h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I would like to say a few things about this recent tragic stabbing/shooting. There are similarities between me and the killer. I have as a result of my mental illness been very paranoid at times. The paranoid mindset is one of feeling persecuted, of blaming others for one’s failures. Now I certainly do not know all that went on in this man’s mind. If he had a serious mental illness and ‘cracked’ then his motives cannot really be analysed as one would for a rational person. It would then not be right to blame outside society, or outside factors, for what he did, or to criticize him either since when you are psychotic you really cannot evaluate the matter of whether your actions are right or wrong. There is something going wrong with your own brain that you have no control over. What you do may seem justified to you in the moment, but you are completely incapable of accurately reflecting on it. But again I don’t know if he was psychotic at the time he did what he did, or not. I am not at all interested in laying blame … I am interested in preventing this sort of thing from happening again.

Now what *would* help, is a better understanding of mental illness and more help for the mentally ill. Now I have to say that most mentally ill people are not violent, and even the ones who are, may direct their violence at themselves first of all. Mentally ill people suffer more violence against themselves than ‘well’ people do. But a small percentage of mentally ill people do become dangerously violent. It is possible that with proper care they would be less violent. In fact I would state that as a certainty. But better mental health awareness would help a vastly larger number of people who are *not* violent, as well, so it’s not a trade-off at all. Just helping people with issues of anger and fear would go a long way. A paranoid person may literally feel as if his or her life is threatened in a situation where this is not the case. Most ‘normal, sane’ people would be willing to use violence against someone who is directly threatening their lives or their loved ones. So, simply correcting the misperception and showing a paranoid person that his or her life is not in danger would make things less dangerous all around. This might be done with therapy or with medication. There are indeed strategies that can be tried out! But one thing that needs to happen, is that the stigma against mental illness must lessen so that more people will be willing to acknowledge that they have a problem and then go SEEK HELP. We must also look out for each other and see when there is a problem. If someone is acting ‘crazy’ and that person has a mental health problem, we must not judge that person … honestly now, the problem might be one that can be rectified! There might just be a chemical imbalance in the brain, too much of this and too little of that, something medication or therapy can put right again. What is bad about making a ‘bad’ person ‘good’ again with the help of medicine? It is only because we want to be able to judge another’s character absolutely, perhaps wanting to believe we are good or better than others, that we would rather believe the person is incurably bad, than to wish the person to be treated and to become better.

Some people may be incurably ‘bad’ people … but what if there are ones that CAN be cured even of violent tendencies? I really feel we should try and see if we can do this. I know this goes against what many or perhaps most people want to believe about human nature but … just think about it.

Moving on to another issue connected with this crime. There has been a lot of talk about misogyny. The shooter appeared to have been a virgin, with the perception that women were unfairly refusing him sex. He made statements indicating he wanted to punish them, and society, for this. Now if he was seriously paranoid, his mind would have exaggerated the seriousness of any problem he might have had romantically or sexually relating to women. Again he might have believed his life, or something even more important than his life, to have been at stake. This is now where social aspects come in. Let me say it straight: I do get the impression that social factors ‘fed into’ his paranoia, perhaps exacerbating it. He seems to have been involved with the ‘pickup-artist’ community, although he was against much of what they did. But still he was influenced and they in turn are influenced by even more pervasive social factors.

The problem: in the modern world, sex has become a factor associated with success. A heterosexual man who is successful should, so the view is, be sexually successful as well … have lots of sex with women. In some circles the perception is, the more women a man has sex with, the better a man he is. A man who can get no sex at all in this view is a complete loser, a nobody. A man is supposed to be a manly man, a go-getter, who doesn’t settle for second best. A ‘real’ man gets what he wants, and a man wants sex, of course. A successful man will successfully charm or seduce women, many women, many beautiful women. In this view women are viewed not as people but as ‘success tokens’. They exist to provide sex and status to men. This view is NOT restricted to mentally ill people, or to the pick-up community, it is a view that is common in mainstream western society, among heterosexual men.

