It seems strange at first to look into the face of a mass murderer.

The face is so hard to penetrate.   The hatred coming out is so visceral and palpable you wonder how anyone could miss it.

But is this the face that people saw?  Did they look into those eyes or rather look away?   Did they stay away because his bizarre behaviour made them uncomfortable?   What would reaching out to this person have been like?    Would he not have  misunderstood any effort at help as an effort to invade him and control him?

I have written before about how, when you get to know people, you discover that most have a giant tangled knot of emotion: guilt, anger, resentment, even unfulfilled longing, tied up in the centre of their being and binding them, restricting them from expressing themselves, from being open to the world.

Because of course, the world is not necessarily friendly.  The kids who hang out together are a lot of fun, unless you are somehow excluded.  The friendly person may be after something of yours, your heart, your body, your possessions, perhaps your soul.

Yet we live together in a social order.   To the loner, to the one who is so afraid of others they do not know how to speak until they are filled with rage and frustration, to those injured or damaged in the past by however small or great a wound, this must seem like torture.

It must seem to them that they are making some huge self-sacrifice to interact with others, to let their guard down even to say hello.  They must come to see themselves as martyrs, as prepared to lose themselves and suffer great pain just to exist in this world.

To this single one alone, it must seem that living in the world is like walking around without skin.   Every touch, however human, however gentle, feels like a shock, like a stabbing pain that is aimed at the vitals.

Is it any wonder that such a one starts to feel that they can no longer bear it, that they can no longer stand the pain, the torture, the martyrdom of simply living with others?

At this point, there are only two solutions, which in the end amount to one.  One could simply kill oneself.  That would end the pain.  But it would not let others know what they have done to you.  One could kill others but do they not have the police on their side and wouldn’t such an action result in your own capture or death?  And if they killed you, they would spin it their way.  Your message would not get out.  Or, as is the case in a number of instances, one could let everyone understand and feel one’s pain by killing as many of “them” as possible before killing oneself in clear statement of defiance.   “Them” is everybody and anybody else.

The decision to kill others is tied up with the venting of one’s rage, the rebellion against one’s feeling constantly hurt, tortured and constrained.   One could even come to see this act as a political gesture on behalf of everyone who like you feels tortured, isolated and enraged.   You come to see yourself as a martyr (and weren’t you already a martyr just by trying to live with others when you had no skin and others could not see it?)  You have no choice.  The world has forced you to do something and now it’s time for payback for your years of suffering.

Suicide bombers share much of this psychology.  They are fortified in their own actions by political and religious indoctrination.  The lone gunman, however, comes to this way of acting on his own.   He is striking out to avenge himself first although he could also come to see himself as the defender of all outsiders.   He politicizes his act.

I say “he” and “his” because this way of acting is better suited to males, but women occasionally take part.  To become susceptible to this way of thinking, they are probably exceptionally isolated and wounded.  But perhaps, women are generally more social and thus less likely to develop these traits.

As men, we constantly struggle to keep our connection to other people.   It doesn’t seem to come naturally to all of us.

Personally, I don’t think stricter gun laws would help much in preventing this type of thing.   We need to find ways of giving the hopeless hope, of building faith and confidence in others and in oneself.

It seems to me that would be the only thing that could help Cho other than massive drug treatments or incarceration.   Otherwise, he was a ticking bomb waiting to explode.   Only the number of people he killed was in question.