Reply #81: His photo is unsettling. He looks like a cross-country skier--healthy, strong, normal. [View All]

[Peace Patriot]

Knowing what he has been accused of, I am a bit drawn to his eyes, which seem to have a bit of mad glitter to them, but, frankly, if you'd shown me this photo before, I would never in the world have suspected psychosis so bad that he would shoot 15 children in cold blood. My reaction would have been: good-looking fellow, quite a "hunk," actually; maybe a little full of himself--although that could just be the pretentious style of whoever took the photo (dramatic shadow on one side the face, intense eyes looking off camera, tweaked up collar, noble forehead emphasized)--or maybe he's an actor. This could be a pose for the part of "Hamlet."

That's what I would have thought. Slaughterer of children? No way.

I know that it's often said of people who "go postal"--they seemed so NORMAL. Friends, neighbors, even family are astonished. Still, this one flabbergasts me. Or at least his photo does. So does his country, his culture. I know something about Norway. I've traveled there. I once understood the language well enough to write proper letters. It's such an incredibly beautiful country--everywhere, in every way--with such wonderful and incredibly sane and sensible people. For instance, poverty is simply not tolerated in Norway. It is not allowed to happen. There are no slums, no homeless, nobody in want (at least when I was there, some decades ago). Their North Sea oil plan was to use the money for social programs and to save a good portion of it for future generations. They wanted NO "boomtown" impacts on the oil development areas. They were planning carefully to prevent such impacts. I saw none of the stressful jostling you see here and in most cities--in Oslo, Bergen or Trondheim. All children I saw were treated with respect--no irritation, no forcing of anything, certainly no abuse. I saw a lot of abuse in L.A., my home at that time--just in the supermarket--not terrible abuse, just the routine abuse of tired, stressed out, irritated parents. Not in Norway. It was very striking. Happy people! Happy children! Open faces, everywhere! Even the "Midsommer" drunks were left alone to sleep it off in the parks. Nobody was offended. No cops pushing people around. Live and let live. Contentment! They were content with their country, with each other, with the world.

This is the last place in the world that I would have expected such a horror as this. I know, too, that literally anybody can go nuts, anywhere. Psychosis can be well hidden. So can social problems. It is a hazard of being human and it is a hazard in all societies--although societies that respect children and that share the wealth, so that no one is in want, generally head off psychosis before it becomes lethal--in primitive societies by channeling psychotic energy in creative ways (dream time, chanting, ritual dances, "medicine," initiation rites, etc.), and in peaceful modern societies generally by early diagnosis and treatment (or it is sometimes channeled into the arts, or into adventure and/or great physical challenges).

In sick modern societies, such as our own, it is channeled into war, militarism, fascist police forces, gangs, racism, conscienceless greed and other sociopathic modes, but not successfully. The costs of these channelings--besides the havoc that our country inflicts on others with our wars and on the victims of fascist culture within our own country --are that the psychosis rebounds into our society in unpredictable ways. Thus we have become inured to psychotic outbreaks--gun-wielding men shooting up schoolyards, or restaurants, or colleges, or military bases, or post offices or other workplaces, or a political rally, or whatever. We have become so used to it, we hardly notice it any more--and the memory of a country in which this did NOT happen is almost gone. Those of us in our sixties and older are the only ones left who remember a country in which this did not happen.

It is a very great shock in Norway. I've already seen some comment from Norwegians and they are in a similar state of shock to those of us, here, who experienced the JFK ('63) assassination, the Texas Tower Sniper murders ('66) and the RFK and ML King assassinations ('68). How could such things happen HERE?

Today we expect it. But they don't in Norway. And I hope to God that this is not the beginning of the end of Norway's wonderfully peaceful, progressive society.

I think that our routine psycho violence is related to unjust war--starting with the bloody, awful Vietnam War (which I think was the core motive of all three assassinations--JFK, RFK and MLK--and may have been at the heart of the Texas Tower sniper murders--the sniper, Charles Whitman, had been a U.S. Marine and served in Vietnam, and was clearly a very troubled soldier very likely with PTSS, possibly a victim of secret medical experiments in brainwashing and control).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Whitman

One of his victims was a very close friend of mine and this event in Norway is bringing it all back--as happens every time there is this kind of apparently inexplicable ("random") mass killing. Despite this, I and others close to that event in 1966 were by no means alone in suffering a state of shock--that an evil like that could occur in our country. (Only the JFK assassination had happened prior to the Texas Tower, and while that, too, had been a great shock, it was not inexplicable; it was clearly political.) Everybody was mindboggled by the Texas Tower event. Such things just didn't happen in the U.S.

I greatly sympathize with Norwegians today, and with the victims' families and friends. Since I've been through it myself, I know that there is no comfort anywhere, in anything, and it can be a corrosive event--it can eat away at the heart of a society as well as individuals. Even when the "explanations" come out, there is no "sense" to be made of it. All we can do is try to cherish and retain what civilization we have and what we can create for the common good. Our society has failed us. But I think Norway has every chance of recovering from this, without the on-going traumas, violence and horrors that we have had here and have inflicted on others. Today the Prime Minister said, "We will answer terrorism with more democracy." That's beautiful Norway.