[lbo-talk] German school gunman 'kills 16'

[Philip Pilkington]

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> [WS:]  One may also argue that an act of "anomie" killing is a perverse
> form of "contact" with the other (as we are by nature social animals,) one
> written in flesh and blood if you will (cf. Kafka's _Penal Colony_).  That
> is to say, extreme alienation and the lack of contact with the "other"
> produces a strong desire to establish such contact "for real" as opposed to
> fake interactions of a consumerist society.  It is the opposite of a
> "frivolous" killing, especially that it often ends in the perpetrator
> killing himself at the end, achieving a sort of communion through death. In
> other words, what is natural (social contact) but denied in actual life
> (thanks to alienation) is ritualistically reaffirmed by death.
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> But we are getting awfully speculative here....
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> Wojtek
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Perhaps, perhaps.... Culturally, these are scary times.