So NBC got a package from Cho Seung-Hui in the mail, with videotaped messages and photographs. Most of it is censored/unreleased, and the few excerpts they’ve released indicate that he was angry at the “hedonists” and the rich.
Has more information about his actual motives surfaced yet?
Or, any thoughts as to his reasons? What drove him to do it?
Because he sucked?
Essentially because he had problems. Whether that means a chemical unbalance or being raped by his dad once a day, I’ve no idea, but something along those lines will be your answer.
Blaming the rich, blaming Christianity, believing that “There can only be one”, etc. are just excuses that a sick mind latches on to in order to rationalise the things they want to do. Which one is picked will largely just depend on what particular influence happened to be around at the time of going bonzo, and happened to appeal to the person.
He was batshit crazy. Why he was crazy is not known, as Sage Rat says, but that doesn’t matter: he was a crazed madman. The objects of his paranoia were just randomly acquired by his nuttiness, and you shouldn’t read anything at all into his choices.
Sometimes they don’t even have to “appeal” to the person; sometimes the voices in their heads demand it. Please don’t think I’m being trivial about it; I’m not.
An attorney friend asked me after the 2nd or 3rd day, “I have to know your thoughts on th VT shootings”.
I shrugged my shoulders and said “crazy ppl do crazy things.”
His crazy head drove him to do it. Again, I’m not trying to be trivial. Insanity is a horrible beast. Insanity will sweep you down to places you really don’t want to be. I don’t think there is a ‘why’. It’s just one of those "IS is " things.
I know that’s not a satisfactory answer. Having dealt with a lot of mentally ill pppl in my family, that’s all I got.
But the “why” does matter. What exactly does it mean when he’s “crazy” or “insane”? They’re convenient labels to attach to mass murderers and the like, sure, but what was actually going on inside his head prior to the events? Just saying he was mentally ill doesn’t explain enough. What made him that way?
Did he somehow logically come to the conclusion that what he did was necessary or even justifiable? Were there voices in his head commanding him to kill? Was he just so angry at whatever that he didn’t care anymore and needed a way to let it out? What?
I mean, how exactly does one go from the mundane daily thoughts that occupy normal people’s lives to “Fuck this. They’re all going to pay!!!”? Does something physically happen to the brain of these individuals that makes them do this? Are they just otherwise regular people who ended up in strange situations that they ultimately couldn’t cope with? Did he have legitimate grievances against his victims that he felt could not otherwise be solved? A combination of things?
I’m asking both because I’m interested from a psychological/behavioral perspective and because I’m wondering if there’s any way to either foresee or prevent these things from happening in the future.
This dude creeped out many of the people that knew him and he was referred to various counseling and mental services (which he did not make use of). How many more like him are out there, waiting for that one last thing to push them over the edge? Are all the angry loners of the world doomed to become mass murderers given enough time and weapons, or can these things actually be prevented given adequate detection and, I don’t know, treatment? Hospitalization?
I guess I’m just trying to get at the root of the issue. Every time something like this happens, a bunch of band-aid solutions are proposed. More gun control! Metal detectors at every campus! Security sirens! But they all just deal with the symptoms and not the cause: How did he ever get to this point?
[Pet Psychology Theory]
Think of life in the following terms: There is only one thing in the world that you can control, which is yourself. And even that’s not 100%.
Now, to the healthy person, they don’t think in terms like that. Your average person thinks that they can control their life and that pretty much everyone they know acts and will react like themselves. Control of their own lives just isn’t something that worries them. Someone who has issues, though, does think in terms like that.
What lets a normal person become a normal person is their upbringing. They aren’t worried about the world being out to get them because they had two invincible pillars there to protect them, and show them that they can grow up to be equally invincible. They have story books that similarly show how man can conquer the fears of the world. And they have friends who, even though they are part of the rest of the world, they’re not scary and even helpful.
The more of those things that are lacking, the greater the odds that the person will become fearful of the world.
And most specifically, if the person has a chemistry problem like depression, or if one of the invincible pillars chooses to abuse their absolute power over the child, then the odds go up even higher.
Now, I say odds because how a person will react to the scarinesses of life depends some amount on genetics and secondary influences. For instance, there was a pretty recent GD thread about how kids with a higher IQ are less susceptible to post traumatic stress syndrome.
How this all turns out though is pretty random. Again, this will largely depend on genetics and secondary influences. Some people will become serial rapists, others become pedophiles, yet other commit suicide, and some like our Virginian friend will go out in a blaze. But at heart it all boils down to the same thing, which is that the person is afraid of the world, and the “solution” that they have found to take that control back is something that will be harmful to others.
[/PPT]
Just to make sure I understand your theory, you’re suggesting that he felt a loss of control over his own life and needed to get that back at any cost?
More of a revenge, really. Punishing the world for making him fearful.
I personally think that explanation is reaching too much.
I base a lot of this on the very sad case of Brendan O’Donnell, who in Ireland in the mid-'90s murdered a young mother and her son, and a priest who came to negotiate their release.
The analysis and description of his thought processes gave something that literally defied logic. His way of thinking was wired completely differently to ours. Cause and effect didn’t work. His memory changed and shifted all the time - he would remember things vividly and strongly that a) had never happened [six foot long red centipedes coming out of his ears], and b) that he hadn’t even hallucinated [i.e. his memories were false]. He was convinced that his victim, Imelda Riney, had had a relationship with him and her child was both his and the son of the devil. For a while, anyway, then his explanation for this would change, and change again. Reality was changing around him all the time.
