TALES OF LOVE AND OTHER DISORDERS: ADAM LANZA LOST IN THE CULT OF BEAUTY

LOST IN THE TINNITUS OF CONJECTURE

In the AlterNet post below, Bill Moyers calls for us to reject the violence. Humans are violent because evolution has hardwired us with a propensity for aggression while we have received less than the appropriate balance of appeasement gestures than most mammals. These factors combine with a craving for that which we ostensibly abhor since it is genetic. In my research for a serial killer novel, I wrote years ago, I read the written and face-to-face communication between Dr, David Abrahamson and David Berkowitz. Abrahamson was very close to Berkowitz and while two forensics shrinks at Kings County Hospital believed that Berkowitz was insane Abrahamson disagreed. Berkowitz was the accidental conception in the backseat a car and Berkowitz was very disappointed when he met his birth mother. He feigned all of the nonsense with his neighbor’s dog driving him mad. He admitted to Abrahamson, who had spent his life studying murder and those who commit them, that he believed that despite their overt chagrin the people of New York were routing for the Son of Sam to elude police and continue his killing spree.

Nobel Prize winning animal behaviorist, Konrad Lorenz, in 'On Aggression' published in 1959, I believe, had already feared that human nature had achieved a point of no return regarding our extinction and said we have reached an evolutionary cul de sac that would lead to escalating aggression and our extinction. Other ethologists tried to counter Lorenz's dire prediction by discussing altruism as the logical antidote to man's infatuation with violence. Stated succinctly, by Dr, Karl Menninger, 'We do not tolerate violence; we love it.' See Love and Hate by Eibl-Eblesfeldt.

Now think when you look at the few photos of Adam Lanza and what do we see? His parents were divorced and they fought. Children irrespective of their age feel on some level responsible for the divorce. Nancy Lanza removed her son from school and taught him at home. He shoot her multiple times in her face. Wilhelm Stekel said that on some level all mothers believe they have given birth to a Mary or another Messiah.

Adam targeted six- year-old children who were at the age of what is called the mental developmental of Machiavellian traits when innocence has begun to erode innocence by a child's ability to infer deception and the beginning of the lifelong propensity to deceive, and the the white lies that begin then last through our entire lifetime disgorging an average of between twelve and fourteen white lies per week. With the ability to infer deception comes the natural evolution of many negative traits and children begin to tease which begets bullying, but also, Lanza a bright boy, had begun to discern this the inference of deception at perhaps an accelerated rate and realized he was the target more often than not.

Adam Lanza's photo reveals a frail boy, hiding and we conceal that which we are ashamed of flaunting and his genetic misfortune came with his Dumbo-esque ears and the body of a concentration camp survivor he had draped and hid in over-sized clothing. His haircut resembles a hat, averting attention away from his face and his exaggerated Beatles hairdo, covered those ears that most likely inspired the slings and arrows of mockery and jokes. It is not Adam Lanza's pathology that we must dissect it is ours, our culture where we worship beauty and applaud violence however reprehensible. His mother tried to reverse her disappointment and protect him from a country infatuated with beauty, youth, violence, and money. It is our disease.

Look at the newscasters on TV. With but few exceptions will you see face that has a single wrinkle caused by the external expression of having known any emotion like a series of automations sexually dimorphic Stepford Community or if you prefer Barbies and Kens. While those in their eighties are the fastest growing segment in our population we have little respect for the elderly and ageism is rampant. It wasn't ASPERGER'S that caused Beauty to Die Today, it was all of us.

Stay tuned for Hollywood Tonight!