Victimization Risks, Murder, and How to Morally Judge an Individual

I have said before and will continue to say that the less you focus on reality, the more compounded your problems become. The police are familiar with what is called “victimization risk,” which is when an individual is engaged in lifestyle choices that may lead to a higher likelihood of a crime being committed on that person. For example, when an individual works as a prostitute and walks the street alone at night looking for customers, they are engaging in activities where there is a high victimization risk to them. It is not “blaming the victim” but understanding the reality of that person’s choices. What comes with being aware of reality and surviving another day as a human being is a code of rational ethics. Therefore, that prostitute should lower her risk by going out with a buddy at night or leaving the business entirely in search of a new, less risky line of work. Their chances of surviving another day increase when mitigating and rational actions are taken. An individual who locks their doors at night is engaging in low victimization risk behavior and, therefore, making the rational, moral choice.

We must use this type of moral judgment properly based on a person’s actions. I believe that is what is attracting so many people nowadays to Dr. Grande’s YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/@DrGrande). He is a mental health counselor who has taken an interest in analyzing criminal cases and their outcomes. He looks at each context like a rational juror and tries to make sense of the seemingly senseless violence a person commits. It is not just another true crime channel but one where the “why” that everyone so longs for is answered to the best of his ability.

We should all aspire to understand people in the way Dr. Grande does because we certainly all have the capacity to understand, empathize, and analyze each other’s actions through moral judgment. In fact, I believe that more people could prevent crimes if they only knew how to judge a person’s actions properly because, unfortunately, by the time the law intervenes, they can only look at the actions of a person after their morality has thoroughly disintegrated. I believe it is often too late to change a person once they have committed a serious crime. They needed moral guidance or help long before they thought of committing any kind of wrongdoing.

As a bit of an aside, the writer Dostoyevsky has one of his characters, from The Brothers Karamazov, say that “If God does not exist, then everything is permitted.” He believed atheists would murder without a second thought, unlike his conscience-stricken Raskolnikov character in Crime and Punishment who “finds God” in the end. But this is entirely false. This abstract thing we call conscience is what keeps us from crossing the line drawn in ethics between good and evil. We would all feel as guilty as Raskolnikov for killing a person with or without god. Our desire to survive and thrive keeps us from murdering each other. A rational morality keeps us from destruction.

It is in this spirit of moral judgment and admiration for Dr. Grande’s work that I am presenting an essay I wrote the day after Elliot Rodger on May 23, 2014, killed six people and injured fourteen others. He shot, stabbed, and ran over with his vehicle as many people as he could find in what would later be named the “2014 Isla Vista killings,” forever labeling him as an infamous mass murderer. He left a YouTube video of his own titled “Elliot Rodger’s Retribution” and a long manifesto called “My Twisted World: The Story of Elliot Rodger,” both of which I have seen and read and have linked down in the description section. And so without further ado:

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My Thoughts on the CA Mass Murderer, Elliot Rodger

[Note: This article is not meant to sympathize or place the predator’s life above those of the victims. To all of those involved in this tragedy, I hope that this psychological look into the murderer’s past will prevent instances of this happening again in the future.]

The first thing I dared to watch was Elliot Rodger’s final video. In it, he struck me as just a kid trying to build himself up as a tragic anti-hero. He was lost in a story concocted by his own mind, and that was what made me want to research this horrific tragedy. Since that final video, I have read the 140-page long manifesto and watched the other YouTube videos he had posted before the final one. These were all highly disturbing, and I think that many of my conclusions do not include the fact that he did have Asperger’s syndrome. Asperger’s syndrome is clear here with his unusual facial expressions, his difficulty socializing, and his apparent lack of empathy. However, that does not excuse his violent outburst on the evening of May 23, 2014.

The philosopher, Hannah Arendt, wrote about the Eichmann trial that occurred in the 1960s. Eichmann was hired by the Nazi Party in Germany, and he was given the task of deporting all of the Jews—he sent hundreds of thousands of Jews to their deaths. People called him “evil” and a “villain,” but once Arendt began studying this wrinkled, pathetic old man—she coined the phrase, “banality of evil.” This phrase meant that Eichmann was really just a dumb, dependent, title-obsessive man. He was a cog in the machine, but a deadly one. Eichmann did not think that he was responsible because he truly believed that he was just “following orders.” Arendt believed that this weasel was telling the truth. Therefore, at the time, she did not believe that people were “radically evil”—that they were not born evil.

After researching this case, I have come to the conclusion that this was a broken boy. He lived his life on a “6th grade loop” which continuously played until he went to stop it by force. Even his manifesto is written at about the 6th grade level, albeit with a few “new” vocabulary words included toward the end. But his ideas are especially childish. He was given everything, and when he wasn’t, he would have temper tantrums.

