The banality of James Eagan Holmes
Christopher Records
JULY 20, 2012 5:04PM
... I don’t recall ever meeting James Holmes, although he apparently was part of some of the same campus organizations that I was, and apparently lived, at least for a brief time, in the same apartment complex as some close friends of mine. He appears, at least according the reports that have come out thus far, to have been, unsurprisingly, a largely quiet and reclusive person, and to have mostly kept to himself ...
Men like James Holmes are probably more numerous, more common than we care to think about. Their world, however unhinged they are, is the same as ours, and they can do violence to it with much greater ease than they can enliven or comfort or uplift it.
Whatever the motive, whatever the circumstance, then, whatever the inspiration for James Holmes to do what he did last night, he is not an especially impactful or remarkable human being, except maybe in the sense that a void is deep or that a black hole is massive or that death is important. Magnitude is not the same as value.
In the end, that business, the business of valuing, of helping and comforting and uplifting, is left to the rest of us. Even if terrorists and murders come out of our schools and colleges and communities and families, then so do doctors and teachers and architects and all sorts of other people who value their lives and the lives of others. It is those people, including those whom Mr. Holmes injured and killed last night, who go about their lives, building or thinking or trying, searching for and hopefully finding some purpose to augment and inspire, to animate and enrich, and to affect and impact themselves and those around them.
http://open.salon.com/blog/creco002/2012/07/20/the_banality_of_james_eagan_holmes
