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.
Showing posts with label Cho Seung-Hui. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cho Seung-Hui. Show all posts
Thursday, April 19, 2007
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Cho's Explosion
A lot of writing on the web indicates that Cho Seung-Hui had an explosion or a meltdown and they wonder what the specific cause of that meltdown was.
This is a good example from CNN 360 blog:
Then something happened. Whatever was boiling inside Cho exploded with lethal fury. In the ultimate act of hatred, he destroyed even himself, leaving others to decipher the ultimate question: Why?-- By Jill Dougherty, U.S. Affairs Editor for CNN International
This would indicate that the deaths on the campus of Virginia Tech were 2nd degree murders; however, this is untrue.
You simply have to look at the information. There was a receipt in Cho's backpack for the gun he used. It was dated in March. One would assume he purchased a generous amount of ammunition at that time as well.
As indicated in this article , Cho waited 5 weeks before using the gun to kill his fellow students and teachers at Virginia Tech. According to his teachers, Cho was intelligent if off-balance. The purchase of the gun and the ammunition indicates premeditation. There was no 'moment' where some action like flying doves in Mars attacks set him off to kill a bunch of people. Like Mars Attacks, Cho and the aliens always planned to kill a bunch of people.
He isn't a marksman. He really didn't have a legitimate reason for purchasing a handgun. His life wasn't threatened, theft while prevalent in schools usually isn't enough to want to own a gun for prevention and bringing a fun on campus is most likely illegal and certainly against the school's rules.
So, why would you buy a large number of rounds for a gun (even if we grant the point that he had a reasonable reason to buy the gun)? If you need to protect yourself, you might buy enough rounds to fill a clip. That's all you need. By the time you've gone through a clip of ammunition you are either dead, killed the intruder or put a bunch of holes in the wall. It is pretty unlikely that he refilled a single clip every time he needed to reload, either. He probably purchased multiple clips, so that he could reload as quickly as possible.
So, what does all this mean? Gun purchase, huge number of rounds, probable multiple clips....? It means it was premeditated. He was planning on doing it sometime. It was only a matter how how badly he felt that day that he decided that he was going to punish all these people for being who they are...
After all, he came from Korea. There is little doubt in my mind that life was considerably harder for him then in his formative years. To see the massive amount of waste in American culture, the resources frittered away that could easily help his people and then on top of that... How they reject him and how intent he was on doing things. That women would reject his advances and increase the feelings that he doesn't belong here, that there is no woman for him in the future.
I can see his side all too well; unfortunately, no one ever told him that the way things are - is not the way things will always be. His parents never drilled in to him that the most important thing in life was the future of humanity and not the future of self. Really, the self is so small in the enormous tide of billions of human beings. I know we like to think that we are individuals, that we are special and no doubt I suffer from that delusion as well. But when it comes down to it, this idea of self-importance probably tore in to Cho when faced with the outward evidence that he didn't matter, that all the suffering he saw didn't matter in Korea and that the point of all the money in the world appeared to be...a bunch of rich kids spending their money and wasting their time fooling around.
But the point of this entry is simple. Cho planned this horrible event. It was not a crime of passion or a lack of control. I'm sure we'll see more people speaking in the future of a Cho shooting people with an emotionless look on his face (much like the look on his face in any number of pictures on the web now. He probably felt hopeless, like he wasn't important struggle with the mental attitude that he must be important and probably felt the tide of College kids doing unimportant things and didn't want to be swept in to that tide. How could he possible stop being assimilated in to this culture?
The sad point is that many of the people he killed had infinite horizons ahead of them. Academic achievers that could have done an unknown amount of good for human society - the human future. A future like a Chinese proverb of many ants working together to achieve greatness. We may not always cooperate well together, but certainly we are better off in many ways in the present than humanity has ever been in the past.
Cho himself had a future. Perhaps if he controlled his anger and continued to write he could have been the next horror author that send chills down readers spines. But now, there is nothing.
This is a good example from CNN 360 blog:
Then something happened. Whatever was boiling inside Cho exploded with lethal fury. In the ultimate act of hatred, he destroyed even himself, leaving others to decipher the ultimate question: Why?-- By Jill Dougherty, U.S. Affairs Editor for CNN International
This would indicate that the deaths on the campus of Virginia Tech were 2nd degree murders; however, this is untrue.
You simply have to look at the information. There was a receipt in Cho's backpack for the gun he used. It was dated in March. One would assume he purchased a generous amount of ammunition at that time as well.
As indicated in this article , Cho waited 5 weeks before using the gun to kill his fellow students and teachers at Virginia Tech. According to his teachers, Cho was intelligent if off-balance. The purchase of the gun and the ammunition indicates premeditation. There was no 'moment' where some action like flying doves in Mars attacks set him off to kill a bunch of people. Like Mars Attacks, Cho and the aliens always planned to kill a bunch of people.
He isn't a marksman. He really didn't have a legitimate reason for purchasing a handgun. His life wasn't threatened, theft while prevalent in schools usually isn't enough to want to own a gun for prevention and bringing a fun on campus is most likely illegal and certainly against the school's rules.
