For some unexplained reason I am very happy. No longer in obsession, unable to even remember what that felt like. Relieved from the bondage of self I walk the streets with the little dog unfettered, knowing of course that this too shall pass. For as every bad feeling vanishes every good one does too.
It may have something to do with the fact that I can see an end to the complications, it may have something to do with the fact that I am off to Europe. It may have a great deal to do with my relationship with Venice boy petering out (sexually) or the man in NYC becoming a very good friend with whom I can have a giggle and not a tear.
So, late breakfast with Toby at the Hollywood Farmers Market which feels, on a warm and sunny day, just like a similar market in any part of France. We drank iced coffee and discussed how much joy it gives us to share things we love with people we love. After breakfast I hung with a new friend and this evening Eric and I are going to see Iron Man 2. Will this make any sense if I never saw Iron man 1?
This afternoon, however, I am mostly preoccupied with the British press and their idiotic deductions re. Derrick Bird the Cumbrian taxi driver who shot 12 people dead last week in the UK. Apparently the British press are baffled not by his deplorable actions but that they, in their capacity as psychoanalytic detectives, cannot come up with any plausible motive he may have had on which to hang their hat.
Derrick was, by all accounts, a likeable man. A good father with many friends and rich family life. He was well respected, his friends describe him as polite.
The press, unable to accept that this man had simply gone insane, are rooting around for adjectives to describe Derrick that might make him less like you or me. Unable to use words like isolated and loner they are reduced to using words like quiet. Derrick, apparently, was quiet. Rather than admit to feeling as confused as the rest of us they report that he had squabbled with other taxi drivers for fares. Clues for why Derrick might have gone insane include: once, a passenger ran off without paying his fare and Derrick made a police report and that many years ago he had been assaulted.
I’m assuming that both incidents are common to most taxi drivers.
A passenger running off without paying the fare is hardly motivation for a man to take a shot-gun and kill two people he knew and ten complete strangers in a wholly un British drive by type killing spree.
The press are rooting around for Derricks unknown ‘demons’. The problem is: they cannot get anyone to say one bad word against him. They posit unconvincing similarities between him and the Dunblane murderer Thomas Hamilton who was an isolated, sad man who wrote compulsive indignant letters of complaint.
The inability of the press to just admit that there may not be a familiar motive, that in this evolved society a simple, polite, kind man might just go off the rails is more disturbing than a loner with a gun who had no friends. Derrick is just like so many people that you and I know. To think of any one of them snapping like that without a history of prior infractions, resentments or dodgy relationships is all the more worrying.
Let’s face it, if I randomly shot 12 strangers (no intention by the way-although I know exactly who I would shoot) people would nod sagely and say, ‘I told you so’. Sadly, it would come as no surprise whatsoever to hear that I had gone off the deep end to the majority of people who knew me and millions of people who didn’t.
Tomorrow I might make a list of 12 people I would shoot if I could get away with it.
So, just to update the Derrick Bird story. The tabloid, salacious UK newspapers are claiming that Derrick (ex-nuclear power worker) was obsessed with a Thai stripper. That he had a ‘secret life’ of visiting Thailand and scuba diving. Huh? So, there is still no explanation. If this is indeed true then so what? Many, many men visit Thailand to gawp and fuck Thai women. It’s even more amazing that they use the words ‘nuke’ worker in an attempt to make the man even more sinister.
Like the rest of us the commentators who work for the British Press are struggling to understand how an ordinary man flips from good to bad, from sane to insane, from ordinary to extraordinary. It intrigues me that this is a man who abandoned the fantasy (fantasies we all might share in a frustrating world) of killing those who gave him pain to the reality of picking up a gun and making the world know just how much pain he was in.
The press are terrified of revealing that we are all capable of committing atrocities, that there is a fine line between those of us who don’t and those of us who could. Normal men and women ran the concentration camps, normal men and women took up machete in Rwanda and cut down their neighbours. I am amazed that there are not more incidents like this than there are. From road rage to screaming at the Indian call center worker to Derrick Bird it’s all cut from the same cloth.
Which one of us has not considered taking the lives of others or indeed our own life and make society pay for not understanding our true worth? Derrick felt, as described by family and friends, powerless, frustrated, plagued with resentments..feelings most of us experience every day.
But, there you go, I ended up doing what I loathe most: psycho conjecture. Just my half penny worth.
The Duke of Hamilton died today. A nobleman who was actually noble. I went fishing with him once in Scotland with my friend and dearly departed Dione Henderson.
10 replies on “Derrick Bird”
Remember,
It’s splattered over the news b/c it’s a super rare occurence and very unlikely to happen to someone you know. Even the overwhelming majority of crazy people never hurt someone. Because I’m anxious, I worry something awful will happen every day to those I love or myself, and that something never happens. The other shoe isn’t ready to drop all the time and remember most people are good.
Duncan,
I am glad that you are feeling lighter and unfettered. And that your relationships seem to be on a more even keel. I read about the Duke of Hamilton; he seemed like quite the gentleman, in the true sense of the word. Very unpretentious. He sounded like he was fun to be with.