Now what happens when a man enters college and the girls don’t seem to find him attractive, they don’t respond to his advances? He might believe he is doing ‘something wrong’. He might try and correct what he’s doing wrong by going to the men who claim to be very successful, sexually. Suppose he tries this and still he is unsuccessful. He feels that he is not doing anything wrong, he tries hard, he works hard, but success eludes him. He might then feel that he is being treated unfairly. In other endeavours … such as, in college, studies … hard work is rewarded or should be rewarded, and if it isn’t, it is seen as injustice. Now if sex is seen as a factor of success, then, when a guy’s ‘hard work’ in pursuing women is not ‘rewarded’ by sex happening, it can also be seen as injustice. In someone with an underlying paranoid streak, it can certainly then become perceived as injustice, gravely unfair treatment, even persecution. But … that, only, given the idea that sex is a man’s natural reward and that women are obliged to provide it.

See, there is the problem, the idea that sex is a given, a right, something that a man, a ‘real’ man, is entitled to. If a man is entitled to it, then someone has to have the duty to provide it. Now I have very little knowledge of what goes on in the pick-up-artist community but from advertisements and things the idea I get is that they promise a man the tricks and techniques that will make the beautiful women he desires have sex with him. A man is supposed to go for the ‘best’ women and not settle for anything less, and given the right tricks, can get any of them in bed. There is a revolting sense in this of women being like automata, machines … push the right buttons and they do what you want. In this view if they don’t do as you want then something is wrong with them, not you!

Now after this has happened it seems there are some of these pick-up groups who say if he had been better advised then he would have had the successful sex he desired and the entire tragedy could have been averted. There are perhaps also groups who say he was a loser who couldn’t get a woman by any means, he was an unattractive and unmanly man and thus they want nothing to do with him or anyone like him, and therefore this crime of his has nothing at all to do with them. He was not one of them, not one of the successful pick-up artists, he was a mere wannabe, they could thus not be blamed for what he did. But the attitude is the same in all cases! The attitude is still … men want sex, men must have sex, only losers fail to get it. Sex is seen as something without which a ‘man’ cannot live … at least not a life that is worth living.

So take a guy who believes all of this, and then deny him sex. He now feels outraged, a victim of grave injustice. His self-esteem is threatened. His identity as a man is threatened, which might in his perception be worse than his mere life being threatened. For him it is shameful to be a loser, an unmanly man, an unsuccessful man. When sex is denied … what else is a ‘man’ to do but resort to that other ‘manly’ element – violence? A man may not have women, but if he has a gun and is willing to use it, he is still a ‘man’! A manly man doesn’t take injustice lying down … he goes out and make others pay. In this case it would seem the correction of a sense of injustice, the necessity of acting forcefully and ‘manly’, was more important than life itself. This too I can understand. It’s a ‘death before dishonour’ thing … as much as one might disagree with the concept of ‘dishonour’ involved here. Just look at humanity: there are clearly many things pertaining to self-esteem and self-image that people consider more important than life itself, however twisted these things may be in many cases.

Now what could I say against this? To be honest I have to admit that I am absolutely 0% successful in matters of romance. Haven’t been kissed romantically even once. The difference is that I never felt treated unjustly by women. It is any woman’s prerogative to accept or refuse the advances of a man. No woman is obliged to go out with, kiss, or have sex with, any man. A man must accept this. I would say a man must be strong enough to be content with this. It is not the end of the world. Women don’t exist to prop up a man’s ego. Again a man’s ego must be strong enough to not need this sort of propping up! This is the difference … I would say this is what a ‘real man’ should be like but this whole labeling of ‘real’ man or ‘real’ woman disgusts me. We are all real. None of us is not real. Using labels like ‘real man’ seems to me to dehumanize some or perhaps all men, or even all humans. We are real. What we must strive to be, is all that is good, towards each other and to ourselves as well. No matter if we might seem ‘unmanly’ or ‘unwomanly’. What is really manly and womanly …let’s call it ‘humanly’ … is to be considerate, kind, compassionate, responsible, gentle when necessary, firm when necessary, to have strength along with control over it. We must strive for the strength to say no, and also for the strength to accept ‘no’ for an answer. This is treating each other fairly and respectfully.

