Korean Job Discussion Forums

[stevemcgarrett]

Note to Mod Team: this thread is not intended to replicate an existing sticky thread on another forum.

The recent tragedy of the Cho massacre at VT should give us all pause. Much has been made of his strange behavior by the media but what, really, made this young man go haywire?

I'm interested in a thoughtful and informed discussion of this issue, which is separate and more pressing in my view than the ongoing debate over gun control. What really happened to Cho? Care to join in?

My personal take on this topic is that the mind of the sociopath is not well understood. It is so much easier to label him psychotic, or just plain "crazy," whatever that implies.

According to his great aunt in Korea, Cho was always withdrawn, even from members of his own family including his mother.

He was woefully shy or, more accurately, expressing shyness as an indication of inner turmoil. Clearly he was mentally disturbed, perhaps from the start. Did that make him a "bad seed?"

He turned inward but as he bottled up his anger it turned to rage. Perhaps he felt inadequate--a first son whose younger sister succeeded in getting into the Ivy League and thereby meeting the highest of Korean family expectations. But what, if anything, was really expected of Seung-Hui? His mother was at a loss as to how to deal with him. No mention yet of the father's role. Clearly, however, no one reached out to the mental health community in earnest, either in Korea or their adopted country. That was obviously a serious mistake but so much in keeping with the East Asian tendency to avoid confronting mental health issues head-on.

The American mental health system only touched bases with Cho. He was prescribed medication but apparently did not fill his prescripton and no one among the VT counseling staff at the clinic saw to it that he did despite a trail of odd behavior, reports, and complaints. The health system was in place but the response was fell far short.

We could insist that Cho had only himself to blame. After all, other kids get teased, especially in middle school and high school, racism is directed at other Asian kids too by those who didn't know or care to know a Korean from a Chinese from a Thai. Countless other kids are shy, some desperately so. While considered poor in Korea, they were not impoverished in America. Cho's parents had their own small business and according to emerging evidence, and least enough wherewithal to provide their children with some of the necessary cultural capital to advance in their schooling.

Cho was a loner, perhaps by choice, but so are millions of other kids. And being a loner is not a permanent disposition as many of us know from observing friends, classmates and other acquaintances. People can come out of the shell. Cho must have known--painfully sensed--that he simply didn't fit in. Then he made his pariah status a badge of honor and allowed his paranoia and unearned sense of victimhood to distort his aims, to make himself ready for martyrdom.

He was not dense and perhaps not even obtuse. He wasn't socially dysfunctional despite great effort to assimilate. Rather, he was willful in his withdrawal and later relished in taunting others in VT classrooms with it. Even his hardest-edged professors like Nikki Giovanni were spooked. Cho was more creepy than a creep; he couldn't even be casually dismissed as just another "jerk."

Now I'm sure I wouldn't be writing most of this had I known any of his victims, if I were a student at VT, or if I had lost a loved one to some other act of senseless violence. Nor would my own stance for or against gun control have swayed me.

At the risk of sermonizing (which I am not attempting to do) Garrett Evans, one of his victims, who was wounded and is now recovering in a Blacksburg hospital, told CNN that he is convinced Cho was demonically possessed. Other students who had encountered him in class nodded their agreement.

The late great exorcist, author and priest Father Malachi Martin insisted passionately that the devil seeks out the most vulnerable among us, especially the mentally disturbed. Martin, a former Jesuit and therefore highly educated, was keenly aware of the need to avoid proselytizing, (especially in view of those who are not Catholic nor Christian and doubt the ability of the devil to possess humans). Yet I think Martin would have at the very least felt it worthwhile to talk to this young man, had it been possible.

Now I'm not saying Cho was possessed but it is telling that he mocked Christ in his video message, which was premeditated, even as he assumed a Christ-like posture before the camera lens. He loathed himself, the Question Mark Kid, even as the devil, despite his outward appearance of arrogance in flouting God's wishes. He was self-absorbed, as even his classmates acknowledged, and in the video we can see a degree of self-indulgence in hatred that only a demon could revel in. Cho was cunning, cold and calculated, as the devil is prone to be, and he took delight in word games, in twisting words from twisted characterization, as is the devil's tactic.

Of course, the secular media will not dwell on this possibility much less address it in anything more than passing. But it does give me pause and makes me wonder: Who could have really saved Cho? An intermittent but then wayward Bible study student, Cho knew verse and his moniker Ishmael may or may not have been symbolic.

This much we know: he was a captive of the dungeon of his own thoughts, rattling chains metaphorically through his outward behavior but no one took it seriously enough. Better to dismiss him as a stalker, a kook, a mentally deranged copy cat killer haunted by Columbine's ghost. Anything than to contemplate, much less consider, the possibility of deep mental illness touched in the end by satanic purpose.

[princess]

I was just thinking yesterday that it would just about take someone being demon possessed to do something like this. I am a Christian, so I can definitely see this as the reason he did what he did. I am sure non-religious folks will disagree. We all have a right to our opinions though.

[endo]

Why do you have to put all you thread titles in caps?

Every single thread title you start begins in caps.

Do you think your threads are more important than the other ones?


Seriously what gives?

[Kyrei]

[stevemcgarrett]

Let me clarify. I'm not convinced he was possessed but he was described as demonic by several eyewitnesses, i.e. students who survived his rampage. So it's worth considering.

I do think, however, that regardless of what transpired in the days and hours leading up to this tragedy that he might very well have has undiagnosed schizophrenia.

endo:

I do it just to annoy you. Now stop eating those magic mushrooms.

