THE CASE OF THE MASS SHOOTER AT ORLANDO

Analysis of such cases show that such people are obsessed with a one sided story of the case. When rejected, they tend to believe that others must be wrong in doing so. Sticking to a one sided story, they ignore others’ points of view. For example, the gunman was rejected due to his own deceptive behaviour but he considered the rejection as discriminatory behaviour of others who had a negative perception of him. They develop a strong belief that the other person is the oppressor and that they are the oppressed. This kind of thinking is unquestionably one sided, but they cannot see this. They are obsessed with unilateralism. Consequently, they get filled with anger which increases day by day until their whole personality is engulfed in it. At this point, they know nothing except hate, anger and revenge, and the final result is breakdown. It has rightly been said: ‘When one’s ego is touched it turns into super ego and the result is breakdown.’ The solution is that, those who are free of such negative sentiments as they are personally detached from the situation, should play an objective role. These ‘outsiders’ are generally teachers and counsellors. In that capacity, they must try to re-engineer the minds of people who have become psychologically warped and help them come to terms with reality. Every angry man is angry because of his reaction to something. But reactionary thinking stems purely from an unrealistic approach. Address the mind of an angry man by reasoning with him and very soon he will of his own, reappraise his behavior. Everyone has an area of the mind which is amenable to reasoning, and by addressing this soft corner, you will surely conquer him without having recourse to the use of guns or bombs. o Forgiving is Divine To err is human; everyone is bound to do something wrong at one time or another. But, in such a situation, revenge means committing not just one mistake, but making mistake after mistake. On the contrary, forgiveness means undoing wrongs with rights. Perhaps this concept is expressed in the saying: ‘To err is human, but to forgive is divine’.