[Transation of Mpunkt's minutes to lecture by Freerk Huisken 18 January 2007, Leipzig]
School shootings are discussed in public as “individual acts.” It is said that the acts arose solely from the “sick brain” (“psychosis”) of the perpetrator. They have nothing to do with normal society – that’s the message. This will be disproved in the following.
1. School competition
Competition in school carries out a selection process for the later allocation of young people into occupations. Because human resources for the “lower” occupations are also – and primarily – needed, schools produce losers. If losers were not a desired result, competition would be a completely inappropriate means. Competition is an efficiency comparison: one must be better than the others. On the basis of fixed standards, the pupils must compete so as not to belong to the losers. In the end, they are irreversibly subjected to the results of this comparison. The school fixes the results of this pre-selection onto the pupils and their personality (“lazy,” “useless to teach”). This gets it backwards because school directly intends the production of losers; however, if there are losers, school is not criticized, but rather the losers themselves.
2. The homicidal maniac’s position on this judgment
The homicidal maniac does not accept this judgment that he belongs to the school losers. He adopts neither an I-don’t-give-a-fuck attitude, adapting himself in this way, and he does not objectively analyze the competition so as to criticize it. He is not disturbed as much by the material damage resulting from the judgment given over him, but feels insulted in his desire for recognition; it wounds his self-esteem. He compares his place in competition, including the associated judgment about his personality, with his image of himself as a personality worthy of respect, and comes to the conclusion “I did not deserve that!” This is no deviation from normality – completely the opposite, even self-esteem is a goal of education. In the end, people are supposed to be satisfied with themselves, completely apart from their success in competition. A desired form of this is, for example, to consider oneself “poor but decent,” since here one resigns oneself to poverty, which is imagined to be caused by one’s own behavior. One would therefore be commendable, even despite one’s lack of success. A tolerated form is the search for confirmation of self-esteem in the sideshows of private competition: the greatest sexual prowess, designer clothes, the most beautiful lawn …
3. Revenge thoughts
The school maniac holds firmly to the desire for recognition, but sees the means to its realization not in private swaggering with material goods. Instead they are transferred onto the desire for demonstrative revenge. He does not want to let the school’s finding of “failure” apply to him and turns it back on the school, teachers as well as students, who in his view have refused to show him his actually entitled respect. The logic of this revenge thought replicates the suffered damage. Instead of trying to understand it and rejecting it, he seeks compensation for it in its replication. He has the the right to obtain a higher position. Others are made responsible for the damage and are to suffer damage. These revenge thoughts are also normal in this society and can be found in criminal law. The state damages criminals through punishment because criminals have trespassed against its legal order, thus they have to be damaged. And the victims of crime can be pleased about the damage to the criminal by punishment, seeing compensation for the damage they suffered from the crime.
4. The difference: the transition of the revenge thought into practice
The homicidal maniac does not only have the simple thought of revenge (“I’ll show them!”) – he also puts it brutally into practice by killing others. Although the psychology of self-esteem is normal to this society and all demand respect, the homicidal maniac takes the liberty of a further transition. He not only disregards the state’s monopoly on violence, but copies it. He takes it into his own hands, not the state’s. He knows he is opposed to the state law (thus he is said to “lack any consciousness of right and wrong”), but regards this as an injustice. Instead he wants his right to success and recognition as it should apply to him according to his image of himself. He permit himself this transition because he makes the question of recognition central to his life, one of honor. If he re-establishes his honor only by killing others, his own life is then also all the same to him, which is why he kills himself as well. He finally fulfills his life’s meaning with the restoration of his honor.
5. Because of “abnormality”
Up to this last step, the practical execution of revenge, all the steps which the homicidal maniac carries out belong to the normality of this society. To this extent, one can grasp the homicidal maniac as an unwanted result of the adaptation desired by this society.