I said this to you at the time, and I'd say it again: Cho Seung Hui was not "a monster." He was mentally ill, most likely paranoid schizophrenic. It's lovely to try and put some rational thinking behind why he did what he did but it's a pointless errand - what happened is a person with a mental illness that was not being addressed with psychiatric treatment resulted ina violent break with reality. That's it. There's really nothing else here. And trying to - as Wesley (it's always a Wesley, ergh) Yang does - make this into the way to discuss various social prejudices is really not going to get us anywhere productive. What we need to do is take mental illness more seriously, and figure out how to get young people the treatment they need, not bounce them around, hope for the best, and wait for the worst.

I was thinking the same thing as weboy. Whatever difficult social prejudices people face in life, it doesn't shed any light on the subject to look at those prejudices using the experience of Cho Seung Hui as a springboard.

By the way, I anticipated a lot of this at the time:

http://nycweboy.typepad.com/my_weblog/2007/04/the_madness_of_.html

I'm not sure I've ever seen so much bloggy discussion of a work that is not available online for the rest of us to read for ourselves. Can't say I like the feeling that much, it's a bit disorienting!

His name was Seung-Hui Cho. Note the order. He lived in the United States.

"Cho, of course, was a monster." Of course. What is that all about? It commands us to agree, and forecloses debate. It's a rhetorical flourish that you should lose now, before it becomes an unshakeable bad habit.

folks who aren't sociopaths, but who've been twisted by rejection, and who now carry wounds and grudges that make continuing marginalization a certainty

Sounds like Nice Guy(TM) syndrome to me. Some of us get over it, some don't.

Plastic surgery?

cho was not a monster.

there are no monsters.

there are only humans.

that is the basis of any sort of tolerable ethic.

after a certain point, cho was probably beyond help.

but he was not beyond help when he was born.

he was not unlovable.

a number of different factors--unknown to all of us--came together to TEACH him that he was unlovable.

to say that is not to blame any one person for his madness.

but it is to say that in some mysterious, other people made him who he was. he was taught his madness. he was taught not to love.

in this world, that happens, and maybe no one person is ever to blame when it happens.

but that doesn't simply remove the question of blame--of how our society and its failure of community made that person.

he was not "ill"--not JUST "ill," in the way a cancer patient is ill. he was not just "evil," any more than any other murderer is just "evil."

he was mentally, morally, spiritually, deformed. he did not have to be. when he was born, he was not unlovable.

no human is unlovable.

to say that there are just some people who don't deserve love is to submit to a logic of love as "rational choice," a logic of sink-or-swim, a logic of market-driven brutality and murder.

of course those forces are in play our sick society.

but there are other forces--starting with the gift of love and lovability--and anyone who talks about "inherently unlovable people," as if there is nothing to do with them but kill them, is guilty of contributing to a culture of rapacity and violence

Of course. What is that all about? It commands us to agree, and forecloses debate.

It signals that the author regards the proposition he's stating as something that he expects we all will agree with. It indicates that the author doesn't take himself to be saying anything original or insightful, but rather pointing out an obvious fact.

And it is obvious; Cho was a monster. We can wonder why he ended up being a monster, but honestly, there was probably just a region in his brain that developed wrong.

It's hardly worth pointing out - people are clearly going to believe what they want to believe - but I'd point out that "monster" is just not a useful term in trying to describe or deal with mental illness. Whether Seung Hui Cho (or Cho Seung Hui) had developmental problems is something we don't, and probably can't, know. We do know - from the extensive evidence of peers, teachers, and others - is that he was showing signs of psychiatric problems and had been for some time. And again, this is not the same thing as people who simply have to live with the "wounding of rejection." What separates Cho from others is not monstrousness, but illness. The monstrousness is in his actions, actions that could have, with treatment or intervention, possibly been prevented. Why "monster" serves as acceptable shorthand for any of this eludes me.

Love, Yang argues, is not offered as charity. It must be earned. You must have qualities that make others want to love you. His question is what happens if those qualities are entirely absent?

This is why I read you, Ezra. Your pathos is the characteristic that sets you apart.

Those sentences are very depressing for me.

I haven't read the Yang essay, but if it's as patronizing, self-important and smug as his posts in Dana's comment section, I'm probably not missing very much.

Sounds like Nice Guy(TM) syndrome to me. Some of us get over it, some don't.

This is to Nice Guys as boulders are to pebbles. Most Nice Guys have a chip on their shoulder that keeps them from getting/functioning in romantic relationships, but are still capable of relating to friends, family, coworkers, etc. Yang is talking about somebody who is a Nice Guy to the nth degree, somebody who cannot even talk to people in passing without attempting to seek support and reassurance.

When i read this: "What's so brutal about Yang's essay is his claim that some people are unloved not because society has slipped up, but because they are not, on some level, worthy of other people's love; because they are as ugly within as they are without, and so there is nothing to save them from the chasm," the first thing that popped into my mind was Ann Coulter. Does this make me unlovable?

Dear CL,

I promise it is not.

Wes

"What's so brutal about Yang's essay is his claim that some people are unloved not because society has slipped up, but because they are not, on some level, worthy of other people's love; because they are as ugly within as they are without, and so there is nothing to save them from the chasm,"

That's not at all what Yang was trying to say. He makes explicit that there is something worthy of love in everyone. What he's saying is that there is no rational reason for anyone to dig for those qualities in Cho. Why would you want to love or be loved by an anti-social, extremely unpleasant loner who doesn't dress well? What's to gain?

In the essay, Yang brings up the counter-example of a 6'4, white, high-earner who gets six-thousand hits on his internet dating profile within hours of posting. He's not any more "worthy" of being loved, but a lot more people are going to want to try. I think that paragraph ("You could watch TV together.") is the most brutal in the essay.

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