Hopeless. Desperate. Lonely. And yet, the choice such people make does not make me sorry for them.
It is a form of Herostrates syndrome. It just comes in the form of mass shooting in our day and age, but it has always been there, and the same.
Maybe you've never heard of a Herostratus complex but you've probably met someone who has it. Today, a lot of...
exploringyourmind.com
So the common traits:
- feeling that he is destined for something that would make him famous
- collector of grievances (in Herostratus' story, blamed lack of success on less-than-noble parenting, in our time, on school, family, exes)
- getting into history by negative attention (destroying 7th wonder of the world, or mass shooting, or 9/11)
My feeling, there is one important motive in their behavior. "Look at me, i am depressed and suicidal, no one cares about me, if I die, they won't even come to my funerals. Let me at least get into the Wikipedia by killing as many as i can".
And the sad part it, they do get into the Wikipedia, these shooters, while their victims don't.
It is up to the psychologists to think of how to reverse the pattern. Maybe the Wikipedias have to be rewritten, to make the articles not about the shooters, but about their victims? "A stupid loser who couldn't achieve, so he had to kill eleven wonderful people, but was beaten up by a hero nearby, and ended up killing himself, ambushed by the police", and then write about the victims, their life stories, and the hero.
The elders of Miletus, who once stopped an epidemic of suicides by threatening posthumous disgrace, were not so wrong.
MOO - one of the things that we need to change in the society is switch from glory to disgrace. From a line in Wikipedia - to the worst disgrace possible. The de-heroization might help. This is what they once did in Miletus.
What form of disgrace can we offer in the 21 century?