Colorado Theater Killing Rampage where Reality Appeared Through The Exit Door
Warner Bros released a movie called "Gangster Squad" starring Sean Penn and Ryan Gosling in which there is a shooting scene where men open fire with machine guns on an audience in a movie theatre. OF COURSE! I only wish it would mean that the big operators in the movie business were shooting themselves in their own big feet. Not so. The Time Warner Corporation is meeting to decide whether to delete the scene given the horrendous massacre that took place during a midnight screening of Batman just this weekend. The "Gangster Squad" movie is due for release in six weeks or so.
Even if the scene is deleted nothing will be achieved. In fact I believe that secretly, privately there would be more than one movie mogul rubbing his hands together because this immense tragic drama that played out in Colorado will most definitely add the thrill factor to movie going in many people's minds. It will most definitely swell the Box Office takings after about one week of shock, horror, grief and mourning. People are bored. People are in desperate need of entertainment. People can find no meaning in their lives. Entertainment rules the whole world scene because of our weak minds. Bring on the next horror show since we have now spiced it up with a bit of reality in the mix!
The fact is the fantasy/thriller/entertainment business will grow stronger. This is not because of the likes of Warner Bros. This is because of our collective human mind. We want this kind of entertainment. We live by it. Just watch the tweets and face book excitement when a new movie is about to be released. Read the comments of the movie goers, some of whom were killed. The comments were recorded prior to the terrible scene at the midnight Batman premiere in Colorado. People were delirious with excitement. They even took their babies and toddlers to the midnight showing!
The movie makers, the actors are not to blame. There is no blame. There are many factors that bring these horrific events about. Increasingly, humans are creating scenarios with their own minds, their own thoughts, their own desires. We are all in it together. This Colorado horror scene has already been created in a film about to be released ... "Gangster Squad" and no doubt in comic books and other literary creations which already exist. We all love it. We want it. Babies with no say are taken to see and experience the violence and mayhem. They can get shot at too as happened in Colorado.
The difference between acting the macabre fantasy-thinking out or not, all comes down to the individual's mind. Is it steady in there? -- or is it not? -- and how do you know? Most people don't.
The individual who turned the violence and horror into reality was already living in the violence and horror in his own mind. His mind was extremely disturbed. His need to act out what he was already feeling inside himself was extreme. He was already feeling the annihilation of his inner self. From his disturbed mental state with his confusion and hatred he crossed the line. He made a strong decision to go ahead and act out the deep feelings within himself and do to others what he was feeling inside. He wanted and needed to turn the fantasy and exciting entertainment we all love into reality … just for himself, his own desperate needs.
That is the difference between him who is unsteady of mind and most others who are much more steady. Increasingly though, the human mind is becoming more attracted to thinking violence, feeling violent and acting out of violence. Until this is understood we will always be confronted by the possibility of these mass killings.
Time and again on all occasions, friends, family, acquaintances who speak out after these killings take place say:
"He was pretty quiet." "He never caused any trouble." "He was extremely shy." "He kept to himself." "He was a bit of a loner." "He seemed a bit strange." "He never had many friends." "I would never have guessed he could do something like this." "He could get pretty angry at times." "I never saw him with a girlfriend." "He was a pretty nice guy, not that I had much to do with him." "He always had a smile on his face""Knowing him as did I would never have believed he could be capable of it."
But no one knew what was going on in his mind. Maybe his parents did or at least they would have been concerned about him. Maybe he had sought some kind of psychiatric help. Who knew that this individual was dissociated from himself, society, and more to the point, if anybody did, "How did this happen?" If he had sought help there will be excuses all round. There was no intervention. If this individual is going to defend himself over what will be many charges he will most likely plead insanity. I could tell he was acting out insanity in the courtroom scene when he was charged so this could be the outcome. An insane guy is not usually so highly functioning as to be able to prepare and successfully pull off such an assault on innocent human beings … alone. Think Breivik. He claims not to be insane and hopes not to be diagnosed as insane because he is not insane. One psychologist suggested that Holmes had 'dormant schizophrenia'. His problems were in no way dormant. The hatred in this young man was developing from a very young age. Ultimately, we failed him and those he killed, wounded and traumatised. We failed all of those who have gone before him and right now we are failing the future mass murderers and those who will become their victims. This does in no way excuse the ones who kill people. Once they have done their killings if they have not killed themselves they must face society's, wrath, indignation and punishments.
