I think we all are struck on occasion by news stories that move us, sometimes in unexpected ways.

Carnell Moore was a 29 year old man who entered the Huston Airport earlier this month with three loaded weapons. After warning those around him he shot into the ceiling. Homeland Security officers rushed to the scene and fired at him wounding him in the arm. He then raised his own revolver and shot himself in the head.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/04/carnell-moore-houston-air_n_3214636.html

In a note he left he had written ““The monster within me was getting stronger and while I could not save myself I could spare others,"

I have found myself continually thinking about him and what he did.

Was he a hero? Can we permit ourselves to consider him such?

In most circumstances if a person through their personal intervention were able to save the lives of numerous people at the cost of their own we would rightly regard them as heroes. Why not Carnell, even when the evil he fought were his personal demons?

Even if one baulks at the label hero I think we should be able to thank him for the lives that were spared.

I however find myself constantly contemplating the internal struggle that must have occurred in his mind and his world. Good triumphed over the evil within Mr Moore because a brave man intervened, his name was Carnell and I choose to think he was indeed heroic.

Rest in peace mate.

Dear csteele,

From the little I know of the case I would not
classify Carnell Marcus Moore as a "hero."
A troubled soul, certainly, but a hero - no.
Whatever demons he had we have no way of knowing.
I'd need more information about this case,
before I could claim as to the "heroism," of his actions.
Had he killed any one at all? Did he have a record as
a killer, what "monster" was he referring to and why?
Too many questions and not enough answers.

csteele,

I don't know that we should tag someone as a hero who sees fit to walk into an airport with three loaded weapons and who starts shooting....even if it was into the ceiling.

What he did was induce absolute terror to those around him at the time.

How is that heroic?

What an interesting post, thanks.It seems to me that this was a basically decent person who for various reasons was under a lot of emotional strain that he couldn't cope with.

I'm not sure that I agree with the characterisation of his actions as
"heroic", given that he had kidnapped a co-worker in the days prior (http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Houston-police-say-airport-shooter-kidnapped-4486592.php?cmpid=hpfsln)and was facing probable imprisonment, but it can't be disputed that he could have caused a great deal of harm to other people and chose not to, which is commendable in itself.

What he did choose was to make himself noticed in his mode of dying, which suggests he felt largely ignored in his living, or possibly was unable to connect meaningfully with people. He worked in a menial job with few prospects, he seems to have been socially isolated, he was obviously severely depressed and no doubt there are other background factors. He was raised as a Jehovah's Witness, which may well have been a factor in his choice of a passive-aggressive final act.

It seems to me that Thoreau got it right when he said "most men lead lives of quiet desperation" and that this is inevitable. However, most of us manage to find ways to deal with our existential angst without such a public display. If we characterise Moore as a hero, it seems we are eulogising passive-aggression. Surely the genuinely heroic path is to just "hang on"?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntm1YfehK7U

Csteele, was Carnell Moore a hero? Firstly we need to define "hero" then we have to determine what was his "monster within" and what could society expect from that monster. On balance I tend to agree with Poirot's comment, why not just wonder off into the desert and neck yourself after posting it all on Facebook, or some such place. Did Moore crave dramatic attention, by staging it all amongst a crowd of people, if not he certainly got it. That is not passing judgement on Moore, obviously a tormented human being, more to be pitied than branded a hero.

He obviously had a conscience. You can look that up on the net. I think it was heroic to give his own life to spare others. Others lose their live on the job & automatically become heroes.
We must be running short of good, decent, home loving, family loving, would do everything for everyone kind of people soon because they have just about been killed off.
About time we put the mongrels up for cannon fodder & give the good ones a chance to live.

Given the events of this week in Paris and London, Mr Moore's actions provide a rather strange backdrop:

* an extreme Right-wing pro-Christian, anti-gay bloke blows his own brains out on the altar of Notre Dame Cathedral;

* a couple of Islamist fundamentalists hack an unarmed bloke to death and wait for the police to come for them.

As a Marxist, I'm loath to point out that a far-Right-winger French reactionary seems to have more compassion for others - he could have blazed away at the 1500-strong congregation, after all, but didn't - than a couple of Islamist reactionaries who have no worries about butchering a stranger, as long, presumably, as he was unarmed.

Real heroes. And I suspect that there will be a lot more where that came from: this week, people killed in bombings in Pakistan, Iraq, Niger. Pretty much all Muslims. Killed by Islamists.