I back-tracked the BBC twitter feed and read what I could about Derrick Bird. I must admit that I had seen the story in the feed previously, but that I hadn’t read it since although terribly sad, what with Columbine, Nickel Mines, PA, Fort Hood, and now, reading in the news, a shooting of four women by a man in a “shooting rampage” at a restaurant in Hialeah, FL, I am sadly, not numb to the horror of it all, but not shocked, anymore. Just saddened.
We treat each other so badly day to day in our mundane interactions, sometimes, even with family and friends, so uncivilly, sometimes even with contempt, that it is not hard to imagine that this simmering egotism, frustration & tamped down anger could reach a flash point as with a fire, and start a conflagration. We feel so entitled and yet to admit the need for help would be a narcissistic wound that we can’t bear. So small slights become festering wounds that end up poisoning our minds and our lives. And we infect others.
You’re quite right about the banality of evil. Philip Zimbardo has written a book with an accompanying website, called “The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil”. Quote:
“In this book, I summarize more than 30 years of research on factors that can create a “perfect storm” which leads good people to engage in evil actions. This transformation of human character is what I call the “Lucifer Effect,” named after God’s favorite angel, Lucifer, who fell from grace and ultimately became Satan.
Rather than providing a religious analysis, however, I offer a psychological account of how ordinary people sometimes turn evil and commit unspeakable acts. As part of this account, The Lucifer Effect tells, for the first time, the full story behind the Stanford Prison Experiment, a now-classic study I conducted in 1971. In that study, normal college students were randomly assigned to play the role of guard or inmate for two weeks in a simulated prison, yet the guards quickly became so brutal that the experiment had to be shut down after only six days.
How and why did this transformation take place, and what does it tell us about recent events such as the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuses in Iraq? Equally important, what does it say about the “nature of human nature,” and what does it suggest about effective ways to prevent such abuses in the future?
Please join me in a journey that the poet Milton might describe as making “darkness visible.” Although it is often hard to read about evil up close and personal, we must understand its causes in order to contain and transform it through wise decisions and innovative communal actions. Indeed, in my view, there is no more urgent task that faces us today.”
I really like the idea of “… making ‘darkness visible’ “. He has also started The Hero Project: Understanding And Encouraging Our Inner Heroes:
“… an international organization to promote heroism as an antidote to evil and as a celebration of what is best in human nature. This organization will be dedicated to:
Developing and spreading the conception of heroes as ordinary, everyday people who are motivated to act on behalf of others or for a moral cause with action that is extraordinary.
We will both demystify and democratize the elusive concept of heroism. Our fundamental conception is to instill in young people the self-belief that “I am a hero-in-waiting.”
Further, to internalize the perspective, “That when I become aware of the need to act on behalf of others needing help or being the victim of evil forces, I will be ready and able to take the necessary action.”
I signed up to get more information about the project because I would like to think that there is indeed an antidote for the self-centeredness & disconnectedness that allows anyone, seemingly, to give themselves permission to kill even one person let alone to become a mass murderer. Maybe if he had been inoculated against the darkness that festered in him, he would have purged it like the disease it was. Someone said that committing suicide is the ultimate “Fuck you” to the survivors. Derrick Bird, it seems, has said exactly that. Neither, Cumbria, nor his family, will ever be the same, again. How tragic.
‘The Lucifer effect’ great title for a film Duncan ???????
This book about the experiment would make a great movie.
Too late D, there is already a movie, darn it!
Yep, there is. But if Duncan cares to use a similar title… how about “The Lucifer Singularity”? Or “The Lucifer Tipping Point”? 😉
I am sorry for his family but in everyone hides a killer its only not acceptable in this day and age to act it out, god I wish I was a cavemen my days wood by filed with murder and plundering but its only a sweet dream I just have to play it cool and hope no one will notice
I have links with Seascale and Whitehaven. So feel this quite deeply. I feel that everyone is discounting the fact that his ‘friends’ were constantly goading him and winding him up, this is not friendly banter, at some point it crosses the line and becomes bullying. For anyone on the edge, with money problems and relationship problems, there comes the staw that breaks the camels back. We will never know why. But he has left a terrible legacy for his sons and his Mother. I feel for them as I do the innocent victims.
I could probably come up with a larger list than 12. Which is sad and scary at the same time. Or I could do em all in and cook for them! (it was rumoured that i poisoned my oldest sister with hard boiled eggs once, wasnt my fault she was dum enough to eat anything I cooked)
The idea of despising some one enough to want them dead , freaks me out. I prefer to wish them life long misery of a really bad case of acne or poison ivy. Or maybe they have ugly feet. So many other choices! I can imagine that D can come up with waaay worse ones than i can…except wishing hemmoroids on some one for life is some what satisfying.
oy
some scary posts today.
The article I read about this character does point to some clues: 9 months ago he told friends that he wanted to shoot a fellow SCUBA instructor; his taxes were being investigated and he was plotting his get-a-way; and so on. Most killers are often seemingly “ordinary” men. Bottom line: killing sprees are never expected and always incredibly sad.