This is what Elliot Rodger said before he went on the killing spree, resulting in 6 deaths.
" Hi, Elliot Rodger here. Well, this is my last video. It all has to come to this. Tomorrow is the day of retribution, the day I will have my revenge against humanity, against all of you.
For the last eight years of my life, since I hit puberty, I've been forced to endure an existence of loneliness, rejection and unfulfilled desires, all because girls have never been attracted to me. Girls gave their affection and sex and love to other men, never to me.
I'm 22 years old and still a virgin, never even kissed a girl. And through college, 2 1/2 years, more than that actually, I'm still a virgin. It has been very torturous.
College is the time when everyone experiences those things such as sex and fun and pleasure. In those years I've had to rot in loneliness, it's not fair.
You forced me to suffer all my life, now I will make you all suffer. I waited a long time for this. - Elliot Rodger.
You girls have never been attracted to me. I don't know why you girls aren't attracted to me but I will punish you all for it. It's an injustice, a crime because I don't know what you don't see in me, I'm the perfect guy and yet you throw yourselves at all these obnoxious men instead of me, the supreme gentleman. I will punish all of you for it.
On the day of retribution, I am going to enter the hottest sorority house at UCSB and I will slaughter every single spoiled, stuck-up, blond slut I see inside there. All those girls I've desired so much. They have all rejected me and looked down on me as an inferior man if I ever made a sexual advance toward them, while they throw themselves at these obnoxious brutes.
I take great pleasure in slaughtering all of you., You will finally see that I am, in truth, the superior one, the true alpha male. [laughs] Yes, after I have annihilated every single girl in the sorority house, I'll take to the streets of Isla Vista and slay every single person I see there. All those popular kids who live such lives of hedonistic pleasure while I've had to rot in loneliness all these years. They all look down upon me every time I tried to join them, they've all treated me like a mouse.
Well, now I will be a god compared to you, you will all be animals, you are animals and I will slaughter you like animals. I'll be a god exacting my retribution on all those who deserve it and you do deserve it just for the crime of living a better life than me.
The popular kids, you never accepted me and now you will all pay for it. Girls, all I ever wanted was to love you, be loved by you. I wanted a girlfriend. I wanted sex, love, affection, adoration.
You think I'm unworthy of you. That's I crime I can never get over. If I can't have you girls, I will destroy you. [laughs] You denied me a happy life and in turn I will deny all of you life, it's only fair. I hate all of you.
Humanity is a disgusting, wretched, depraved species. If I had it in my power I would stop at nothing to reduce every single one of you to mountains of skulls and rivers of blood and rightfully so. You deserve to be annihilated and I will give that to you. You never showed me any mercy so I will show you none.
You forced me to suffer all my life, now I will make you all suffer. I waited a long time for this. I'll give you exactly what you deserve, all of you. All you girls who rejected me, looked down upon me, you know, treated me like scum while you gave yourselves to other men. And all of you men for living a better life than me, all of you sexually active men. I hate you. I hate all of you. I can't wait to give you exactly what you deserve, annihilation."
For a moment, let's go with the columnist's conclusion that it was the illness that made him do it. I see sound reasons for such a conclusion. After all his anti-female vitriol, the first thing he did was to stab down three of his male room mates, who happened to be ethnic Asians. It appears that he did not hold a high regard for the Asians as well. As someone suffering from a development disorder, driven by the despondency of loneliness or anger or self-righteousness or whatever, misogyny might have just happened to be one channel through which he expressed his frustrations.
Now, let's take a look at how random incidents of crimes are perceived in our society. Illness that cause havoc in the way people perceive their surroundings, absorb social cues, build relationships and become a full-developed social being is not just confined to USA. Just because the medical practice and child care is much advanced in the West, and parents are made knowledgeable about variations of child behavior, cases of these deviations are treated from childhood and precautions are taken much earlier.
On the other hand, in countries like India, a child is considered normal and is expected to be on par with every other child in every single facet of human development until the child behaves explicitly mentally-retarded. In other words, there is a plain black-and-white separation. Either a child is labelled "normal" and is part of the mainstream socialization process or is labelled "retarded" and is totally outcast from the mainstream. Child psychology is never considered as a spectrum, there is no recognition to the fact that even the so-called "normal" children may not be as normal as they are supposed to be. Most of us remember the "who is on first" joke referred in the movie Rainman (NB1), but none of us really bother to figure out if there are individuals who are incapable of grasping the difference between Who and Who (interrogative pronoun and proper noun). I am just quoting this example to illustrate a point- that people may not have the same understanding of every social cues, communication technique or abstract concepts that "normal" people take for granted (NB2). From infancy to adolescence, in the journey of mental development, this rather "inadequate" or "different" notions could induce a lot of psychological disturbances in individuals. This is a fact to which, we as a society, are more careless as compared to being ignorant.
So, what we need to recognize is a fact that there could be many such "deviant" minds among ourselves who bear the cross of forcing themselves to be normal, mentally wounded, not fully capable of grasping the intricate and subtle social notions that we hold dear, feeling down and out and blank in certain circumstances, obtuse in the way they express their mind and living with a sense of alienation from the "normal" world. Worse of all, with no medical or social help. Of course, the family structures and support systems like religious faith may be lending some helping hand (or may be worsening the situation in certain cases, who can say?). And the huge majority of such people may be living a resigned life, may be addicted to something or the other or may be just too busy in their daily routine of making their life as close to normal as possible. Such adults also goes unnoticed, by their family, colleagues or neighbors, just like how they went unnoticed by their parents, friends and teachers in their early life.
But, there could still be a very minute section who goes the other way, following certain notions in a twisted fashion (like how Elliot absorbed the concept of Equality - "that it is not fair for others to get a life that I did not get"), failing at certain passions in an irrecoverable manner (like how Elliot failed to digest the fact that he could not find a mate) and looking for retribution. In our society, may be the access to the tools or circumstances to commit heart-chilling crimes such as the UCSB may be different. But, that doesn't rule out a possibility that such individuals may, given an opportunity, express their retributive feelings.
Our legal system as well as the larger societal reaction to crimes such as sudden emotional outbursts resulting in murders, mass suicide attempts, random cases of rapes etc tend to follow an assumption that these crimes are committed by normal people who turned evil. Those cases which can be bracketed as useful to drive a social cause (for example, rape cases) result in a massive reaction against any thought process that could potentially undermine that usefulness (hence, the reluctance to go beyond the word "male chauvinism" in rape cases, using the same example). This kind of an attitude, however effective in the short term, may have its own unintended negative repercussions in the long run. My mind goes back to the notorious Delhi rape case, where 24/7 coverage of the media did not even feature anything that remotely tried to address the psychology of it (if I remember correctly, everybody who tried to bring in this aspect was brutally shot down by the likes of Arnab Goswamy).
Crime & Punishment should go as per the law of the land. But, that does not mean that, introspection as a society should not happen. It may be ridiculous to read too much into a single incident, but often, repeated random occurrences of similar crimes means one thing - there is a problem at the root. Punishment alone is not going to address that.
NB1: When writing this, I could not resist thinking about the ridiculous and insensitive manner in which this rather nuanced movie was remade in Malayalam, Pachakuthira, starring Dileep.
NB2: I am a first hand witness to this. I won't say anything more.
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