Elliot Rodger was an irrationally selfish, materialistic, dependent child. If any of you have ever read Ayn Rand’s novel, The Fountainhead, this child was a real Peter Keating. He built up absolutely no self-esteem whatsoever, and therefore, his ego (the “I” part of him) was nonexistent. This set him up for disaster.

He blames his parents for this, and so do I.

Parents are the most influential beings that a person can have—they tend to make or break the future adult. These parents did not give him a set of moral values to live by—and religion does not even need to factor in here. Learning philosophy is invaluable because it makes you question and reassess all of your most basic premises. You think logically and fix any emotionalist responses to rational concepts. This child needed a philosophy lesson badly.

Elliot Rodger emphasizes how much he was “living in the moment” and so thoroughly enjoyed his childhood, that when he was rejected by the outside world—he threw yet another tantrum…this time with tragic consequences. This could have been prevented had he been raised right—not by several nannies and several new houses, regardless of his Asperger’s syndrome.

This behavior was chosen, this is not an issue concerning his Asperger’s (although a symptom can be obsessive behavior, like the one he had toward objects, women, and difficulty socializing). But that cannot cause violence, and his premises were all wrong. The violence stemmed from a lack of knowledge. This is what Hannah Arendt and Ayn Rand meant when they both wrote about how “evil” occurs. It happens when people become irreparably broken. It happens when parents neglect their children emotionally and do not teach them about virtue. It happens when they are given everything, up until they hit the “real world” where they have to fight for survival. Capitalism forces men to prove themselves. It is the ultimate “Alpha Male” system which this child could not win—and so he tried to take it away from others.

Again, for those of you familiar with Ayn Rand’s character, Peter Keating, Peter quickly worked his way up the career ladder by stealing, looting, robbing other people, and passing their work off as his own. He was labeled a “second-hander” who took from the “first-handers” or else he would throw tantrums, similar to Rodger’s. In the beginning, he is hailed as the best architect in the country, but by the end, he is a miserable, broken, and “evil” man. This is the story of Elliot Rodger, who laughs at “the irony of the world” and feels holier-than-thou without any reasons to back up his premises.

But do not call this child a “madman”—he was a person robbed of morals. A madman is someone who is incomprehensible, someone who cannot go from Point A to Point B. That is a madman. This is someone who grew up in a surprisingly ordinary way (besides having a famous father). He talks about movies that all kids from the 90s have seen and video games that we’ve all played at some point. And even his concerns in middle school were shared by many other lonely kids at the time (myself included). But we saw ourselves as better than those who were considered “popular.” We had our set of values and we strived to achieve success, while the “popular kids” tended to fail. We grew up and moved on—allowing ourselves only to find better, more worthy people to include in our lives. But this child got caught in it, and would not budge until he got his way…

“I wanted to live in a world of fairness”—that is the common creed of the Communists and Socialists of our age, and that is exactly the creed that Elliot Rodger grew up living with. But that does not bring happiness. For material objects are not the ends, they are the products of a person’s labor. Labor is the means to get to happiness or living a good life—(if it is honest work, of course). But this boy was never taught that he had to work for his possessions.

Rodger then goes on and on for 40 pages in his manifesto about video games. This has been a controversial topic in many of these violent tragedies. But video games, in particular, seem to have destroyed many young people. However, I think it is important to note that his feelings began before ever playing a video game, but his situation grew exponentially worse when he was pretty much given free rein with these games during his adolescence. Parents need to watch what their kids are playing, watching, reading, and listening to because there is so much garbage out there today. In fact, in his manifesto, Rodger used video games as a way to fight the reality that he was facing. He used World of Warcraft as inspiration for his ideas of a “War on Women.” Elliot Rodger blurred games with real life because he was never taught the difference.

Elliot frequently uses the words “little,” “obsessed,” “weak,” “worthless,” and “starved” as terms of describing himself and his mental state. The kid never learned how to live on his own. He never was allowed to become self-reliant. He was extremely sheltered. “The more lonely I felt, the more angry I became,” he writes at one point. This is a typical feeling that “evil characters” feel before they lash out at the world. He was living out a fantasy storyline of his own—like when he wrote, “If I can’t have it, I will destroy it.” After that, sex became a negative thing for him and by 17 he wanted to outlaw sex. This means that for 6 years, he had been planning and plotting a way to seek revenge on others. There was no real instance where he “became a madman,” but a slow progression of events that were laid down on a boy without any moral guidance or principles.

On his “forced” plane trip to Morocco, Rodger decided that he wanted to die. That is the moment where he lost hope because he was never allowed to have any control over his life. He did not have any agency—no ego, no self-esteem—and this led him to the radical state that he worked himself up to in his twenties.

