"He was a loner, and we're having difficulty finding information about him," said Virginia Tech spokesman Larry Hincker.
How often, in the wake of some apparently senseless rampage, do we hear the killer's neighbors say the cliche: "He kept to himself mostly"? Well there is truth in cliches.
The human animal craves society -- without it, his limbic system reaches out into the world of fantasy and solipsistic reality, finding solace in theories and bizarre ideas where real human contact should be. Many of these loners come from perfectly "normal" families and do not necessarily suffer physical or emotional trauma in their childhoods. Which makes their violent outbursts that much more incomprehensible. How could this happen?
Many theories, involving violent video games, Hollywood, godlessness, etc. don't really come close to identifying the reality of what causes an individual to snap and kill everyone he sees. Lots of normal young people enjoy those games every day and don't mistake the fantasy for reality. Plenty of atheist or agnostic kids have meaningful friendships and love relationships with their peers.
I don't know the details why Cho acted as he did. But if he was like many immigrants I knew at college, cut off from their communities and thrown into a strange universe filled with sexual provocations and language differences, he withdrew into himself rather than find the strength to reach out and make friends.
In such a state of powerlessness, a gun, its physical reality, can be an inspiring totemic object. Come, take it out of the closet, or from its hiding place under the bed. Feel its heft, linearity, power. So many mass produced objects are poorly made, designed to fall apart after a few uses. Handguns are one of those things that, because of the sobriety of their purpose, must be made well. It's a matter of life or death.
I remember when the toys I used to play with as a kid were well-made. A gun hearkens back to those days, when a toys were produced seriously. A gun is not a toy, in that it is actually better.
I imagine Cho in the days leading up to his actions, taking out his guns, touching them, and thinking -- not necessarily about the killing acts, but about an image of himself amidst the carnage, a self that would finally be able to get through to his peers and teachers. Killing for Cho might have been a means to an end: that end being: people will finally notice me, acknowledge my power as a human being in the world, as a male projecting maleness. And they will respect what I can do. Respect ME.
On top of this, it appears that Cho's violence erupted from a love relationship gone bad. Well, we don't miss what we lack so much as when we have it for a brief instant, and then it disappears. Young women are sometimes drawn to loners because they are, in a sense, attractive. They stand out as having a unique reality which can be very compelling. For girls without strong males in their life, a guy like Cho can draw them in--but perhaps the girl realized quickly that Cho had too many issues--she understandably got scared, and found someone else, someone better adjusted to society as a whole.
Maybe that's why he wrote what he did: "you made me do this". Of course she didn't. But it was the absence of human contact, after having it for a brief period of time, that pushed him over the edge.
I went to Catholic school as a kid, during a time after "Vatican II" when the church was trying to remarket itself. Before these reforms, the version of "Hell" we were always taught in elementary school was as a place of eternal fire where you get slow-roasted on hot coals for eternity. Afterwards, the nuns at my school told us that hell was not God being a sadist--instead it was the state of being "away from God"--being "abandoned by God" that was a greater suffering than any active torture could be.
I laughed at the notion then, and disbelieve in God today. But I do know there is a grain of truth to that story of Hell. Sartre said that "Hell is other people". But then, so is God.
Because we did not evolve to be loners--loners get their genes snuffed out, and a healthy individual is defined by his relationships to others. We are happiest when we are in society, loved and understood by our fellow man. We may be carried away by flights of imagination, like the poets, but those flights become a nightmare when we cannot share them with others.
This drive is essential in the human animal--to reach out and connect with human animals. Thwarted by rejection or isolation, that drive will find an exit, be it through a smile, through positive work for good, or through the barrel of a gun.
What events like this should teach us, I think, is not to become hypersensitive about every single expression of violence--either as a joke or as muttered frustration. What we should look for in our communities are the people who are shut out, keep to themselves, seem depressed or spurn human contact.
These are the ones among us who are suffering--and they will get our attention one way or another, eventually.
But we fear and turn away from such people--they emit to much desperation. We'd like to be friendly, but.. who knows? They might attach themselves too much to us, come to rely upon us as their "best friend" or become too needy. They might lower our own social status by virtue of our association with them. And we are right to consider these factors, because really, we're all struggling here--to be loved, to be important.
In the context of our own problems, can we really AFFORD to be nice to people who are suffering and alone?
And why should we be held hostage by these social misfits anyway? Some may ask. "Do I have to be nice to every single freak just because one day they might lose it and off my whole class?"
The answer, I think, is kindness. Kindness to your fellow man or woman who is just like you on the inside--a being who craves love, respect, and wants to belong. You don't have to be their best friend, but you should show them basic awareness and kindness.
Because we all share a common humanity.
UPDATE:
Some more on Cho, the "question mark kid":
Classmates said that on the first day of an introduction to British literature class last year, the 30 or so English students went around and introduced themselves. When it was Cho's turn, he didn't speak.
The professor looked at the sign-in sheet and, where everyone else had written their names, Cho had written a question mark. "Is your name, `Question mark?'" classmate Julie Poole recalled the professor asking. The young man offered little response.
I wonder if our identity, who and what we are, is defined through the ongoing process of our contact with others. The boundaries of the self, after all, are the edge where others begin. Some people obviously need less contact with others in order to define themselves - but others require more, and if they can't get that contact, those experiences, for whatever reason, they become a mystery unto themselves.
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