I rarely link to anything in Time Magazine as Time is about as liberal as anything in the MSM, but as I was looking at my wife’s office copy of the latest issue, the one with the pictures of the slain Virginia Tech victims of the cover, I turned to the last page article and was taken aback at the wisdom on that page. There David Von Drehel writes:

My reporter’s odyssey has taken me from the chill dawn outside the Florida prison in which serial killer Ted Bundy met his end, to the charred façade of a Bronx nightclub where Julio Gonzalez incinerated 87 people, to a muddy Colorado hillside overlooking the Columbine High School library, in which Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold wrought their mayhem. Along the way, I’ve come to believe that we’re looking for why in all the wrong places.

I’ve lost interest in the cracks, chips, holes and broken places in the lives of men like Cho Seung-Hui, the mass murderer of Virginia Tech. The pain, grievances and self-pity of mass killers are only symptoms of the real explanation. Those who do these things share one common trait. They are raging narcissists.

There you have it — the “reason” “why” a killer like Seung Hui Cho would go on a rampage, killing fellow student and teachers. Indeed, as the Washington Post reports, the authorities were even looking for brain abnormalities to explain the carnage — to come up with some rationale as to why Cho would fire more than 100 bullets into 31 victims. Actually, I think that Von Drehel is on to something.

Psychologists from South Africa to Chicago have begun to recognize that extreme self-centeredness is the forest in these stories, and all the other things– guns, games, lyrics, pornography–are just trees. To list the traits of the narcissist is enough to prove the point: grandiosity, numbness to the needs and pain of others, emotional isolation, resentment and envy.

Be sure and follow the link to see how this theory stacks up to serial killers like Ted Bundy, as well as to mass-killers like Cho.

Freud explained narcissism as a failure to grow up. All infants are narcissists, he pointed out, but as we grow, we ought to learn that other people have lives independent of our own. It’s not their job to please us, applaud for us or even notice us–let alone die because we’re unhappy.

How many people do you run into everyday that feel like life “owes” them something? How many that want you to give them what they need? How many that the school system has told them that “they are special, that they should feel good about themselves”, without ever having to have done anything to warrant those types of feelings?

A generation ago, the social critic Christopher Lasch diagnosed narcissism as the signal disorder of contemporary American culture. The cult of celebrity, the marketing of instant gratification, skepticism toward moral codes and the politics of victimhood were signs of a society regressing toward the infant stage.

Even our governmental leaders are contributing to this, with their constant pandering to the victomhood concept of social justice. “You are a victim of your circumstances, therefore you are not to be held accountable for your actions.” I. E. You couldn’t help yourself. What a crock of bovine excrement!

In Holocaust studies, there is a school of thought that says to explain is to forgive. I won’t go that far. But we must stop explaining killers on their terms. Minus the clear context of narcissism, the biographical details of these men can begin to look like a plausible chain of cause and effect–especially to other narcissists. And they don’t need any more encouragement.

Indeed, there is far too much encouragement for our narcissistic natures, on TV, in the movies, in popular music and especially in the public school system. Never in the history of the United States has there been such a disconnect between personal responsibility and citizenship. Von Drehel nails it for me when he discusses a narcissistic popular singers response to the Columbine killings.

This is the narcissist‘s view of narcissism: everything would be fine if only he received more attention. The real problem can be found in the killer’s mirror.

It’s not the guns, it’s the killer himself. Wise words from the pages of Time Magazine — will wonders ever cease?

Technorati Tags: Time Magazine, David Von Drehel, Virginia Tech, Seung Hui Cho, narcissism, narcissist

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 22nd, 2007 at 11:12 pm and is filed under '60s / '70s Redeaux, Media Doin' It Right. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.  |   Print This Post  |   Email This Post

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