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Las Vegas Shooting and the Consciousness of Violence


  I have listened to news reports and read few comments on the personality of the suspected Las Vegas shooter. So far, everybody seems to agree that the picture of his life as presented does not agree with the action that was credited to him, but I disagree with such conclusion. For me, he is capable of doing it. In fact, any ‘Gentleman’ is capable of anything dangerously contradictory.

  There are existential and psychological tested reasons for my claim. If anything, the picture of the life of the man as presented shows him as a revel, an aesthetic or one with an egoistic character trait within existential character trait analyses. There are four existential character traits: Aesthetic/Egoistic, Ethical, Religious and Analytical/Philosophical.

  Any aesthetic/egoistic character, according to Kierkegaard, is a revel with little or no sense of responsibility to societal morality or values. Also, based on Nietzschian’s analyses such a person will be categorized as possessing ‘Dionysian’ character trait. By Wole Soyinka’s analyses, he would be seen as possessing the ‘Ogunnian’ trait.

  Inherent in this character trait is a form of impulsive destructive tendency that often thrives on circumstantial negligence or omission of the society. For instance, when Dr. Amao Temitayo Ayanbisi manipulated 94 results of 2013/2014 graduating students of English and International Studies of Osun State University, who would have imagined that such a ‘gentle and easy going’ senior academic would do what she did? As if that was not terrible enough, she connived with Professors Olukoya Ogen, Alebiosu Christopher, Akintayo and others to push the crime on 8 innocent people who they were going to claim had password to the computer and could have changed the results until I stood against them and confronted them with incontrovertible evidences that she manipulated the results.

  And, of course, the records of how these societal ‘gentlemen’ and woman, Professors, marked me for destruction and elimination are there for all to see.
Now, theoretically, whenever anything is perceived to threaten the ‘reveling’ of an aesthetic character or a group of such characters, such a thing is marked for destruction… of course, sets of irrational or arbitrary actions will follow from one with such character trait to protect his/her interest, even to the point of death to save his/her dignity. We cannot explain the reason Agave killed Pentheous in The Bacchae of Euripides till today than that she was under the influence of ‘Dionysian orgy’! The Dionysian spirit is the irrational motivation for the actions of every reveler or aesthetic characters.

  I will say that if that man had lived his life as a revel all his life, he was capable of what he was accused of…
 ‘Bode Ojoniyi is a Postdoctoral Fellow of ACLS/AHP
He writes from UG, Legon, Ghana. 
#For more on/about existential character traits and the consciousness of crime or violence, contact me at: bodetope@gmail.com

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