In parts one and two, we’ve touched on the importance of isolation and alienation to the developing mass killing agenda. One feeds the other; the less human contact one has, or the less contact one has with unmistakeable humanity, the easier it is to maintain a generalized contempt without challenge. For the mass killer, isolation crosses from merely being alienated from a group of people or the general public to an active effort to separate. The more alienated one is, the easier it is to isolate. Norway’s Breivik spoke of how he did not have contact with anyone for a year as he literally trained himself for what he was doing. Newton’s killer, whom we now know was at least referencing Breivik in his run up to the catastrophe, likewise isolated himself, and reinforced his detachment (and as Breivik before him, perhaps trained for something more) in compulsive violent video gaming.
Again, mass killing is the endpoint of lengthy premeditation. Along the way, a person full of contempt, who identifies with the stature afforded by media to earlier mass killers, graduates into thinking that all others in a particular group, school, workplace, or a community at large deserve to die. Such resentment broadly devalues others and accounts for those prospective victims who don’t quite fit their contemptible vision as “collateral damage.” Always remember – you have to hate everyone to kill anyone. A person has to be at that point in order for a mass killing fantasy to evolve into a plan, then practiced and refined, of indiscriminate shooting or bombing.
Simple acts of human kindness can save your life. The lesson first vividly hit home to me when I was brought in to examine the killer and circumstances of Byran Uyesugi’s mass killing of seven Xerox employees (that psychologically decimated the company’s Hawaii presence). Included in his rampage was the spectacle of Uyesugi murdering seven people at close quarters within minutes – and completely sparing a man in their midst who sat so shell shocked that he did not bother to run or hide as everyone was wiped out around him. Randall Shin, who survived such indescribable trauma, happened to have asked Uyesugi about two years earlier how he had been feeling after Uyesugi had had eye surgery. That was all!
What this example and others demonstrate is that a person who is conscious, whatever his diagnosis (Uyesugi had a psychotic condition) and even in the midst of a murderous spree, will be touched by memory of kindness. I’ve known of cases in which rapists as well, who reversed course when they recognized an intended victim for some simple previous kindness. How does this work?
I am convinced, based on professional experiences such as these, that simple, even simple acts of kindness penetrate the bubble the mass killer in waiting creates and reinforces. The person who idealizes the unthinkable goal of mass murder imposes isolation from a target in order to protect their alienation; their nihilism cannot trump kindness coming back at them. Acts of kindness may not often be met with trust; but they register, and can be built upon. A human connection, any connection, may be the lone force embedding the homicidal nihilist from crossing over from a life with no connection to a legacy of being larger than life, given mass media transcendence and legitimization.
One of the great misconceptions about mass killers is that they “fall into the cracks.” They do not – they crawl into cracks that reinforce their alienation and isolation. This means that merely referring them to psychiatrists or counselors – if these high risk persons comply – does not necessarily render them any less invested in hating everyone around them. By the time psychiatry is involved, the mass killer may be too invested in the plan. This is akin to when the best brain surgeon gets a Stage 4 glioblastoma – some beliefs are such advanced cancers that they cannot be excised or reversed. At this point, the mass killer in waiting has worked to harden a cocoon around his ideology.
Ronald Taylor, a Pittsburgh mass killer I spent many hours examining in a prospective death penalty case, was a familiar example of such a person embittered – in his case, by hatred for white folks. He was loved by his mother, connected to a mental health apparatus; saw a highly experienced psychiatrist who was a very competent and caring man who properly diagnosed him with low grade depression -- but to whom Taylor never revealed a vituperative manifesto Taylor had prepared months before he launched. Taylor, like many mass killers, was greatly frustrated at being unable to achieve meaningful intimacy with a female (an aside – I’m aware of only one mass killing perpetrated by a homosexual, and almost all are males. Yes, that is telling). Taylor’s tipping point was a failed effort to woo an employee at his drop-in center, to whom he wrote secret admirer letters. She found his warnings to avoid white males creepy, and eventually figured out who responsible. It was the humiliation of being exposed by someone he had a crush on that fairly immediately preceded Taylor’s mass killing. But Taylor, for all of the tooth-spitting rage with which he started his rampage, walking through his neighborhood and shooting every white man he encountered in the head (including a priest), Taylor literally skipped one man early in his assault. That person was as white as his other victims. Whatever Taylor’s fury, he recalled – in the moment -- the man’s having been friendly to him in the past, even though their encounters were casual.
Consider, then, as you go about your way, how easy it is to project and act with kindness particularly directed toward those you recognize as alienated, unapproachable, rejected, and even frightening. In workplaces, in schools, in neighborhoods, there are those dark and angry folks who are easy to overlook, who seemingly want to be overlooked. You need not do much or go overboard; modest if sincere warmth may be all that such an angry soul can trust at the time. But kindness is a portal to humanity and is easier than you think to deploy as a disarming weapon. You will never know what difference it makes, just as Taylor and Uyesugi’s spared targets were shocked by their fate and its basis. But if your actions are early enough to penetrate the bubble of alienated nihilism, your initiative may be the only countervailing example of how irrational it is to simply hate everyone enough to destroy indiscriminately. And its impact could be more profound than you will ever know. Don’t leave kindness in the hands of others. You may be the only person who ever has that chance to incidentally, but definitively, jolt sensibility in the prelude to senselessness.
Next in Part Four: What Teachers Can and Must Do to Eliminate This Social Catastrophe
