School Shootings in a Postmodern Age of Nihilism
Why do so many young Americans find no meaning or purpose in life, and why do record numbers of teenagers have a desire to commit mass murder?
Less than a week ago, on Monday, December 16, 2024, a fifteen-year-old student at Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, Wisconsin, named Natalie Rupnow, opened fire during study hall. Using what appears to be a 9mm pistol, the girl—who reportedly preferred to be called Samantha—attempted to murder as many people as possible.
She succeeded in killing a teacher, a fellow student, and herself, while wounding several others, some critically.
For those who enjoy audio versions of Zetetic Questions, here is the audio for this essay.
This Substack is not a news outlet. I will not attempt to provide up-to-the-minute developments in this tragic case—that information is readily available elsewhere. Instead, I want to step back and examine the larger cultural and philosophical framework in which such heinous acts increasingly occur: our postmodern culture of nihilism, which, I have argued repeatedly, is the greatest mental health crisis of our time and is closely connected to the increasing frequency of random mass murders.
The Age of Nihilism
Nihilism, from the Latin nihil (meaning “nothing”), is a philosophy of moral nothingness, or moral emptiness. It asserts that there are no ultimate, non-arbitrary standards of right and wrong, justice or injustice, or truth and falsehood.
According to nihilism, the world is nothing but matter in motion—a domain best understood through physics: power, force, and the ability to move objects (or people) to achieve outcomes.
When diluted for popular consumption, these core tenets of nihilism are translated as cultural relativism and an obsession with power dynamics.
When university-educated Americans ask, “Who’s to say what’s right or wrong?” they assume the question is rhetorical. They assume the question is unanswerable because they also assume no objective standard of morality exists—only subjective, culturally constructed “values” and “worldviews.”
From the nihilist’s point of view, all cultures possess their own moral prejudices: communists have theirs, Christians theirs, and cannibals, too. But none are objectively true or right. None can serve as an objective standard by which to judge others. There is no objective standard. That is the whole meaning of nihilism.
When Nothing Is Right, Nothing Is Wrong
For nihilists, if no moral creed is objectively right, then none can be objectively wrong. Cultures and individuals operate on arbitrary preferences, and moral disputes become contests of power.
Nihilism collapses ethics into physics, where might makes right. Winston Churchill’s distinction between base success (bad guys unjustly winning) and noble failure (good guys fighting for justice and losing) dissolves into meaninglessness. Without a moral framework, there’s only power—those who are strongest are victorious; those who aren’t, lose.
In a nihilistic age, people cease striving for goodness, morality, or justice. Instead, they pursue power. This worldview dominates contemporary culture: morality is mocked as a mere human contrivance and ethical judgments are dismissed as outdated expressions of personal or cultural biases.
Nihilism in Culture
Nihilism is deeply embedded in postmodern popular culture. In her best-selling book Untamed, author Glennon Doyle simply declares, without any argument or evidence, “An objective right and wrong…are not real.” Moral standards of right and wrong are “just culturally constructed,” she asserts, nothing but “artificial, ever-changing cages.”
Ms. Doyle equates freedom with abandoning morality—“We don’t have to be good,” she writes, “we can be free”—urging readers to create their “own existence from scratch.” This is nihilism for the masses, Nietzsche’s übermensch reduced to a few sexual peccadilloes.
This casual pop-nihilism is widely celebrated. Doyle’s book, which sold millions of copies, delivers advice that could just as easily have come from Ted Bundy or Adolf Hitler: morality is irrelevant; do whatever you have the will, the power, and the desire to do.
Contrast Doyle’s shallow, cheerful nihilism—which in her case means not much more than justifying her desire to sleep with a woman rather than a man—with Shakespeare’s portrayal of the full, terrifying reality of living as a nihilist in Macbeth.
As Macbeth spirals into the dark depths of depressive nihilism, he laments memorably that “life’s…a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
That famous line occurs after Macbeth learns of the death of Lady Macbeth, and as he reflects on his own fateful immoral choices. In this moment, he delivers a poignant soliloquy that reflects his utter despair and the sense of meaninglessness he now sees in life.
Macbeth’s lofty ambitions, and the path of violence and injustice he has chosen—including multiple murders and hired assassinations—have dissolved into a haunting nihilism. The once-confident soldier-king now views all human endeavors as empty gestures—a tumultuous spectacle devoid of moral purpose or significance.
And, let us never forget, Macbeth is a tragedy. No one who reads Macbeth wants to be Macbeth. Or, let us clarify, no one with a properly-ordered soul and a moral compass wants to experience the moral ruin that Macbeth experiences.
A nihilist, however, has no reason to prefer being or not being Macbeth. If there is no right and wrong, why not be a king who betrays his closest friends, murders political opponents, and loses his wife and everything else he ever loved or valued, along the way?
Nietzsche, as much as Shakespeare, understood the human attempt to live a life of nihilism is something of a living nightmare. In his book Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche argued that the attempt to live beyond good and evil—to live as a nihilist—“is for the very few, the strong.” And even for them,
whoever attempts it with the best right but without inner constraint proves that he is probably not only strong, but also daring to the point of recklessness. He enters into a labyrinth, he multiplies a thousandfold the dangers which life brings with it in any case, not the least of which is that no one can see how and where he loses his way, becomes lonely, and is torn piecemeal by some minotaur of conscience. Supposing one like that comes to grief, this happens so far from the comprehension of men that they neither feel it nor sympathize. And he cannot go back any longer. Nor can he go back to the pity of men.
