12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos

A RELIGIOUS PROBLEM It does not seem reasonable to describe the young man who shot twenty children and six staff members at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, in 2012 as a religious person. This is equally true for the Colorado theatre gunman and the Columbine High School killers. But these murderous individuals had a problem with reality that existed at a religious depth. As one of the members of the Columbine duo wrote: "The human race isn’t worth fighting for, only worth killing. Give the Earth back to the animals. They deserve it infinitely more than we do. Nothing means anything anymore." People who think such things view Being itself as inequitable and harsh to the point of corruption, and human Being, in particular, as con­temptible. They appoint themselves supreme adjudicators of reality and find it wanting. They are the ultimate critics. The deeply cynical writer continues: "If you recall your history, the Nazis came up with a 'final solution' to the Jewish problem. . . . Kill them all. Well, in case you haven’t figured it out, I say 'KILL MANKIND.' No one should survive." For such individuals, the world of experience is insufficient and evil—so to hell with everything!