Murder, Suicide and Self-Divinization in the Media Age

Dr. Melanie J. Van Oort – Hall

Introduction:  Fifteen Minutes of Fame

As I began to write this paper, the 10^th anniversary of the mass murder at Columbine High School in Colorado has come and gone.   In the months preceding, there was a spate of killings.  One of the most remarkable shootings happened on the 11^th of March, when seventeen-year old Tim Kretschmer[1] murdered fifteen people, mostly students at the Albertville Secondary School in Winnenden, Germany.  After the massacre, he committed suicide.[2]  Kretschmer, who was described in the media as “quiet and inconspicuous,”[3] received global attention and his “fifteen minutes of ‘fame.’” 

Since the most notorious shooters have been known to write diaries, create websites, where they detail their real and perceived grievances as well as film videos of themselves ranting and raving about their future crimes, an explanation for the crimes can be found in what seems to be the perpetrators’ fanatical desire for attention, but also the worldview that supports their need for it.  For many of the shooters, fame or better infamy has become a substitute for immortality, causing them to perceive their violent death or willingness to die in a barrage of gunfire as a form of self-divinization.  Furthermore, the young shooters’ too frequent self-identification with ‘God’ or ‘a god,’ and their desire to attract followers, implies that their violence has – to some extent -- a religious connotation. 

The fact that some of the shooters understood their deeds as a sacrifice[4] and even perceived themselves to be ‘victims’ of society, coupled with their belief that the experience of their own murder, i.e. “suicide by cop,”[5] would ‘divinize’ them implies that the pharmeketical process of the scapegoating mechanism was active in the planning and execution of their crimes.   Hence, placing the shootings within the framework of Girard’s scapegoat theory can help to understand the actual motivations of the shooters and, by extension, other acts of terrorism. 

A Brief Summary of René Girard’s theory of Pagan Divinization

Now we will attempt to understand school shootings within the framework of Girard’s theory. 

School Shootings

Concerning Girard’s belief that religion began with a mimetic crisis, I take it as a given that our western civilization is in an extreme and vast mimetic crisis or a crisis of violent imitation.  Our diverse and plural western civilization seems to be pulling apart at the seams.  The events that unfolded at Columbine High School on the morning of the 20^th of April, 1999 in many ways mirror the growing level of random violence in western culture.  Columbine became the benchmark from which to measure other shootings, but also the model which other shooters have attempted to imitate and surpass.  In fact, many later shooters often admit to Columbine imitation and mention Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold as their ‘models’ or ‘heroes’ in their final video addresses and suicide notes.[6]  Although Columbine represented something new; nevertheless, it too modeled another home-grown terrorist activity, namely, the Oklahoma City Bombing.  This bombing occurred on the 19^th of April, 1995 and received extensive media coverage, lasting for years.  Furthermore, in the apocalyptic destruction that the perpetrators hoped to create, they also sought to commemorate the birthday of Adolf Hitler, whom Harris admired.[7] 

Selection of the Victims and Unification of Communities

An important element of the scapegoating process concerns the selection of the scapegoated victim.  In school shootings, this appears to occur in two different ways:  by the auto-selection of perpetrators a priori and by the media a posteriori.

A Priori Selection 

According to Girard, in the primitive situation, the victim was selected by the community due to some distinguishing characteristic or weakness, for example, a birthmark or limp, during the course of the abovementioned mimetic crisis.  Only later, after the victim had been murdered and the guilt of the community had set in, was the victim divinized.   In the case of school shootings, however, selection is not carried out by the community, but by the perpetrators themselves, based on what they consider to be the personal characteristics that make them ‘different,’ or as we will see, a ‘superior victim.’  This is because the perpetrators often aspire to become omnipotent divinities before their deaths, and attempt to find ways to distinguish themselves from the rest of the crowd, or even humanity.  They do this, not by playing up their distinctive weaknesses, but by emphasizing their illusory superiority.  In their videos, they brandish weapons that make the film legend Rambo look docile in comparison, while encouraging others to follow in their footsteps.[8]  Since their exploits often end in suicide or attempted suicide, by establishing their hypothetical superiority, they not only engage in a process of the mythologization of themselves (self-mythologization), but also in a process of what I call ‘auto-selection.’  As is clear, unlike the timeframe when mythologization took place in the ancient situation, occurring after the death of the victim, here, the perpetrators set themselves up to become their own victims. 

