Profile of Aurora shooting suspect keeps getting murkier
July 23, 2012 9:00 am
More:
http://herald-review.com/news/natio...cle_b27a87b8-d4cb-11e1-b1d1-0019bb2963f4.html
From the article:
"His grades were mediocre. I've heard him described as brilliant. This is extremely inaccurate."Holmes attended the Salk program between high school and college and performed poorly, Jacobson said. "He shouldn't have gotten into the summer program."
Jacobson also said Holmes was enormously stubborn and refused to follow instructions.
He said he set Holmes to work writing computer code for an experiment Jacobson had done involving a game of rock-paper-scissors, in which the computer always beats the human, no matter who goes first.
He said that although he urged Holmes to use one method of programming, Holmes insisted on using another that Jacobsen described as vastly more time consuming and complicated.
"He just refused," said Jacobson. "Finally, I said, 'Do it any way you can.' "
The work never got done. "He never completed the project. What he gave me was a complete mess," Jacobson said.
So one might add "stubborn" to the list of traits in the wispy profile of Holmes - except students who knew him say they don't particularly recall pronounced stubbornness at all.
"I think he just liked to share his opinions on stuff he really believes in, what's right," said a 26-year-old UC Riverside graduate who was in his lab group in 2008. "There were times he can come off arrogant. He definitely could."
To me, this sounds like a guy who believed himself to be much more important and intelligent than others judged him to be. When his beliefs about himself were not supported by others, I have a feeling his disappointment turned into narcissistic rage. Then, much like a domestic abuser who decides to kill his ex or take her children and kill them in order to hurt her, he decided to seek revenge and show those bastards who he really was, that he was more powerful, more intelligent and more important. That if they were not going to give him the recognition he deserved, he would get it another way, from the world.
These types are disgruntled egoists who feel life has shorted them, so they will simultaneously show the world and punish it. They don't care so much about the consequences. Some even choose to end their own life in the process. What's most important to these types is causing pain to others - to seek revenge, to punish and to become ultra famous as they do it.
Is something "wrong" with such a person? Well, of course. They have a withered soul. Is such a person so mentally disturbed that they cannot control their actions? That I do not believe for a moment.
There has been a debate on the threads about how even sociopaths have different brains and thus, the implication goes, they cannot control themselves. Burt science has shown that brain changes can be caused by the most minute things. Someone who is feeling happy shows brain changes. Someone feeling sad, shows brain changes. And so what? Those changes do not necessarily equate to a loss of will or control.
It is a chicken and egg argument. Does an evil heart lead to changes in brain chemistry? Or does brain chemistry lead to changes in one's heart? If we believe that criminal behavior is outside our control and is determined by the brain (something, BTW, that many feel racists have used for at least a century to prove that blacks are inherently prone to criminality), then why the heck do we have prisons at all? We should have sympathy for these poor sots who cannot control themselves and offer them treatment instead. All of them.
I for one think that choice, will, soul, all play a part in one's conduct, unless they are so ill or damaged that they cannot function at all - i.e. lack the ability to feed themselves, clothes themselves, etc.
I think it is rather bizarre to condemn those that say he is nice looking as "sickos". His picture is all over the press, of course people will comment on his looks, many will make insulting comments and others will find him nice looking.
I personally thought he was good looking when I saw the first picture, the pics that came out later with the weird red hair were not at all flattering.
Wow, really? People were tweeting that a guy who just murdered 12 innocent people and tried to kill 50 more, is "kinda hot", stating "I would hit that".
I'm sorry, but they ARE sickos, IMO. That is one of the most tasteless, offensive and insulting things to say in the face of such a tragedy. Wow, no wonder creeps like the Colorado murderer do what they do. Despite the incredible evil of such an act, despite the horror and pain it causes so many, people are not only ready and willing, just chomping at the bit, to excuse it, stating the poor guy has brain issues and deserves our sympathy and that everyone else is to blame, people are also willing to make statements about how "hot" he is and how much they would like to have sex with him.
That is really, really offensive to me, in the face of such devastation. It adds to the problem. It resolves nothing. :twocents:
