The signs were everywhere that Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold
were about to explode upon Columbine HS. They even left revealing journals so
that we are not in the dark about their motivations.
Harris was desperate for the validation, which he required from
the other students. At least, he felt
that he could earn their respect by being feared: “I HATE PEOPLE and they
better fucking fear me if they know what’s good for ’em.” At a more self-reflective
moment, Harris admitted: “If people would give me more compliments all of this
might still be avoidable . . . but probably not.” file:///C:/Users/Daniel/Downloads/harris_journal_1.3.pdf
However, Harris might have been seeking an inordinate amount
of compliments. He had convinced himself that he was a god, and gods need to be
worshipped:
·
It’s ok if I am a hypocrite, but no one else,
because I am higher than you people, no matter what you say if you disagree I
would shoot you.
Today, building self-esteem, instead of an accurate
self-assessment, is praised. It should be no surprise that Harris became a
master at self-esteem to compensate for his bad feelings about himself,
something we all share. However, if we elevate ourselves as a god, we seek
validation from others for the monument we have built for ourselves. When we
fail to receive this validation, the compliments, our god is diminished, and we
feel rejected.
Besides, the drug of self-glorification diminishes the conscience.
It enabled Harris to reject whatever his conscience might have been telling
him. After all, if his is god, there is no need to take his conscience or any
other voice seriously.
The idea of power gave him a high: “I am fucking armed. I
feel more confident, stronger, more God-like. I have confidence in my ability
to deceive people.” Harris had filmed his planning book entitled the “Writings
of God.” Once the partners had convinced themselves that they were gods, they
could reject their servile conscience as the zombie-like mentality of the
ignorant masses.
Although less hateful, Klebold expressed many of the same
ideas:
·
Society is tightening its grip on me, & soon
I & will snap. We will have our revenge on society, & then be free, to
exist in a timeless spaceless place of pure happiness. The purpose of life is
to be happy & be with your love who is equally happy…The real people (gods)
are slaves to the majority of zombies, but we know & love being superior.
file:///C:/Users/Daniel/Downloads/klebold_journal_1.1_3.pdf
Society had denied them their due as gods. However, we all
cannot be #1, the object of compliments, the most loved, or the most respected.
These forms of validation are limited resources. How then must the marginalized
survive if the respect is a scarce commodity? Scripture gives us the answer. We
need not demand or hunger for the respect and love from others once we are
assured of the love and validation that comes from the Supreme Source:
·
I have been crucified with Christ. It is no
longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the
flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. (Galatians
2:20 ESV)
Consequently, when the world rejects me, they reject Jesus.
It still hurts, but Jesus gives us a refuge and a balm for the pain. Instead,
the promotion of self-esteem fails to produce a greater number of “winners” or
minimize the number of “losers.” Instead, it seeks to confer a survival advantage
only upon its disciples.
In contrast, Jesus is unlimited and can elevate any who come
to Him in truth. We can all know that we are loved.
Harris also admitted:
·
Everyone is always making fun of me because of
how I look, how fucking weak I am and shit, well I will get you all back, ultimate
fucking revenge here. You people could have shown more respect, treated me
better, asked for my knowledge or guidance more, treated me more like a senior,
and maybe I wouldn’t have been so ready to tear your fucking heads off. Then
again, I have always hated how I looked, I make fun of people who look like me,
sometimes without even thinking sometimes just because I want to rip on myself.
That’s where a lot of my hate grows from. The fact that I have practically no
self-esteem, especially concerning girls and looks and such. Therefore people
make fun of me . . . constantly . . . therefore I get no
respect and therefore I get fucking PISSED. As of this date I have enough
explosions to kill about 100 people, and then if I get a couple bayonets,
swords, axes, whatever I’ll be able to kill at least 10 more. And that just
isn’t enough!
They were gods, and gods and were superior to the zombies. Gods
could also take lives. I’m sure that many feel badly about themselves, but
Harris and Klebold surrendered to their destructive feelings. What else enabled
them to act out? Harris cited the non-existence of any standards of judgment:
·
Why should your morals apply to everyone else.
“Morals” is just another word, and that’s it. I think we are all a waste of
natural resources and should be killed off, and since humans have the ability
to choose . . . and I’m human . . . I think I will choose to
kill and damage as much as nature allows me to so take that, fuck you, and eat
napalm + lead! HA! Only nature can stop me. I know I could get shot by a cop
after only killing a single person, but hey guess the fuck WHAT! I chose to
kill that one person so get over it!
Instead of being recognized as superior, Harris felt that he
was being scorned. However, he found additional encouragement from the example
of the Nazis and an intellectual basis for it from Darwin’s naturalism and the “survival
of the fittest. Although Eric Harris wanted to believe himself a visionary, he
was a child of his postmodern, morally relativistic culture:
·
If you recall your history the Nazis came up
with a “final solution” to the Jewish problem. Kill them all. Well, in case you
haven’t figured it out yet, I say “KILL MANKIND” no one should survive. We all
live in lies. People are always saying they want to live in a perfect society,
well utopia doesn’t exist. It is human to have flaws. You know what. Fuck it.