On that fateful morning, Eric Harris (18) and Dylan Klebold (17), with only a few weeks to go before graduation, and after more than a year of preparation, walked into their school with various semi-automatic weapons, knives and home-made bombs.  In the mayhem that followed, they murdered twelve students, one teacher and wounded twenty-seven others.  Forty-five minutes after they entered the school, they committed suicide.[9] 

From their diaries and videos of themselves preparing the attack, it is now possible to see how the process of auto-selection took place.  On the day of the shooting, Harris in fact wore a t-shirt with Natural Selection printed on it.   Harris’ understanding of natural selection was based on neo-Nazi ideological social Darwinism that had little to do with the scientific theory of evolution.  In his diaries, he wrote about the need to kill anyone, whom he deemed abnormal or weak, and even provided a list of traits.[10]  Nevertheless, in one of his last diary entries, he lamented about feeling excluded, because he looked different or weird.[11]  Harris was born with a concave chest and, true to a boy who is not yet beyond puberty, felt insecure about it. He hated how he looked and admitted that he picked on people, who looked like himself.  He believed that his hatred for others originated in his hatred of himself.[12]   

Klebold made similar distinguishing or auto-selective statements about himself.[13]   Yet, Klebold considered that his perceived “difference” to be on an incomparably grander scale than his classmates.  Their existence was shallow, because they did not know the “world beyond,” a world that he claimed he had experienced in and through his mind.  Thanks to his esoteric experiences, he believed that he lacked their human nature, while they lacked his “mind/imagination/knowledge.”[14]  His perception of his incapacity to share human nature with others, a topic he mentions often, had made him into a “god.”[15] The most significant part of the selection process was carried out by the perpetrators themselves, perceiving themselves as victims, real or imagined.  Their process of auto-selection, on the one hand, recognized their own weaknesses (e.g. look weird, miserable, small chest, etc.), but on the other hand, engaged in absurd self-aggrandizement or ‘self-mythologization’ that led to a malicious contempt for others.

A Posteriori Selection

At this juncture, we come to the question of the media’s a posteriori selection of the victims of the crime.  Here, the selection process differs from the primitive one in that it occurs after the fact.  After each violent event, the media and the communities involved begin to search for a justification for the perpetrators’ actions and provide various reasons for it in an attempt to make sense of what seems to be random and senseless murders.  For example, one of the most common reasons given for the attacks -- and one that seems to capture the public’s imagination -- is ‘revenge for being bullied,’ or as a result of ‘being humiliated’ due to some physical defect.  Since Harris was born with a concave chest and vented a lot of his frustration on the school’s top athletes or ‘jocks,’ the media initially assumed that they must have tormented him about his size or looks.[16]  Other reasons given are: traumatic childhoods, bad parenting, easy access to dangerous weapons, anti-depressants, mental illness, peer pressure and violent video games.[17]  As will become clear, most of these explanations serve as method of selection a posteriori and become rallying points to unify various groups.

For example, directly after the Columbine shootings, a plethora of websites were established, either vilifying or idolizing the shooters.  A virtual international media cult sprang up glorifying the boys’ actions as standing up for marginalized and humiliated students all over the globe.[18] Theories surrounding the targeting of Christians also served to unify Evangelical Christians, who felt that Christianity had been marginalized in western culture, or it unified resentful non-Christians, who felt that Christians were unjustifiably making themselves into victims.[19]

From police records and other documents, however, it has now become clear that neither Dylan Klebold nor Eric Harris were really ever bullied or humiliated, except in their own pubescent minds.  In fact, they were themselves bullies and shot no one on their so-called ‘hit list.’  Not only was Harris a good student, but he was also a good soccer player.  Harris’ bullying at the hands of ‘jocks,’ therefore, seems to have had more to do with Harris’ envy and desire to be a ‘top jock’ than with any actual experience of humiliation.  Moreover, it has been shown that in the case of Cassie Bernall (a girl who supposedly replied positively to the question that she believed in God and was shot for her Christian beliefs),[20] was a case of mistaken identity with Valeen Schnurr, whose life in fact Klebold spared.  It seems that the boys’ victims were chosen randomly or ‘unselectively,’ undermining most revenge theories.  

