A lot of information is coming out about Cho Seung-Hui. My earlier complaint about the faculty member of Virginia Tech not releasing his writing that was disturbing has been rectified, but not by her.
A picture is forming of a loner, who was very angry, and wrote in class about topics that showed his anger. It is mentioned by a former school-mate of his that Cho was a stereotype of the psychotic killer (or similar words).
But this picture can be very misleading. I have known some very f***ed up people - especially when I was younger, but none really turned out all that bad. Perhaps, I have led a sheltered life, but I don't think so.
The reality of the matter is that when I was younger I might have fit Cho's description, except that when people approached me and wanted to talk to me I broke out of my shell fairly easily. Of course, I can't say I was really angry about anything except that I didn't have a girlfriend and at that point in my life I often felt like I wasn't ever going to have a girlfriend. It happens when you graduate high school 5' 9.5" tall and 135 pounds. I was skinny as a rail and easily pushed around by just about everyone.
Fortunately, I never followed Cho's path, I was probably just needy. However, I suspect Cho is like many people out there or rather many people out there are like Cho. Only 1 in a very large number of people follow Cho's path to violence. This is why we don't have many shootings in colleges, but we probably do have many people that feel like Cho at certain points in their lives.
So, before people run around like crazy and reporting people they know that those people are just like Cho and going to pop their cork and kill a bunch of people take five minutes and cool it.
It should be realized that like medical conditions and other psychological conditions, many people have the symptoms that may appear like psychosis or a medical condition. That is because a lot of these conditions are inside of us, but to vastly lower degrees.
So, I'm afraid what Cho has done (not on purpose, most likely) is made it much more difficult for the creative student to write horror or horrific items. In Cho's case he apparently acted in a manner consistent with a person who was angry to the point of not being able to control it. That is an important point to keep in mind.
Each piece of writing has to be considered in its context. The context of the writing is the times we live in and the person writing the story. Writing about madness, death or any other subjects that people don't like to talk about is perfectly normal and stretches our minds. His schoolmate indicated that he wrote about things being used as weapons that he never imagined. Well, that's good in most writers cases, its bad when you think the writer might actually go and perform those actions.
This is similar to the Columbine shooting. Details of the lives of the shooters came out, the games they played on their game console, things they read and music they listened to. Well, so what? Many people fit that profile, few people (regardless of what they play on the gaming console, read or music they listen to) actually go around thinking it is a great idea to go and kill a bunch of people.
Life is very complex especially for humans. Humans are complex creatures by themselves and unpredictable when you take in to account humans interacting with humans. The same indicators in one person that means they are about to go crazy and kill a bunch of people might be the warm-up for another person for a good long game of Doom or a creative binge of writing.
So, if you are Angry that's good, it shows you are alive. Learn to control it and channel that energy in to something creative.
If you feel like you are closing in on madness, find people (professional or otherwise) that can talk to you and that care for you mutually. Hey, it might even be some people in a bar with no other commonality than they need to be able to talk to people before they descend into madness.
If you think you are psychotic, there is one last vital hope - that you care enough about humanity in general to seek help instead of deeping your psychosis.
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