From: Kathryn Aegis (aegis@igc.apc.org)
Date: Fri Oct 10 1997 - 07:58:45 MDT
Many of you may have heard something on the news regarding the mass
killings a few days ago at a high school in Pearl, Mississippi.
Extended print accounts regarding it have revealed a few details of
particular interest to anyone who wonders into what possible directions
the memes we propogate can go.
After first noting that nothing justifies the actions that these
youngsters took against their own kind, I would call your attention
to a few very telling points regarding the thought processes and
motivation behind these horrendous acts. I'll lay out the clues and
a few thoughts on them (these quotes are from the Washington Post):
'Shortly after the killings, police began picking up rumors that
Woodham and his friends, whom classmates and teachers describe as
brainy loners who called themselves 'The Group', were involved in
everything from animal sacrifices to embracing in bizarre form the
anti-Christian views of the 19th century philosophy German
philosopher Frederich Nietzche'.
One of Woodham's friends, Justin Sledge, interrupted a prayer vigil
to state that Woodham 'went mad because of society. We, as a
society, must change.' He later clarified: 'society as a whole puts
down the thinkers and true geniuses of the world and replaces them
with men whose strength is physical strength and physical abilities.'
What does all of this mean? It's too early to say for sure, and I am
sure that the trial will reveal more, but I already discern a general
societal conflict regarding hyperintelligent youngsters feeling
trapped and isolated in an undeveloped small town that happens to be
located in the one state of the Union consistently at the bottom of
the rankings of scholastic achievement. They banded together and
looked for support in some of the same memetic coordinates as we do,
but without mature guidance they quickly developed those memes in a
pathological direction that led to horrible consequences.
The town seems to have chosen to deal with this situation in terms of
'anti-Christian' behavior--I wonder if anyone there will take a few
minutes to consider how these boys were treated by their peers. This
is not the first case in which a brainy child went postal on his
classmates, one other made the news a few years ago. I think
that these children are the forerunners of our future, and their
parents and schools do not know what to do with them. And so some of
them fall, in various ways, some more public than others.
Sin,
Kathryn Aegis
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