In the end, both as an individual human being and as a psychotherapist working with people of all ages, some of whom have the potential to carry out horrendous acts of cruelty upon others … some of whom already have, I am concerned with these things only ---
"How is it in there, in your mind? How do you feel about yourself? What do you think of? What do you do? What are you angry about and what are you afraid of? Do you fear the pain of the feeling of humiliation?" … and "What can I and others do to help you feel better, help you to connect up with yourself and others, help you feel a part of the human race? … so that you don't develop further the desperate need to create a parallel reality for yourself in order to release all of the feeling of the anger, the hatred, the self loathing you have onto others?"
This is what I work with in young, dissociated people. The intervention, if one is knowledgeable skilled and above all dedicated, really does work. It works like a miracle. It works on the two year old AND the twenty two year old and much older people. It is complex work which requires a deep understanding of the human mind, the individual human and their history and conditions. To have this understanding one has to understand ones own mind. That is the biggest problem in this world … difficult to read the mind of a disturbed individual if one does not know oneself and how the mind works.
So, not many people have the development of mind themselves to read what is going on for some person in their individual mental state and most often they don't care too much anyway. People in general are excited by the thoughts of horror. They want the horror to give them the 'hit', the adrenal rush, to make them feel in touch with their own aliveness … until, for these poor Colorado people, it crosses into reality in the very venue they have gone to seek entertainment, hoping for the bursting out of violent scenes their own minds have already created. Little did they expect that a fellow movie goer, after months of planning, would turn himself into a character from the movie, the character he most identified with, and release his rage on them.
The rest of the world, already engaged in creating or waiting for the next 'horror' story, will be collectively putting their imaginative mind toward the next scene of horror, more imaginative, more amazing, more bizarre, fuelling some other disturbed individual's mind to act it out.
A wonderful knowledgable person once told me simply, "Whatever we think, WILL some day happen". At the time I was incredulous, entirely skeptical but slowly as time goes by I am seeing the truth in it.
We are all in this together. I am watching my own mind and my thinking constantly. This is something we can all do.
I have become aware that people are tired of sensationalist reporting of mass murders in this world and particularly the media reporting of such events focusing on the assassin rather than the victims. This I agree with and feel the relatives and friends' attempts to have media reports not focus on James Holmes are valid and commendable. Nonetheless, some of us must urgently and fervently focus on all of the present and future disturbed and crazy ones. This is not only because they could become murderers but because they are individuals who are feeling deep distress, the deepest of confusion, the deepest of pent up hatred toward themselves and others. I am telling you, they live next door, they sit next to you in class, they work on that film shoot, they wander the streets, they shop at the supermarket, they buy ice cream or cigarettes at the corner store. They struggle to make things OK for themselves and most of all they hate themselves and others. They are not all dangerous murderers. Many will live and die quietly suffering their fate. What is urgently needed is knowledge and understanding that these people are very disturbed internally, in their minds. The greater task is to become wise and knowledgeable about how to prevent the disturbance of mind from ever developing in our children. There is a very precise cause for people to become angry, aggrieved and to crave retribution for what they suffer. This is not some acute mental illness that jumps inside a person suddenly. These acts of violence and murder are a result of the enraged disturbance that has developed in a person's mind in billions of moments throughout their lives, no matter what age they have reached. We must learn about how this happens, how it comes about. This is a responsibility belonging to the whole world population and particularly to us parents whom we must not blame - not ourselves or others. Instead we need to develop a deep awareness about what happens to children in their developmental years continuing into adolescence and adulthood.
