When a Killer’s Life Has More Value Than My Own

Every once in a while I say or ask something so stupid that I immediately regret it and sometimes people even make me regret opening my mouth for years and years to come afterwards. Today just might be one of those days because I have found myself once again asking a stupid question for which I’m likely going to get kicked in the proverbial teeth. The question is this: Is it just possible that a mass murderer’s life has far more value than my own? More specifically, did the mass shooter James Eagan Holmes in 2012 make a strong philosophical argument for why his life is far more valuable than mine in this grand game of life?

A Little Background

It almost seems as if my life is inexorably linked to mass shootings. Something about me changed in the year 2012 that is hard to put into words. That summer, in July to be exact, I started blogging. At the time I didn’t know exactly WHAT I was going to blog about but I knew I wanted to take blogging seriously and for that I needed to have something to blog about. Almost as if on queue, a young man by the name of James Eagan Holmes is believed to have walked into a packed movie theater in Aurora, Colorado and killed 12 innocent people in one of the deadliest mass shootings in US History. Months later, in December 2012, another young man by the name of Adam Lanza is believed to have carried out another mass shooting at Sandy Hook elementary in Newtown, Connecticut, killing 26 people (twenty of which were children between six and seven years old). These two shootings hallmarked a whirlwind next couple of years as I went down the rabbit hole of online conspiracy theories.

When I started blogging that summer it began with a simple question, just like it always does with me….a question that probably should never have been asked. That’s just how I roll and it frequently gets me in trouble. The question which almost seems ludicrous to me now was, “What if James Holmes wasn’t actually the shooter?” After all, the shooter was wearing head to toe body armor and there was not a single video camera that caught the shooters face on camera. How do we really know if he was the man behind the mask? I actually didn’t take my own question seriously at first, I was just playing devil’s advocate since the media was so sure of who the shooter was.

And then, almost by sheer accident, I ended up obsessively researching and blogging about three mass shootings that year (particularly the case in Aurora). As typical for me, I was getting myself in all sorts of trouble simply by asking questions. Next thing I know my blog went semi viral (probably too strong of a word) with a group of self-proclaimed “holmies” (James Holmes fans) and overnight my blog exploded. With a fully enraptured audience driving me on, I became so entwined with the case of James Eagan Holmes that I knew things about his childhood, things about his research projects, the names of police officers on scene that night, the names of the judges presiding on the case, names of many of the eyewitnesses as well as videos of first hand accounts, audio recordings of police and fire dispatch channels that evening, 911 recordings, names of conspiracy theorist bloggers and more.

In the course of my questioning things got REALLY weird for me personally. The “most litigious man in America” (Jonathan Lee Riches) was reading my blog and reached out to contact me with inside information (seriously..he has a wikipedia page explaining why he’s the most litigious man in Ameriaca). See, this is EXACTLY how I get myself in trouble. I’ll probably get sued for writing this. Then later on, a conspiracy blogger became so convinced that I was a government plant trying to cover up what really happened in the theater that night that he called me out online as a government shill. Not too long after that he was shot and killed by police after allegedly stabbing a random professor in a parking lot while on some sort of psychotic bender. Unfortunately I’d bumped elbows with some of his “friends” briefly online and suddenly I feared one of them might take his claims seriously that I was a government agent who may have helped speed along his untimely end and come after me. In other words, my life was getting REALLY weird, really fast. I ended up pumping the breaks on a book project I was writing about the shootings that year and have put it away all these years. And yet, I keep coming back to random thoughts.

The Notebook

One of the things I remember spending hours obsessing over was a mysterious notebook that may or may not have been written by James Holmes himself and may or may not have been sent to his personal psychiatrist at the University of Colorado days before the shooting as some sort of plea for help. In that notebook, it was said, was a glimpse into the deranged mind of a killer.

In the notebook Holmes allegedly described himself as having an:

“Odd sense of self. View myself as being divided. There is a biological me which is driven by biological needs….the real me is fighting the biological me.”

Thoughts attributed to James Holmes in his notebook.

Welcome to Eastern philosophy or Western Buddhism, James. I’ve expressed these same sort of thoughts about myself on this blog alone. But of course James Holmes and I have responded to these feelings in much different ways. James seems to have taken his thoughts and feelings about his divided self to an extreme. In fact, he makes the argument that NOT to take his thoughts to an extreme would be tantamount to living a meaningless life. While this may be disturbing for many I’m sure, the notebook offers a small glimpse into how Holmes came to the conclusion that mass murder was a better option than living a life without meaning.

I should probably be terrified that I can understand the above logic and can even expound upon it. After all, these are the thoughts of a madman, right? What I believe Holmes was working out is that there are two extremes we commonly acknowledge. There is the extreme of ultimate good (which he describes in symbolic form as the infinity symbol) and there is the extreme of ultimate evil (which he describes in symbolic form as negative infinity symbol). Between these two extremes are the “value” of one’s life. Extreme good, extreme evil and right down the middle all have no “real” value. Only degrees between good and evil (and not zero) have “value”. Being dead center he calls zero or valueless.

I believe in James Holmes mind, a person can contribute either good or evil to the world. The amount of which they contribute good or evil determines their “value” in life. But being a student of math, Holmes also understood the concept of absolute value. Absolute value refers to the number of positions from zero either to the left OR to the right. A positive number of 5 therefore has the same absolute value as negative 5 since both are five spaces away from zero. Therefore, in a twisted sort of logic, Holmes declared that taking lives was considered a negative trait and that by taking multiple lives in a mass shooting he was increasing his negative value in the game of life.

In this logic, Holmes might believe there there is no difference in the game of life between himself (who killed 12 people) and say a doctor who saved 12 lives. Both individuals have the same absolute value in life in that they effected 12 lives for the perceived good or bad. Conversely, the vast majority of people live their lives neither contributing good (saving lives) or contributing evil (taking lives) and thus most of us are worthless or without value. Society, and the world, is no better or worse off without us. We have simply wasted our time here on earth.

James Holmes, I would argue, changed society as we know it forever. Think about that for a moment. In one single evening of his life James Holmes literally changed the way an entire nation or society thinks. No longer do most people go to movie theaters in the same way they used to. I would wager that most of us now are at least vaguely more aware of the people around us. Whether we are conscious of it or not, we likely scan the audience continually looking for something off. If we see someone walking in all tall and lanky wearing a long black trench coat or body armor for example, chances are many of us will be watching that person at least from the corner of our eye until we ascertain that he is not likely a threat.

Long after James Holmes is dead, society is going to remember his name. He will be a footnote on this generation for along as recorded history survives. I on the other hand will likely leave no mark on society. A mere few years after my passing no one will even remember I existed. No one will care. My existence will have had neither a positive nor negative value in life. I just floated through life at net zero and thus was worthless and without value.

“Morale imbeciles are those who side with 0 or negative infinity. The ideals of society side with positive infinity.”

Attributed to James Holmes in his infamous notebook

Let me end by clarifying a few things. NO, I am NOT saying James Holmes was correct. No I am NOT saying I admire Holmes for having more value than me. No, I am NOT saying I’m considering shooting people in order to increase my own absolute value in life. All I’m saying is that it’s interesting to ponder the philosophical question Holmes has presented. If life is just a game and everything in this world isn’t real, would Holmes have spent his time in this game more wisely? Would his life have been of greater value than mine because he impacted society in some way and I did nothing to bring about good or evil in the world?

I probably got myself in big trouble again with my big fat mouth, but yeah, that’s just how I roll.