Search for a Motive

The perpetrator of the latest American mass shooting—at the elementary school in Newton Connecticut—also killed himself and his mother. In addition, Adam Lanza smashed his computer hard drive before he went on his rampage. This, we are told by the investigators, is going to make it harder to find what motivated Mr. Lanza to do such a horrible thing.

When we say we want to find the motive for a crime, what we want is a clear, logical, rational explanation for an action that makes it understandable. However, when someone does something of this nature—a mass killing—you can be sure they were not thinking clearly and rationally. Sure they could think clearly about the guns, ammunition, clothing, etc., but this deludes us into thinking that the motivation for their action is also rational.

Dr. James Gilligan, a psychiatrist who directed the Center for the Study of Violence at Harvard Medical School and was in charge of psychiatric services for the Massachusetts state prison system for ten years, begins his book, Violence, with this message: “The first lesson...is that all violence is an attempt to reach justice, or what the violent person perceives as justice, for himself or for whomever it is on whose behalf he is being violent…Thus, the attempt to achieve and maintain justice, or to undo or prevent injustice, is the one and only universal cause of violence. [italics in the original]

I think Dr. Gilligan gives us the guidance we need in our search for a motive: somehow, for Adam Lanza this action was an attempt to achieve justice. It’s not too hard to imagine how Mr. Lanza might have perceived that his mother had caused him an injustice, but it’s much harder to get a handle on how killing children could undo or prevent injustice. I suggest we’ll never know for sure. All we can know is that in some way this action helped Lanza, in his mind, right an injustice that he believed had been done to him.

Aurora shooting occurs at film that glorifies violence

Has anyone else noticed the irony that the audience in Aurora was gleefully assembled to drink in every frame of Hollywood's latest simulated snuff-film, a blockbuster extolling violence as a solution? Got a problem? Kill it! Someone hurt you? Hurt 'em back! Tit for tat! The shooter obviously agreed with this lofty editorial position: (a) other people have made my life wretched (b) other people are the problem (c) other people must suffer as I have suffered. A no-brainer. Literally.

Bob Dylan once wrote a song called "Who Killed Davey Moore?" about a prize fighter who died in the ring. The question is repeatedly asked, "Who killed Davey Moore? Why and what's the reason for?" Each subsequent verse is devoted to a person or persons involved in the "sport" who deny their culpability: "Not I," said the referee, the crowd, the manager, the gambling man, the boxing writer, and finally the opponent who dealt the actual death blow.

I think we should legalize snuff films--have poor people well-paid to literally be slaughtered for our amusement up there on the big screen. Wouldn't that be more honest?

People ask "Why?"

Because we've been trained to love violence that's why. The purveyors of this sick trash are insane and so are we when we support it.