HMSHood
Admiral-Class Battlecruiser
- Joined
- Jul 29, 2011
- Messages
- 4,344
- Reaction score
- 3,237
They are often consumed by envy.
Murderous Envy
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/keeping-kids-safe/200905/murderous-envy
Envy is a common feeling. In most instances, it is a harmless matter of people wishing they had someone else's attributes or possessions. In some cases, however, envy can be a motivation for murder. Earlier this month, Stephen Morgan killed Johanna Justin-Jinich, a student at Wesleyan University. Beyond the murder of Johanna, with whom he had been obsessed for a long time, Morgan had written in his journal that he thought it was "okay" to "go on a killing spree at this school" (i.e., Wesleyan). Why did he want to kill people at Wesleyan? His journal gives us a clue. In an entry written approximately two hours before the murder, Morgan referred to all the smart and beautiful people at Wesleyan. This suggests that envy may have been a factor in his planned killing spree. If so, he would not have been the first school shooter to envy the people he wished to kill.
At Columbine High School, Dylan Klebold envied the social successes of the school's athletes. In his journal, he wrote, "I see jocks having fun, friends, women." In another entry he wrote, "I hated the happiness that they [jocks] have." In contrast, he wrote about himself as being so different from everyone else that he seemed to believe he was not truly human or capable of functioning like a human being.
At Virginia Tech, Seung Hui Cho criticized people as stuck-up hedonists. He stated, "Your Mercedes wasn't enough, you brats. Your golden necklaces weren't enough, you snobs." Despite this hostility, Cho wished he could join them: "Oh the happiness I could have had mingling among you hedonists, being counted as one of you." It seems that his antipathy toward them was driven by his inability to be included among them.