Furthermore, the boys were not deprived and came from well educated, upper middle class families that most people would consider good, stable homes, where neither violence, racism nor anti-Semitism were propagated.  In a country where millions have easy access to weapons, the Klebolds, half Jewish, apparently only owned a BB gun.[21] The popular belief that they came from bad or even underprivileged homes is unfounded.[22]   The most troubling fact about these seemingly ‘normal’ teenagers is that they actually did not intend to target particular enemies at all, but had targeted humanity as such, hoping to become the leaders or models of an apocalyptic revolution of other disaffected self-aggrandizing teens.[23]  They even fantasized about crashing a plane in New York City, two years before September 11, revealing how the mind-set of these juvenile school shooters is closely related to that of other suicide terrorists.[24] 

The perpetrators were filled with rage and hatred, not necessarily against any particular person, race, religion or gender, but against the world as well as themselves.[25]   Instead of placing blame on one victim, the shooters placed blame on everyone.  For example, addressing his diary entry to the ‘survivors’ of his apocalyptic mass murder, Harris wrote: 

If you recall your history the Nazis came up with a ‘final solution’ to the Jewish problem.  Kill them all.  Well in case you haven’t figured it out yet, I say ‘KILL MANKIND.’  No one should survive.  We all live in lies.[26] 

Although there are no easy answers, one thing that most of the killers seem to have in common is their obsession with violent virtual reality games.  Dr. Jerald J. Block, who writes against admitting a direct link between violent computer games and children’s behavior, nevertheless, admits that the thousands of hours that the perpetrators spent behind the screen playing games that simulate mass annihilation somehow “changed” them or at least their way of thinking.[27]   Children, who are obsessed with games, become immersed into its virtual reality and start to integrate the games’ primitive narratives into their way of thinking, blending the virtual with the real.  For example, Eric Harris became so obsessed with the game ‘Doom’ that he wrote:  “Doom is so burned into my head my thoughts usually have something to do with the game.  …  What I cant do in real life, I try to do in doom.’”[28]  Doom[29] is a “first-person shooter” (FPS) game that introduces the gamer into an imaginary world that strongly resembles a Hobbesian state of nature, that is, a war of all against all.   In the game, the layers of reality, fantasy reality and virtual reality are stacked together like a set of Russian Matryushka dolls,[30] so that not only the main character, but also the reader is unable to easily distinguish between the fantastical real from the virtual.  The actual existence of a ‘real’ reality is not only put into question by the plot of the stories, but also by the nature of the relationship of the “Doom novels” to the virtual framework in which the ‘Doom’ games are constructed.  For the obsessed gamer, ‘reality’ is merely another aspect of his fantastical projection.  This might explain why Harris began to think that “we all live in lies.” 

Panenanthropic Worldview

In his book Sources of the Self, which to an extent is a refutation of what he calls the “naturalist temper” that permeates western culture,[31] Charles Taylor makes a good argument that our metaphysical vision, or understanding of reality, determines our moral actions in society.[32]  Taylor’s arguments are significant since many of the shooters claim -- despite their rejection of objective reality -- to be following ‘nature.’[33]  Although it’s difficult to say to what extent the shooters actually read or understood their philosophies, in one of his last diary entries, a few months before the Columbine attack, Eric Harris wrote that he loved Friedrich Nietzsche and Thomas Hobbes,[34] two philosophers whose worldviews and moral understandings were decidedly naturalistic, whom Harris had learned about in a high school philosophy class.  As most are aware, Hobbes posited that in the ‘state of nature,’ a state he imagines without man-made institutions, there would be a permanent state of “war of all against all (Bellum omnium contra omnes).”[35]  Harris would have virtually experienced the Hobbesian state through his obsession with the game ‘Doom.’

First, it is important to emphatically state that there is no causal link between the shootings and learning about Hobbes and Nietzsche in a high school philosophy class; nevertheless, I would contend that the shooters’ juvenile confrontation with these philosophers, coupled with their obsession with violent video games that simulate a virtual Hobbesian state of nature, might have provided a rationale or justification for disparaging societal rules and norms as well as reality as such in order to execute their pubescent rage and envy on their peers.  For Harris, objective reality had become an illusion.[36]   He believed that the Earth should be given back to the animals[37] and longed for the elimination of all laws, rules, obligations so that so-called ‘human nature’ could take over and destroy itself, leaving only the fittest to reshape the world.[38]

