To all the Cho's out there.

 

First and foremost, fuck you.

I think that pretty much sums up everyone's reactions (if they are honest with themselves) once they get past the initial shock of the act itself. And lord knows the media goes into a frenzy, flooding the TV with a nonstop barrage of images and video fresh from the scene. They will interview anyone without shame or consideration with complete disregard for the feelings of anyone in their way. But, that is another matter entirely. This passage I have devoted to you, Cho’s of the world.

So, you’ve been bullied. You feel as if the world has done you wrong. It isn’t fair. You’re under appreciated and overly abused. Congratulations, you sound like a 3-year-old child.

This brings me to my point.

The world doesn't owe you anything. Nobody wronged you. You are out of line on a magnitude that nobody is prepared to deal with because it is just outside the scope of human rationale. You have no right to exact what you perceive as vengeance on whoever happens to be standing there as if they were the incarnation of all that has plagued your life. You have no right to do these things.

But you do anyway.

As soon as the blood starts to cool people begin to point fingers. The media is especially guilty of this because controversy and slander sell. They only further your cause to be perceived as a victim or a martyr. They want to blame the guns. They want to blame the teachers or the school. They want to hold all sorts of people accountable. They do this because they do not understand why you have done these things, so they stretch reality to try to find reason in other facets of what has happened.

I will tell you why you do these things. Ever since you were born you were told you were special. You’ve been told your whole life that you can do anything you want to do, be anything you want to be. Your head is filled with ideas from TV where people live ideal lives. Everyone has perfect skin, dates supermodels and drives fast cars. Because you have never had to earn anything for yourself you feel that the world owes you a living and the life you want. You begin your life out of touch with the world. You are told to be yourself and do what feels good. External stimulus, be it the media or our society as a whole, praises individuality and shuns it all in the same motion and you are confused and don’t even know it.

The next thing you know a few more years pass. You grow up beyond the realm of ninja turtles and power rangers. Your parents continue praising you publicly like you are the only child in the world, encouraging you however they feel they can. It all seems harmless, but it isn’t. Your sense of reality grows more and more distant from the real world.

Now what of the bullies? People grew up with bullies for decade upon decade. Now they are not tolerated. You are taking a predator out of the food chain. Did anyone ever stop to consider that being bullied might be a normal part of development? Like it or not we live in a world where the mob of society defines what is acceptable. If you live outside that norm, you will be ridiculed. That is fine as long as you are prepared to deal with it one way or another. You can either learn why you are being picked on and adapt or take it on the chin and stand your ground. Of course, Cho’s of the world… you chose neither of these normal options. Where would we learn these skills of survival? Maybe a bully picking on you would set the stage for that layer of personal development. Maybe you would develop that tough skin or learn when to adapt if you were pressured to.

All that praise from parents combined with an imaginary social pecking order stimulated by fantasy realms on television and in movies has led to entire generations of narcissistic youth. They all walk around with a sense of entitlement. They have no idea what it is like to go hungry. They have no perspective. They have no way of finding a purpose or establishing their social standings to attain their station in the world.

Freud spoke of Psycho-developmental stages (of course he only related them to sex, but it doesn’t mean he didn’t have some valid points). A child is cruel. Watch them stomp bugs or break toys. It really isn’t always malicious, but rather sometimes from not knowing their own strength. They will destroy things just to watch them break, spill things just to watch them splatter. It is a very explorative phase of development.

What I’m saying here, Cho’s of the world, is that you are stuck in another developmental stage. You missed the part where behavioral anomalies are either hammered out or you learn to cope with being different because of them. What does a 3 year old do when it is angry? It lashes out irrationally and destroys things within its reach, even if they are unrelated. That is until the behavior is corrected. Because of your parents always pressuring you to succeed and their constant and unwarranted encouragement; Because of the lack of establishment of a pecking order between you and your peers and the unrealistic views you have gained from the media about where you should stand you do not know how to react to the basic realities that everyone else deals with on a day-to-day basis.

That’s right, the very same people you killed went through everything you did. They were just able to deal with it. They were better suited to their environment and destined to survive. You on the other hand refused to adapt because of that narcissistic sense of entitlement. Instead you let the pressure mount. You let the hate ferment inside you. Your distance from reality grew greater and greater until you found yourself unable to relate to the people around you. You began to judge them from holy ground your feet had never once touched. Because of your disillusionment you felt you had the right to place your shortcomings on someone else’s head.

You are not the victim. You never were. Everything you hated in others came from within you. The blame is solely on you. Your inability to accept failure led to you placing the blame for your (completely normal) inadequacies on anyone else you could. All of the girls that rejected you were whores. All of the guys who laughed at you were the source of your torment. You made the demons out of them.

You are not a victim. You are the evil behind all of this. Your inability to understand why you were different led to you lashing out indiscriminately like a child. You tried to spread your pain and suffering to anyone who got close enough. You decided to finally gain the notoriety you felt you deserved and to punish the world while becoming a martyr to your own pain.

The difference is that unlike that 3 year old you do have power. Though you still do not know your own strength, you are capable of atrocities that defy description. In taking your vengeance out on the innocent you are no better than a pedophile preying on the young. Those seem like terms anyone can understand.

Hear my words, you are a coward and a fool.

You are not a victim. The people who died in your childish rampage were the victims. The family that lives on to wonder why their child was taken from them is the victim.

And you do all this for what? You feel justified because somebody was born into a rich family and has it easier than you? Is it fair? No. Is it life? Yes. We live in what I feel is the greatest nation on this earth. In these United States we do in fact have the freedom to be anything we want to be, to do anything we want to do. But it isn’t free. I’m sure by now it sounds cliché, but things oft become cliché for a reason. America is unwell. Its people lack the context of what is reality for the rest of the world. There aren’t bombings here on a day-to-day basis. There isn’t widespread starvation and disease. People here have no clue what true poverty is. If anything the death of 32 people grabbing full news coverage for weeks at a time should serve as an example of how sheltered we really are. I’m not saying that not living in a dirt hut is bad or that we should feel guilty for our success. If anything people should use our happiness as a model and learn from it instead of hating it. With that in mind, Cho’s of the world, use the happiness of the man next to you as a model. Do not hate him for his success. Instead be happy for him. Perhaps instead of trying to bring him down to your level you should try working to get to his.

Stop trying to be the victim, and assume some responsibility for your own actions.

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