Remember this - James Holmes was once an innocent, ignorant dependant baby and probably cute at that! What happened to him? That is the question and that is where all of the attention, focus, money and energy needs to go in order to help people develop more balanced minds, mental and emotional states.
Post Script: Having just viewed the short clip of the 'Joker' James Holmes during his first appearance in court I believe, along with other material I have seen, my view is substantiated. This guy is still in shock, traumatised by his own actions but what I can see behind that is a typically disconnected young man. He is unable to connect with his feelings, his authentic feeling self. This disconnection did not happen because he massacred, maimed and terrified hundreds of people. This state of mind developed incrementally from the moment of birth. When we can recognise and fully understand this fact in all of the 'dissociated' people of the world we may be able to stop the surging tide, the number of future assassins, by helping them. The answer is prevention and that is the real story, yet to be understood by everyone, yet to be acted upon by all of human kind. Until we understand the growing child's mind and ultimately how they feel about themselves we will never be effective in helping them. One thing is for sure. They are not going to tell you about themselves, not when they are confused, not when they cannot be in touch with their feelings and even if they are they not going to tell you anyway.
Post Script 2:... and now the trial begins. Two and a half years after writing this piece I am of course very curious to see and hear everything that has been kept from us regarding James Holmes, who he really was inside the mind existing inside his body. Clearly already much of my stated understanding of who this young man was is being revealed. There is just one thing missing so far. We need a generation of parents whose children are suffering great mental stress, the ADHD's, the Aspergered, the Autistics, the mentally disturbed, the angry violent ones who have outbursts of intense rage, the intensely shy ones, the self harmers, the cutters, the over eaters, the under eaters, the ones who do not like to go out with friends, the ones who don't like to have their own birthday party, the ones who avoid eye contact, the ones who avoid any contact, the ones who can't have a boyfriend or girlfriend and when they do they almost die of mental torture when they end up being rejected... yes we need to talk to a generation of parents who know a lot about their children's suffering. They are worried. They are angry. They are embarrassed and they lack understanding. They feel guilty and greatly fear being blamed. They rarely talk. We do not hear their voices. They are way too afraid to extend their concerns beyond themselves and a very small group of family and friends. The 'professional' help did not help. They live in the deepest of fear. "Will he or she commit suicide?" "Will there be a police person knocking at their door at 3am?" "Will the phone ring only to find some distraught friend on the other end talking about how worried they are about this person's child?"... and when can I rest free of the intense worry and anxiety?"
Somewhere, somehow there has to be a whole generation of parents who know something is very 'wrong' with their child, their neighbours 22 year old daughter, their friend's 'withdrawn' son. We need this generation to stand up and to speak out and voice their concerns, to have no shame and no fear to declare something is going drastically wrong and to support each other and be supported to find out what is happening! This generation of parents will themselves have to suffer. They will have to face their own embarrassment and the judgement of others because they hold a lot of knowledge about these children's development. They can talk about their experiences of bringing up their own children. They will have to talk about their mistakes, their shameful cruelty, their tiny unintended mistakes, their fear of reaching out. They will need years of support and guidance to recover. They will need whole governments to focus money and aid toward them. They will need sophisticated 'programmes' to learn about themselves, to learn about how to change themselves in order to better help their children. It would take at least two whole generations who would have to sacrifice their egoic defences and learn about their part in their own child's troubled self without fear of blame. Then we can all own that we are all part of the degenerative path our young may be taking. We can learn from the parents of the 'troubled' ones and we can help educate all of the children and parents, troubled or not about how a young mind develops as complex as that may be. And then the next generation of parents can be helped immensely because their parents have owned their part in their children's suffering along with all parents who will know what really happens in a child's mind due to how we are with and around them. Rather than being blamed we all have to know that each and every parent had no intention of being or doing anything to cause such an outcome for their children. I can state that uncategorically. The only fault they have had exists in one word... IGNORANCE. Something happened and then there was a result... no blame!