The Pedagogy of the Abyss: Correct Pronouns, False Reality

In Canada, one man shot and killed eight other people. Among them his own family. Children. A teacher. Lives that in the morning were banal and commonplace, and by evening were nothing more than statistical data. But what follows is not an attempt at understanding. It is a ritual. The conversation no longer revolves around the individual. It revolves around identity. Around concepts. Around correct labels. Around narratives so sterile that they neutralize all reality like a disinfectant that doesn't heal, but merely masks the odor.

Jesse began seeing himself as something different at the age of twelve. An age when one used to climb trees, scrape one's knees, and eventually realize that identity isn't something you prescribe like an antibiotic. Today, this age is apparently sufficient to legitimize irreversible medical decisions. Decisions whose long-term consequences even the experts describe only cautiously in footnotes, while public discourse already simulates absolute certainty.

What would once have been a cry for help became an administrative process. A form. A consent form. A treatment. Not because everyone knew everything. But because everyone wanted to know. The adults in this room weren't absent. They were present. Parents. Institutions. Experts. Media. Each with their role, their responsibility, their moral conviction. Each convinced they were on the right side of history. It's astonishing how often disasters arise from precisely this feeling. Because nothing is more dangerous than a system that has eliminated its own doubts.

A child who is clearly struggling is no longer seen as someone who needs support. They become a project. A piece of evidence. Confirmation of an idea that is bigger than the individual. The person disappears behind the theory. Suffering disappears behind language. And language is everything.

The press is now reporting that a "woman" committed this act. It's a linguistic reflex, functioning as automatically as a smoke detector, except that it warns not of fire, but of deviation. The correct term becomes more important than the correct analysis. Semantic purity replaces moral responsibility. Because language has a practical function: it structures what may be thought.

If the terms are correct, reality no longer needs to be verified. No one questions whether a twelve-year-old child is truly capable of making decisions whose consequences define an entire life. No one asks whether a society that sees itself as progressive has perhaps become blind to the fragility of the people it claims to protect. Instead, the system stabilizes itself. It corrects the words. It corrects the perspective. It corrects everything except itself.

And somewhere in this process, a person who needed help becomes a symbol. A piece of evidence. A product of its time. The greatest tragedy is not that no one bears responsibility. The greatest tragedy is that everyone played their part perfectly.

The parents trusted the experts.
The experts trusted the guidelines.
The media trusted the language.
And society trusted itself.

This is not how security is created. This is how continuity is created. Because a system that does not recognize its errors can reproduce them indefinitely…

The Pedagogy of the Abyss: Correct Pronouns, False Reality