Intention to Heal: In The Aftermath of The Blacksburg Killings
Understanding Anything Is Imagining The World Through The Other Person’s Eyes. Even Seung-Hui Cho, The Murderer of 32 People and Himself, Has a Relevant and Compelling Story.
Twenty-three year old Seung Cho was born in Korea, but lived in this country since the age of 8. In his graduating year at Virginia Tech, he lived in a dorm with 5 other suite mates, not one of who knew anything about him. His roommate said, “Sometimes I would come back and find him sitting in a chair, staring into space.” A fellow student said, “I went to high school with him and it became a joke for us, if we gave him ten bucks, could we get him to speak?” Another student in his suite said, ” He didn’t say very much. I just thought he didn’t speak English very well.”
Over the past week of coverage, no fellow student has stepped forward to say s/he knew him personally or that he was a friend. Why? I ask myself if early in his life, Seung Cho’s isolation was caused by racism or a mindset provoked by a racist incident. I ask that about my own experience of isolation in America.
My family had just moved to an upper middle class, predominantly white suburb of Detroit and for my sisters and I, this meant a complete change of schools and friends and social strata to fit into; we all experienced difficulty. Being novel at my junior high, I made a lot of friends quickly, but almost as quickly, a mysterious rumor was spread about me and, overnight, I was shut out and taunted for almost 2 years. My locker, inside and out, was the depository of hate words and notes and not one friend I had made looked at, spoke to or sat near me in class, lunch or gym; it was like I stepped into a parallel world and disappeared. I tried to speak to my mother about it but she brushed it off; she was overwhelmed with work, and in our family, paying heed to the children’s experience was not the way things went. I began to withdraw and avoid contact with people in fear of the aggression or rejection that met me everywhere at school. I can’t say my thinking remained in line with reality for racism — or whatever motivated this systematic exclusion — puts a spin on the mind that there is something wrong with you that you can never remove.
I started staying at home then, fearing school. I watched the television instead, 4-6 inches from the screen and began the odd habit of pulling out hairs from the front of my head. I also began an intense dependency on food, especially candy. Though eventually I found people I could join at lunch and gym, the awareness that things could go terribly wrong at the drop of a hat never left me.
Seung Cho didn’t say “here” when present at roll call. He signed an attendance roster with a question mark, earning the identifier, “question mark kid”. One day, in high school, when a teacher threatened an F, he read aloud and was met with laughter and the erroneous epithet, “Go back to China!” Humor and derision are ways to adapt to someone different, at first, but eventually he was removed from normal expectation of feeling and behavior altogether.
In his play, Richard McBeef, 13 yr. old protagonist, John, makes reference to being raped in almost every sentence he speaks. The accused, John’s stepfather, McBeef, not listening, approaches him and touches him. Finally, John attacks him with a piece of food and in return is “decimated by a single blow”. The stepson confronts and resists the stepfather who raped him and is killed for it.
In one video message, he states, “You had a hundred billion chances and ways to have avoided today…But you decided to spill my blood. You forced me into a corner and gave me only one option.”
Quoting Romeo in the famous balcony scene to Juliet in a text message he sent to a girl who did not want his attentions, a CNN reporter summarized the missive as disturbing and violent. Yes, in retrospect, any communication from him must be felt as chilling; but how many boys and girls have crushes on people they don’t know and how many times a day?
What I worry is that if we only characterize Seung-Hui Cho as alien we will lose the capacity to dialogue with the person out of balance. It’s highly unlikely that his rage could have grown in a vacuum no matter how uncommunicative he was. The possibility of autism was raised by his aunt, but he wrote plays, he texted, he spoke. And when he did, it sounded like an utterly disassociated voice, that knew no place to land.
The lack of compassion for him is justified in punishment of someone who showed no regard for 32 brilliant, innocent lives. But knowing that his ultimate punishment was inflicted by his own hand, what, as a society, is our intention now? How do we, as so many have asked, “make sense of it”? If we wish to heal, I would like to propose this: we see all of the actions of the world, beautiful and horrible, mirroring what is inside ourselves, that, with the right set of circumstances, any of us is capable of.