As someone with 0% romantic success I can also say that there is life outside of sex. Maybe I am just not a guy the sort of women I am interested in, are interested in in turn. It happens. There can be many situations in which a man or woman, of any orientation, who intensely desires sex or romance simply cannot find a suitable partner. Well then you just have to go without what you desire. Humanity, womanhood, manhood, or the Universe, does not owe it to you. Where the freedom of others are involved, you may not force matters. But in this case, it is not the end of the world if they don’t do as you want. You can live without sex, without romance. It may hurt at times but it does not kill you. So there is no need to go killing others, is there?
The problem remains: sex is still associated with success. So when I say the above … it is easy for men with the prevailing attitude to dismiss me, to ignore everything I say: “you are a loser! It sucks to be you! I most definitely would not take any advice about sex from someone who knows nothing at all about it!” Imagine a young man in college is failing to achieve the sex with the beautiful women he sees and desires. Who will he most likely listen to: me, when I tell him that he mustn’t stress too much about it, accept ‘no’ for an answer, and respect women even if it means accepting ‘failure’ in the matter of sex … or the pick-up-artist who claims to have bedded over two thousand women and who will tell him the tricks of ‘true sexual success’?

Well, at least I tried.

One of the things that angers me is blaming this on mental illness rather than an outrageous sense of entitlement that any woman out there such accept his wonderful self as a wonderful boyfriend! You need to be a friend to have a friend and you just can't offer anybody friendship if you are too self-involved. His not respecting women as fellow human beings needing respect and having their own needsis the real problem here that and the damn NRA selling guns to men impliing that real men have guns and are not afraid to use them.

A very bright black poet and artist Maya Angelou said that she married a man who was not into rape society being a rape survivor she was really impressed with this man:she said


"I married a man once because of something he said. We were in England, and somebody said that women should always expect to be raped if they wore very short pants and low decolletage and acted "fast." So this man, whom I knew slightly, said, "If a woman has no panties on and sits with her legs wide open, no man has the right to assault her. When a guy tells me, 'I couldn't resist because she did sit in such a provocative way,' all I want to know is if four of her brothers were standing there with baseball bats, would they have resisted?"

One of the horrifying things is that the violence against women is so profound and that blaming the victim is sort of institutionalized in the legal system and why are male children being raised with mindsets that women are there to SERVE me? Let alone the ease of gun purchases. BLaming this on mental illness takes away the horror of these things and lets the NRA and politicians off the hook.Also too many 'normal' people think guns are OK?

Also part of this seems to be the problem that 'white. rich people are entitled to sex' Success=power and women find this sexually attractive. Women like men who listen to them and are kind and do NOT deny them their own agency (a respect thing as you talked about) but if you tend to be tied up with everything just being about you ---you are going to be a failure in this area. This is sort of a narcissistic delusion that can be very dangerous. Blaming everyone else for your problems and implying that everyone enjoying each other's company is DELIBERATELY DISSING YOU!

Willem, you appreciate nature, and can demonstrate your appreciation of it through art, that is really cool. But you are frustrated that people act unnaturally and you can't get a handle on them because they don't make sense the same way animals do. But if you study groups of animals --they are not really cookie cutter the same either ---some are more or less aggressive. Fearful ones tend to be more dangerous--to others as well. Maybe that is why humans always like to see themselves as PREDATORS because every other animal gives them wide berth. Well then you are lonely. You can't have everything you WANT WHEN YOU WANT IT, especially if it is with someone else. Sharing is wonderful and is its own reward.

Here is a bright guy who did well on a trivia quiz tv program called "Jeopardy" says pretty much what we both came up with:

http://www.salon.com/2014/05/28/arthur_chu_mansplains_entitlement_to_nerdy_men_stop_trying_to_win_girls/?source=newsletter

Men are not to view women as 'prizes' because they worked so hard!

There needs to be a bit of introspection here. But as you said there is more to life than sex. You have to be able to enjoy your own company, before you can enjoy someone else and not have the attitude that you deserve attention and nobody else does. Everybody deserves attention. It is a joy to give and receive it.

Hi Elektra, hi Willem

Yet again another senseless killing on the news attracts our attention and is quickly dropped for the next tragedy. We hear from "experts" (and I was particularly disturbed this time by the airing of his *grudge* self video).