Having experienced one very short and mild episode of psychosis myself, I can confirm that my thought processes were just not right. Analogously, 2 + 2 did not equal 5. I called it “ill-logic” at the time. It’s incomprehensible and difficult to describe to someone thinking normally. I am happy to report that it didn’t make me kill anyone - my perceptions of the world changed, but my inner core realised that things were wrong, so I just felt scared a lot, particularly of London, and briefly thought I’d make lots of money from managing a band I’d seen in a bar in Singapore.
That’s why I think the only thing to say by way of explanation is that “he was a madman”.
It may be telling that one of the more incurable forms of schizophrenia is prevalent in young people. I seem to recall this being predominantly a male problem too. I may be completely off the mark with this, and don’t like to demonise the mentally ill; but you could say that a murderer is by definition mentally ill I suppose.
Well as said, it will vary by the person. If you’ve a rather severe version of scizophrenia, then that makes the whole process easier. In extreme cases, reality may not even enter the equation, so arguing about “fear of the world” and such is, as you say, potentially meaningless (though it’s possible to argue that one is shown memories/hallucinations that allow you to rationalise your murderous desires, lacking any real data.)
Cases like that aren’t the majority though.
[cartoon clock] Cuckoo! Cuckoo! Cuckoo! [/cartoon clock]
Katherine S. Newman, author of a book on school shootings suggests that peers see them as losers and they want to show themselves to be important; to “go out in a blaze of glory”, like a super hero or something.
Being “creeped out”, treating someone like a loser, as was also done at Columbine, doesn’t help the guy. Nor does treating him as sick, although of course he is. Treating folks like human beings may reduce this sort of thing.
Why did he do it? Because he was an evil man.
“Because of the kids, they called me Mr. Glass”
The 16th century called. They want their worldview back.
What does that mean, in real terms? I watched the interview with the two young men who were Cho’s roommates in 2005. They certainly thought he was weird, but from their account, it seems like they did try to treat him “like a human being”…they invited him to go to parties with them, tried to engage in him conversations and, when it looked like he was threatening suicide, the one guy contacted the police for help. It sounded like they made overtures, were rejected, and just left him to himself. The women he stalked…what were they supposed to do? Be nicer to him? I mean, I’m sure he had more of his fair share of teasing and mean behavior, but it seems like he also had a lot of people who did care and who tried to help and it didn’t seem to make a difference.
C3, that’s exactly my take on the situation. I keep hearing this endless yip-yap in the news about what a loner he was, and isn’t it too bad that he wasn’t given more help, or that he didn’t have more people reaching out to him… but you know what? How many times does a person have to try to be your friend with constant rejections and no display of interest before it’s okay to shrug and say “okay, he doesn’t want to hang out” and leave the kid alone? Plenty of “normal” people are loners, and it’s not as though (at least from the point of view of his life at VaTech that we’re getting, what may or may not have happened to him in earlier childhood or adolescence hasn’t yet been reviewed ad nauseum by the media) the kid was a desperate loser who just needed a friend and was constantly getting shoved in lockers and given atomic wedgies. His roommates and classmates tried to extend offers of friendship, and he declined. He wouldn’t even be engaged in friendly pre-class chit-chat.
Yes, he was given opportunities for counseling and psychiatric treatment, but you can’t lock someone up for being an introvert or acting a little weird. Plus, you have to want help to get better, psychologically speaking, and he did not want help. We don’t have the ability to predict future acts of violence and I don’t even like to imagine the implications of a society where the powers that be look at young people and decide they’re going to commit horrific acts because they don’t dress the right way or go to enough frat parties. Some people are just loners, and few are crazy, mass homicidal loners.
From the limited amount of information I have about this guy, reading the plays he wrote and seeing the clips of his video, I think that he probably wasn’t exceptionally bright or at the very least wasn’t in a mental state to capably express himself. He was an English major (even if at VaTech ;)) for the love o’god, yet his writing skills are terrible and the stuff he wrote sounds like something a foul-mouthed nine year old attempting a scene from a B horror movie might write. His talk in the videos is rambling, mostly pointless, and mostly incoherent. I don’t know that there’s any good answer to “why?”–at least not one he could provide. I just think he had some serious wires crossed somewhere and maybe there’s some diagnosable condition at the root, but when it comes right down to it, he did it because… well… that boy ain’t right, as they say. There might be a motive to one or a couple murders, or even the killing of a group of people, but the random shooting of strangers en masse is, I believe, quite a good example of insanity. Sane folks don’t spend months planning and executing a mass killing.
But you know, I had a conversation with NajaHusband the other day on a similar subject. It’s been a tough couple of weeks for him and his friends–one of his high school buddies who had gone into teaching and was currently teaching in Dubai was arrested for having sex with “several” students at “several” schools, and two of his closest friends were VaTech students. Now, the students his friend was having sex with were 17-18ish, not kindergardeners, and while that doesn’t make it right–in fact it was a monumentally stupid thing to do–I do have to wonder what kind of mental state one has to be in to step over the line from fantasy to committing these kinds of acts (a teacher having sex with students or shooting a bunch of people, etc.). I imagine we’ve all had fantasies of doing one stupid thing or another, but not too many of us act on the impulses. Something makes these people do it. Maybe sometimes it’s a deep psychosis, and sometimes it’s just a massive lack of impulse control… who knows?
It looks like he may have been dx’d with autism. That would explain his isolation and rage issues.