Avoiding School Shootings and the Boy Crisis | Dr. Warren Farrell | EP 261

If there's anybody out there, any young guy for example, who's watching this, who's been having vengeful fantasies, and who has been developing and toying with fantasies of revenge, and who is feeling isolated and lonesome and oppressed and isolated, and is starting to spin up fantasies of violence in revenge, you know, and you'll know that if you're one of these people: find someone to talk to. There's better ways you can deal with this.

And you're young; you're 16 years, 17. You don't have to be doomed, you know? You got your whole life ahead of you. And maybe just getting out of the place that you're in, where you're unpopular, might do it for you. You know, you can move to somewhere else and be a new person. There's all sorts of pathways in life, and so you don't have to explosively demonstrate your competence, you know, in a single vengeful violent act. There are better ways to deal with the world, and you might have reason to be bitter and vengeful, but there are better paths. There are better paths forward. So don't do it. Do what this young man we talked about earlier did: have enough sense to reach out to somebody. Find someone: a teacher, a principal, someone, a policeman if it has to be someone.

[Music]

Dr. Farrell has been chosen by the Financial Times of London as one of the world's top 100 thought leaders and by the Center for World Spirituality as one of the world's spiritual leaders. His books have been published in more than 50 countries and in 19 languages. His most recent book, The Boy Crisis, co-authored with John Gray, was a finalist for the Indie Book Publishing Award. His other books include the New York Times bestseller Why Men Are the Way They Are, plus the international bestseller The Myth of Male Power.

A book on couples communication, Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say, was the selection of the Book of the Month Club, and Why Men Earn More was selected by U.S. News and World Report in 2006 as one of the top four books on career. A very practical book, by the way, for men and women alike contemplating how they might maximize their earning power over the course of their career, although that comes at other costs, obviously.

Dr. Farrell has taught at the university level in five disciplines and appeared on more than a thousand TV shows, being interviewed repeatedly by Oprah and Barbara Walters, as well as by Peter Jennings, Charlie Rose, and Larry King. He's been featured multiple times in Forbes, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal. He's also the only man ever elected and three times to the board of the National Organization for Women in New York City, and currently, as chair of the Coalition to Create a White House Council on Boys and Men, he is working with the White House to create such a council.

He teaches couples communication courses around the country and speaks internationally on the global boy crisis, its causes, and solutions.

And today, unfortunately, we're going to be discussing a series—a duo, let's say—of recent tragedies, catastrophes, acts of malevolence in the United States, both in New York and in Texas. The unfortunately all too present and all too preoccupying mass school shooting. And we're going to delve into that pleasant topic and try to see if we can make some headway in a practical, in a conceptual and practical sense.

"Very good to see you again, Warren. It's a real pleasure to see you, although I'm sorry about the stimulus for this, of course."

"Yeah, well, so let's dive right into it. I'll offer some ideas about what I think is motivating this, but I want to hear what you've written so much about."

"Well, as we can see in the background, the crisis of masculinity, the crisis among boys, maybe you want to define what that crisis constitutes and then maybe zero in to the issue of what's happening with these mass homicides, committed almost always by young men, almost invariably."

"Yeah, we've seen a lot of theories recently. We've seen, you know, in Buffalo, we saw the replacement theory style, you know, hatred, and everybody zoomed in on that. Then we looked at the access to guns as an issue. We looked at..."