Worry about those who believe in nothing

On the Golden Rule, youthful rebellion, and the imperative to send young minds in the direction of shaping a personal code

A teenager from Oregon was arrested late last month after the FBI received a tip that he was planning a terrorist attack against the people inside a mall nearby in Washington. The FBI noted that the suspect -- someone not even old enough to vote -- "shared nihilistic violent extremist ideology and the plans in online chats."

■ It has always been the case that parents (and society generally) have to give young people something affirmative to believe in, helping to guide them towards a healthy understanding of their place in the world with others. Whether it takes a religious, philosophical, or secular-ethical form, there needs to be some form of input.

■ It doesn't have to be monomaniacal or oppressive -- indeed, it expressly should not be -- but there has to be some kind of engagement with a framework that says something in the world is worth shaping into a personal code of belief. As long as it adheres in some general way to a Golden Rule and is generally benign, the exact shape of the belief isn't all that material.

■ Though this has always been so, what's new to us today is that the consequences are magnified when that process fails. The evidence is strong that there have always been nihilists; history gives us many examples of people who rose to notoriety through destruction that doesn't make sense to rational people. That's what people might do if they think that nothing really matters.

■ But for "nihilistic violent extremist ideology" to take hold of a child -- someone still too young to rent a car or enter a bar after dark -- requires exposure and compounding by something else. The suspect didn't get lost in a dark corner of the public library. There were online chats, presumably with and among people sharing the same dark view and perhaps even offering suggestions about how to do evil things.

■ That's the danger: Someone, convinced they believe in nothing and possessing too little impulse control, found the resources to turn a sinister worldview into a way to harm others. And they were only stopped by some fortunate intervention.

■ For the most part, the adolescent mind is already geared toward skepticism and rebellion against conformity. That should give even-keeled adults some comfort; even if we don't agree with what our neighbors might be teaching their children about belief, whether religious or secular, there's a good chance it won't be passed along unaltered anyway. What we should worry about instead is the hazard that some young people are being left to believe in nothing at all.