like machines, which would be predictable (mostly), but boring.

One individual acting out like this is what's called an "outlier" in statistical terms. That means if you were to draw a graph of normal actions or behaviors, this data point would be so far off of the line drawn through all of the other data points that it is compeletely unpredictable. When dealing with systems you would generally just ignore that data point and develop the system around the predictable parts.

That approach does not work so well when you deal with the possibilities of catastrophic failure, such as when there is the result of people dying. When looking at this individuals motives (and not the methods) for commiting the violence, the lessons learned should be put towards fixing the system so that there are fewer outliers to begin with, rather than just trying to reduce the number of methods for violence.

When dealing with people, the "system" is society and community. As an engineer, my normal statement would be to say, "fix the system if you want better results". A more general way to say that is "adjust the system if you want results different from what you are currently getting". This is where it gets complicated and you start running into the "big idea" stuff like shaping societies and community.

I predict that much of what we learn about the individual who brought grief into the lives of so many this week will match the pattern we have seen before: a loner, not many friends, not involved with the community, etc. Now a person who fits that description is not destined to commit violent acts, but on the other side of that coin it's not often that you hear of a person who was involved with their community, helped other people out, had lots of friends, a strong family life, etc go completely off the deep end and go on a shooting spree.

If people are truly looking for an end to violence in society, I propose that the answer is in the society.

The natural reaction for most people when dealing with someone who wants to be left alone is to just leave them alone. This might not be the healthiest path for that person, but it's easier for everyone else. Most of the time nothing bad comes from it, other than "the loner" becoming more isolated.

However, this process also creates the "outliers" that have the potential to really cause havoc and rend the peaceful lives of healthy families in an instant.

I wish I had answers here, but the best idea I can come up with is for all of us who want a healthier, peaceful society is to try and stay involved with people who tell us they want to be left alone, but really need us in their lives.