Adam Lanza on suicide

[telekon]

I've been transcribing the words of Adam Lanza as a sort-of study in psychology of someone who would commit atrocities such as the Sandy Hook shooting. And I must say, he was a very well-spoken individual, which surprised me. He often talked like he was reading a book of himself so I decided to see how it would look in book format. I feel pretty satisfied.

He talked a lot about his own suicidal ideation which I thought some of you might find interesting.

Here are a couple excerpts:

"I don't understand how anyone could possibly find the desire to manufacture computers. I mean, how did humanity get to this point without killing themselves? Then I remember, of course it's only me who wants to do that.
There isn't some transcendent truth that you should kill yourself. It's just that I'm capable of recognizing what culture is, and my subjective values based on my experiences have led me to come to this conclusion.
But I think that everyone else would come to the conclusion, too.
Water isn't objectively valuable, but it's a consensus that everyone does accept it as having value, even though it's not objective.
In the same way, suicide is water.
That's getting into all this cosmic stuff. Now I can start formulating theories about why there's anti-matter. It must have something to do with death."

"Isn't it strange how those atheists say, "Of course I won't be bothered when I die, because I will not have existed, but I can enjoy life while I'm here." Atheists will say that they recognize that in death you do not exist, but they don't see what that means pertaining to life. They still think we can fulfill values in life.
Don't you see that death is happiness?
That life is deprivation. That you can't live your life. That you have to die.
Maybe I will. No, I won't. I often say to myself, maybe I will kill myself tonight. But no, I'm not going to do it. I already know I'm not going to do it.
Maybe I'll just ramble for a few hours.
I can't release something like this. If I were to release something like this, I'd be involuntarily committed, imprisoned for the rest of my life. Life is a prison. But just saying that even risks being involuntarily committed.
It bothers me that people defer to these authority figures of psychiatrists and doctors thinking that they know what they're doing, but they don't have this well of wisdom. They're fulfilling their own psychological deprivation.
That's why they're doing what they're doing. It's not because they have wisdom.
Isn't it funny how I would be called insane, but everyone else seems to think that they're perfectly fine?
Don't you understand that you're all heavily damaged, and I'm heavily damaged? That's what life is. I'm just going to keep repeating myself.
I sound like Gary, don't I?"

...

I don't know if anyone will find it as interesting as I do but I just thought I'd leave it here anyways.

Enjoy!

 

[Forever Sleep]

It is interesting. The quote wouldn't be out of place as a post here.

What do you think he means by: 'Life is deprivation'? That maybe so many people don't get to fulfil their dreams/ potential maybe? That the presence of death voids any meaning or achievement in life? That so many people do live deprived lives?

He does certainly come across as pro- mortalist. To be truthful, the name only rang a faint bell for me but- I now see he was involved in a high school shooting, as well as killing his mother and then himself. I haven't looked into it though. Was the reasoning he was doing them a favour- if life is so pointless? Or, was it driven by hatred do you suppose?

 

[telekon]

It is interesting. The quote wouldn't be out of place as a post here.

What do you think he means by: 'Life is deprivation'? That maybe so many people don't get to fulfil their dreams/ potential maybe? That the presence of death voids any meaning or achievement in life? That so many people do live deprived lives?

He does certainly come across as pro- mortalist. To be truthful, the name only rang a faint bell for me but- I now see he was involved in a high school shooting, as well as killing his mother and then himself. I haven't looked into it though. Was the reasoning he was doing them a favour- if life is so pointless? Or, was it driven by hatred do you suppose?

He seemed to believe that suffering was life-affirming and in the absence of suffering, there is no life, which is why rich people like himself want to kill themselves. He also said that talking was a sign of relieving suffering, and thus the quiet ones are often the ones to kill themselves. So I guess by "life is deprivation" he means that simply means that life is a type of suffering.

He was actually very vocal about how he loved children and wanted to take away the pain of life from kids so they would never experience the suffering. It's a pretty twisted way of looking at things.

 

[ZwartHartje]

Interesting indeed. For me the name rang the wrong bell - I was thinking of Robert Lanza, the author of "Biocentrism".

Completely different person, obviously. But yeah, he was onto something there, basically concluding that human culture is a prison, which I'd agree with.
"Life is deprivation," I'm not sure if he meant it that way but in Buddhism it's recognized that desire causes suffering. You're hungry and you're suffering until you can fulfil the desire for food, but even when satiated you're not satisfied, you desire some activity now, and when you can pursue some pleasant activity you'll eventually get exhausted and will desire to sleep, and after resting you may get hungry again, and so on, and all these things are caused by your biological aliveness, as it's for the most part just needs of the body.