Movies and video games surrounded this kid, and he lived in a fantasy realm for most of his life. (And Soumaya, his stepmother, seemed to be the only adult capable of trying to teach Rodger something, albeit in the least effective way). Then, in his mid-teens, he turned to books, instead of thinking about his future and getting a job. These books provided him with the “anti-hero” type of mindset that he had always wanted, and he amateurishly clung to them.

By page 66 of Rodger’s manifesto, he begins using terms like “destiny” and “injustice” to prove that he was made by some “creator” to right all the unfairness that happened to him in the world. The amount of hate that he had for others was very high when he was only 18. He says at one point in his manifesto, “I am an intellectual who is destined for greatness. I would never perform a low-class service job.” But that is exactly the problem. A true intellectual or “great man,” as Aristotle discusses in depth, does not change based on external forces. The “great man” cares for a few things that bring happiness (eudemonia) to his life, and the rest is irrelevant. He has a proportionate amount of self-confidence, and he quietly respects himself for the virtues that he has learned over the years. This sentence is yet another temper tantrum, only in adult form, but it renders him more of a child than anything. Elliot Rodger was not an intellectual, but a bitter fool—a frustrated and miserable Peter Keating archetype due to his parents’ neglect.

Rodger repeatedly asked his mother (and later on several more occasions) to “sacrifice her well-being for the sake of [his] own happiness” by marrying another rich man. Elliot’s hope was only reignited when he thought that some base exterior change could fix all of his moral problems—only to be dismayed once again…and again…and again. This child calls his mother “selfish” for not remarrying into a rich family—when what he really is saying is that she is not “sacrificing” herself for his needs. She is not giving up her life for him. She is not being altruistic because that is a vice (read Ayn Rand’s The Virtue of Selfishness for more).

And yet, his “selfish” mother continued to support him and told him he had a talent for writing. But his motive from the beginning was to get rich quick off of his “bestseller” books, and then maybe girls would like him. This motivation never works. He didn’t even mention that perhaps some girl would like him for his talent to produce something of his own, proving just how lost he was. Elliot considered himself to be talentless and fervently refused to work or produce anything at all that would have given him some kind of value. Rodger continues to write in his manifesto that he “deserves” things when, in reality, he does not. Rodger did not earn (nor try to earn) a single thing in his life. He was never taught that money could not solve his problems. Money is merely another reward for the productive, creative thoughts that you make, but nothing more. Rodger looked to rewards as ends in themselves: money, girls, fame.

This kid never took the responsibility into his own hands of actually trying to change his life. He would pray to the stars and the universe, but never to himself and his own self-esteem. Rodger did not understand that money cannot replace moral values. Every time that he “actively” tried to change his life, he would never approach a girl or try to communicate with her. He made continual excuses due to his extremely low level of self-esteem. This isolated him further (not to mention looking for those bright and intelligent girls in all the wrong places). He writes at one point, “I was a ghost”—little did he know that he had died morally way before any of this took place.

He blamed society, not himself, for denying him pleasure. What a skewed view of reality is that? Rodger had to try to open himself up to new experiences. If people aren’t worth your time (usually the “popular kids”), then don’t even bat an eyelash at them. Focus on the positives.

Currently, in the media, he is being called racist, sexist, entitled, elitist, spoiled, and these labels are true. He had attacked groups because he lacked an ego of his own. He was shaped by groups himself. He didn’t know what being an individual entails. Rodger may have said to himself that he was special, but he didn’t really know what he was, besides what others said of him. Elliot Rodger was an altruist, a self-loathing looter who lived with an “anti-life” mentality. For by actively rejecting sex, he accepted death.

He could not be fixed after he grew up without any value-based foundations.

By page 87 of the manifesto, Rodger openly declares that he believed he could kill another man. He had prepared himself mentally, and truly felt “worthless” at this point. You see, there was no “snap in his mental state.” Rodger had been boiling over since his temper tantrums at the age of 3. This child never grew up, and could not handle living alone. His parents are to blame, just as much as he himself is to be blamed.

He was so completely self-absorbed without having a real “self.” I have heard people use the term “narcissist,” which may be the correct term because it has such a negative connotation with it. However, “rational selfishness” is not a bad thing, according to Ayn Rand (again, read The Virtue of Selfishness). There is an important distinction to be made between those who do things to promote their own happiness and those who are hurting others in order to obtain some unidentified fantasy.