So, why would you buy a large number of rounds for a gun (even if we grant the point that he had a reasonable reason to buy the gun)? If you need to protect yourself, you might buy enough rounds to fill a clip. That's all you need. By the time you've gone through a clip of ammunition you are either dead, killed the intruder or put a bunch of holes in the wall. It is pretty unlikely that he refilled a single clip every time he needed to reload, either. He probably purchased multiple clips, so that he could reload as quickly as possible.
So, what does all this mean? Gun purchase, huge number of rounds, probable multiple clips....? It means it was premeditated. He was planning on doing it sometime. It was only a matter how how badly he felt that day that he decided that he was going to punish all these people for being who they are...
After all, he came from Korea. There is little doubt in my mind that life was considerably harder for him then in his formative years. To see the massive amount of waste in American culture, the resources frittered away that could easily help his people and then on top of that... How they reject him and how intent he was on doing things. That women would reject his advances and increase the feelings that he doesn't belong here, that there is no woman for him in the future.
I can see his side all too well; unfortunately, no one ever told him that the way things are - is not the way things will always be. His parents never drilled in to him that the most important thing in life was the future of humanity and not the future of self. Really, the self is so small in the enormous tide of billions of human beings. I know we like to think that we are individuals, that we are special and no doubt I suffer from that delusion as well. But when it comes down to it, this idea of self-importance probably tore in to Cho when faced with the outward evidence that he didn't matter, that all the suffering he saw didn't matter in Korea and that the point of all the money in the world appeared to be...a bunch of rich kids spending their money and wasting their time fooling around.
But the point of this entry is simple. Cho planned this horrible event. It was not a crime of passion or a lack of control. I'm sure we'll see more people speaking in the future of a Cho shooting people with an emotionless look on his face (much like the look on his face in any number of pictures on the web now. He probably felt hopeless, like he wasn't important struggle with the mental attitude that he must be important and probably felt the tide of College kids doing unimportant things and didn't want to be swept in to that tide. How could he possible stop being assimilated in to this culture?
The sad point is that many of the people he killed had infinite horizons ahead of them. Academic achievers that could have done an unknown amount of good for human society - the human future. A future like a Chinese proverb of many ants working together to achieve greatness. We may not always cooperate well together, but certainly we are better off in many ways in the present than humanity has ever been in the past.
Cho himself had a future. Perhaps if he controlled his anger and continued to write he could have been the next horror author that send chills down readers spines. But now, there is nothing.
Virginia Tech incident and Gun Control
I've been writing some long posts today, but I think this one will be short and simple.
I'm not particularly a gun-control advocate. I think everything to a point needs to be controlled, the more hazard involved the more control might be advised.
So, Cho goes and purchases a gun and a large amount of ammunition from a gun store at age 23. This is perfectly legal under present laws. Some politicians are taking the time right now to put their foot down and say that better gun control laws will not provide any more benefit.
I think; however, that they are wrong. Specifically on two points that wouldn't be particularly restrictive.
1) I have a friend who is 24, he cannot rent a car. Cho, would not be allowed to rent a car unless he put down $500 payment (in addition to normal rental charges) that he would not get back. My friend had need of a rental car because he traveled to Florida for flight school. No car was available to him. So, let's be straight about this, if it is a business and it MAY cost them money it justifies greater control than a person who wants to purchase a gun which is designed to kill. This doesn't make sense to me. One of these items needs to give, either the age for renting a car or the age for purchasing a gun. Both have high requirements for responsibility. Both can kill. Only one will cost a business a lot of money if it gets wrecked or used improperly. Only one has a higher age requirement for use.
2) It is all well and good that people want to be able to walk in to a store and purchase a gun and walk out that day. However, it sounds like Cho didn't have a single friend and that is most likely part of the profile for him performing the actions that he did. Is it such a burden that if you go to purchase a gun that at least one other person be with you and legally sign that you have known the person for at least 3 years and that you know of no reason that the person purchasing the gun would use it on a person except in self-defense conditions? (for handguns, for hunting rifles, the requirements would be written slightly different)
I don't think the above are drastic changes to what happens when someone wants to buy a gun.
Oh, and one more thing. The victims the doctors saw that were alive all had multiple gun shot wounds. Don't you think that means that the dead victims had multiple gun shot wounds? The doctors indicated that there were at least 3 wounds per person in the hospital.
So, let's do a little math. Cho bought (at least) 17 [injured] * 3 (51) + 32 [dead] * 3 (96) = (147) rounds of ammunition. Now, don't get me wrong, but he bought the gun in March, so he didn't spread the purchase of the ammo across a lot of time - don't you think it should have raised an eyebrow that he bought almost 150 rounds of ammunition? Wouldn't someone think to ask what purpose do they need to have that much ammunition? It doesn't mean that buying that much ammunition needs to be illegal; however, if you can't answer that question with a "I'm going to a target range with a couple buddies and we are practicing our shooting abilities." or something similar I think the shop keep should be thinking about something more than just how much money he is going to make off the sale.