"Now I can start formulating theories about why there's anti-matter. It must have something to do with death."
To do with death, not directly. Except that the world is largely made up of opposites, like light and darkness, good and evil, matter and anti-matter - and life and death.
Actually matter and anti-matter are the odd one out here though since they're not truly opposites, although they annihilate each other upon contact. They're more like a mirror image of each other rather than opposites.

Also interesting how he says, "those atheists say...", implying that he himself is not one. If not an atheist, then what was his religion?

 

[Spite]

Adam Lanza was an anomaly. His views could be broadly described as 'efilist', or 'pro-mortalist'. I think he saw life as this horrible, unbearable, self-replicating curse, and his ultimate conclusion was that non-existence, whatever that may be, is preferable to being alive - a sentiment I think many users here would resonate with. I believe his motive for committing the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School was both a (disastrous) attempt at self-expression, and a means of "delivering" others from what he perceived as the horrors of life.

I also think he did the shooting as a means of giving himself a 'push' towards committing suicide. By killing his mother at home, he effectively burned his bridges and at that point there was no turning back. He had to kill himself or face the inevitable consequences (captured by law enforcement and sentenced to life imprisonment). He killed all those people to make a point, and that's effectively what most mass killings are - an attempt at trying to convey some kind of message or ideology to the wider world.

Furthermore, he was very psychologically impaired and is never known to have had any semblance of a social life. Towards the end of this life, he was almost always confined to his bedroom, alone, with nobody to talk to. I can see how this would make someone grow incredibly despondent, hopeless, and suicidal.
You might know about this already but when his CulturalPhilistine YouTube channel was discovered, somebody made a video analysing Lanza's beliefs. If you have an hour to spare and want to something to listen to I'd highly recommend giving this a listen, I found it to be very insightful:

 

[telekon]

You might know about this already but when his CulturalPhilistine YouTube channel was discovered, somebody made a video analysing Lanza's beliefs. If you have an hour to spare and want to something to listen to I'd highly recommend giving this a listen, I found it to be very insightful:

Yes actually, these excerpts are taken from his YouTube channel, although he has countless other writings listed on schoolshooters.info

One of the most eye-opening things he said, at least to me, was his whole theory about life being deprivation

"But why is it always the quiet ones who kill themselves? In the past, I would have thought that it was because they were not being included in something. I think that's the way that most people think of it.
But if you think about this loudness paradigm, then I would interpret it to mean that quiet people have less deprivation. Or at least in some cases. At least, I think that's the case for me. I feel less deprived and thus I desire life less."

I agree that once I stopped being deprived of this one specific thing, this thing which I had longed for my whole life, ironically that was the moment I became suicidal. I've written this before in another post, but at that point it was like "I'm finished. I've beaten the game. I have nothing else to experience and this world has nothing else to offer me." Combine that with isolation and suddenly becoming a burden and you get suicide.

I feel like I am in the highest bracket of likelihood to commit suicide based on the current psychological research. And yet I also feel as though I am in the least likely (or at least I hope...) simply because I ascribe to spirituality.

I weirdly relate to Lanza in so many ways, like the fact that I almost committed matricide when I was around his age that he did that. But he was a freak and even though he was not a pedophile, he vehemently defended pedophilia and that is something I can't get behind. I know sex is bad for kids because I had a type of intercourse done to me by an older neighbour when I was only 6 and this really affected me badly. I think I was affected by other things badly too and it was likely a combination of things that led me here today, but he was wrong about that one specific topic.

Interestingly though, he gave up that topic of debate when he realized the whole genesis of his fascination was out of spite for societal values. He was a masochist and he knew that if he argued for the side of pedophilia that society would hate him, and he fell victim to some heinous theories about the subject which are popular among "MAPs" even if he wasn't one himself. I'd forgive him for it only because he was 17 at the time and he seemed like he was starting to come to his senses.

It's actually sad to see someone with his kind of verve for philosophical debates die, let alone kill a bunch of kids. If he had been around the right people, he might have written something respectable one day. Or if he had a dad. Did you know that his dad said he wished his son was never born? Sounds like something my dad would say to be honest.