The Friends of Rage

I have rage issues.  I’m not sure there is a single person that knows the full truth of that statement.  I’m not saying that no one knows it is true- there are- just that they don’t necessarily know how true.  I’ve done my best not to let on and in my worst moments I’ve trained myself to react first by shutting down.  Not healthy, probably, but it’s gotten me into less trouble than punching the bringers of bad news in the face.  I understand more than I would like the desire to cause pain.  If I had the ability to make someone’s heart explode with the power of my mind, no driver would be safe.  Likewise, politicians might have to worry.

I wanted to get these sad truths out of the way before I said this.  There are people I would thoroughly enjoy smacking in the face.  There are people who could get run over by a bus and I’d mostly feel bad for the people riding said bus when it happened… but I would never want to actually be the instrument of ending a life.  To plan and carry out an action solely for the purpose of ending the life of another human being, is not something I can fully fathom.  I’m writing this as every news station covers the latest tragedy.  This is not my story, and I’ve no right to tell it.  It is my reason, however, to once again consider what kind of mind could make something like this happen.

Rage alone is not enough, not for premeditation, and possibly not always in a crime of passion.  I have lashed out and I know that the very first target is where the strike lands.  I also know that the first strike is the hardest if not only strike.  For the violence to build, despite you expressing it through that first hit, implies another aspect.  You strike again because it’s not enough, you’re not enough- either that, or you strike again because you enjoyed it, beyond the expression of rage, you enjoyed collecting pain.

To plan an event that you will trigger remotely that will hurt or kill an unknown number of people requires even more factors, and rage has an equal chance to be or not be one of them.  To be physically uninvolved in the action is physically unsatisfying.  On the most basic level, the action does nothing to express rage.  In a physical altercation, it is actually the pain you feel that lets you know that you have made a connection and expressed it- because hitting things hurts, though not as much as being hit does. 

When people are unknown, they cannot be important as individuals.  They are unimportant to their killers to the degree that their lives are no different from a score.  The feeling of knowing their fate would be no different than someone checking successful stock exchange results, or achieving a higher score in a video game.  Both of those have in common a certain disconnect from reality.  It’s a matter of distance and the protective shield of a computer or television screen that give, or appear to give, safety.

I probably should have several more paragraphs, but I’m going to jump ahead to the conclusions.  You must need to get your taste of success, your thrill of battle, through another medium and at a distance- You must be a coward.  You must have the ability to mentally reduce people to numbers- You must be self-centered to the point of absolute arrogance.  You must need, beyond all else, to have the world notice your action and agonize over your message- You must have such low self-esteem that you need massive amounts of validation from the very people that you don’t value beyond numbers.  You must be disconnected from the feeling and concept of hope in relation to the human race- You must have no desire for the world to ‘get better’.