Even some relatively mild controls would have prevented this situation from happening - or at least happening the way it did.
I'm not particularly a gun-control advocate. I think everything to a point needs to be controlled, the more hazard involved the more control might be advised.
So, Cho goes and purchases a gun and a large amount of ammunition from a gun store at age 23. This is perfectly legal under present laws. Some politicians are taking the time right now to put their foot down and say that better gun control laws will not provide any more benefit.
I think; however, that they are wrong. Specifically on two points that wouldn't be particularly restrictive.
1) I have a friend who is 24, he cannot rent a car. Cho, would not be allowed to rent a car unless he put down $500 payment (in addition to normal rental charges) that he would not get back. My friend had need of a rental car because he traveled to Florida for flight school. No car was available to him. So, let's be straight about this, if it is a business and it MAY cost them money it justifies greater control than a person who wants to purchase a gun which is designed to kill. This doesn't make sense to me. One of these items needs to give, either the age for renting a car or the age for purchasing a gun. Both have high requirements for responsibility. Both can kill. Only one will cost a business a lot of money if it gets wrecked or used improperly. Only one has a higher age requirement for use.
2) It is all well and good that people want to be able to walk in to a store and purchase a gun and walk out that day. However, it sounds like Cho didn't have a single friend and that is most likely part of the profile for him performing the actions that he did. Is it such a burden that if you go to purchase a gun that at least one other person be with you and legally sign that you have known the person for at least 3 years and that you know of no reason that the person purchasing the gun would use it on a person except in self-defense conditions? (for handguns, for hunting rifles, the requirements would be written slightly different)
I don't think the above are drastic changes to what happens when someone wants to buy a gun.
Oh, and one more thing. The victims the doctors saw that were alive all had multiple gun shot wounds. Don't you think that means that the dead victims had multiple gun shot wounds? The doctors indicated that there were at least 3 wounds per person in the hospital.
So, let's do a little math. Cho bought (at least) 17 [injured] * 3 (51) + 32 [dead] * 3 (96) = (147) rounds of ammunition. Now, don't get me wrong, but he bought the gun in March, so he didn't spread the purchase of the ammo across a lot of time - don't you think it should have raised an eyebrow that he bought almost 150 rounds of ammunition? Wouldn't someone think to ask what purpose do they need to have that much ammunition? It doesn't mean that buying that much ammunition needs to be illegal; however, if you can't answer that question with a "I'm going to a target range with a couple buddies and we are practicing our shooting abilities." or something similar I think the shop keep should be thinking about something more than just how much money he is going to make off the sale.
Even some relatively mild controls would have prevented this situation from happening - or at least happening the way it did.
Cho Seung-Hui and Indicators of Psychotic Anger
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.
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.
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
Viginia Tech Shooting
I feel sorrow as a parent for all those killed at Virginia Tech. Each and every one of them took years to be made in to college students, people with futures and people that in this country we need to live long fruitful lives. All those hopes are embedded in these students by their parents and the hopes for better futures.
Today, for 32 people most who were college students there will be no future. The absence of a future is a void the exact opposite of having a better future.
The head of the English department at Virginia Tech has revealed that some of Cho Seung-Hui's writings were sufficiently disturbing that they sent him out for counseling. Then in the same paragraph in this article she indicates that she won't tell anyone his grades or reveal the paper that referred him to counseling out of respect for privacy laws.
I have the highest respect for privacy laws, but she already broke those privacy laws by revealing anything about his education that was not already public knowledge. At this point in time to be consistent she needs to reveal this paper that she has now made everyone slavering over knowing the contents public.
I think, that in certain cases privacy laws need to be amended. It should be written that if a person commits a crime that all privacy concerns are no longer in scope. If you run around and kill a bunch of people you lose your right to privacy. Also, in this case it is uncertain whose privacy she is protecting as the individual in question is quite dead. If you are dead, you don't own anything, you can't do anything, you can't feel embarrassed about anything and guess what you don't have a right to privacy anymore since there isn't a 'you' anymore.
Today, for 32 people most who were college students there will be no future. The absence of a future is a void the exact opposite of having a better future.
The head of the English department at Virginia Tech has revealed that some of Cho Seung-Hui's writings were sufficiently disturbing that they sent him out for counseling. Then in the same paragraph in this article she indicates that she won't tell anyone his grades or reveal the paper that referred him to counseling out of respect for privacy laws.
I have the highest respect for privacy laws, but she already broke those privacy laws by revealing anything about his education that was not already public knowledge. At this point in time to be consistent she needs to reveal this paper that she has now made everyone slavering over knowing the contents public.
I think, that in certain cases privacy laws need to be amended. It should be written that if a person commits a crime that all privacy concerns are no longer in scope. If you run around and kill a bunch of people you lose your right to privacy. Also, in this case it is uncertain whose privacy she is protecting as the individual in question is quite dead. If you are dead, you don't own anything, you can't do anything, you can't feel embarrassed about anything and guess what you don't have a right to privacy anymore since there isn't a 'you' anymore.
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