Why Bad Writers Kill/RSD
By – Russell Scott Day
Do you want to be famous?
One way to become famous for a long time is to write something that entertains or inspires or educates people for a long time.
Another way to become famous is to kill a lot of people, or someone significant to a lot of people.
The key to mental health is having a lot of friends.
They do not necessarily have to be great close friends, and really one ought not be fully invested in only one other person.
The German heros of the Second World War were the Germans who tried to assinate Hitler. It is those men who give the German people the right to say "It was not all of us."
Those men who tried to kill Hitler with a bomb in a meeting room died horrible agonizing deaths as horrific if not more than the death of Jesus on the cross.
They tried to kill Hitler.
I was once on a train out of Hoboken and looked across from me to see a 15 year old that I knew was not human like me. If I had killed him then from what I saw in his eyes I know that others in the world would not have suffered beyond what is civilized.
This is not what we can make laws about, it is about the unspoken and the private and the non verbal and the verbal and risk.
The US has become a Bureaucratica.
Of course I think that Munch’s "Scream" is not about noise from a train, but the madness of living in Bureaucratica. Kafka in Amerika described the tenacles of it as it rips out the soul.
Apparently in South Korea an ex-policeman killed 57 with a gun and some grenades.
I wonder what that policeman’s collieques had to say about him.
I never heard about it before the news from Virginia.
Everybody wants to be famous in America.
Of the Asians Koreans are the most extroverted and they eat dogs.
Flannery O Conner wrote Wiseblood many years ago.
She understood crazy people.
The most important thing about people who experience life with great sensitivity who do not go as crazy as someone like Shu, or whatever his name was, is they don’t believe in anything too much.
I myself do not believe in war, but do believe in killing some people some of the time.
This does make me a bad Quaker, though it lets me off from WarMonger.
The difference between me and other political leaders is that I do not war to get general and would much prefer that it was at a manageble level, as it is when spies kill spies and no one else.
Well there have been some leaders that carried with them away the names and friendships of fighters that died keeping things peaceful enough.
The current international situation calls for the elimanation of Weapons of Mass Destruction since if the guy at the College had had a Nuclear Weapon like some in the world want to get and use on the US or Great Britian, we could be bombed into another bit of Dark Ages if NYC and London and Tokyo were wiped out.
Sociology and Psycology are much more the same than we want to recognize and when individuals do great harm and take over the mental landscape it is sensible to suspect that a group of them with the same set of flaws are likely to get to general harm.
The worry about gun violence in the US is no match for the worry I have about atomic bombs.
I myself have a 32 revolver and don’t really want to give it up, but I really object to nuclear, chemical or biological weapons in the arsenals of anyone.
If the nations of the world get going on getting all big bombs out of the aresenals of mankind, I can tell you for a fact, it would set a good enough example that other weapons would become better regulated.
Love, Russell
P.S. It doesn’t make you crazy to eat dogs by the way, and I admit that this piece leads me to some thoughts as much as presenting any position. This is why it is better called a letter, than a column.
As far as what is unique about the American Culture, I believe it is a far advanced common desire to be famous. It is actually okay to not be famous and just do your work. A good parable about this is The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. In that story the woman is passed around like a prize, or I am sure Ayn was tracing what made each man attractive. One man wanted to be famous, one rich, and the other wanted to do his work. It is more legitimate to become famous, because your work is important, than to become famous simply because you want to be famous.
In the body of this letter I did not fully make clear why Hitler popped up but really it has basis in his attempts to be a successful artist that apparently failed.
Cho was apparently not a very good writer.
In such a case of any future similarity in Universities or schools my suggestion with the individual would indicate that such a personality might be moved towards more appropriate work for them.
Cho chose the gun, which has similarities to the camera. A movie camera of the classic mature sort operates much like a machine gun an would have been a better way towards achieving fame, than the choice Cho made.
When dealing with crazy people it is frightening to accept their logic, but you must accept that they have a logic and give them a way out that accepts that logic.
What it is that a crazy person believes is their truth whether or not is an objective truth.
I have not watched much of the video of Cho since I wasn’t watching tv when they apparently played the stuff too much.
My question to answer is whether Cho felt trapped and lost. This was not objectively the case since he was in University and there are oportunities for change that are inherent in that experience that are profound when we consider the many in the world who have no such opportunity.
Another unique aspect of the American Culture, that has influence on why terrific acts of violence occur is the feeling of desperation that Americans share.
For the common working people there is little security. Promises are abrogated day in and day out and they are humiliated and divided and shamed and alone.
Everytime the workers get a raise the rent is raised.
So what we have in this country is a mental landscape that is desperate, armed, and where the greatest achievement is to become famous regardless of the integrity of work.
This mental landscape produces events such as the killings at Columbine, Jonesboro, and Virginia Tech.
I submit that if it were generally accepted that it is okay to not be famous, and the integrity of work was made more valued and honored evidenced by a national committment to universal healthcare for instance, an end to the drug war that criminalizes working people for their rightful vices, which is what they heard as freedom, when the rich know freedom as money, that the mental landscape in America will improve enough so that laws about guns or pregnancy will not much matter.