I confess to be a life-long bachelor, and while there may
have been a moment or two when I thought that something was amiss about this,
I’ve reached the age where I just don’t care—as they say nowadays, it is what
it is. Nature decreed from ever since I could remember that I would be one of
those introverted types, whose reclusive behavior was seen as a form of
delinquency by at least one of my parents. This needed to be “corrected,” the methods
of which I won’t go into detail here. However, instead of correcting my “faults,”
all this “correction” did was make me even more reticent of interacting with
the rest of the human species, the female half in particular.
It doesn’t help that all I ever hear from the media is
whining and complaining and claims of victimization. People fall in lust
instead of love, and when the lust is over they discover that not only don’t
they love this other person, but they don’t like the idea of having to take
into consideration the other person’s feelings, or they feel the other person
is just getting in the way of their “freedom” to do whatever they please. I
frankly don’t have patience for the games that women insist that you play; when
it is over, you are left with less than when you started, sometimes
considerably so. It goes without saying that I’m not unhappy that I missed that
part altogether.
And so now we have this story out of southern California,
the college beach community called Isla Vista, where the University of
California at Santa Barbara is nestled in. Elliot Rodger, a 22-year-old college
student, son of a low-level film director and drives around in an expensive
car, decided to take his revenge on the world by going into town with a small
arsenal and randomly shoot people, killing at least six and wounding seven
others before either being shot himself by police, or taking his own life. Although
he apparently was targeting women, he shot whoever was most convenient to make
his “point.”
Rodger’s “point,” it seems, was his anger at women for not
satisfying a particular need of his—relieving him of his virgin status. He
couldn’t understand why girls didn’t like him; he was a “gentleman,” he drove a
nice car, and he even appeared with his father on a Hollywood red carpet,
having done some minor work on the “Hunger Games” set. But this didn’t impress
the girls; they preferred conceited jocks and tough guys. Rodger was just some
guy they kicked sand in the face at the beach.
This character deserves no sympathy, however. In a YouTube
video where he is seen speaking into a camera while sitting in his expensive
car that his father bought him, we see his smug, self-righteous demeanor and
tone that is chilling in its insane justification for “revenge.” His
“autobiography” posted elsewhere talks of being “traumatized” by seeing
pictures of naked women, and then being unable to fulfill a desire to turn what
he saw into reality. He described being “bullied” in school, and becoming more “shy
and timid.” Once in college he claimed that "Every day that I spent at my
college, the more inferior and invisible I felt. I felt like such an inferior
mouse whenever I saw guys walking with beautiful girls." In his YouTube
video, he asserted that “For the past eight years of my life, ever since I hit
puberty, I've been forced to endure an existence of loneliness, rejection and
unfulfilled desires all because girls have never been attracted to me,"
and then vowed "Tomorrow is the day of retribution. The day in which I
will have my revenge against humanity, against all of you."
Now, as a person who has never felt the desire to convince a
female of the species to fulfill some need of mine beyond not causing me any
trouble in my work-a-day life, I find all of this beyond my feeble
comprehension. I like women as well as the next male, but if I have to work too
hard for a few seconds of pleasure, I don’t see what the point of it all is. I
could be doing something more useful with my time. And here is this fool who
life cannot be “complete” unless he can convince a woman to sleep with him. The
problem is that there is likely a reason why the girls don’t like him, and part
of it is because he appears to be narcissistic and self-absorbed; he doesn’t
care about them, but about himself. They are just objects to fulfill his
fantasy. This is somewhat on the pathetic side, I’d say.
I have said before that I
do not live in a world of illusion. I am also an observer of the world, and I
comment here on what I see. I find that not being under the thumb of anyone
allows me to say whatever is on my mind, without fear of upsetting a
“significant” other. I will never understand what drives people like Rodger to
such insane acts. Life is too short, and there are always useful alternatives.
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