Similarly Klebold began to question the veracity of objective reality.  In one entry, he writes:  “My existence is shit to me – how I feel then.  I’m in eternal suffering. In infinite directions in infinite realities – yet these realities are fake…”[39]  Klebold entitled the front page of his diary:  “A Virtual Book:  Existences.”  In this book/diary, he claimed that he is going to discuss existence as he understands it.  Although he believed that reality is infinite (e.g. infinite worlds), it is an illusion that has been induced by thought.[40]  In another place, he says that he seeks the knowledge of the unthinkable and explores “the everything” -- which is probably his synonym for ‘the All’ -- through the use of his mind.  He claimed that no physical boundaries block his exploration, “through time and dimensions. … the everything is his realm.”  By experiencing what he considered to be “the everything,” he came to the conclusion that not only is everything “connected yet separate,” but also cyclical.[41]  For Klebold, the totality of reality is a holistic, eternal cycle of creation and destruction, light and dark, good and evil, etc.[42] Reality is a continual pendulum swing between oppositional states, which he believes is replicated in the weather[43] or nature.

He began to refer to his phenomenal self in the third person.  He wonders how the “body of Dylan” had become “covered” by an “entity,” which seemed to have enveloped him. This experience of dissociation or depersonalization could be explained by the fact that Klebold seems to have had some type of out-of-body experiences, which gave him the impression that his mind was separated from his body or that his mind was manipulating his body from a distance.[44]   Klebold’s writings also exhibit a strong tendency towards solipsism.  In another section, he says that the one, who truly exists (“the true existor”), “lives in solitude, always aware, always infinite, always looking for, his love.” His growing solipsism could have led Klebold to believe that reality was constructed by his own thoughts.[45]  In a rather Gnostic fashion, he despised physical existence and longed to die, specifically mentioning suicide as an answer. [46] He imagined death as an escape or release that would allow him to go on living in his own thoughts. 

Like one of his games, Klebold imagined that existence was one long hallway with various doors.  After one existence or life was ended, one just walked through the door into another existence.[47]  Because he experienced life as hell on Earth, he longed for a Gnostic release.  Although he claimed to hate the thought of it, going on a killing spree might allow him to “break free.”[48] Thereafter, he could live in a peaceful room in his own mind, in a condition of divinity.[49]  Klebold also interpreted his murderous acts as some type of a sacrifice.  For example, he drew repetitive double and triple crosses (11 times), a sacrificial symbol, throughout his diaries, even though the boys disparaged Jesus of Nazareth as a weakling.  On one of his first repetitive crosses, in the middle of the horizontal axis, Klebold drew four concentric boxes, which he entitled “Existence.”  Inside of the boxes, he wrote the word, “Me,” symbolizing his own suffering and perhaps, given the fact that he was permanently contemplating suicide, his anticipation of his death as his sacrifice of himself.[50]

Klebold’s diary suggests that he had adopted a metaphysical position called panpsychism, meaning:  All is thought or mind.  Panpsychism is a more holistic or monistic philosophical paradigm of reality that envisions nature not only as alive and sympathetic, but also to varying degrees conscious.[51]  More significantly, Klebold seemed to have adopted a strange philosophical panpsychic disposition that is often found in occult thinkers called panenanthropism, literally meaning: the All is in the person.  Within panpsychic philosophical monism, panenanthropism occurs when the thinker intellectually subsumes the cosmos into his own mind[52] and begins to believe that he is literally the incarnation of the ‘Mind of God,’ directing the course of the world through his own thoughts.  Should Klebold’s metaphysical outlook have been panpsychic, i.e. all is thought, and panenanthropic, i.e. all is himself, in order to become godlike, he possibly felt like he needed to experience what he understood to be “the everything,” which might also include murder.  Since he began to believe that these experiences were generated by his creative mind, in his mind, murder of others would have no objective reality and, from his mentalist perspective, no real actual moral significance.  Harris similarly expressed panenanthropic thoughts.[53]  