On page 101 of Elliot’s manifesto, he mentions explicitly that he wanted “revenge.” At the age of 20, Elliot Rodger declared that he was done with hope and expecting things to change. He understood that he was living in a vicious cycle, but he didn’t understand why. It is here that he also begins talking about his “Day of Retribution.” He had been slowly concocting this plan for over a year. This was premeditated mass murder. Someone at any point could have stopped this, especially his parents. Yes, his parents did hire a few psychiatrists toward the end (according to Elliot), but it was already too late. His plan was already in action.

Rodger notes that, at first, he felt sick at the thought of holding a gun and possibly using it in his plan, which means that he had a conscience. By page 109 of the manifesto, he decided to plan out a “mass murder.” He felt compelled to do it because he was so focused on himself and what his world led him to. Rodger did not care about the world outside of his own narrative (he never mentions 9/11 or the war in Iraq), and that was a major mistake.

Elliot Rodger did not have a “twisted world,” but a “twisted logic.” He thought that Point A (money) would lead him to Point B (girls) which would equal Point C (“peaceful revenge”). If that line of thought did not work out, then he was a worthless outcast, and a loser, which could only equate to violent revenge in his mind.

There is a particularly female-hating passage on page 117 of Elliot’s manifesto, where he “comes up” with this “original” idea that women are like a plague that needs to be controlled and quarantined. This is where many people say that he is a “misogynistic psychopath.” However, he seems to be placing all of his frustrations on females, (even though he seemed to have a pretty good track record with his grandmothers and mother). He was venting his hatred for all of humanity onto a particular group, and once again—just as Hitler did with the Jews—it’s called selecting a scapegoat.

Rodger believed that his act would cause some tremendous change, but it didn’t. Instead, his case was added to the growing pile of an increasing problem concerning mass murderers in this country. He was not philosophically learned or intelligent to any degree, because the first thing that educated people do is think. Rationally. But Elliot Rodger behaved in exactly the same way that he claimed girls were by “behaving irrationally.”

One important idea that should be pointed out is the religious undertone that his manifesto espouses. He wanted to play god, but he also referred to the sex that people had as “heavenly” and that he was living in “hell.” Although he doesn’t seem to be very religious, this Judeo-Christian view of the world was ingrained in his perspective of it.

Elliot claims toward the end of his manifesto that he never lost that last flicker of hope—he thought that in some miraculous way, he could be saved—but it was all too late without him even realizing it.

“Give me, give me, give me” was this child’s war cry. It was just another tantrum…but it hurt so many. Rodger felt entitled, as many people have been stating. He was not “a madman,” but a kid who grew up without any values, and after a series of circular events—he concluded that man is evil. His last straw was in Santa Barbara.

Elliot Rodger professed himself as a “god” and as the “good guy” and wrote that “Finally, at long last, I can show the world my true worth” as the last line in his manifesto—but the thing is, he never had any worth.

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Links: https://www.youtube.com/@DrGrande; https:www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLLy1Awig0E&ab_channel=IntoTheFireTrueCrimeStories; https://schoolshooters.info/sites/default/files/rodger_my_twisted_world.pdf; https://www.amazon.com/Virtue-Selfishness-Fiftieth-Anniversary/dp/0451163931/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1YXNM861KJ1O4&keywords=the+virtue+of+selfishness+by+ayn+rand&qid=1700164079&s=books&sprefix=the+virtue+of+sel%2Cstripbooks%2C178&sr=1-1

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Views Expressed Disclaimer: The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily represent the postings, strategies, or opinions of American Wordsmith, LLC. Please also know that while I consider myself an Objectivist and my work is inspired by Objectivism, it is not nor should it be considered Objectivist since I am not the creator of the philosophy. For more information about Ayn Rand’s philosophy visit: aynrand.org.

On Judgment

This month’s topic is on judgment and its use. Judgment, in particular, is required when growing up in a culture that constantly preaches not to judge while choosing to uphold the activities of the lowest common denominator, namely school dances.

I don’t know if every school has dances like the one I am going to discuss, whether public or private, but I would be curious to know, so feel free to share with me. This was certainly the climate when I was attending my public middle and high schools in New York and then in New Jersey. The first actual nightclub that I went to was in D.C. while in college, and it was clearly the inspiration for such school dances when I was growing up.

My first school dance was in the sixth grade when I would have been at the tender age of eleven. At eleven, I walked into a gym that was dark, loud, and downright frightening. I had never seen such a place before. The music was blaring, so much so that I covered my ears to protect them. Girls were behaving strangely around me and telling me that I was dressed up wrong. Guys were doused in horrible-smelling cologne and gel spiked all the hair they had on their body at that point. Teachers looked the other way while boys met girls up close and personally; I had never seen “grinding” before. The lights from the DJ disoriented me as I turned around looking for the familiar faces that I knew in the daylight, the faces I sat beside every day in the classroom. Where were they, or what, exactly, had they become in an instant?