The easy access to firearms has always disturbed me. The only "real" gun I have ever seen was in 2006 when I took my parents to an NVA gathering (the last one my father attended), people from a museum had dressed in period costume (WW2) and the soldiers were armed with real weapons. My mother barely reacted, but my father was deeply upset. He said it was the hardest thing he'd ever done in his life, fire his weapon at another human being.

My Dad and my Mum were virgins on their wedding night. I remember him telling me "we just had to hope we would both like it" (they had 5 children...)

On the subject of mental illness, my youngest son has Aspergers as you know. He went from being a troubled, violent child to an introspective youth, clueless about girls and even other lads. He got upset with each rejection but I taught him to treat the girls as if they were friends, no different from his male friends. He has a girlfriend now, although he'd already left home and I don't know how they met.

Willem you are a lovely man. Your personality shines through your posts and I adore your artwork. I have often thought you should have an exhibition to bring you to the world's attention, you deserve a wider audience and a circle of friends who appreciate you. I imagine you living alone and feel sorrow because I know how much love is locked inside of you. I'm so lucky I have a partner and family. He was a widower and I had to do the "pulling" - he said after we got together that he didn't have a clue how to make advances to women (he had been married 44 years).

I don't think sex is a measure of success, nor do I think men are entitled to it. It never appealed to Sir Isaac Newton, who was surely one of the most influential people in history.

Willem, thank you for trying to explain, which you do very well. Apparently this guy had Aspergers according to reports over here and it would be easy to use that as an excuse.There are varying degrees of the condition and I don't think w should allow it to colour our thinking too much as it almost gives permission for a lack of self control.

I suspect that the root of the problem is lack of love, care, support and understanding, as is (as GB says) the free availability of guns.

We are seeing something similar with knives over here and that is much more difficult to control. There is no doubt in both areas the appalling stuff available to buy, and online has a lot to do with it.

I also wish that more research and resources were put in to finding the causes of mental illness, as it seems to be increasing enormously.

Websailor

Hello and thanks for the comments Elektra, Galaxy Babe and Websailor! The way I see this, this guy definitely had a serious mental health issue. I am not saying we should blame the mental illness and ignore the misogyny ... we should be looking to what extent both of these factored in. As I see it, there is a culture of misogyny as I explained, the idea of men being entitled so sex with women, there's the pickup-artist community, there's the nerd entitlement aspect explained in that article you linked Elektra, there's the men's rights movement, there's the way women are portrayed in the media, there's the way regular men fail to protest against this, fail to see how this culture is harming women - and I would say ultimately harming themselves as well. A man, or a woman, who diminishes others ultimately diminishes his or her own soul. So yeah, all of that.

The existence of this misogynistic culture however fed into the mental illness this guy had. I spoke of the paranoid aspect. I don't think he was paranoid schizophrenic because his ideas were not as deluded as needed for this ... if he was schizophrenic he would have felt persecuted by Martians or the CIA or something rather incredible like that, not by women. His idea that women owed sex to him was not so much a paranoid delusion as something he picked up from the circles he was involved in, the misogynistic cultural aspects thus feeding into his personal insecurities. He elaborated them in his mind into his own personal persecution concept.

But the mental illness aspect is also important. Without that, he might have been a misogynist but maybe not a murderer. There is something profoundly irrational about his idea that he was a 'perfect gentleman' with whom women ought to have been very happy ... while planning to murder people! There's something irrational in trying to 'show them all' in something that results in your own death.

Right now I'm feeling very raw about this ... I would like to continue in another posting, trying to explain this from my own experience and also trying to say what can be done as a matter of practice. About both aspects, the misogyny, as well as the mental health angle. Our society is failing tremendously in both those things.

Hi I saw a reference to this title on the front page and I would just like to add a comment that may or may not be relevant.

Now I think it was Freud (or maybe Jung or Adler or a combination ...) that suggested that certain basic human animal "drives" ... such as the sex drive have an energy associated with them. This is the energy that causes the human body to move towards the means to satisfying those drives.

If the drive is not satiated then that energy "has" to go elsewhere.