Will we ever know what provoked this final, horrible act? It’s unlikely. Can we look at the story of a human being, and the state of disconnection and suffering he was in before he committed it, and decide that the next potential person will be met with consciousness and unwavering compassion? I hope so. Understanding is our greatest tool for healing and if that is our intent, let’s begin now.
Jacqueline Kim was born in America to parents of Korean descent. Her email is samadhi7@sbcglobal.net
Ms. Kim’s article reminds me of Ghandi’s proposition: “In the new India, all crime, even murder, should be treated as a disease.” Clearly, the boy was sick. Do we have the luxury to feed our rage, when we haven’t yet answered the more pressing matter, which might save more lives in the future, namely, “What is the basis of this illness?” A “reactive person” will see only red. But is it too much to ask of a “thinking person” to have profound sympathy for the killer, as well as those poor youngsters who were killed? It does not require courage, nor maturity, nor wisdom, nor strength of character to be infuriated at an act of such cruelty. It requires those qualities, however, to distinguish the doer from the deed, and to want to understand in a transformative way the roots of such violent madness. Just as violence begets violence, anger generally begets more anger. Sorrow is different. Because it doesn’t blind with hatred, it can eventually lead to understanding.
SEung- Hui Cho, Jim Jones, Adolf Hitler, Genghis Khan, Joseph Stalin, Sirhan Sirhan, Idi Amin Dadda, Jeffrey Dahmer were all victims, too. Clearly, in every evil, in every murder, even in the most minute of offenses, there lies the sins of a white christian male and the society they have wrought- where people like the above are driven to mass murder. I just hope the familes of those murdered understand the virtue of tolerance for all those who are not white christian males as we do. Once they realize that truly tolerant people can excuse all acts of murder, such as the murders of thousands in Somalia and Sudan, 911 or of their own children, so long as the murders are not committed by white christian males. Once true tolerant liberalism learned from the feminist ways of Barbara Walters, CNN, Rosie O’Donnel and Hillary Clinton unites all America (or until we are all butchered by those who may see this as a weakness) maybe the Va Tech parents whose children were killed can laugh about it, right?
Truly, tolerance for everything, but what we can blame on white christian males, will ease all pain.
In the astrological community, the disturbed young man’s birth data (a/k/a chart) was distributed via the internet. Having looked at it, the planet Mars, which relates to the individual’s integration of self-interest. When thwarted, anger is natural, and in very angry people, violence emerges. This young man had his Mars (anger reflex) in Scorpio, sign of the scorpion which is poised to use its tail to strike back. About one-twelfth of the population will carry this astrological “stigmata” and it means they have work to do with internal alchemy: how to transmute their anger and tendency towards vengeance into forgiveness. In this young man’s case the Mars was “close to” Pluto. In astrology, two planets found on the same degree (based on the 360 degree circle, or dial of the heavens) work in concert. Think how water and oil do not blend. There is a profound chemistry to the astro-logos. Pluto rules Scorpio, thus the tendencies towards raw vengeance and like the scorpion, working the reflex to strike back when one feels threatened, humiliated, angry or in need of “getting back at.” This young man had the Mars-Pluto configuration in Scorpio. He WAS a weapon ready to go off. Perhaps had he an empathetic society or friend, forces may have helped him to ameliorate the trends that he carried. His moon–which deals with emotions as well as family ties and where/how we set up our home, was in Cancer, the sign of the US (July 4). Therefore given the climate in our nation, itself focusing on PRE EMPTIVE war, the supreme crime, this young man’s chart dove-tailed in a strange way with current events to show us the dark side of our own national mirror and the blood-lust for violence so prominent under Bush. Bush, by the way, was born with Mars and Saturn both in Cancer along with his son. According to astrological theory, a fiery planet does not “go” well in a water sign. Saturn Cancer is a VERY negative placement and is totally in synch with what Doctorow defined in Bush as the UNFEELING president. There is NO capacity to feel others’ pain. In my view the sun-Mars-Saturn all detrimental in Cancer indeed show the character of a sociopath. Why America is dealing with this disease at this time is incredibly karmic, and for those who read Vanity Fair, they courageously published a very good