[philthy]

Possessed? Maybe. I prefer to think it is mental illness. Neither one of us can prove or disprove Satanic possession Jack Lord so the argument is moot.

True we all have our own opinions and I'm not knocking yours, I'm just saying a possession is FAR fetched in my ideals.

I believe he had a mental break, not possession, and snapped.

I will not try and diagnose him as you have as I don't have a medical degree nor Psychiatry training. And I'm sure you do not as well.

[tfunk]

Even Freud couldn't tell what conditions brought about his disturbed state just by browsing the internet. It could be anything, but likely to be a contribution of factors.

Are you interested or do you want to understand?

You'll never be satisfied because the only way you can trully understand is by becoming...

Staring into the abyss and all that.

Unless of course you're just trying to pass some time.

What's better than a 50" inch monitor, surround sound, the most realistic graphics card and a belly full of hate?

[Sine qua non]

[tfunk]

[Sine qua non]

In talking about illness, if a person with AIDS knowingly goes around sleeping with people with the self-professed intent to further transmit the fatal disease, that person�s behavior is criminal.

This Korean murderer had sociopathic behavior. Sociopathy is not illness, it is, in its essence, hate. Hate, in turn, is no more than willful thoughts to destoy (in this case, thoughts to destroy other people).

An example of mental illness is when the brain is missing sections or is otherwise malformed.

If there is such a thing as a �chemical imbalance� in the brain (the supposed cause of so many mental illnesses), I would love to one day see a person with a �chemically balanced� brain.

Emotions (love, hate, etc.) produce chemicals in the brain; an example being the joy we feel when we�re in love (releases of endorphins). Emotions make us chemically imbalanced.

If that person didn�t control his emotions to the extent that he decided that he must kill others, that is an example of human behavior that we should try to prevent from ever happening again, rather than �understanding the mind� of the murder as the media wants to do (and wants to force down our throats).

[Ya-ta Boy]

We are solidly into the 21st Century and someone honestly posits demon possession as a possible cause of an atrocity?

[cosmicgirlie]

Instead of placing the blame on one thing or another one must ask society "what was his base line, when did the homicidal/sucidal thoughts begin to swing back and forth more rapidly, what were the warning signs and what was done about the warning signs?"

Serious violence is an evolutionary process--no one just snaps. CHildren are empty vessels so the question remains, what are they filling themselves with?

I suspect that Cho was filling himself with images of violence from television. I also suspect that his family dynamics had very little to do with it other than the pressure to perform well. I also suspect he had a serious mental illness that already altered his perception of reality and what his base line of 'normal' behaviour was.

There are many factors that contribute to a person committing serious violent acts. I've done the Threat Risk Assessment Training--although not to the same level as the FBI/RCMP--but the beginning level of the same training as they would take and let me tell you that no one contributing factor can be found. However one thing is true. Violence is evolutionary and is based on a base line of what is a person's "normal" behaviour.

If, for example, a child is to watch a lot of violent television but not exposed to any other violence then their base line of violent behaviour is fantasy/visually watching. However, if that same child begins to exhibit some aggression then they have moved up the evolutionary line and is more proned to violent behaviours then that of a child who just watches violent stuff. Cho was a 'quiet' kid. He barely spoke to people--or so it is reported--and that was his base line of 'normal' behaviour. Then all of a sudden he's being taken in for questioning around 'stalking'. That my friends is the evolutionary leap for him.

There are four prongs to the process of violent occurances. The first prong is personality traits and behaviours. What type of person are they? There are Four typologies of a high risk offender. The Traditional behavioural--they use violence to get needs met, the Mixed type--wears their emotions on their sleves and their violence is usually emotionally charged, the Non-Traditional who has no history of violence, they are thinkers/planners--this is where most school shooters fall into, and the Traditional cognitive-they are okay with violence but wont do it themselves, they are the puppet masters and the most dangerous. I suspect he was either a mixed typology.

The second prong is family dynamics. What are the behavioural baselines in the family dynamics. What are the beliefs, tradtions, customs and values that exhist int he family? Most importantly what is the role in the family. Are they the parent or are they the child? If they are the child what is their significance in the family? Are they important or not? I suspect this is a 'traditional korean' family dynamic in the sense that the children are pressured to perform well for the parents so that their parents can rely on their children once they find work past graduation. If this is the case then I suspect that Cho's run in with the law was a big disgrace to his family.

The third prong is school dynamics. Is the school Naturally open or naturally closed? Is the school traumatically open or traumatically closed? What are the school's customs, traditions, roles, values, beliefs and culture? What are the levels of interaction between students and teachers? What about the administrators and teachers? or administrators and students? I don't know much about the school or it's past tragedies. I can't comment on this without much further investigation.

Finally the forth prong is the social dynamics. This is the larger community context. What are the communities customs, traditions, roles, values, beliefs and culture? How does one percieve themselves in the context of their community? From his notes to the media he had a lot of hate on for the 'rich' folk. I suspect he felt marginalized by the whole community. Again, I can't really comment on his community as I'm familar with it.

There are two types of violent offenders, the Inovators and the Imitators. Inovators are the ones who commit the violent act that no one has done--i.e. Columbine shooters and the Imitators are the ones who follow suit--i.e. Taber shooter. He my friends is an Inovator. He has uped the anty(sp?) for new school shooters.

There is much more to be said about violence in our society and what our baseline is now versus what it was post WW2. What we would have considered absurd in the 50's and 60's is now our 'baseline' for what is normal behaviour. A scary thought if you ask me.

[stevemcgarrett]

cosmicgirlie:

[Junior]

How would you have handled it if you had been his room mate or in his class?


Because the necessary services to handle whackos aren't in place.

[princess]