An active shooter has just killed nineteen children and two teachers at Robb elementary school in Uvalde Texas. This kind of horror has happened a lot lately and whenever these heartbreaks happen, people wonder what could possibly drive people to do such evil. While I don’t pretend to know all their motives, I do know one thing that motivates people do extreme evil: feeling worthless they perpetrate immense evil as a way to be famous and to therefore obtain symbolic immortality. This has happened throughout history.
If you can’t get attention and thus somehow obtain a symbolic immortality through doing something good, or at least in some sense, neutral, then you can always do evil. The Temple of Artemis of the Ephesians was 380 feet long, 180 feet wide, 60 feet tall, and took one hundred and twenty years to build. But in 356 BCE, a man destroyed the temple by setting its wooden roof ablaze. They caught that man right away and tortured him on the rack. He confessed that he burned the temple so that he would be famous. Well, the Ephesians weren’t going to let that happen so they prescribed what was later to be called a Damnatio Memoriae: anyone who mentioned the arson’s name would be executed. The arson’s name was to be scrubbed from history—a fate the Romans considered worse than death. But we know the arson’s name: it’s Herostratus. Fiction and non-fiction books, plays, poems, films, and even art works have been done about Herostratus, but none of those things have been done about architect of the temple. Such is the human lust for fame. Everyone would agree that fame for doing something wonderful surpasses fame, or infamy, for doing something horrible, but doing something wonderful takes skill and hard work—it’s easier to become famous for doing evil.
What people will do for infamy is hard to read (this is a warning about what follows) but why they do what they do tells us much about the human quest for immortality. We noted earlier the literal immortality attempts of the first emperor of China, Qin Shih Huang, who buried alive 460 scholars who failed to fulfill their promise of bringing him an elixir of eternal life. Well, China’s communist revolutionary Mao Zedong (1893–1976), who became the first chairman of communist China, certainly didn’t want to be outdone by the legacy of the first emperor of China! Thus Mao Zedong boasted in a 1958 speech to the party functionaries, “What’s so unusual about Emperor Shih Huang of the Chin Dynasty? He had buried alive 460 scholars only, but we have buried alive 46,000 scholars.”[1] As I mentioned in my book, Why Does God Allow Evil?, when I first read this I thought “buried alive” must be a metaphor for something less horrible—I could hardly believe it!—but then I kept reading. Live burial became a common method of execution in China.
Charles Lindberg became world famous as the first person to complete a solo nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean on May 20-21, 1927. But Lindberg and his wife were struck with tragedy when their first child was kidnapped. The kidnapping garnered the attention of the entire nation and what he did was called “the crime of the century.” But before they captured the actual killer, over 200 people confessed to the kidnapping and murder of the Charles Lindberg baby, yet none of them were the actual killer.[2] Such is the desire for attention—even bad attention.
Another infamy seeker was the BTK killer (for bind, torture, kill). He murdered at least ten people from 1974 to 1991. But the BTK killer wasn’t getting the attention he craved, so in 1978 he sent a letter to Wichita’s KAKE-TV complaining, “How many do I have to kill before I get my name in the paper or some national attention?”[3] Similarly, in 1988 John Miller abducted 8-year-old April Tinsely while she was playing outsider her home and subsequently raped and murdered her. Miller taunted police for the next 30 years. One note Miller left tied to a bicycle read: “Hi Honey, I been watching you. I am the same person that kidnapped an [sic] rape an [sic] kill April Tinsely. You are my next victim if you don’t report this to police an [sic] I don’t see this in the paper tomorrow or on the local news….”[4] John Lennon (1940–1980) was killed by Mark David Chapman who said, “I committed this act for attention…to, in a sense, steal John Lennon’s fame.”[5] In the parole hearing Chapman said, “That bright light of fame, of infamy, notoriety was there. I couldn’t resist it. My self-esteem was shot, and I was looking for an easy way out. It was a bad way out but it was the way I chose, and it was horrible.”[6] Recently, German nurse Neils Hoegel admitted “to injecting patients with drugs that can cause heart failure or circulatory collapse so he could then try to revive them and, when successful, shine as a saviour before his medical peers.”[7]Police estimate that he may have killed as many as 180 patients.
