Are some serial killers created? An observation, by Len Howlett

I had been to North Miami Beach High (no, but I was sure spaced out by the time I graduated --an old throwaway punchline from Rowan and Martin's "Laugh In") to a seminar on teaching A.P. Chemistry, and there was a lunch break with a convenient little neighborhood deli across the street.

I went into the place and had a seat at a table in the small, almost full dining area which may have had a dozen tables in it. A guy I recognized from the seminar came up to my table and asked if I would mind if he sat in the chair across from mine. I invited him to join me. He was a personable guy and told me that he was from Queens or Brooklyn, or whatever borough it turned out that Dave Berkowitz lived in during his adolescence. The talk was light, and I was a curious figure to him since I was possibly one of the few people that he ever met with a Southern accent who loved Manhattan.

So, the talk went on, and it ranged from topical stuff to teaching and its pros-and-cons. I observed that maybe the best or worst of our tendencies embodied the vast potential that inadvertently plays a part in shaping future lives, which in the end, was more important and long lasting than anything they could possibly retain of the facts of Chemistry.

"After all," I said, "we could influence their view of the academic and the adult world just through example, either for the better or the worse. Then I made a statement--mostly in-jest-- that I didn't want to feel like I had helped make any serial killers or engendered resentment that twisted young psyches. Looking back, I can only believe now that I must have been reacting to some recent news about a case that was still active, and I was regarding my corned beef and half-a-sour pickle when I felt the stillness of a significant pause and a rather sobering, quiet response from him.

"I may have," he said. I looked up to catch the light humor I would expect to see in a satirical reply. It wasn't there. He was somber, like someone who feels the gravity of an act gone bad and the silent record of guilt.

He added, "Not as a teacher, but as a student."

"How so?" I asked.

There was another significant silent space and a measured response. Then he said he went to the same high school that David Berkowitz did and asked if I remembered who that was. "Of course, I did," I replied. He had been in the same class as Berkowitz.

I asked what kind of kid David was: his reply was the expected description of a friendless, lonely boy who ate every meal alone, sitting in the cafeteria at a table by himself. My lunch companion said with detectable guilt that he had been one of a group of four boys who would sit the next table over and ridicule and harass him every day while David sat and wordlessly ate his lunch.

The topic he remembered most frequently was the question, "So what you got planned, Dave? You got a hot date? I hear all the girls taking about you? They really like you. They're crazy about you, Dave." You know, the usual compassion of high schoolers and humanity when it's allowed to distract attention from it's own loneliness and self-doubt.

Then he said, "So, I come home one day some years later and open the paper and who do I see on the front page being led away by the police wearing that frightened smirk that I had watched him walk around with for years in high school?" He said he recognized Berkowitz immediately, even before he read his name, even though he hadn't thought about him in some years. And then, he said that he often found himself wondering--if just maybe--he had played a part in what happened later. "Maybe, maybe not," was all that I could say.

But nowadays, I think about it and the unknown consequences of unthinking actions.

Dalai Lama states that "sex leads to trouble"

"I may now add that civilization is a process in the service of Eros, whose purpose is to combine single human individuals, and after that families, then races, peoples and nations, into one great unity, the unity of mankind. Why this has to happen, we do not know; the work of Eros is precisely this. These collections of men are to be libidinally bound to one another. Necessity alone, the advantages of work in common, will not hold them together. But man's natural aggressive instinct, the hostility of each against all and of all against each, opposes this programme of civilization. This aggressive instinct is the derivative and the main representative of the death instinct which we have found alongside of Eros and which shares world-dominion within it." --Sigmund Freud, Civilization and its Discontents, P. 119, 1930.


WWW--The Dalai Lama's right, you know. There's a gal who I see when I go out who's interested in me, and I think she's all that, cute, etc. . But I don't want any part of it. This isn't to say that I don't believe there are those magical folks among us who can handle love and intimacy, but they're a tiny minority of humanity who don't let it get to them and who can control themselves. It's also not because I don't want to see humanity perpetuate--it's that I know there are too many of us, and we're not all that.

The Lama stated some of the unholy truth this week:

Sexual pressure, sexual desire, actually I think is short period satisfaction and often, that leads to more complication. ...[There] are too [many] ups and downs. ...Naturally as a human being ... some kind of desire for sex comes, but then you use human intelligence to make [the] comprehension that those couples [are] always full of trouble. And in some cases there is suicide [and] murder cases. (AFP, 11.28.2008)

What? The Buddhists are cynics? Uh, yeah, that's a big part of Buddhism, a renunciation of this world. Most Buddhists view the world as being a place of futility, a trap for the soul, something very transitory, and brimming with evil. Correct, and it's how I view the world. Are all relationships futile? No, I don't believe this. But it's close, very close to being that way given the predictability of people's behavior in a relationship.

Freud was right once again. Sex binds us, even when it shouldn't. There would be no point whatsoever to any of this without some carrots (go wild with the symbolism of that, I know you will). The most horrible truth is that when one partner loves another more than the other, they're the inevitable victim in the equation. Almost no one is capable of coping with the responsibility of someone who loves you more than you love them. Being a restless species, we try perversely to make things worse. Not content to leave intimacy despoiled, we inject crass materialism into-the-mix, then blame each other when we fail to meet our mutual expectations.

The worst aspects of humanity have been nurtured under the capitalist order we've all inhabited in our lives, not that it's the only system or order to ruin love and sex. Women in West are especially guilty of promoting this convenient commercialism, wrapped-up as it were in "gifts" that are a mandatory prerequisite for things to be "romantic." Even worse is the female-fixation on the blustering mate who shows constant certainty that they have "things under control," the "Mr. Fix-it" syndrome, when they most definitely have nothing under control.

"Lie to me," she said, "Tell me what I want to hear, not the truth, not ever."

"If you insist," he said. You could just as easily rearrange the genders here, it doesn't matter. We just want to get laid. Men, women, regardless of sexual orientation or how raging our libidos might be. At some point, the flesh needs servicing, empty notions of "romance" aside. Lies are crucial in a culture where the lines between instinct and the repressive conditioning of civilization have blurred.

Self-interest and false sentimentality have been used to keep us buying garbage we never wanted or needed, distracting us away from what's important--each other. We bought it, literally. The Lama goes further than I ever would, Buddhism not being an entirely "humanist" religion and philosophy. He says that we shouldn't get too attached to anyone--not even our loved ones or our children.

This is where I would draw-the-line, and I believe we all need focus on empathy towards others.

There are many sects of Buddhism, so you can tell that they don't agree on such issues either. Yet, he's right about sex. That spells trouble and the over-complication of our lives, it means unnecessary drama and irrational compromise. Men and women are going to have to live separately for a long time before we're all ready for sustainable cohabitation...if that's even possible or desirable.

Hats go off to the lucky few who've already achieved it.

The basic difference between the East and the West is geographical location. The cultural sources are the same. Men and women--and individuals-in-general--are much farther apart than mere cultures in the modern world.

Freud was also right that we're always going to be in conflict with our animal side. Sometimes, a cigar really is just a cigar (why do some feminists use Freudian imagery so much?)...and you can keep it anyway. "Let's do it" might be about the most intellectually and morally honest greeting, but honesty is the last thing anyone cares about. It's enough to turn anyone off. Trouble? Brother, you don't know the meaning of "trouble."