Culture and Adam Lanza

Adam Lanza has been interesting to me for a while now and in spite of his elementary school shooting (see Sandy Hook shooting )for which he became known for for most people, there is also a more interesting aspect of his person which is his philosophy and general thoughts he had. By no means I want to glorify this cruel actions, however I also don't want to be a moralfag and refuse to consider his thoughts because he did those awful things.

1. Culture

The central point of Lanza's argumentation is that he rejects culture as an abstract force coercing people into certain behavioral patterns.

I highly recommend you read (and listen) to it yourself and get it from first hand instead of me explaining what he probably would explain better anyway. This is just some spare thoughts I had on this.

He compares his disdain for culture as similar to the role of technology and technological society in The Industrial Society And Its Future, too – essentially robbing people of their autonomy, dignity, and freedom – which is probably the most known work of similar tone and content. The comparison is not completely accurate as for instance a central point of Kaczynski was the power process and that is something which Lanza doesn't really mention, and it wouldn't make sense either since that is something distinct and specific to modern industrial society and not something that culture imposes on humans.

2. The "Feral Self"

It is also notable that Lanza refers to a "feral self", a self not touched by cultural values and consequentally free. This dismisses the fact that culture is something intrinsic to humans. Culture in any form existed, literally, since the dawn of mankind, and is impossible to seperate from humans. In most likelihood the differentiation is not "feral self <-> encultured self", but "autistic <-> neurotypical". This is not to dismiss his thought as a result of a mental defect or overly judge anything with armchair psychology rather than it is about pointing out that this hatred of culture is something inherent to every autistic person and alien to most of if not all non-autistic people. Moreover, my point is not to elevate autism to something that it isn't – like those "autism is my superpower", "Autism isn't a disability, it's being different!!", or whateverthefuck else you have – there's no judgement here, even though I have my subjective opinions, it's about understanding where he is coming from and making sense of this theory of the feral mind. When Lanza talks about the "feral self" that gets coerced into culture he is describing an autistic person having to adjust to arbritrary social rules and a complicated web of dos and do-nots that everyone else is able to understand from a young age and progressively even more so the older he gets. Naturally this also includes taboos and no-gos which are only comprehensible to people for whom it is natural. The "feral self" does not exist in normal people and the friction that culture causes is for the most part a concern of autistic people, because normal people don't feel like they are being coerced into anything at all, while it caused great hatred in Lanza, and probably a lot of other autistic people who, too, do not respect those rules as something natural and self-explanatory.

Lanza realized this point to a certain degree when he says that mental illness and intellectual disability are barriers to being influenced by culture, but he doesn't draw this particular connection.

Culture and Adam Lanza

1. Culture

2. The "Feral Self"

3. Further Reading