People still ask why the October 1, 2017, Las Vegas shooter killed 58 people and wounded 851 others. In today’s (as I was writing this for my book) Los Angeles Times, a front-page article was titled “Portrait of Vegas gunman missing a motive.” The article stated that law enforcement had been unable to determine the motive. That’s an odd conclusion since the article quotes the gunman’s brother as saying that his brother “would have planned the attack to kill a large amount of people because he would want to be known as having the largest casualty count. Paddock [the shooter] always wanted to be the best and known to everyone.”[8] We may not know all of his reasons in this lifetime, but he knew he’d be infamous! He went out in an infamous blaze of gory (that’s not a typo).
The Parkland school shooter, who murdered seventeen people, recorded a video prior to his crime where he said, “It’s gonna be a big event… When you see me on the news you’ll all know who I am.” Then on the day of the massacre he said, “Today is the day. The day that it all begins. The day of my massacre shall begin… All the kids in school will run in fear and hide. From the wrath of my power they will know who I am.”[9]
The U. S. Secret Service examined the “thinking and behavior of the 83 American attackers and near-lethal approachers” and identified eight major motives for their attacks or planned attacks. What topped the list? Attackers desired “To achieve notoriety or fame.”[10] It’s better to go out in a blaze of glory than have no glory at all. As people in the America continue to cast off God and the literal immortality offered through Jesus, how many more will kill if they think that symbolic immortality is the only immortality available?
But Jesus offers literal immortality: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). Here’s a short argument for the resurrection of Jesus.
This has been excerpted from my book Immortal: How the Fear of Death Drives Us and What We Can Do About It.
[1] Quoted in Li Cheng-Chung, The Question of Human Rights on China Mainland (Republic of China: World Anti-Communist League, China Chapter, September 1979), 12, as quoted in Jasper Becker, Hungry Ghosts: Mao’s Secret Famine (New York: Free Press, 1996), 145. Becker cites many cases of live burial.
[2] Saul M. Kassin and Lawrence S. Wrightsman, The American Jury on Trial: Psychological Perspectives (New York: Routledge, 2012), 89.
[3] Caroline Shively and the Associated Press, “Wichita Police: ‘BTK Is Arrested,’” Fox News, February 26, 2005, http://www.foxnews.com/story/2005/02/26/wichita-police-btk-is-arrested.html, (accessed June 28, 2018).
[4] Steve Kroft, “Genetic Genealogy,” Michael Karzis producer, 60 Minutes, first aired October 21, 2018.
[5] “Mark David Chapman killed Lennon for fame,” UPI, Oct. 15, 2004, https://www.upi.com/Archives/2004/10/15/Mark-David-Chapman-killed-Lennon-for-fame/2571097812800/, (accessed May 1, 2018).
[6] Associated Press and Ashley Collman and Alex Greg, “‘It took incredible planning and incredible stalking’: Mark Chapman BRAGS about killing John Lennon and how he couldn’t resist ‘that bright light of fame’ in latest parole hearing,’” Daily Mail, 28 August 2014, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2737101/Mark-David-Chapman-brags-incredible-planning-stalking-notorious-murder-John-Lennon.html#ixzz5EHcnZ9OZ, (accessed May 1, 2018).
[7] AFP and staff writers, “German police say former nurse Niels Hoegel may have killed up to 180 with lethal drug overdoses,” News, August 29,1917, http://www.news.com.au/world/europe/german-police-say-former-nurse-niels-hoegel-may-have-killed-up-to-180-with-lethal-drug-overdoses/news-story/194c5f51f904ce277baec1595ff29ea2, (accessed June 25, 2018).
[8] David Montero, “Portrait of Vegas gunman missing a motive,” Los Angeles Times, August 4, 2018, A9.
[9] Rafael Olmeda, “Parkland shooter Nikolas Cruz brags on cellphone videos, ‘I’m going to be the next school shooter,’” SunSentinel, May 30, 2018, http://www.sun-sentinel.com/local/broward/parkland/florida-school-shooting/fl-reg-florida-school-shooting-phone-video-release-20180530-story.html, (accessed, 7-4-2018).
[10] Robert A. Fein and Bryan Vossekuil, “Protective Intelligence & Threat Assessment Investigations: A Guide for State and Local Law Enforcement Officials” U. S. Department of Justice, January 2000, https://fas.org/irp/agency/doj/protective.pdf, (accessed October 4, 2017).
