No Answers

The shootings in Virginia yesterday are hard to take your mind off. We've become so desensitised to the indescribable awfulness that is Iraq that the news reports from there barely scrape by on the radar. When a killing on such a large scale happens in the US or anywhere in the West it lands right on the radar. There are lots of discussions in the ether as to why that is and why we should feel guilty and I don't want to get into that here. What I am trying to understand is why someone turns into a killing machine and once they've started they can't stop. We are all capable of horrendeous acts but what is it that prevents most of us from turning into monsters and lets others run riot? Supposedly the murderer was reacting to being jilted by his girlfriend. If we imagine that he couldn't stand the thought of his girlfriend with another man, the thought is so unbearable that the only way he can deal with it is to destroy them. He needs to restore control in his life. He needs to feel that he has some power over his life. He uses his ultimate power, the power to take life. Does he think about what he's doing? Does it all happen in a rage? Is he calm for the four hours or so that this all took place. Why did murder become the only solution he could find for his problems. Was he wired differently to the rest of us? Is it fair to focus so much on the murderer and not his victims? His legacy, their legacies are these feeling that we are all experiencing.