Transforming an otherwise healthy adolescent into a serial killer, mass murderer, or domestic terrorist is a three step process.
The first step involves establishing a relationship between the individual and the public founded upon a sense of betrayal. This involves failing to protect the individual from abusive behavior, then shamelessly avoiding the imposition of any significant punishment upon the abuser. If the abuser is a relatively high status individual it's especially effective to praise and reward him for his athletic ability, his fighting skill, his anatomical correctness and so forth. If the abuser receives a lot of female attention, that's also helpful in generating a general sense of hatred toward the public. Routinely insulting and/or blaming the terrorist trainee and referring to him with labels like wimp, faggot, pussy, etc. cannot help but reinforce the hatred he'll feel toward everyone around him. Now that the internet exists, the terrorist trainee will almost certainly learn that this sort of barbaric behavior is normal all over America. This will help to widen the scope of his hatred toward just about everyone. The terrorist trainee is now able to place no value on human life without losing sleep over it.
The second step is less controllable. The trainee must develop a general sense of failure strong enough for him to lose hope in a better future. He must feel as though he has nothing to lose. The length of time required to complete this step varies widely. Eric Harris was 18 when he orchestrated his attack on Columbine High School while George Sodini was 48 when he started spraying bullets inside a Pittsburg health club. The inability to make and keep friends or maintain healthy relationships with the opposite sex, the inability to find a job that actually pays enough to live on, and the inability to pay for higher education can all be important factors in convincing the trainee that the world hates him and wants him to feel like a loser.
The third step involves the trainee embracing a philosophy where he will acquire a sense of purpose and reward for killing people. He may embrace a radical religion or he may simply make something up on his own. In his personal fantasy he's fighting evil and will be lavishly rewarded in Heaven or when the virtual reality game ends. In a world where videogame and virtual reality escapism is a multibillion dollar industry, this is pretty easy to do.
But without fulfilling the first step by establishing a sense of betrayal in the trainee, the second and third steps become irrelevant.
The manner in which you treat another individual or group of individuals and the value you place on their lives and safety is a function of your relationship. Timothy McVeigh, Eric Harris, and Adam Lanza obviously had a strong negative relationship with the public. They had no moral difficulty killing and maiming large groups of people and the reason for this is anything but mysterious.
Here's Dr. Pia Durkin's homework question for today:
What kind of relationship will be established between the community of New Bedford and the recent victim of violent crime, Eduardo Irizarry? Will the criminal who attacked him and broke his jaw suffer the same laughably ineffective punishment as chair throwing Kemar Omar Roselus? Will he simply be moved to another school building and put on "double secret probation?" Will young Mr. Irizarry be taught by example that adults in authority place no value on his safety? Will he learn the same lessons learned by the three mass murderers listed above? Or will the criminal actually be treated as what it is?
I know what you're thinking. Lots of people are bullied without turning into killers. I encounter this argument routinely and my standard response is always the same. Lots of people drink and drive without ever crashing into anything. In fact, between 1978 when I graduated high school and 1984 when I enlisted in the military I operated a motor vehicle after drinking more than the legal limit well over a thousand times.
How would you feel if I addressed the senior class of New Bedford High School and argued that drinking and driving is statistically safe?
The Elephant will be following this story closely. Try not to get anyone killed.
Love and peanuts,
The Elephant
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