Postmodern pop-nihilists like Ms. Doyle lack the depth of a Shakespeare, or a Nietzsche. How can a populist postmodern writer who flippantly assumes that morality is merely “culturally constructed”—without any investigation—understand Macbeth’s soul being torn to pieces by the inescapable self-awareness that he broke the most fundamental of all moral law?
She likely cannot.
Nihilism for Kids
While adults might wrestle with nihilism’s intellectual and moral implications, children and teenagers are not equipped to handle such existential weight.
Imagine an ordinary teenager navigating hormones, peer pressure, academic stress, and the challenge of planning for the future. Now, add the cultural message that life is meaningless—that there is no right or wrong, no justice or purpose. Is it any wonder that so many young Americans are depressed, addicted, or suicidal?
Some parents believe sending their children to church or Christian schools will shield them from nihilism. But popularized nihilism has infected Christianity, too, with relativistic language, as many Christians speak of their “values” or “worldviews” as if all moral systems are equally arbitrary.
This, too, is a form of nihilism, even though it’s wrapped in religious garb. It’s not the language of moral truth. It’s the language of moral relativism. And, it doesn’t take long for curious young minds to conclude that if one cultural moral code is arbitrary and meaningless, so are all moral codes; and, therefore, there is no moral truth and life has no moral purpose.
The results are everywhere: record levels of teen depression, addiction, suicide, and random acts of violence, including mass public murders.
Is that what Natalie Rupnow did at Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, Wisconsin, this past week? We don’t for sure, but it certainly appears so.
Why Do Young Americans Resort to Violence?
In the wake of the Madison school shooting, Police Chief Shon Barnes remarked: “How does any 15-year-old get a hold of a gun? Or anyone for that matter? Here we get into philosophical questions of guns and gun safety.”
I disagree. The philosophic question is not how a 15-year-old gets ahold of a gun. Over the course of almost 250 years of American history, many teenagers have had easy access to many guns. Yet, few used those guns to go on murderous rampages before killing themselves.
The real question today is: Why do so many young Americans find no meaning or purpose in life, and why do record numbers of teenagers have a desire to commit mass murder, including murdering random strangers they often don’t even know?
If we think the answers have nothing to do with the nihilism our culture embraces, espouses, and celebrates, then we are in deep self-denial. Or maybe we simply don’t know the truth about ourselves? Perhaps it is time to remind ourselves of the first directive of philosophy, famously inscribed within the Temple at Delphi: Know Thyself. The challenge—if we truly examine ourselves morally, intellectually, and philosophically—is that we might not like what we find.
Brilliant article! Reason, and its remorseless logic, are as certain when thinking on the subject of morality as it is with respect to all claimed knowledge!
Rand powerfully makes the case that "man is a being of self-made soul.” She means it - in the broadest of contexts. From the “soul’s” little voice each of us hear reminding us that "we know better," to the "soul-less Nihilist" one asking and answering, "what does it matter?" That voice is our voice, played back to us as an emotional recording of our interpretations of reality we have logically (however efficaciously or poorly) previously placed on it.
The unavoidable fact of humanity's means of understanding reality, both the external reality we initially explore, and the internal one a maturing individual must eventually confront, is tied to the inescapable logic of Reason. I would further posit that Reason’s laws-of-logic represent the law-of-causality applied to thinking.
To fail to appreciate the consequences that these immutable "laws" result in can literally produce logical absurdities. Here are but a few. Attempts to claim man is not "conscious" while using his consciousness to do so; attempts to argue that reason is impotent while using Reason to prove it; so-called "Determinists" arguing that free will is an illusion when they assert it is one’s environment and “genetics” that determine one's values. They make this argument while ignoring the logic of their claim – i.e., that if true, they too have no choice (free will!) in what they claim and argue!
Finally, the moral Nihilist is created, “affirmed,” and sustained through what is called the “is-ought dichotomy.” A logical contradiction posited by those who should know better. The claim that one cannot determine moral reality from the facts of material reality! Beginning with the material fact that they are alive and if they wish to remain so, there are objective material values they must seek and acquire. That the manner and method they choose to go about seeking and acquiring these material values, by definition, become moral values - in addition to material ones!
To whatever extent one makes the case for what are objective moral values - values that one “ought” to live by, they apply to each and every human being. This fact leads to the necessity of another critical fact that must be logically recognized, irrespective of whatever objective moral values one has claimed to have derived. One that is equally applicable to each and all. It is that none may morally claim to be materially “special.” (Perhaps we can explore this at our next smoke-a-thon.)
Second, and of profound significance and implication, is the answer to the question, what should be the potential and purpose of an individual’s “life?” Not only does this get us into a human being’s physiology and epistemology, but – at the risk of understatement, the potential “rabbit hole” of psychology! I would argue, while paraphrasing Rand’s cited claim of the soul, that psychology is “a rabbit hole of self-made depth!” (More fodder for smoke-a-thons?)
Dave