It’s beyond difficult for me to
write about the tragedy at UC Santa Barbara and that is why I’ve avoided it for
so long. My mother, on the other hand, could not stop talking about it. When I
first heard about it, I am ashamed to admit I was rather blazé. Considering
that there’s a school shooting in this godforsaken country an average of twice
a year, and after the immeasurable tragedy at Sandy Hook in December of 2012, I
thought, along with many others that it could not possibly get any worse. In
fact, I was at a point of giving up on society, and not in a superficial
pseudo-philosophical Dostoyevsky kind of way, in a profound way that blackened
my heart. I was too young to fully understand the gravity of 9/11 even though I
completely absorbed the ramifications and the profound changes it had on our
nation as a whole, but when I was 28 and was sitting in my cubicle with a
co-worker running towards me asking me to tune the TV in the lobby to CNN
because of a school shooting, and then watching as our entire office of over
200 people crowded around it, listening to sniffles and cries from the girls,
and exclamations of disbelief from the men, I was changed forever.
What kind of world are we
actually living in when something like this happens? I don’t want to compare it
to something like shellshock after two of the greatest wars in human history
that both took place in the 20th century, but I felt like a soldier
who had spent years in the trenches and upon being furloughed had no idea how
to assimilate back into culture once again because to me, there was nothing
left of value and goodness to care about or fight for. We could march in the
streets protesting the 2nd amendment, ring our fists in the air and
demand change from the administration and then go home and eat our dinner with
our family. And that’s the true horror of it all. We bare witness to atrocities
everyday in our lives. Atrocities that could have been
prevented. And we say ‘oh how horrible!’ and then go on about our day, thinking
that one day there will be change, one day we’ll hit our bottom, but after
Sandy Hook I realized there is no bottom. It’s an endless spiral into the abyss
to where we as a species have no means of rescuing ourselves from apathy,
selfishness, and discontentment.
So when Elliot Rodger rampaged
through the dorms, sorority houses, and campuses of UC Santa Barbara, I had
almost expected it, but what I didn’t realize was the absolute abhorrent nature
of his act. There are certain atrocities we as reasonable people will never
fully understand, but Rodger made sure that he gave us a play-by-play account of
exactly why he was going to do what he did, like it even mattered. In his
tapes, he actually feels that he is not only justified but a martyr for his
cause. It took me right back to an incendiary incident that captivated the
heart of the nation back in the 1920’s that most of us never lived through but
we had definitely heard of.
In 1923 two young and rich
lovers, Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb in Chicago kidnapped the son of a
family friend and brutally murdered him after luring him into a park. They did
so for no other reason than they thought they could. They, like Rodger believed
themselves to be the reincarnations of the Nietzschean Superman, in which laws,
morals, and ethical codes no longer apply. The superman lives by only his own
rules because he is an ‘enlightened’ being, a being of absolute power who
exists on a plain above the rest of humanity. If they were indeed Supermen then
the notion of being caught for this senseless crime never entered their minds.
The crime was in itself a means of proving to themselves and each other that
they were indeed what they claimed to be. Alas, they were not. Both were
arrested and sentenced to death. The trial is infamous in that the best defense
attorney in America at the time, Clarence Darrow (who famously defended John Scopes
during the ‘Scopes Monkey Trial’ and won) decided to defend Leopold and Loeb
pro-bono and rather than enter a plea of not-guilty for which they would have
definitely been hanged, he submitted pleas of no contest, not even by reason of
insanity, instead arguing that capital punishment in this case was
unconstitutional and won. Loeb was killed in prison, and Leopold died after
being paroled in the 70’s.
But unlike Leopold and Loeb, had
Rodger survived his murderous rampage, no attorney would take his case for a
billion dollars. With his
half-baked manifestos and Youtube rants, he proved to be nothing more than a
deranged lunatic with delusions of grandeur, and a deeply dangerous inferiority
complex, not to mention the worst manifestation of sexual frustration.
The question becomes not that
which we keep asking ourselves; which is ‘how do we prevent this from
happening?’ because it will continue to happen. I’m sorry to say that, but we
fight and fight for change and yet nothing really changes. As evolved as we
think we are, nothing really changes. In truth, as John Locke or Emanuel Kant
would have put it, and to a greater extent Machiavelli; is that we as human
beings are born with a darkness in our soul. We are conditioned to put
ourselves first, to thrive in our selfishness, and drunk with the idea of being
better than the person next to us. It is very likely that Rodger took that idea
of being ‘supreme’ just like Nietzsche hypothesized and took it to atrocious
and unimaginable conclusions. What is supremacy anyway, and what is
entitlement? Entitlement, like respect is earned. And therein lies the sexual
divide.
He skewed his entitlement towards
a particular psychosexual conceptualization that Freud would have a field day
with. As a woman, it’s hard not to be completely sickened by the rants and
raves of such a subhuman mass-murderer believing that his actions are to be
blamed on women at large considering the few he came in contact with never paid
attention to him like it’s our fault as a species. What we have to remember is
that there is no one to blame but the perpetrator. Another paramount thing to
remember is that when a cataclysmic event that changes and reshapes our culture
as we know it forever, the way towards ramification and rectification of it is
not to superficially find superficial things here and there that we think we
can fix, because there will always be people like Elliot Rodger. There will
always be those who’s mentality is so perverted and skewed that are capable of
afflicting the worst atrocities on the human race. What we can do is take a
long hard look at the progress or lack-there-of that we’ve made because as much
as we say ‘never again’ there will be an again, it will just be under different
circumstances. If history has taught us anything it’s that. Every murderer,
subhuman monster, and deranged lunatic will always affect our culture, and we
as victims will try our best to cope with the damage done. We need no longer to
be victims. All that can really be done individually is to take responsibility
for our actions and hope that we set an example for the next generation based
on empathy, brotherhood, and affection so that future generations learn from
that and hopefully utilize those aspects that make us actual supreme beings in
our ability to give love rather than inflict hate.