Why should I have to explain myself to you survivors when half of this shit I
say you shitheads won’t understand and if you can then woopie fucking do. That
just means you have something to say as my reason for killing. And the majority
of the audience won’t even understand my motives either! They’ll say “ah, he’s
crazy, he’s insane, worthless! All you fuckers should die! DIE! What the fuck
is the point if only some people see what I am saying, there will always be
ones who don’t, ones that are to dumb or naïve or ignorant or just plain
retarded. If I can’t pound it into every single persons head then it is
pointless. Fuck money fuck justice fuck morals fuck civilized fuck rules fuck
laws. . .There’s no such thing as True Good or True evil, it’s all
relative to the observer.
Besides his inflated expectation that others should validate
him, moral relativism, the belief that morality is no more than a human
creation, undermined Harris’ moral restraints:
·
You see, anything and everything that happens in
our world is just that, a HAPPENING. Anything else is relative to the observer,
but yet we try to have a “universal law” or “code” of what is good and bad and
that just isn’t fuckin correct.
Harris felt that others wrongly
judged him. Of course, believing himself to be a god, no one else would ever be
able to affirm him in the way that he required. Instead, of examining himself
and perhaps making some changes, he used his belief that there are no moral
truths to dismiss their opinions.
However, without objective moral truths, we are left alone
to ourselves and the conviction that whatever gladdens us and makes us feel
that we are a “somebody” is the supreme truth. Harris filled the moral vacuum
with his own self-aggrandizement:
·
…but me, I see all . . . you can only
blind me for so long, but alas, I have realized that Yes, the human race is
still indeed doomed. It just needs a few kick starts, like me, and hell, maybe
even____ . If I can wipe a few cities off the map, and even the fuckhead
holding the map, then great. Hmm, just thinking if I want all humans dead or
maybe just the quote-unquote “civilized, developed, and known-of” places on
Earth, maybe leave little tribes of natives in the rain forest or something.
Harris rejected any truths that could challenge his thoughts
and feelings. Why would Harris be willing to leave “tribes of natives?” Perhaps
because he had desired the validation and approval of the “civilized” – those
who thought that there was something the matter with him? In contrast, these
tribes had never contradicted his visions of self-glorification.
Harris committed one of the many errors of postmodernism.
While he claimed that no one could judge him, this didn’t prevent him from judging
others.
Self-glorification is intoxicating, but it is a creature
that needs constant and increasing feeding. Klebold and Harris also produced
very candid videos. In them, Klebold stated:
·
Directors will be fighting over this story. I
know we’re gonna have followers because we’re so fucking God-like. We’re not
exactly human — we have human bodies but we’ve evolved into one step above you,
fucking human shit. We actually have fucking self-awareness. file:///C:/Users/Daniel/Downloads/columbine_basement_tapes_1.0(1).pdf
Interestingly, they didn’t blame their parents for what they
planned to do. Harris stated:
·
My parents are the best fucking parents I have
ever known. My dad is great. I wish I was a fucking sociopath so I didn’t have
any remorse, but I do. This is going to tear them apart. They will never forget
it. [He then addresses his parents directly, if briefly] There is nothing you
guys could have done to prevent any of this. There is nothing that anyone could
have done to prevent this. No one is to blame except me and Vodka [Klebold’s
nickname]. Our actions are a two man war against everyone else.
·
Yea . . . Everyone I love, I’m really
sorry about all this. I know my mom and dad will be just like . . .
just fucking shocked beyond belief. I’m sorry, all right. I can’t help it.
Klebold added:
·
Hey mom. Gotta go. It’s about a half an hour
before our little judgment day. I just wanted to apologize to you guys for any
crap this might instigate as far as [inaudible] or something. Just know I’m
going to a better place. I didn’t like life too much and I know I’ll be happy
wherever the fuck I go. So I’m gone. Good-bye. Reb . . .
Perhaps we have been too ready to lay all the blame at the
feet of the parents and need to spread the blame around. I think that the
self-esteem, self-help, and psychotherapeutic community need to assume some of
it. Klebold and Harris had been faithful students of the self-esteem culture,
even if they did apply its lessons more thoroughly than most. They had learned
to believe in themselves to the extent that they believed that they were
superior – even gods.
Instead, growth and appropriate modifications depend upon
seeing the object that we want to modify accurately - ourselves. The Bible
counsels:
·
For by the grace given to me I say to everyone
among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to
think with sober judgment... (Romans 12:3)
Why aren’t we given the corresponding warning to not think less of ourselves than we ought? Because
our tendency is to inflate ourselves to compensate and cover the painful
feelings about ourselves!
In contrast, Harris wouldn’t listen to anyone. He did not
want to climb down from his self-constructed throne. It was just too deflating.
Instead, he was determined to believe in himself, and it was easier to regard
others as beneath him than to sit at their feet.
He could they abide with humbling themselves to truly
examine who they were and to make the proper adjustments? Once they rejected
Christ, His love and forgiveness, they had rejected the one Resource that would
have enabled them to face the painful truth.
Besides, if morality is just a human illusion, which imprisons
the zombies, why bother with it or with the need to make any painful personal
changes, which God’s moral standards require. Klebold and Harris had pulled
anchor and convinced that they were captains of their own ship. They were now
at the mercy of the winds of their destructive feelings.
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