But, wait a minute, isn't Islam a religion of peace ? Check out

http://www.masjidtucson.org/quran/index/

and see for yourself :)

It's a very complicated world, certainly not a simple either-or world. The enemy of my enemy could well be my worse enemy. It's a pity the Left has never learnt that simple baby-lesson.

Sorry for that vicious personal attack, Poirot :)

Cheers,

Joe

It is in my view with that degree of understanding, the man was and is no hero.
A rather gutless planed death.
No thought for those required to kill him.
Or those including Children who had to watch and fear him.
He may well have been heroic if he did what he should have, presented himself to medical or police and reported his feelings.
Hero,at a meeting put together to assist those who had to be responders to fatal road events, in this case a mountain near town.
A serving Sergent of police, ex Navy with extensive war history, told us what he thought heroism was.
Please excuse my frankness o sung wo, no one he told us, while dressed in that special police wear, a self satisfied bloated self love is a hero..
Was not a knowing act but a split second act, an unthinking one.
I do not agree, he also, at every event I attended stopped first aiders helping while waiting for paramedics.
Unlike the folk in that tiny town I did not wait till he left to openly say he was both wrong and not at all nice, cleaned what I told him a bit.

How many times have we heard that mental illness was the cause of atrocities. Here's a human being who realised in time that he was in trouble & he made the admirable & heroic decision to prevent any possible tragedy. Do-gooders who would have condemned him had he done something dreadful are now condemning him for taking preventative action. What cowardly hypocrites !
Have you no sense of sense at all ? Where were the moronic counsellors when he needed them ? His integrity obviously considered that some idiot counsellor would have talked him out of committing suicide & then if he did commit an atrocity they would have swarmed around him lamenting the tragedy. Idiots !

csteele,

I find it sickening that anyone could not only appease the actions of such a sad and disturbed person but actually try to label them a hero. Where in Gods name and from where in the darkest recesses of a distorted human psyche, does such dysfunctional thinking originate?

A hero is not a person who enters a public place with weapons, discharges them, putts innocent members of the public at risk, provokes potential high risk return fire from security agents and then tops themselves with a gun is not a hero, they are deranged for whatever reason and a life threatening hazard to the public.

This sick person wanted to go out with a bang because in their disturbed state, they wished to “excuse” their actions and could not bring themselves to do this in a way that didn’t threaten the wider community. It was an attention seeking sick statement you cretin.

Has it crossed your mind that the ceiling could have been another level and that he could have killed someone upstairs? Could there have been a ricochet that could have slaughtered an innocent child? Could any return fire have caused innocent loss of life and what of the emotional consequences to vulnerable bystanders who witnessed this tragedy?

Hero? You are sick puppy

Loudmouth,

Yes, the events in London this week were sickening in the extreme.

This event at the beginning of May was sickening also.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/may/02/birmingham-murder-racially-motivated-police

..........

I can't think of csteele's example as heroic.

Why go to crowded public place to shoot randomly and then to shoot yourself?

Perhaps to make a statement, but certainly not to be a hero.

Heroes risk themselves for the benefit of others.

While I can have sympathy for this man's obvious torment, terrorising the public is not an heroic act.

Loudmouth. As all religions are based on superstition they provide fertile grounds for the mentally disturbed extremist. There is no such thing as a "religion of peace" to the extremest, by their very nature they must embrace violence towards any who would dare to disagree, the infidel, the non-believer, god commands no less from his servants than the total destruction of those who would oppose him. By definition such persons are seen by extreme believers as evil incarnate, the devil himself. To these religious radicals there can be no dialog, no compromise, and no truck what so ever, with evil, even the ambivalent are perceived as evil. To these fanatics violence in this world is part of an ongoing struggle, and in their minds ultimately there can be but one outcome, the total subjugation of all others.

in their minds ultimately there can be but one outcome, the total subjugation of all others.
Paul 1405,
That is the gist. Unfortunately, too many can't see or refuse to see that. The asylum seeking single men are their soldiers waiting for the numbers to be right here.

Joe, that's pretty simplistic.

The French fellow was 78 years old, a very long-term right-wing polemicist and acting out of what he saw as patriotism in one of the greatest symbols of France and of the religion that has been at the heart of the French State since Charlemagne. He was making a straightforward statement rich in nationalist semiotics and it didn't cost him much to do so at 78 after a rich, full life, so it wasn't very heroic as a self-sacrifice. I don't see any heroism in his failure to attack others either, to do so would have been in opposition to his patriotic motivation and would have confused the message he was trying to convey.