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Each year, I went to the next homecoming dance, believing that somehow a new grade meant more mature peers. Boy, was I wrong. It took me until I was seventeen years old and had worked my way up the high school food chain before I wrote this piece (even though I regrettably never sent it in). 

Our Nightclub Dances Must GO!

I have gotten into Peer Leadership and Teen PEP and these leadership roles have made me question how our school could better represent itself. My inspiration for change came from our Homecoming dance and several middle school dances beforehand. I believe that our dances are inappropriate and do not represent this school or any other school well. If you have ever been to a dance you would see kids ‘grinding’ in almost complete darkness while supposedly ‘dancing’ to extremely loud pop/rap music that no one can actually dance to. These dances begin in middle school and promote, to put it bluntly, sex. The music is also extremely loud as stated before, which can harm a student’s eardrums. I remember my eardrums buzzing for hours after I got home from dances. All I have to say is where has our culture gone? Our principals (and not just at LHS & LMS) seem to have ‘given up’ on enforcing school appropriate dances. I can understand that school officials feel that this is what most teenagers like and they’ll complain if you take away their freedom of expression but this should not be tolerated. I know many of my peers who would like their dances to be 80’s movie-esque. I know teachers who refuse to chaperone anymore because they feel uncomfortable allowing the kids to act in this way. If students learned how to dance then I believe that more of them would come and enjoy the dances. Learning how to dance is a great thing that our generation is missing out on. We are missing the whole point of what a dance is: a place to socialize and show off our moves not a place to sweat like pigs in the dark and dry hump to bad, booming noise. Excuse the vulgarity but I really do believe strongly in this. Kids are missing out on a great cultural past time.

I have never had fun at any of the dances I have been to which means that something just isn’t right. I’m not saying that students must stand a foot apart and sway to 50’s music, but I do think that we have toppled over to the other extreme. We are a SCHOOL, not a nightclub. I also realize that many teens like pop/rap, however, it seems one-sided and unfair to the students who like other kinds of music. The DJ’s should have a variety of music in order to expand students’ horizons and, as a result, teens can learn to respect other kinds of music. We could have jazz, R&B, swing, blues, classic rock, classical, anything! Just being exposed to different dances could also benefit the students because dancing is great exercise and so much fun. Learning dance steps from other countries could also become a culture experience (which International Alliance has already shown us). We could have break dancing, waltz, jitterbug, swing, and tango, whatever you can think of.

This is what dances everywhere have succumbed to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6t_rdl5zNg&feature=related  (This is a typical dance: crowded, blasting music, grinding, swaying like a dunce or jumping like one…I’m getting nauseous just watching this. Plus those are just 8th graders!!! What are we teaching them?! We are undoing all of the endless hours of abstinence messages just by allowing these types of dances to occur every month in LMS)!

Here is my vision. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-OG0EyJyV8&ab_channel=BoxofficeMovieScenes (Please notice the comments at the bottom. Just clean fun).

Now that’s a HUGE difference and it has only been 26 years since 1985! Clearly something is wrong and we have culturally demolished ourselves.

My plan, (if you and the school officials think it’s possible), would be to get a petition signed by a numerous amount of students to change our dance system, possibly after talking to the Board of Education, and create an experimental dance hosted by a school club/several clubs where high school students could come, dance, and then vote on whether or not they’d like to change our old dance habits. Then, if enough students enjoy it the school could change every dance to this new system. I know the question has popped into your head about how exactly we will teach around 300 high school students to dance…but this is what I am thinking. I would like to add dancing to our physical education program. So along with the required weight room and swimming units we should also have another in dancing. I still haven’t quite figured out if we could pay for a teacher, (I do know of a great ballroom dancing couple who work very close to LHS), or we could just buy dance videos to play on the TV in the aerobics room. After learning a few new moves hopefully the enthusiasm for real dancing will return and we can all live happily ever after… Thank you for listening and please get back to me about whether or not this is even possible.

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I was eighteen when I wrote this next piece for one of my first college literature classes.

The Atheist’s Sermon

How silly you look. How young. You’re not a real college student. Simultaneously attempting to calm my nerves and get ready for the party, I slip into my elegant dress and shoes. This was the only “clubbing” attire that I owned. Trying to escape the nerves wrapping themselves around my brain like thin vines, I stealthily step out of my room and into the residence hallways. My heart is starting to palpitate hard against my chest as I scurry down the hallway and out into the starless night to join a group of four other girls who were all wearing “little black dresses.” Staring down at my own purple bubble dress, I withdrew from an instant realization that I was already screwing up that night.

