The archetype - The Hero

Watching the video of Cho Seung-Hui on the computer with my wife and I was reminded of something from you youth. Fantasies of being the hero were something that went through my mind often. I guess it was because physically I always felt inferior to others (at 135 pounds and 5' 9") and emotionally I felt that I wasn't going to participate in the "dream" of well being married, having a wife, children and indeed a future.

The fantasy, in general, goes like this: Love interest of the moment (and there were many, sometimes I wonder if I 'loved' all women to a certain extent in my youth) was in terrible danger (oh, no!) and there I was at location that I normally see her and there are many enemies, in fact enemies all around me! Hah, then I do x, y and z and beat those enemies to a pulp destroying them utterly. The fantasy would end around there with the corny - you know what's going to happen next as she falls in love with her hero.

I see echoes of this in books, comics and movies all the time. It is a common theme. It is the fantasy I think in some exaggerated form which drives terrorists to suicide bombings and Cho Seung-Hui to kill a bunch of his 'enemies'.

This archetypical fantasy has many benefits to the young male mind. You get the satisfaction of doing something for your cause (be it a woman, your country or your religion), you get to prove your physicality by beating foes who are typically in a stronger position than you are and of course you attain your goal. It is nice and simple. It is the format of some first person shooters like Doom. You have enemies that are far more powerful than your actual self. There is a goal which will save lives, etc. You acheive this goal by pounding the enemy to a pulp in various ways. Eventually, you succeed and become the 'hero'.

These fantasies I think are partially driven by the helplessness in general young males have with regard to their lives. We all feel to some degree that we are nameless parts of a billion person body and we move with the tides and inertia of that body. By becoming this hero we achieve control over our destinies and we achieve our goal - the thing we want most at that time.

Of course, there is a huge difference between having a fantasy of killing to achieve your love interest or country's freedom or religious goals - or playing a video game in which you perform violent actions to become the hero and actually fulfilling your fantasy in a more active manner and actually running around killing innocent people to realize your fantasy in the real world.

At least that is my theory why Cho Seung-Hui became a mass-murderer and my theory on why people do things that otherwise normal people can't even consider, like suicide bombings or flying planes in to inhabited buildings.

These people all want to be the Hero. And they have discovered that this is the way they can achieve hero status in the real world.

I don't know if there is really a way to battle this fantasy except for each young male to engage in normal activities to gain a sense of achievement to understand that their goals are not unattainable.

Hell, it seems part of Cho Seung-Hui's problem was that he couldn't get a relationship with women. I'd rather he went and found a high-class hooker willing to act out some of his fantasy then believe that what he wants in life is utterly unattainable.

In the end a hooker or a sense of achievement might not have been enough for Cho Seung-Hui. The achetypical fantasy lived in him, that much is clear from his video, but he probably had mental problems or chemical imbalances that exaggerated this fantasy until such point that he felt he 'had' to act it out - maybe to protect his imaginary girlfriend from the pollutants of the students on campus. The pollutants, that I suspect Cho Seung-Hui felt were going to pollute him and turn him into a frivolous college student.