The people in Britain were almost polar opposites. They were both raised in Britain, as I understand it, but felt so little attachment to the place and so much hatred for it that they attacked somebody they saw as a symbol of the state's authority. They didn't attack the very brave lady who spoke to them, or anybody else except another symbol of the State, the police.

The BBC coverage is very good, as far as it goes.

I think this one may yet turn out to be a lot more complicated than you think. The rant about the radical Islamicist agenda may well turn out to be a bit of a red-herring, given their background. Although it's possible they were primed to act their anger out in this particular way by associates within the Islamic community, it seems to me that their motivation for acting out at all was much more personal and rooted in a sense of alienation, isolation from the mainstream culture, lack of opportunity, etc. If they'd been born Irish they'd have been in the IRA.

Hi Antiseptic,

No, I'm certainly not saying he was some sort of hero, just that - by comparison with the Islamists in London - he didn't intend to take anybody else with him, or worse, kill somebody else in his rage against the world. No, he's no hero, and most certainly, neither are those butchers.

But for all that, I'm not so sure that they would deserve the death penalty, if it were applicable in the UK. Their lives are precious too, and that approach should be a feature of distinction against the Islamists' notion that any non-believer is fair game, and that any member of a 'group' which has wronged Muslims somewhere is collectively liable, especially a soldier. Preferably unarmed. In other words, that collective punishment is okay and yes, I'm aware that not only the Nazis used that rationale but so have the Israelis an to an extent, the Yanks. It's wrong, evil, and impermissible whoever uses it.

Todorov has suggested that the mark of a barbarian -who could be from any group, any of us - is to regard somebody from a group other than one's own as not-human, as expendable, as un-valued, as eliminable. We surely must be above that.

Cheers,

Joe

Dear Poirot, Lexi, Belly and Paul1405,

All entirely reasonable positions to take, thank you. We are all individuals and so stories like these will of course impact us differently. I certainly am not claiming anything definitive for my take.

Dear Antiseptic and individual,

Thank you for having an appreciation of my perspective.

Of course the all too familiar course of events probably would have been another depressed loner in the US massacring yet another group of innocent people before turning the weapon on himself.

I feel it is fairly certain that thoughts of following this depressingly common path were occupying the mind of Carnell Moore when he wrote of the Monster inside of him getting stronger. He had certainly gathered a collection of weapons capable of inflicting a terrible carnage which he took to the airport. This really could have had a dramatically more tragic outcome.

Suicide by cop is not only an American phenomena but occurs in this country too. I get a real sense of Carnell's Dr Jekyll taking the Mr Moore/Hyde to his death. "I bring the life of that unhappy Henry Jekyll to an end" mirrors Carnell writing “I could not save myself I could spare others”. However I think it is hard to be sure he knew exactly which way this would turn out. Would the monsters gain control?

Of course like most Aussie kids of my generation the literature of Robert Louis Stevenson was part of my formative reading.

“You must suffer me to go my own dark way I have brought on myself a punishment and a danger that I cannot name. If I am the chief of sinners, I am the chief of sufferers also.”
Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Perhaps this is why Carnell's story has so much resonance for me.

Cont...

Cont...

Antiseptic, I do take your point about lives of 'quiet desperation' yet Thoreau was taking about the ordinary man, not one obviously afflicted with a personality disorder where part of him was clamouring to do evil.

Topically this piece, The Flawed Concept of “Good vs Evil” - The philosophy of Hayao Miyazaki by artist Ashley Allis was posted to Imgur recently.
“When I say 'hero' do not picture someone with the strength to fight and conquer evil – because evil is not something that can ever be conquered or defeated. Evil is natural – it is innate in all humans. But while it can't be defeated … it can be controlled. In order to control it and live the life of a true hero, you must learn to see with both eyes unclouded by hate. See the good in that which is evil, and the evil in that which is good.”
http://imgur.com/a/60fev

I have found much to contemplate in Carnell's story.

“There comes an end to all things; the most capacious measure is filled at last; and this brief condescension to evil finally destroyed the balance of my soul.”
Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

For me his act of warning people in the area was a clear sign that he reacted before his soul was entirely destroyed. This must have taken courage, the type I'm not sure I would be capable of. I certainly hope never to find out.

csteele,

I think I understand a little better what you were getting at earlier.