Suicidal Self-Divinization

After reading more about Harris and Klebold, the question remains, “why would two bright boys, who had most of their productive years before them, aspire to become infamous mass murderers?”  Perhaps their deeds can be partially understood by placing them within the context of the modern spiritual search for meaning in a culture that claims that “God is Dead.”   The philosopher Charles Taylor is insightful here.  He says that the “modern aspiration for meaning … has obvious affinities with longer-standing aspirations to higher being, to immortality.” As he points out, the modern longing for immortality has taken various forms.  One of the typical ways that it expresses itself is in the aspiration to fame,[54] or in the case of school shooters, for infamy.   For example, in a 2006 survey for National Kid’s Day in England, 2500 children under ten years of age revealed that being famous would be “the best thing in the world.”  Having “good looks” and “being rich” came in second and third place respectively.[55]  In a sense, the boys successfully achieved what many kids want to become:  famous or infamous.  A report by the “Rocky Mountain Media Watch,” prepared a year after the Columbine tragedy, showed that between May and October 1999 Columbine was mentioned about 9500 times in local media reports (4 television stations), and at least daily in the national media during the month subsequent to the massacre.  It is now a more or less accepted fact that the excessive media coverage of the event catalyzed at least three thousand copycat actions, some which were successful, but most which were thwarted in time.[56]

To paraphrase Nietzsche in The Gay Science, 125, where the madman announces the death of God, one must become a god oneself in order to appear worthy of the deed.[57]  The fact that Nietzsche discusses God’s death as a murder and not as his death by old age is one of Girard’s most important insights into Nietzsche’s philosophy and perhaps our contemporary brand of atheism.  In a post-Judeo-Christian morality, murder that makes one famous becomes the foundation of a new type of divinity; yet, it is one that strongly resembles that of the pagan gods of old.  It is perhaps then significant that both Harris and Klebold made many references to being or becoming godlike, and Harris even compared himself to the Greek god Zeus.[58]

  Given the cult-like status of the Columbine shooters, their spectacularly violent deaths not only immortalized them, but they also became the foundation of a new type of nihilistic youth religion.  They staged their massacre much like a film director would stage a movie to provide entertainment for his audience.  Given the media coverage that they received, their gruesome crimes entertained not only other bored teenagers, who have come to believe that violence is ‘cool,’ but also the rest of the globe, making murder and suicide the fodder of international media ratings. 

Conclusions

In the case of school shootings, often the attainment of divinity is the goal.  As shown, postmodern divinity is achieved through the orchestration of spectacular and ‘entertaining’ violence that often ends in murder and suicide, leading to a form of celebrity, namely, the infamy of the perpetrators. In our late modern western society, fame has become a substitute for immortality and people worship the famous as if they were gods.  Modesty and humility are no longer perceived as virtues, but as liabilities, and celebrity has become so desirable that ordinary people are willing to degrade and humiliate themselves on so-called reality, talent and/or tabloid talk shows to achieve some degree of it.  In order to achieve the highest good, namely fame, our civilization seems to encourage self-inflicted scapegoating and has created an ordinary class of self-humiliated ‘gods,’ who entertain us with their antics.    

From their writings, videos and exploits, it is clear that the Columbine killers’ understanding of the process of divinization closely follows Girard’s scapegoating theory.  The boys engaged in a process of auto-selection and mythologization before their crime, while in primitive societies, mythologization occurred after the crime.  In the case of the media, given the fact that the perpetrators’ true victims were themselves, in order to make sense out of the crime, the media launches a process of victim selection a posteriori, which later serves to mythologize not only the victims, but also the perpetrators.  In many ways, given the postmodern confusion of divinity with celebrity, the media not only unconsciously selects, albeit after the fact, but also propagates the scapegoating system and its process of mythological divinization by rewarding the murderers’ juvenile aspirations for fame and their audience, namely all of us, with entertainment.  Although in death the perpetrators could never enjoy their newfound notoriety, knowing very well how the modern media works, they knew that their exploits would be globally disseminated and, hence, imitated.

Finally, this should teach us a lesson about the so-called ‘humiliation theory’ that is often used in the justification of the motives of school shooters, but also of suicide bombers and other suicidal terrorists.  In many cases, ‘humiliation’ is not a reason, but a tactic in order to achieve what our contemporary – in the west or east – society seems to value most:  fame or celebrity.  As we have shown, in the minds of school shooters, and by extension suicide terrorists, self-humiliation and self-degradation are often auto-selective elements in the process of sacrificial self-divinization that can end in murder and suicide.  The process is not only encouraged, but is also perpetuated by the negative attention that the media is compelled to give the shooters in order to sell papers or boost ratings.  Since neither the media, nor the viewing public seem able to regulate themselves in this regard, it is imperative for over-arching regulatory bodies or governments to find ways to limit media coverage of terrorist-type attacks without undermining an essential building block of western democracy: freedom of speech and expression.  Whether this is possible is yet to be seen.

Dr. Melanie J. van Oort – Hall

Cologne, 24 February 2010