It can be "repressed" - but then this builds up which can be suddenly released through such an action as we saw in this news story - rationalised through a persecution complex then released through the killing spree.

Alternate means by which to deal with this energy is to dissipate it through displacement activities (and rationalised accordingly) ... such as through sport, climbing mountains, creative arts, working to make lots of money etc.

It is said that the development of personality occurs predominantly from birth to puberty through a multi-stage process called socialisation. Quite often it is a "failure" in that process which leads to later personality issues and difficulties in adulthood.

With the particular case referred to in this thread I would suggest some failure in the society that allowed such a person access to firearms. I could go on about the modern mass society, the raising of children and anomie but I think I have now dissipated my own displaced energies so will stop here.

Bless you all - if there were more people like you, the troubled folk would find help more quickly.

Well said Dmitri


lil x

It seems had had been feeding off some pretty awful stuff on the web which sadly gives the opportunity for some pretty vile stuff to fester and spread.

Please don't think that I believe young women 'ask for it', but it seems to me that the promiscuousness, draunkenness and bad behaviour exhibited in most UK towns and cities does nothing to promote respect for the female gender as a whole. I have no idea if this behaviour is mirrored in cities in other parts of the world, but certainly British and drunkenness seems to be linked together in many minds.

Websailor

But it hasn't been feeding off 'the web', actually comes to every day stuff

Right I'm back and will say a bit more. Just, Galaxy Babe, thank you so much for what you said, and I really hope all would go well with your son!



Back to the case.

(Stone Aart I will try and get to your comment which is a whole new sort of thing ... please be patient with me.)

It is difficult to say how much of what this man has been feeding off, so to speak, comes from the web or from his own 'real life' environment. I would imagine though that a lot of it did come from the web since if he had the mental illness it seems he did, he did not have much of a social life or friends. So much of his ideas could have come off the web, and the web is great at concentrating the worst in humanity in certain areas. As I have it he frequented the 'pickup-artist' communities and later rebelled against these - but only because the methods they promised would get him in bed with beautiful women, did not work for him.

I would say his Asperger's Syndrome (or whatever it was) could have come together with the pickup-artist style sites in a particularly horrible way.

(Just a reminder that 'labels' in psychiatry rarely mean much. I've been labelled everything from schizophrenic to Asperger's myself. I do see a lot of myself in this man except that I never killed any people and never resented women for not dating etc. me. In this sense mental illness is not an excuse ... I see it as my own responsibility to overcome whatever negative tendencies I might have, and not to use anything as an excuse to harm people or treat them horribly.)

But all right. Asperger's Syndrome - as well as many other mental illnesses means having difficulty relating to other humans ... difficulty communicating, difficulty understanding others, difficulty having empathy with others, all of which results in difficulty making friends or having meaningful relationships. (Again about my own case I want to say: I have enormously strong feelings of love for other people, I think I am empathic with other people BUT I cannot fully understand other people, especially their motives. So while I *want* to be close to other people there is this extremely frustrating thing where I know that perhaps this is just not possible for me. So I have to just accept that I might never have close friends, let alone intimate romantic relationships - which I do WANT as much as I know I probably can never have.)

But anyways. Say you have a young man with Asperger's syndrome or another mental condition which makes it *extremely difficult* to make friends. This condition makes it even harder to relate romantically to women. Personally I think there must be something creepy about me, which women pick up. They might be friendly with me but there's something that prevents them from wanting to get really close to me. I still don't know what this is, if I did I would change it. The thing with Asperger's and other conditions is that with human interaction you have verbal and nonverbal communication and there are subtleties to both of these that come naturally to normal people but not for aspies/what have you. And these things are *really* subtle. They're not what the pickup-artist community is familiar with. The tips they give for getting women in bed assume basic, normal communication skills, and then to this they add their 'special tricks' which may or may not work for average guys. Just let me repeat that I find this entire community to be utterly scaly and want little to do with them so I did not go into any detail about their 'tricks'.