Are you saying that somehow the more "Dr Jekyll" part of Moore managed to muster the strength to warn the public of the danger from the "Mr Hyde" part of him. That his trajectory in space and time was to commit murder and mayhem, and this was somehow thwarted by the enfeebled but still viable "good" part of him?

Individual; "The asylum seeking single men are their soldiers waiting for the numbers to be right here." You draw a rather long bow with this; there is absolutely no evidence to support your claim.
I am an atheist who see's very great danger in organised religions. Fromm the billions who profess to follow some religion or another, and I do not distinguish between Christian, Jew or Muslim etc. there is but a very small minority who have both the desire and the capability to commit the heinous crimes they perpetrate in the name of their god. No one faith has a monopoly on fanaticism all are capable of producing the monsters we see. In 1978 religion produced Jim Jones and the Jamestown massacre. I must say there is more to this than purely fanatical adherence to a religion, although it is a major contributing factor to their actions. The reasoning that drives these monsters to undertake these outrages against society is complex and not easily understood. Never underestimate the power of religion.

csteele, I think you're just reading too much into it. He was depressed and that in itself is enough to create all sorts of mental phantasms. Beyond that, he had just been rejected and accused of kidnap by a woman he was attracted to and was running from that. He felt anonymous, unwanted, rejected and wasn't thinking straight.

From my reading of it, I think he was a basically decent man who felt he had screwed up his life. Beyond that, it's all speculative, but that's never stopped me before...

The public nature of his death was a statement to the world at large, I think, that he existed and was worthy of attention. The initial shots were attention-grabbers, so that he would be seen when he took his final action. What he didn't want was to die as anonymously as he had lived, I think.

All in all a human tragedy that would probably have been easily averted at any number of points along the way, but not heroic by any means.

Joe, our society is excellent at creating people with few connections. As we are a social animal, such people are always in a distressed state and if they are offered a place in a group, are prone to becoming zealots. Religions understand this and their scriptures are full of stories of such zealots, as are the ranks of their followers. Zealots are extremists, they are always seeking ways to show their commitment to the group they belong to. In this case they also found a way to attack the State they felt had failed them, while not attacking ordinary members of that State. They weren't indiscriminate monsters, they had a specific purpose.

Basically they were a couple of members of the British underclass who made some stupid choices out of a desire for recognition by a group that had accepted them. They may have been manipulated into it by some unscrupulous puppeteer, but it seems more likely they took this upon themselves to demonstrate their commitment to the group. They may have heard eulogies for Muslims killed in wars and would have known that there is considerable anti-Muslim agitation in Britain, where attacks on Muslims far exceed attacks by them.

I really don't think you can blame this on Islam. It's a product of a social structure that entrenches dysfunction, reduces social connection and generates resentment.It also possibly reflects mental health issues in the accused.

These guys were primed to go off long before they converted to Islam.

Hi Antiseptic,

" ... there is considerable anti-Muslim agitation in Britain, where attacks on Muslims far exceed attacks by them."

Really ? Do you have figures for that assertion ?

But this claim is a bit precious:

"I really don't think you can blame this on Islam. It's a product of a social structure that entrenches dysfunction, reduces social connection and generates resentment. It also possibly reflects mental health issues in the accused."

To the extent that a garbled set of instructions can provoke a brutal murder, I think that most certainly we can 'blame Islam'. And how long are we going to use this rationale of social deprivation, etc.: "I'm so misunderstood and alienated, so humiliated." ?

And says who the murderers have mental issues ? This is the point about ideologies, and their power - having been embedded in one myself, I'm sort of guiltily aware of how far one would be prepared to go, and yes, it does resemble insanity sometimes. Ideology can kill.

Ultimately, this may be the point - that ideologies derived from the Enlightenment, from the thousands of years of development of political ideas, from the Greeks, the Indians, Magna Carta, the Treaty of Westphalia, etc. - ideologies based on notions of equality and the rule of law for all

- will have to stack up against ideologies derived from desert stories and garbled versions of imported ideas - ideologies based on unquestioned male authority, the unchangeability of the written word, anti-Western science (and therefore anti-science), regardless of any new knowledge accruing (which is thereby devalued by being non-'Book').

I suspect that this is going to be a very long, IDEOLOGICAL struggle involving billions of people, not just a struggle against a relative few bombers and butchers. Perhaps it will go through some horrible phases, an all-out war between Shi'a and Sunni, forexample. I read recently that there had been 1800 al-Qaida-related bombings since 2001. So how may more ? And what sorts of other vile crimes will be committed in the name of Islam ?