Doubly self-conscious, I step onto the shuttle bus full of half-naked students. Egotistical boys are talking in the back, while the leader of the pack makes his presence known for all capable of hearing by saying that he is “semi-hard right now.” I feel my face burn and I force myself to breathe again. I cannot help feeling naked, dirty, and mysterious all at once. I am trapped in a completely packed shuttle with these other crazy party-goers. And in the midst of such chaos, a girl is putting on ten pounds of cherry red lipstick on her already obnoxiously bleeding-red lips. While girls with the flat-ironed bleach blonde hair, the extra padded push-up bras, the arrogant walk – you know, the hip-swinging, back straightened, nose-to-the-sky type of walk are strutting around the bus stop waiting for their dates. This shuttle of hormones begins to move after five eternally long minutes. I sit and try to make small-talk with the people accompanying me, but I can’t help getting distracted by the darkness outside that is enclosing the bus. It is around 10 PM now, so the night is still relatively young. We exit the shuttle and before I know it, I am on the metro headed toward Metro Center, our destination for the evening. The metro lights are unnaturally bright for this time of day. They sting my retinas. I look away and catch a glimpse of my right wrist clenched onto a cold, metallic rod for support. My wrist looks so small that I almost do not recognize it. It appears vulnerable, pale, innocent, thin, delicate, and fragile – breakable. And I swear it was getting smaller as the night dragged on.

The chill weather gives me goose-bumps as I walk down the road immersed in warm, illuminating street-lights. I can sense the buzz humming in the silent air, this is the nightlife. People line up on the escalator, one after another, all headed somewhere. Some faces were disapproving and it made me feel like an outright scoundrel. Other faces were absorbed in their own thoughts – hollow, and unchanging. Still some were happy as clams, laughing like fools, already having a good time. I am none of these people. I am a nervous wreck. Having been to several parties previously, I usually ended up awkwardly dancing with my friends out of a sense of obligation and then I would proceed to sit out for the rest of the night. The whole “club culture” which has always been a major attraction for students has constantly felt like the antithesis of my very being, but I could never effectively explain why to people. Homecomings, formals, and prom always ended the same way for me – lonely. I went out that night to understand myself. What was I psychologically struggling with every time I went to a party?  Was it just me or was it something else more powerful than myself coercing me not to enjoy it? Am I in the wrong or are others? 

It is an hour long line. Even with our “Ladies Night Passes,” we still have to wait with everyone else in the bitterly cool night air. A whirl of smoke and perfume fill my lungs as I wait there in line choking on its consistency. Greasy-looking men smoke at least three cigarettes during that long wait, while slutty-looking women complain about the line. Meanwhile, the heels and skin tight clothes on every body type imaginable were being unwillingly downloaded into my subconscious mind. Those images sear my eyes, while the electrical neurons shoot up into my memory center, and my innocence is quickly vaporized from existence. French speaking people behind me in line speak of how they pity me and how “saintly” I look among my friends. Is it really that obvious? Finally, I make it up to the door: boorish guards check my bag and driver’s license, take my umbrella away, seize my money and pass, grab my miniscule wrists and mark and stamp them to death. I want to run away but I keep walking forward, determined to discover once and for all why I feel this way. I enter the club and it is all fog and strobe lights. One puff of smoke after the next, an unrelenting chain of stupor enshrouds the club. It is loud and cramped, I cannot breathe. My group and I push through the crowd so that one of my friends who have been here before can show us each floor. I shove my body through the crowd, men flinging themselves at me. I push more forcefully now, the adrenaline rushing through my entire body. A room full of Ids. A room full of escapists. A room full of imperfection.

It is around 11 PM and we spend the first twenty minutes running up and down narrow staircases. Constantly passing by a bright blue and green light box which was the only beacon of stability I had to cling to amidst unstable waters, because it soon became a familiar sight. Bodies are shoving their way upstairs or downstairs in such commotion. It is as if people had suddenly become mindless ants crawling to and fro on their tiny hill without rhyme or reason. And the staircases are black so it is almost impossible to see where you are going, except for the various colored lights escaping from the floor below. It is like some kind of twisted nightmare that I have had before. The first floor is the main floor which has mostly pop music, the next floor is rap, and the final floor (at least from what I can remember) is Hispanic music. We visit all three and decide to stay awhile on the third floor. So standing in a circle we sway back and forth to the music, no one looking happy or having fun. One of the girls I do not know is “grinding” with a random man who looks to be about twenty-five years old. We all stare. It is not dancing, it is dry humping. Excuse me for being so blunt, but this is what I saw. And in order to understand oneself, the truth must be told. After that I was through, finished, done. Yet again, I experience the party for five minutes and then give up on hoping that I will have a good time. I have hoped one too many times. It’s useless. I hate it.