But consider that in their adverts they promise that ANY MAN who follows their advice can get ANY WOMAN HE WANTS. Those are pretty much the actual words. You can see these adverts. Even these past days while I was seeking for more info on this incident I came across these kinds of ads making these kinds of promises. Also remember an Asperger's sort of person can take things very literally. So you can say an advertismement is obviously not being 100% honest when it says any man can get any woman he wants in bed. Suppose the woman I want to get in bed with is Angelina Jolie? Obviously there's not a high likelihood at all that their methods, even if they're the best in the world, is going to let me succeed with that! A normal person, again, even a *gullible* normal person, would take these claims with a very liberal helping of salt.

But suppose an aspie takes these claims fairly literally - since many aspies do tend towards a more literal than normal comprehension of figurative language. So take this person who has trouble making friends trying to get a girl using the tricks from the pickup artists. Not even being able to properly use the ordinary verbal and nonverbal cues regular folks use to get along, there is of course a huge disadvantage. (Asperger's Syndrome also causes men to be rather physically awkward, which also does not come across as particularly sexy to women ... the way a man moves is a great part of sexual attraction). So most likely the tricks will not work. The tricks can't take the place of something more important, the basic ability to get along well with other human beings of whatever sex.

Now imagine an aspie trying this over and over and over and the degree of cruel disappointment that ensues especially for one who had very high hopes to begin with based on the promises made.

Imagine the impact on this person's self esteem.

The pickup-artist sites go on and on about how even the biggest loser can land the hottest chicks with their advice. So if this aspy who's trying their advice can't land any women at all ... imagine just how big a loser he must be! In the sort of terms of thinking these ads propagate! Still bear in mind that an aspie or a person with a similar sort of condition may think in very literal terms.

I mention my own case just for perspective since it is something I know more about having *lived* it. I am not the world's most gullible person, I have a strong self esteem and know to disregard all the cruddy messages 'society' sends my way, and I have a very strong ethical core, but I still frequently feel like a horrible loser when I think of how women just ignore me and have never shown any indication of thinking of me in any romantic sense. It *does* hurt. I do want love and romance, I desperately would want to find someone right for me. BUT I accept it if this is not to be. I also know that this acceptance takes a great deal of strength and is not easy.

Let me just again say that I do not know exactly what the guy's mental problems were, so what I say here is probably not exactly on the mark. But it gives a *possible* explanation for one aspect. The guy's problem with socialising and making friends would have been a great obstacle for getting romantically involved with women, and on top of that these pickup artist communities made exaggerated promises and offered methods that couldn't 'work' causing great frustration. They did NOT tell him what he REALLY needed to hear, namely that he first of all had to be able to relate to PEOPLE - that women are indeed people first of all - and that he shouldn't have been so hung up on sex as to ignore everything else including the basic humanity of the women he was interested in. The pickup-artist community goes out from the standpoint that sex is success, consequently someone who does not get it is a loser. They gave him techniques that were supposed to work, so as I said previously, he got the idea that if he put in the work, then he was owed the reward - women were required to have sex with him, and if they didn't then it was injustice, unfair, because he wasn't rewarded for his work. The idea that women have buttons to be pushed which would make them offer sex, is like seeing them as machines, and if after pushing the buttons they don't give the sex, then there is something wrong with *them*, not with *you*. In this community there's no concept (from what I've seen) of women as being individuals, fully rounded people. They're like interchangeable tokens (provided they're beautiful). So when you can say "I've slept with 500 women" it doesn't matter who those women are, what they are like, what kind of personalities they have, the only thing that matters is that they were beautiful and slept with you. That is the going mindset as far as I can see. (It's not just in the pickup artist community, the attitude in perhaps a lesser form is found in much of male society and is promoted to a degree in the mass media.)

This is a very toxic sort of thing to 'feed' into a person's insecurities and mental imbalance. Also with many mental illnesses there is an obsessive component, meaning a person can become obsessed with failure and negative thoughts. I'd like to say more about that in a future posting but I'd better post this now ...

OK I said I would say something about what to do in practice. Of course I think out society needs to teach ethics more, the core principle of which remains as I would formulate it: see others as no more or less worthy than yourself, treat them with the same respect and consideration with which you would like to be treated yourself (and RESPECT YOURSELF, esteem yourself highly). People who demonstrate difficulty with empathy and socialisation could be helped indeed. I even think it is possible to teach compassion. But the tricks that need to be taught are not tricks to get girls in bed, but just the little subtle things that go together with verbal and nonverbal communication.