Sometimes I'm glad I'm getting old ;)

Joe

Hi Antiseptic,

Did you mean this sort of thing ?

from: http://au.news.yahoo.com/latest/a/-/latest/17328200/three-fresh-arrests-over-london-soldier-murder/

"Faith Matters, a state-funded organisation which works to reduce extremism, said it has recorded a huge increase in anti-Muslim incidents reported to its helpline since the attack.

' "It's a hugely worrying development," director Fiyaz Mughal told AFP, saying the organisation had been informed of 162 incidents in the past 48 hours, compared to a daily average of four to six.

"They were mainly verbal attacks on women wearing the Islamic headscarf in the street, he said, but there were also online attacks and some violence.

"A woman in her 50s had been punched unconscious on the outskirts of Oldham, near Rigby's home city of Manchester in northwest England, while two mosques had been attacked in the south of the country."

I agree that there is no excuse or reason for abusing anybody wearing the hijab, or any other violent acts, certainly not beating a woman unconscious, these are gutless actions, but hardly a 'huge increase' in incidences. I'm surprised that that far-Right demo in Newcastle attracted only a couple of thousand nutjobs.

And only two mosques attacked ? That's a pretty restrained response, in my view, I would have expected far more outrage at the possibilities of mosques as breeding-grounds for more atrocities.

Joe

Joe, my point is that there's no point blaming Islam when these men are representative of a problem that is far more widespread. Islam didn't cause them to do this, a deep disaffection with their society did. Islam just gave them a perceived justification. We would never have heard of these men if they'd done this to some poor bugger in a back lane, which is a far more common scenario for such violent acting out.

I'm trying to find the paper on British religious violence stats I saw a couple of days ago. Basically the upshot was that Muslims, especially women, are subject to abuse and minor violence (getting pushed, being spat on, having things thrown at them) at an enormous rate. There are groups of thugs who specifically target Muslims and sometimes Sikhs. Drunken assaults on Muslims are very common. On the other hand, violence by Muslims because of their religion is quite rare, although there are growing numbers of groups of young men who perpetrate similar types of violence as the non-Islamic thugs, both on the public and more commonly on other Muslims who belong to a different sect. The Islamic community is not well integrated socially with the wider one.

I agree that it isn't going well, but in only seeing the perceived failings of the Islamic community you are missing the wood for the trees. Let's not forget that Indians, Carribean blacks and others have been subject to similar behaviour from the great British public in the form of strident women and violent young men and some reacted violently in turn. Was that the fault of Hinduism or Rastafarianism or a simple human response?

Loudmouth; "I suspect that this is going to be a very long, IDEOLOGICAL struggle involving billions of people, not just a struggle against a relative few bombers and butchers."
Although the fanatics wage war in the name of god, and they base much of it on their perception of the teaching of their prophet, its not the entire reason. If it was nothing more than an ideological struggle between Islam and Christianity then the targets for terrorists would be churches and the clergy, not office buildings and the general public.
I cannot see billions of people involved in some kind of armed struggle, In any war the non combatants always far exceed in number the willing, or not so willing, participants, The greatest war of all times WWII with its relatively primitive technology only directly involved a small number of combatants compared to the total population.
My biggest fear is that terrorists may one day obtain nuclear weapons and the capacity to use them. Then the army of terror has to be no more than a handful of people.

Well, Paul, did write:

" ... a very long, IDEOLOGICAL struggle involving billions of people, not just a struggle against a relative few bombers and butchers",

EXPLICITLY suggesting an IDEOLOGICAL struggle, not necessarily just a military one, or a whole series of relatively small military ones - in other words a 'battle' of ideas, not necessarily weapons, a struggle between what I suggest are backward, pre-modern and reactionary ideas, versus a necessarily imperfect and evolving body of beliefs and practices which derive from notions of equality and the universal rule of law.

I guess, in short, a struggle between dogma which can't or won't evolve, explicitly because of its own internal rules, and a body of principles which evolves with society.

I DO use the word 'imperfect' deliberately, because that's how real life works, as opposed to any reactionary Utopian theory which seeks the impossible, i.e. perfection in society, and the 'necessary' 'removal' of all those who stand in its 'perfect' way.

