{"id":15462,"date":"2012-07-22T10:09:50","date_gmt":"2012-07-22T16:09:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/?p=15462"},"modified":"2016-05-01T10:05:25","modified_gmt":"2016-05-01T16:05:25","slug":"why","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/?p=15462","title":{"rendered":"Why?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Summer \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Hiroshima Moon<\/p>\n<p>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&#8217;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.<\/p>\n<p>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&#8217;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&#8217;t go on to commit spree murders of become serial killers.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>Any explanation has to take into account the obvious long term preparation for this act. \u00a0He amassed ammunition, weapons and body armor over a period of months, making multiple purchases from different physical and online merchants. \u00a0His shooting had a plan that included the use of some kind of gas and the booby-trapping of his apartment.<\/p>\n<p>These are not the acts of someone unable to think clearly or unaware of the implications of their actions.<\/p>\n<p>One parser of humanity&#8217;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.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Summer \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 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&#8217;s strange to &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/?p=15462\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Why?<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1980],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15462","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary-on-the-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15462"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15462\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36083,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15462\/revisions\/36083"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}