 Looking back now my family was never very religious, but I was brought up a Protestant anyway. When I first realized that I could think for myself, I never thought much about god. But that all changed when my mother died. I can still remember a kid in my class saying, “maybe you didn’t pray hard enough for her.” From that point on, I hated any notion of a god. Having never really believed in him in the first place, it was easy to reject him entirely. But for this reason I am not Agnostic, because I resent people believing in some creature who could kill my own mother so viciously. No just god could do something as evil as that and get away with it. So having kicked god to the curb, I looked to people and nature. My expectations for myself and others rose to unnatural heights. My definition of perfect was no longer connected to some omnipotent presence, but to other human beings. It is not difficult to be perfect in my book. One must simply maintain moral goodness and care for oneself. I do not see people as walking shards of soul, as many others do. I see people as whole, good, and always striving to be better. That is perfection.

It is about 1 AM when I begin amusing myself by watching how drunken people are based on how poorly they walked up the stairs. It began with people joyously dancing up the stairs, then people began spilling their drinks halfway up, then men and women began zigzagging up the stairs, some people tripped, and angry women yelled at the security guards. These were signs of the night growing older, and yet the music continued to get louder, as if to shout in rebellion against time aging. And as the music was increasing in volume, each note was nailing a sign into my skull which said, NEVER AGAIN. Finally, at 2:45 AM, my friends were finished partying and I could leave this foreign place. The stark, early morning air slapped me hard in the face. One of the girls said she felt nauseous and had to sit down, another girl did not look like she had any fun at all, the one who invited me claimed that she had fun, and the “grinding” girl I had only seen for five minutes before she ditched us was staring up hazy-eyed into the pitch-black sky. Apparently, an older guy brought her a couple of shots to take and she had willingly accepted. While keeping an eye on her, we flagged down a taxi which drove us back to campus (we managed to shove five bodies into one cab). And of course, I had to pay the taxi driver. What a waste of twenty dollars. By 4 AM, I quickly run to the bathroom, throw off my elegant dress and shoes, and yank on my pajamas. Then, I proceed to scrub the marker and stamp off my hands and wrists until they are bright red. I wish I could forget this night in its entirety. I crawl underneath my thin fleece covers and allow the night to settle in my brain and produce the answer to my problem. The images that bore a hole in my memory kept playing in my head over-and-over again, until I reached some pretty hefty conclusions about myself and others. 

I am not in the wrong. My body and soul are simply intertwined – inseparable components of my being. My mother’s death allowed me to see that the two must be connected in order for me to find happiness. And the only way that I can combine the two dual entities is to find other people with the same high moral expectations. My own morality shines through because, as Socrates says in Plato’s Socrates and Alcibiades, “either […] man is nothing, or, if man is something, he turns out to be nothing other than soul” (48).  I am soul. I am soul, because I have decided to devote myself to people. So by using my body, I can carry out my soul’s will. Without a god to lead me through life, I must rely on my own intuition. For I am limited to people – all I know are other people. Socrates also says in Plato’s Five Dialogues, “that the soul of man is immortal, and at one time has an end, which is termed dying, and at another time is born again, but is never destroyed. And the moral is, that a man ought to live always in perfect holiness” (78). Hence, my very being is made up of other people. And if the soul is reused like water, then I have a well-versed soul telling me that clubbing is wrong.

People often tell me that I place too much moral weight on things like alcohol, drugs, and parties. But if I give way to these evils, then what does that say about my soul? I prefer to be hyper-sensitive and in control of my senses at all times, because that way I can take pleasure in the simple joys of life. I can combine soul and body to achieve happiness. I do not wish to escape from reality. I wish to relish in it, because being an Atheist I believe that this life is the only one I have. Therefore, I can only respect and have fun with the people who can earn my respect. People must work for my love and I must work for theirs. I shall never compromise my body and soul for others, because I have taken on perfection. I am perfect. Call me a saint, an innocent little girl, an old soul, but I will not be peer-pressured into corrupting myself in any way. I love humanity, and that night I was personally hurt and disappointed that people could behave so irrationally for fun. Escapism is not what I look for in other human beings, but courage…to have the courage to act, to live, to enjoy insignificant moments, to taste life twice.  I want to be able to look up to mankind, not despise it, because that is all that I have to live for – myself and other people.

***

After reading this essay, my freshman college professor told me I was “being way too judgmental of these people who were just trying to have fun.” She looked at me with hatred in her eyes. You see, the point of this introductory assignment (and many of the subsequent ones) at this liberal university was to “go outside of our comfort zones and learn something new about ourselves and others.” The main example pressed upon us was to pretend to be homeless for a day and then write about that. What this translated to was to be humble, you privileged child, and place the lowest in society above yourself—it was meant to be the ultimate act of altruism in order to enter the pearly gates of this university.