And yes, I do believe that all Utopian theories are eventually reactionary, anti-human, no matter how prettily they may be expressed, 'for the good of all mankind', that sort of thing, because there is always that 'exception' clause - what do we do with the 'exceptions', those who regrettably don't fit in, or want to fit in, or be converted ? Unfortunately, they must be 'subtracted',. I.e. Gulagged, beheaded, used for body parts, etc.

Down with all Utopias !

Joe

Dear Paul,

I share your fear of nucelar weapons.

If more and more nucelar weapons are built, and if more
sophisticated means of delivering them are devised,
and if more and more nations get control of these vile
devices, then surely we risk our own destruction.

If ways are found to reverse that process, then we can
divert unprecedented energy and resources to the real
problems that face us, including poverty, disease,
overpopulation, and the devastation of our environment.

We may hope and trust that our ultimate choice will be to
enhance the life on this bright and lovely planet on which
billions of us share our adventure.

The only way to stop terrorists
from getting hold of dangerous weapons is not to manufacture
them. No matter what the security, or how vigilant the
authorities are, criminals, terrorists, and whoever is
determined will eventually get what they want if it is available.
No matter how protected the weaponry may appear to be.

"EXPLICITLY suggesting an IDEOLOGICAL struggle,"
Joe, did not Christianity go through an ideological struggle, before and during the time of the inquisition when science and reason was suppressed by the Catholic Church on the grounds that it mostly contravened religious dogma. One of the finest minds that ever lived Galileo Galilei was subjected to investigation by the church to see if he was in contravention of the bible, and to determine if his science was in fact heresy. To save his own life Galileo had to recant much of what he believed. Fortunately science and reason won out over fear and superstition and western civilisation was able to move into an age of enlightenment, which continues to this day. I wounder how many years of scientific advancement the Catholic Church was able to suppress 200, 300 maybe, no one really knows!
Is it possible that those in the world today who are being subjected to religious fanaticism, with dogma which can't or won't evolve, will eventually see it give way to enlightenment? If that was possible with Christianity, could it not also be possible with Islam.

Lexi
"The only way to stop terrorists from getting hold of dangerous weapons is not to manufacture them." So true.
My greatest fear is a rough state such as Pakistan could supply a third party, (terrorists), with nuclear weapons to be used against a perceived common enemy, in this case India. Even a small nuclear device, the size of a brief case would unleash mass destruction.

>>To the extent that a garbled set of instructions can provoke a brutal murder, I think that most certainly we can 'blame Islam'.<<

I'm less inclined to agree, Joe. Men will kill each other under little more than a garbled set of instructions. But this was not a cold-blooded murder. The frenzied hacking at the body, even post-mortem, suggests a degree of rage and passion that I find hard to believe could be achieved through indoctrination alone. On some level - maybe the completely fukcing batsh!t crazy level that you and I would never want to understand - it was personal for these guys.

>>We would never have heard of these men if they'd done this to some poor bugger in a back lane<<

But they wouldn't have. They'd have rolled him and killed him, but they'd have scarpered the moment he shuffled off the mortal coil. The ones who stay around to inflict post-mortem abuse are the Ted Bundys, the Dennis Nilsens, the Jack the Rippers: they are proper sickos.

>>I suspect that this is going to be a very long, IDEOLOGICAL struggle involving billions of people, not just a struggle against a relative few bombers and butchers. Perhaps it will go through some horrible phases, an all-out war between Shi'a and Sunni, forexample.<<

Give them a few hundred years and I think they'll come around.

I'm not up on my Judaism but the Old Testaments of my bibles suggest they were a pretty cranky mob who did a fair bit of arse-kicking in their day but have now settled down a bit. They were the first of what we might call the 'angry' religions.

TBC

Christians used to be fairly ferocious too. I've been reading up on the English Civil War lately... a political war as well as a religious one but how many Catholics died just because Cromwell didn't like the way they worshipped?

Christians settled down too and brought us the Enlightenment. I would suggest that was more than fair recompense for all the years of Endarkenment they had worked at before.

Islam is the last of the angry religions (Mormons et. al. don't count) to be founded. Like a good cheddar and fine red wine, angry religions obviously need a decent length of time to age. I'd give it a few centuries yet before Islam is ready to stop acting like a teenager and have a reasonable adult conversation. Until then, let's try to keep them away from the nukes.

