Summer Hiroshima Moon
If you take a quick look at the news channels, or scan the news aggregators on the web, Aurora, Colorado and the shootings at the Century Theatre occupy most of them. It’s strange to be here, so close, yet for the day to day, to be as far as away as anyone else in the country.
The more I read about the shooter, James Holmes, the stranger it gets. We may discover that he was a very well defended psychotic or a high achieving psychopath, either seems likely, but I’m increasingly skeptical of these kinds of explanations. Yes, when applicable, they are a contributing factor, but even for the universe of psychotics and psychopaths, these people are outliers. Said another way, the vast majority of both psychotics and psychopaths don’t go on to commit spree murders of become serial killers.
We might discover he was a deeply unhappy man whose life dream had begun to unravel. Perhaps, faced with the end of a seamless rise through the academic system, he could imagine no future for himself and decided to vent his frustration through a symbolic, but tragically real act.
Any explanation has to take into account the obvious long term preparation for this act. He amassed ammunition, weapons and body armor over a period of months, making multiple purchases from different physical and online merchants. His shooting had a plan that included the use of some kind of gas and the booby-trapping of his apartment.
These are not the acts of someone unable to think clearly or unaware of the implications of their actions.
One parser of humanity’s extremes suggested he might have been in neuroscience trying to understand the strange state of his own mind. And failed. Or, I suppose, maybe he succeeded.
