Cho

Sure, lax gun laws did facilitate the murderous rampage of Cho Seung-Hai. There needs to be change in that respect. But all this is very superficial.

Where there is no cancer growing malignantly inside the head of the murderer, no extreme tragedy experienced to cause a meltdown, the cause for the mass-murder is clear. It is a frustrated, unrestricted narcissism that drives people towards such crimes. Cho saw himself as a Christ-like figure, with an important message to tell. When you realise that the States has a particularly narcissistic culture, it becomes clear why there are proportionately more school and university mass killings there than in other countries with even less tight gun laws.

In years past, I have caught myself in narcissistic moments. It's true that there WAS a tiny core of extreme confidence in oneself. But, mostly, it is the fight that this core engages in against an extremely damaged, fragile ego, a quiet depression, a bitterness, an all-pervading dissatisfaction with life. Narcissistic people respond far more explosively to stress, to humiliation, to exclusion, to the indifference of others. They want attention, glory, praise. There is a distortion of thinking which can be treated most effectively over time. Sometimes, genuine individual effort alone is enough, but where that fails or where the subject is not aware enough to self-diagnose,the provocation and then support of outsiders is crucial. I've mentioned before that a reasonably large ego is OK in some respects. It motivates, for example. But one has to keep it in check, privately and publicly!

ook at Cho's videos, his writings, his self-centredness, his planning, his warnings, his identity. He suddenly became as grandiose in real-life as in his fantasies. If only temporarily, he finally felt powerful. An easy, most cowardly way out, yes. So, to prevention: Tease out narcissistic thoughts, which become evident in the individual's creative expression, in their opinions and behaviour. Gently dismantle the narcissistic structures people build in their minds. No more killer. And do something about those gun laws!

Oh, and consider how narcissistic Jesus Christ himself must have been. Wow. I'm not saying he didn't have some fantastic traits. He was probably extremely intelligent. But what came with that, amongst other things, was "I have god's message, listen to me, give me attention, control, power". One can imagine his increasingly grandiose thought patterns as he attracted more and more sheep to his flock.

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The Onion reports that thousands more are dead in the ongoing victory in Iraq

Snobbishness

There are different types of snobs - intellectual snobs and materialists. Both sides like to feel themselves as superior and have some measure of contempt for the other.

There are high-powered CEOs who, due to their lack of knowledge on a topic, are routinely humiliated by intellectuals. There are plain-clothed intellectuals that are ignored, ridiculed or pitied by the wealthy. There are trendy, beautiful people in successful careers who are enraged and humbled by their complete irrelevancy in matters political or scientific. There are trendy intellectuals who are unfairly labelled as materialists, and shallow, materialistic geniuses who are ashamed to be called know-it-alls and who recoil at the possibility of being ostracised due to a perceived intellectual elitism. The intellectual elites are derided as bullshit artists, the materialists as uneducated.

It can be very difficult to reconcile these ways of living. Where one tries merely to gain as many posessions as possible, one must compromise, to some degree, ones love of gaining as much knowledge as possible. Of course, knowledge may sustain wealth, and wealth may help you obtain or transfer knowledge, but ego and identity depend on which category we choose for our own self-evaluation. Too often, people of different tastes judge the other on criteria they did not submit to. Two people with a commitment to knowing all about cosmic rays may compete fairly, as might two people who just want to be billionaires. When the cosmologist judges the aspiring billionaire or vice-versa, is where things get very strange.