>>Let's not forget that Indians, Carribean blacks and others have been subject to similar behaviour from the great British public in the form of strident women and violent young men and some reacted violently in turn. Was that the fault of Hinduism or Rastafarianism or a simple human response?<<

Again, this was not a simple human response. Oppressed groups might lash out violently but they don't go past basic thuggery. It takes a fairly unique pathology to spend a good few minutes trying to remove a dead man's head after you've already killed him.

Cheers,

Tony

Dear Poirot,

Indeed.

There is much we do not know about what happened nor can we ever know what exactly was going on in Carnell's mind. Yet it is evident from his letter and his actions that he recognised his capacity to do great harm and that he needed to be stopped before that harm was realised.

His is a story of the human condition. We are never comfortable about recognising the capacity for evil within our selves.

Take the My Lai massacre. The hive mind that was the couple of hundred men making up Charlie company murdered close to 500 unarmed civilians, a large proportion of whom were women and children.

There were three men who attempted to intervene and likely saved numerous lives. Much later they were recognised for their bravery but initially they were derided and even called traitorous, notably by a congressman.

We now rightly see them as heroic.

My point is that we are all capable of great evil given the right circumstances. The voice inside Carnell's head can be thought of as Second Lieutenant William Calley. Very few resisted his orders at My Lai. We have all heard of the horrendous toll in innocent lives the mass shootings in the US have exacted. To me Carnell represents the first instance that I can recall where someone was that close to the brink and yet decided to kill himself in order to spare others. I see the part of Carnell Moore that did this in a similar frame to those three at My Lai.

Dear Antiseptic,

I am happy to acknowledge I may well be reading too much into the story but when you say “The initial shots were attention-grabbers, so that he would be seen when he took his final action.” I think you are wrongly dismissing the fact that he took three loaded weapons to the scene when surely one would have done. Secondly to write this off as a depressed man committing suicide glosses over the fact that he felt he had a monster within that was capable of killing others. I'm not convinced we should do that.

Be that as it may I reiterate that with the limited information available our respective takes on Carnell are ultimately personal assessments. Mine is just different to yours, nothing more.

The pseudo-intellectualized argument behind this “hero” is a classical attribute of those who try to “socialize” everything. This is just another example of academic “narrative theory”.

For good or ill, the major intellectual and social events of recent centuries, has been the progress of science and education in the transformation of the world. This has produced much anxiety and possibly some vocational envy amongst the humanities academia and the products of their doctrine, the political elites.

Humanities academia, political elites and today’s pseudo intelligentsia (copy cat wannabe’s) are naturally unhappy to recognize the centrality of these developments to our culture, to be constantly reminded of the importance of the unattainably different level of rigor and sophistication prevailing in subjects they don’t understand.

The socialization of our culture and our perceptions requires the assumption that these are a part of our life that must be re-interpreted or criticized by humanities as part of the view that their educated minds may inspect on our behalf and pontificate for the benefit of lesser minds and humanity itself.

The process of socializing adopts a strategy of “narrative theory” which treats philosophy, sociology, science, history and literature, as simply a different mode of story telling and therefore opened these topics up by rhetoric to “interpretation” or the creation of objective truth. Just like our “hero”.

“Like the eunuch at the orgy who was always first with the gossip, but being forced to realize that he doesn’t really know what’s going on, his knowledge is not real and that far from being the centre of things, he is forever on the margin”.

The Eunuch at The Orgy, Raymond Tallis.

Nope. He didn't play Rugby League.

Dear Houellebecq,

Correct, but it seems a year ago when Spindoc last used the reference he did;

“So you end up just like the Gordon Tallis “eunuch at the orgy” who was always first with the gossip, but being forced to realize that he doesn’t really know what’s going on, his knowledge is not real and that far from being the centre of things, he is forever on the margin.”
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=13662#236414

Kinda hoisted by his own petard one would have thought.

csteele,

Interesting that you spent time searching for the previous references I’ve made on this topic rather than actually engaging with it. Pity about that, predictable but still a pity.

Dear Spindoc,

I just typed in “Like the eunuch at the orgy who was always first with the gossip” into google to learn a little more of the context of the quote and a link to your posts on the forum were head of the pack.

I am happy to see you included quotation marks when you used Tallis' words this time. That didn't happen here;
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=13247#229053

But as I moved down the Google list I kept finding what is a rather obscure quote around other blogs and websites over the last year or so. Then it struck me, given the context and the style these were all from you, unless of course there are a whole bunch of other Australians who have suddenly decided to employ it in similar settings.