I was having none of it. After all, I was one of those students who had already struggled enough in life and chose not to go down the path of drugs, prostitution, crime, and homelessness. I didn’t work this hard just to end up there, anyway. I was using my senses and honestly felt sick going to what this culture was telling me was a place to have the time of my life. It wasn’t life; it was death.

I was meant to put my head down and serve death—in my college career and my future job until I was skin and bones myself. I was meant to shrivel up and die like Christ on the cross for others. I was worthless without the other. That’s what school was trying to teach me now, not reading, writing, or arithmetic.

In The Virtue of Selfishness, Ayn Rand discusses “judgment” as something that we all must do to “evaluate a given concrete by reference to an abstract principle or standard.” And that “[n]othing can corrupt and disintegrate a culture or a man’s character as thoroughly as does the precept of moral agnosticism, the idea that one must never pass moral judgment on others, that one must be morally tolerant of anything, that the good consists of never distinguishing good from evil.” Therefore, I judge so as to understand myself and the world clearly. And this sensitivity to the world makes it more sustainably pleasurable than being in a dark room that is too loud to even think in—not from a religious perspective but from a human, moral one.

The only ingredient missing in those gyms (although I’m sure the “bad kids” already had it) was alcohol and drugs. Those ingredients magically make that dark room “fun” for adults. The darkness and noise and hazy fog blinding the senses—the complete abandonment of reality—is fun? If that is truly fun, then that means something is not right in that person’s personal life. They are deliberately trying to escape reality. As I said before, it is an unsustainable and ugly way to live. As an adult now who cannot be bullied, I will not ignore how I always felt about these types of dances and how they reflect our culture at large. For any time you abandon reality, the risks to you of losing control for good increase. I choose life over death every single day and so should you, so judge on, my friends.

***

Links: https://www.amazon.com/Socrates-Alcibiades-Symposium-212c-223a-Philosophical/dp/1585100692; https://www.amazon.com/Plato-Dialogues-Euthyphro-Apology-Phaedo/dp/0915145227/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=; https://www.amazon.com/Virtue-Selfishness-Fiftieth-Anniversary/dp/0451163931

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Views Expressed Disclaimer: The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily represent the postings, strategies, or opinions of American Wordsmith, LLC. Please also know that while I consider myself an Objectivist and my work is inspired by Objectivism, it is not nor should it be considered Objectivist since I am not the creator of the philosophy. For more information about Ayn Rand’s philosophy visit: aynrand.org.

Why Did I Write A Man of Action?

***WARNING: SPOILERS***

I essentially wrote A Man of Action as a means of updating my “fictionalized scrapbook” and expressing my frustration with the law. My concerns had to do with whether a life sentence without the possibility of parole was really a punishment equivalent to the crime committed. I have always believed that prison is meant as punishment, not necessarily for rehabilitation.

I see a deadly crime as one that only comes after many transgressions have occurred before the worst one. It is a downhill trajectory. I was inspired by the Barbie and Ken Killers’ case this time. What if they lived in my husband’s beautiful Queen-Anne-styled house? What kind of psychological hold did Paul Bernardo have over Karla Homolka, or was she just as guilty for the crimes they committed? Could a man like him truly love a woman who is “of the flesh” after killing another human being? A woman’s defining trait, after all, is her ability to create life.

Conrad has these constant thoughts of killing people, and he believes that he is fighting “for the good” by only hurting other criminals. But what is he losing by committing each offense against another individual, and what about Elizabeth?

One other aspect that frightened me about this idea is how quickly the human body can be harmed as opposed to how slowly it takes to create and heal—a single bruise can take two weeks to heal, a deeper wound can take half a year! All the little bits that make up you took nine months in your mother’s womb, only to have some other beast come to destroy it all in seconds. Creating is so hard, in any form, that it is almost unbearable to me to see it annihilated so easily.

Both Conrad and Elizabeth end up dead in this tragedy because I could see no other way out for their deeds. In my mind, a woman would be destroyed just from carrying the burden of death and being separated from her lover, while a man would be ruined without a purpose by being holed up in prison for life. Death only seems to beget more death. So, I say, let the legal system do its work and hope that justice is served, only don’t sacrifice yourself to it.

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Views Expressed Disclaimer: The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily represent the postings, strategies, or opinions of American Wordsmith, LLC. Please also know that while I consider myself an Objectivist and my work is inspired by Objectivism, it is not nor should it be considered Objectivist since I am not the creator of the philosophy. For more information about Ayn Rand’s philosophy visit: aynrand.org.