Wednesday 2 June 2010

"It's like a bad dream."

Michael Ryan's murderous assault upon the small English market-town of Hungerford on the 19th of August 1987 was attributed to various factors. After the dust had settled new gun laws were brought in to help try and prevent any recurrence because Ryan had an apparently unhealthy obsession with guns. Charges were leveled at his mother Dorothy for spoiling him, whilst the significance of his father's age at the time of Michael's birth, 55, and death from cancer 2 years previous also added meat to the pot. It is true we will never know whilst in the world why Michael Ryan chose to obliterate his life along with 16 others on that hot summery day but we can look close at the likely reasons, and in interpreting the true nature of the reality of Michael Ryan's world, we may even help to prevent such destructive tendencies from amongst ourselves.
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Because of his size he was tormented at school but refused to fight back. It does not take a genius to see the link with his inability for self-defence and his subsequent hoarding of weaponry. This is common in the "mass murderer" who goes on a rampage of violence. The fact that they often, like Charles Whitman in the 1960's, shoot family members and pets, and also torch their living arrangements does not indicate a hatred against those things but some disturbed psyche that monitors the unreasoning facilitation of the shooter to pack up all he believes to be of true value to him.
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Ryan's father's death is important but it is only symptomatic and follows in a long line of carefully entrenched chips at the psychic expression of the introverted man. This sense of loneliness and lack of control will manifest in one of three ways. Firstly, like with most individuals, the lack of power is allowed to be repressed and put down to common experience. Any bitterness against the wider society is then processed and exhausted through verbal expression and outrage. Sometimes these individuals will take the next step and become active in the political sphere to try and remonstrate with their low self esteem. This can be healthy. The other two ways are fundamentally more abnormal.
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If the individual already suffers from a preconception that they cannot accomplish their dreams because of the "unfairness" of the world around them, this low self-regard will fester into a warped attitude towards the society. With some they will target those they consider to be at the core of their own problems. The racially-based urbanite will look upon the "alien" as the result of his own powerlessness and the reason why he is not "topdog". The misfit, or socially inept, with the opposite sex generally follows two paths. One involves the "braggart" who is at heart the typical misogynist and the "shyboy" who appears all gentleman like but conceals a violent hatred of the feminine form, because he believes it is because of their innate womanliness that he lacks the credentials to make him a true man.
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Type A "braggart" will usually consort, and may even marry but any failure to manufacture a life that brings him a form of self-respect will bring consequences to those immediately around him. Type A is the "Jack-the-lad" type and he is hard to recognise but Type B "shyboy" is harder, and of the two more dangerous. Type B will devolve his character into the persona apparent to all, and the "secret life" one. The secret life of Type B may involve acts of criminality or even a lifestyle at odds with his known persona. Type B may find strength in visiting prostitutes, seeing these kind of women as the excuse he needs to believe that women are at the root of his problems, and since there can be nothing "lower than a whore" he finds it easier to form relations with these women. On occasion Type B will become a killer and will invariably find his victims amongst those he is familiar with.
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The third manifestation is the "spring exploder". This most dangerous of apparitions is in many ways a condensed form of Types A and B. The potential to be everyone's friend with the gift of the gab is there, but the awkwardness and self observation about his own shyness is intimidating to the extent he can not act on one path or the other. This tightening of the screw without any release of internal tension will cause the psyche and that which it views (the world) to schismatize into a fragmented idealism and this usually takes the form of extension to the property of the individual. In Ryan's case his armoury and car.
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His rampage begins with a kidnap attempt on Susan Godfrey and her two children. It is believed that his original intention was to rape her at gunpoint to satisfy what he considered to be his main problem - the lack of interaction with females. It was an ill-conceived plan that resulted in Ryan executing her before anything could happen. This intrusion into his secret fantasy world is the first tear in his perception of the unfolding of reality. It does not end until on the phone with the police it dawns on him the enormity of what he has done but even then it is distilled to a degree where he can operate on auto-pilot. The suicide, in practically all these cases, reflects the death wish of the individual who always felt he was of no worth to anyone, and in his self destructive massacre he seeks to realign the world view by disembodying others and peppering his notional state with the physical. Does he succeed?
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I can remember the strangeness of the news report on that afternoon. About a man on the rampage with an arsenal and with no one being able to prevent him. I felt the power he must have experienced and it is not glib to suggest that during those "bad dream" hours Michael Ryan had idolized himself to the role of a god. Judge, jury and executioner and at the end of his breathing the decision, unhindered, to finish his reality on what he deemed a permanent basis. These monstrous acts that affect all those they touch have a deeper significance for us. From these "aberations" we must seek to peer closer into that forest of green desires and perhaps we may be able to help and prevent such dislocation from ourselves.



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