Hacking the Murderous Mind — What Drives People to Hate and Kill

Injustice + humiliation + isolation + agitation + last straw + mental illness → moral lobotomy

Here we go again. A triple dose of “hatred gone wild,” with the mail bombing attempts at opponents to President Trump, the grocery store shootings of two African-Americans in Kentucky and also the horrendous mass shooting at the Tree of Life turned valley of death synagogue in Pittsburgh. And rather than getting numbed to it, I’m becoming sicker to my stomach.

I’m a “people hacker” and used to focus on hacking into suicidal people,then dying people, then hostage takers but then the cumulative effect caused me to leave those front lines and teach other interventionists how to “listen into” potentially explosive people to calm them down and in some cases cause them to accept help.

However, every now and then I get a call to make sense of another senseless act. And I will now do my best to explain that such acts of hatred are literally “senseless” in that the final trigger is what I refer to as a moral lobotomy.

As with all these horrible and horrific events, the facts about Cesar Sayoc, Gregory Bush and Robert Bowers will continue to pour in, until we have some quasi explanation which isn’t fully satisfying, but in 3–5 days our horror will have abated enough to tolerate such an answer.

I hope what follows will shed some light on what I believe will be revealed in this, as in nearly every shooting case, and be a view of these hate crime perpetrators from their inside out.

Typically what occurs with such individuals is the following process and a descent into hatred and murder:

1. Perceived injustice mixed with humiliation — Whether it’s real or imagined these individuals often perceive the world saying to them: “You’re stupid,” “You’re ugly,” “You’re weak,” “You’re nobody,” etc.
2. Isolation — As these individuals pull away they become greater prey to their imaginations and the thoughts above.
3. Agitation — These individuals then proceed to have observation bias(they look out at the world as if it is saying all these things to him) and then confirmation bias (this further justifies the vengeful fantasies and beginning of plans or even acting on prior such events that were not stopped or taken as a full risk).
4. Last straw — Often we will discover some event, sometimes even small or trivial from our point of view, but given the foundation created by the above 3 steps, it essentially causes a moral lobotomy. At that point these individuals act by reflex and with an eye for an eye, revenge for perceived injustice and to the degree that they have felt that the world has put them down and pushed them away, they will find a way to get in and get even.
5. Lowered impulse control — Quite simply, mental health is the ability to experience strong emotions without getting emotional, experience anger without becoming angry. In psychological terms it is referred to being able to “contain” emotions, i.e. feel them without acting on them. The greater the degree of mental illness that lesser the ability to resist acting on impulses, be they destructive towards others or towards oneself. Lowered inhibitions can also be caused by drug and alcohol use, although most mass shooters are not usually high on drugs, because they are instead high on revenge.

Oprah Winfrey has recently talked about a game changing segment she did in which she learned to ask people, “What happened to you?” after they commit even the most awful crimes.

Maybe the time has come to intervene with people such as the mail bomber and synagogue mass shooter and ask, “What is happening to you?” at every red flag warning we see before hurt and humiliation turns to hate and retaliation.

Also: About Teenage Violence: It’s the Rage — In this 2007 ebooklet, I described red flags and warning signs before teens turn to rage (or later on become like the perpetrators referred to in this article) and some ways to talk to and possibly get through to them.