My thoughts on…the Virginia Tech Massacre
The biggest news to hit the airwaves in the past couple days is the Virginia Tech Massacre, in which 32 college students and faculty members fell at the hands of a madman. Columbine ain’t got nothing on this, and when it is mentioned, it will be in comparison to Viginia Tech. Such random and meaningless loss of life is always saddening, worse when you read the victims’ profiles and discover the people behind the photos. It hits closer to home for me as I am a university student.
The perpetrator, Cho Seung-Hui, denied families of the deceased the pleasure of seeing him brought to justice when he killed himself. I guess that’s why all these wacko killers smoke themselves, or maybe they’re just afraid of the consequences of their actions. Learning about him makes you discover just how truly disturbed he was. His plays “Mr. Brownstone” and “Richard McBeef” give you a clear view inside his twisted mind. They feature language, use of weapons and violence that would shock even the most hardened soul. He rarely spoke in class, he stalked women, especially Emily Hilscher who rejected him and, not surprisingly, became his first victim.
People are now pointing fingers to the powers that be as to why he wasn’t given any help, what motivated him to do something so evil, why the university didn’t act sooner to alert students, etc. I don’t really pay attention to all that, because its easy to speculate after such an event, as hindsight is after 20/20 after all. Right now everyone sees Cho as evil incarnate, but I see him as a young man with a hard life, one with very little, if any, happiness in it. He was angry and frustrated, mainly because of the rich kids that teased him for being so quiet, and had no positive means to relase that anger. He didn’t connect emotionally with other people, and the one time he tried, he was shot down. Emily probably rejected him for some fickle reason, as college girls often do. Little did she know what damage that would do to him.
Perhaps you are wondering how I can empathize with such a monster. But we must not forget that he was also a human being, and if we can gain a bit of insight as to what motivated him, maybe we can stop future Virginia Tech Massacres from happening. This incident has also caused me to think about my own life. Most of the victims’ profiles are around a paragraph long, but you have a few one-liners. Which makes me wonder what my profile would be like? It certainly wouldn’t be a one-liner, I can tell you. But it has motivated me further to live a life worth remembering, as you never know when it can be taken.
This wasn’t in any way the fault of the girl who “rejected” him. If he was anti-social and she wasn’t attracted to him, there was no reason for her to not reject him. People get rejected every day and they don’t go off and kill people, it’s a part of life. Most people just keep trying until they find someone who IS attracted to them. This guy was a sick psycho who didn’t get help and was able to buy a gun. That’s it.
Yes they will paint this guy as the devil himself and no doubt what he did was evil, but there is something that makes me feel like this could have been avoided. It’s not a cut and dry issue. I think his family abused him. You can see it in the plays he wrote.
I live in Northern Virginia, and if any community could produce a serial killer, this is the one. The adults are totally immersed in social climbing - swerving through traffic in their oversized SUVs, prattling away on their cell phones, threatening to sue anyone who gets in their way. Their kids are raised by underpaid au-pairs and brought out for display at dinner parties like centerpieces. The kids are truly sad, but considering how they are raised it is surprised they don’t all wind up in two camps - emotionally scarred like Cho, and the next generation of the self-involved. If there is a hell on earth as far as human nature goes, it is truly the metro D.C. area.
I totally agree with the first Anonymous. To the second Anonymous, I suggest a visit to the Congo where all kinds of madness are going on, apparently, or Iraq, where bombs are going off daily.
Thoise hells are related to human nature too, and they seem to be to be WAY more hellish…
That’s why I limited my description to D.C. as a hell of human nature. I knew comparisons to the rest of the world would come up in subsequent comments. The rest of the world, for sure, has hellish circumstances beyond comparison to anything in the U.S. Their “hells of human nature” largely come from centuries-long rivalries between warring tribes often brought about by artificially drawn national boundaries made by European powers. What you see in the behavior of the typical D.C. and D.C.-burb resident is born of a me-first mentality of gargantuan preportions. From the DCist/Fairfax County resident perspective, those individuals that are not rungs on a ladder for their financial and social climbing live and breathe for their personal amusement, if they even bother to notice their existence at all.
Some further thoughts…For a real taste of what young people in the D.C. area are all about I would point you in the direction of the “D.C. LateNightShots” website. It is a group dedicated to social climbing via D.C. bar hopping. They used to have some very insightful comments on their website, but ever since the “I Hate D.C.” blog spot started making sport of them, they promptly moved everything self-revealing behind the safety of their members-only web pages.
I don’t see how the authorities could have pervented this shit happens. IT just goes to show the power of the human mind. We need to love each other instead of alienating people. They should have a “be a friend to a crazy person” holiday
It’s not about rich kids or college girls, it’s about maturity and the darkness of human nature. We all have times when we need attention and feel th only way people will take us seriously is if we kill ourselves - that’s what suicide usually is, a cry for attention. This guy Cho executed people, he leveled his gun at kids his own age who begged for their lives and pulled the trigger.
No one is responsible for the carnage that day but that sick murderer - and any attempt to explain away his culpability is to invite the next depressed suicidal murderer to film his martyr video and kill even more innocent kids.
hey Leon…
Pretty powerful post. I blogged about this myself. Didn’t feel to analyze it myself, just wanted to talk from the heart. Keep up the good work here, man. Take care.
Peace,
Gina R. Johnson
Well said Leon…You always have to wonder if no one saw it coming and why it couldnt have been avoided..Too sad
I feel sorry for both the victims and Cho himself. he was obviously a very disturbed person who did not get the help he needed. He was not poor so the rant against rich girls/society was just part of his delusions. I also feel very sorry for the instructor who tried so hard to find him help which he refused. So sad.