There's more but the above is a pretty important thing ...

Willem, I have never thanked you for your ability to put over your feelings and problems so succinctly.

You have helped me help a friend to get diagnosed with Aspergers and it has answered a lot of questions for us, though it has not provided any solutions as you will understand.

It has however made it easier for people to understand why he is as he is, particularly professionals who don't know him well and judge on first impressions, which are generally perfectly normal.

However, he does have a kind of reserve with strangers, and even a glass wall which even I cannot get beyond sometimes.

Anyway, please be assured that you have helped at least one person and his friends to understand better. Thank you.

Websailor

Thanks Websailor for the kind words. I am glad if I can help in a little way. I think I understand the glass wall thing. For me it often feels like I'm in a universe separate from other people, sometimes with a sound-proof glass wall between me and them, so that it feels I can scream and scream and they still won't hear me though they can see me and I them ...

Anyways another thing struck me today. I keep wanting to understand why this tragedy happened. Like I said before I have difficulty understanding other people's motives. I have difficulty understanding why anyone would willingly hurt, never mind kill, someone else. So I'm trying to see reasons, but even in trying to see reasons that make sense to me, I may be wrong. I have difficulty imagining a person actually being evil. I would see them as misguided but I cannot comprehend someone willingly being evil. Maybe this guy was just evil, maybe there was nothing to be done. But I honestly don't want to believe that about him or about anybody. I want to believe there's a reason, and that something positive can be done once one understands ...

Some of what he did made me think he was trying to be what I conceive of as a 'cosmic troll'. This is a concept that's been in my head a lot but I still don't know if it makes any sense. A cosmic troll just want to mess things up, as badly as possible. Like Heath Ledger's joker character in the batman film. Wanting to make a horrible mess, because of wanting to believe in evil and chaos as being the greatest powers in the universe ... see, there I'm again trying to make sense of it ...

Hey there Willem

I am not sure you would be able to get the comprehension you are after because to us on a deep level it is incomprehensible.

So here is what I understand from the information I have to hand at the moment.


This young man appears to have a narcissist personality, if you have an understanding of that then you can see how the world made sense to him.

His outlet for the hatred of others was not just directed towards women, but many, to understand where that came go back to the nature of his personality and look to the cultural outlets he found and what influences that validated his feeling and views.

While he had an unstable personality, a mental health history and this comes into play in terms of our understanding he was not insane nor was he out of his mind when he committed these actions.

His views were extreme, most certainly harmful and potentially dangerous. Now this is when I think we come to the not being able to understand, what was it that made him commit such an act of extremism, when someone else with similar views and instabilities wouldn't.

If there was any one answer to the issue of extremism we would have found it now I think but in *this* case, this is how we should view his action as one of extremism.

We can only understand and look to the factors that led to that and to see how or if we can do better.

I think it quite telling that fact that his rage and hate has had a misogynistic outlet as opposed to other acts of 'terrorist extremism' that the response to it has been quite different.

His outlet for the hatred of others was not just directed towards women, but many, to understand where that came *from*, go back to the nature of his personality and look to the cultural outlets he found and what influences that validated his feelings and views.

Though this is portrayed as an example of misogyny, he killed four men and two women. Three of the victims may be deemed as have being in some form his "friends" (housemate acquaintances?) who just happened to be at hand when his mind set was switched into kill "everyone mode" to "punish the world" for the "world" not acting in the way he expected or wanted.

The wanting to "punish the world" mindset is probably quite common but not everyone has the means (access to guns) or the will (most people stop themselves) to go through with it.

It is more common to harm one self (self - "punishment") or harm those nearby (the pet dog, the wife, the children). The classic case is the frustrated worker being ill-treated at work taking it out on his wife and kids etc when he gets home.

When people go to sports events and "their" team loses you might see them "punish the world" afterwards through smashing a window or performing some other act of violence.

Of course we are talking differences in magnitude of the "punish the world" response but there is a similarity.