So will you confirm or deny you are Donkey Hote posting on Michael Smith's blog?
http://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2012/11/a-couple-of-points-from-the-abcs-insiders-show-on-the-weekend.html?cid=6a0177444b0c2e970d017c335a865a970b

And are you Bazza from Qld 4218 posting on Andrew Bolt's site?
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/the_good_manne/

Be that as it may from my limited reading Tallis' point was about the 'socialisation' of science so your prolific use of his quote in discussions on Climate Change on this site may have some validity. But you now want to stretch it to include this topic?

Lost me.

Tell you what, how about you tell me, in your own words this time, exactly the point you are trying to make because I will admit to being a little confused.

A word of advice. Overuse can wear some things out.

Overuse can wear some things out! A bit like CAGW links I guess?

You missed out on some other sites but what is your point? What does it matter? A great diversion I guess but still no actual response to the content, just have a stab at the messenger, is that the best you can offer?

It reads like a 'suicide by cop' scenario where the victim cannot muster the courage so puts themself into a situation where death will most likely occur.

While your perspective is different, I would not claim it as a heroic act. Athough one should be thankful for small mercies in that this fellow believed he was doing the right thing to prevent killing others.

Having had family in the police force my first thought was the awful effects on policemen who have to kill somebody to defend others. These effects should not diminished.

It is always difficult to pass judgement, people are complicated and I guess we are not in a position to be discussing what might have happened had this unfortunate person not taken this course of action.

Poirot>> I don't know that we should tag someone as a hero who sees fit to walk into an airport with three loaded weapons and who starts shooting....even if it was into the ceiling.<<

He is not a hero, if the terminal was full of armed travelers then he may have a claim to courage, but that was not the case. He was a predator with no opposition, a doddle, a selfish act meant to shatter innocent lives. If I had a piece I would have blown his brains out and I would have been a hero.

Dear pelican,

It appears Carnell shot and killed himself rather than it being the officers who fired upon him, nonetheless your point about the distress faced by officials stands. Yet his act of suicide does confuse the notion that this was a man who could not “muster the courage”.

I know two people who have had the misfortune of having to tackle the 'voices inside their heads'. At there worst they can clamour for self-destructive action and often suicide can seem a viable way of escaping them.

I am hardly an expert but Carnell's actions seem to be outside the norm for a schizophrenic. Paranoia does not seem to feature strongly here. Schizophrenics, if they are going to act violently, tend to do so in a more defensive manner as their fears most often centre around people doing them harm or constantly watching them.

On the other hand “dissociative identity disorder (DID), previously known as multiple personality disorder (MPD), is a mental disorder characterized by at least two distinct and relatively enduring identities or dissociated personality states that alternately control a person's behavior” Wikipedia.

We know there was a 'good guy' personality within Carnell as evidenced by his writings and actions. We also can surmise there was another identity he called the monster. It is not hard to imagine the fear in the first when the second one would take control.

“The primary identity, which often has the patient's given name, tends to be "passive, dependent, guilty and depressed" with other personalities or "alters" being more active, aggressive or hostile, and often containing more complete memories.” Wikipedia

It is not unreasonable to imagine a struggle between two identities. The possession of a loaded AR-15 Assault rifle catering for the aggressive one and a Gideon bible giving the other strength to fight it.

"Here in the last hour I yield to mercy," "When this could have turned bad Jehovah found a path to my heart, that love would conquer anger. The monster within me was getting stronger and while I could not save myself I could spare others."

csteele
It seems I did not read the entire story properly - apologies.

Indeed his condition complicates matters and I would be unlikely to judge him his actions that to him felt well intentioned.

It does seem odd to do it in a public venue, however I imagine it is inappropriate to try and use logic in situations like this when clearly his condition does not predispose him to think in those rational terms. I am also no expert in schizophrenia although have had contact with many sufferers in a previous job. There appears to be different variations of schizophrenia even if there are similar threads running through some sufferers such as delusions about voices, mind control etc.

Very sad all round.

“The monster within me was getting stronger ..."

This is so very sad.

A tormented soul? Yes. A hero? No.

Why go to a public place so armed, when "The monster within me was getting stronger"?

A momentary, but overwhelming impulse either way ...

It seems that he could have tipped over the edge very easily with resultant massive casualties.

A "hero" perhaps would have thrown his guns as far away as possible and even isolated himself ... A hero would not have tempted that inner monster.