A troubled 19-year old, estranged from family and having bounced around for years in foster homes and group homes, dumped by a girlfriend, and a day earlier having been fired from his job, goes into Omaha’s Westroads Mall with an assault rifle and guns down holiday shoppers and employees. Then kills himself.

In a suicide note he writes that he will no longer be a burden to anyone. And that he would be famous. (“Thoughts on Solitude,” by Wendy M. Wright, in Weavings, XXIII:6, p.9)

No longer be a burden to anyone. And be famous.

The young man had concluded that something was so wrong with him, so repugnant, so unacceptable, that he was nothing but a burden to all. He believed that his killing spree would finally gain the attention he so desperately craved.

I. The Human Condition: Origina…