analysis by Michael Lutin on future trends in our land. I would have added to Lutin’s commentary as he did leave off one substantial planetary factor. In short, the prognosis ain’t great. Anyone can say they don’t believe in astrology, nor is a belief in gravity necessary to experience its effects. The planet Pluto, associated with cycles of death and rebirth, endings that lead to new beginnings requires 248 years to orbit the sun. (This is an astronomical fact, and if readers want to challenge Pluto’s status as a planet, fine. Point is, it was discovered close to the deployment of laser and nuclear technology. Just as Uranus came into view when mankind opened to the realization of electricity, and Neptune, to the steam engine and use of OIL for powering machines. There is great cosmic synchronicity involved in these convergences, the outplay of “as above, so below.”) Pluto opposed the US around the time of our Revolution and is coming BACK to this same position. The equivalent of a great cosmic cross pits Uranus, Pluto and Saturn all against the US Cancer sun (July 4) beginning in 2010 and holding for at least 5-6 years. The battle to regain America’s soul will get much more intense than what we here on commondreams (as prescient observers) already note. When I shared astrological insights with Florida Keys viewers (thousands) for 8 years (before media changed and my show was canceled), I explained that like the weather report, we SEE the coming conditions, but we do not see HOW they will come about. Free will and “fate,” or the forces that shape mankind’s destiny (the Greeks understood these, that heaven does NOT speak in one unitary-executive voice!) work in ways that create unimaginable outcomes. I do not see FATE as supreme, but that it interacts with human free will to give rise to events. Fate and free will “dance” and new steps evolve. It is a conceit to think man can operate outside the laws of Creation, and in my view, the great cosmic clockworker laid the planets into the firmament and endowed them (like gigantic satellite dishes) with character and quality. Those who denigrate astrology either carry on a prejudice installed by those who did not want (the original authoritarians) any voice to counter their claims for speaking for the almighty, or have never studied the subject.
I very much understand where the author of this piece is coming from. As a kid growing up, I was socially awkward (would probably have been diagnosed with aspergers syndrome nowadays). Most of my school years were a downward spiral of hellish torment. The ostracization and mocking leading to withdrawal, which lead to even more torment, more withdrawal, and so forth.
I think few people really know how painful it is to be a constant butt of mockery - many times I felt that it would have been better if they were to just kill me and be done with it.
And few know the sort of quiet rage such treatment can elicit. I entertained fantasies in those days of violent mass revenge on my tormentors, and of suicide. But, they remained fantasies. Lack of access to a gun during my youthful years was very helpful. More than anything, though, it was my status as a “normal” Caucasian male that allowed me to manage my way through university, my first full time jobs and adulthood.
A moving post.
And I agree with PJD, that “few people really know how painful it is to be a constant butt of mockery - many times I felt that it would have been better if they were to just kill me and be done with it.”
Seung-Hui Cho seemed to spend so much of his life in a quiet rage. I can’t help but wonder what led him to feel this way. He eventually erupted. I think he might stand as a representative of the population that feels alone and misunderstood. Look at what can and does happen as a result. It’s really saddening.
I also agree that understanding requires one to imagine themself in someone else’s position. But, it’s not always that easy… especially when emotions get in the way.
I call it Social Terrorism.
It happened to me in the 60s, but what helped me is I saw it being used on other people. I was a big, nerdy kid and they chose me to pick on, wanting to prove their
bravery. I didn’t want to fight, why does everyone want to fight me.
I learned how to defuse these situations with words, and I have never been in a real fight in my entire life. I would have dreams that I was fighting and my arms would move in slow motion. This may have sub-consciously helped me develop speed and confidence because I don’t worry about fights; I have the philosophy of a cat, don’t mess with me and I won’t mess with you. You mess with me… I fear for my life; and time slows down to slow motion, I trust in that and it gives me peace. Fighting is stupid!
My message to people this is happening to; see people for what they are. All their criticism is character assassination; baseless.