Insanity is part of being human – and we’re all potentially unstable

Robert Aaron Long murdered eight people in Atlanta Tuesday. That’s what police tell us.

Why did he do it? Some people say it was a hate crime since most of the victims were Asian. Others say this introverted 21-year old is just crazy. And there are other wildly different explanations.

Those who knew him in high school in Woodstock, Ga., just a few years ago are shocked. They say the boy they knew was caring and kind. He was an active member of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes and he talked about wanting to share God’s love with others.

“From what I can remember he was a really smart kid,” a former student told Fox News. “He was really quiet and kept to himself the majority of the time.”

I’m not inside Long’s mind, so I can’t say exactly why a caring teen became a cold-blooded murderer just a few years later. But I’d like to suggest that you or I could have done something similar. The civilization we see all around us — with our outward calm and polite behavior — is a thin veneer over something far more savage.

At least a touch of hidden insanity is born into each one of us. The interesting question isn’t why Long suddenly murdered eight people — but rather why more people don’t act more like him.

At a Wednesday morning news conference, Capt. Jay Baker of the Cherokee County, Ga., Sheriff’s Office gave us a little bit of insight into what Long is telling police.

“He has an issue that he considers a sex addiction and sees these [massage spas] as something that allows him to go to these places,” Baker said. “It’s a temptation for him that he wanted to eliminate. … He was pretty much fed up and kind of at the end of his rope, and yesterday was a really bad day for him, and this is what he did.”

Did you ever see a 1993 movie called “Falling Down“? The movie didn’t appeal to me when it first came out, because I saw it as some sort of action adventure. When I finally watched it years later, I realized how wrong I had been.

“Falling Down” is a cautionary tale about what can happen to a normal person when he’s pushed too far by the other normal human beings around him. On this horrible day, the character played by Michael Douglas turns violent in the pursuit of what he considers simple decency from those around him. The film’s director didn’t intend for the character to be the hero, but I’m not so sure he isn’t a dark hero for a modern age.

I believe we are all seething masses of contradictions and insanity. Most people have an internal view of themselves as good and righteous — by their own standards — but a different side comes out of all of us under certain types of pressure.

Earlier this week, I dealt with a woman at work who I’ve known for several years. I’ve known her as a kind and loving person who was soft-spoken and avoided conflict. I would have described her as caring and loving.

But during a conflict she had with another person this week, I saw another side of her which was completely unlike what I had known of her. She had reason to be upset with someone, but what I saw was over-the-top, irrational anger. She even mentioned that she wished she had a gun to display openly in the room when she saw the man she was angry with — as a not-so-subtle warning.

Do I believe she would get angry enough to kill the man? I like to believe she couldn’t do that — just as I like to believe I couldn’t kill people — but I also wouldn’t have believed she could have been this irrationally angry.

There are some people who choose to go down an evil or violent path — and they know what they’ve become. But I think most of us have the capability to mentally break down — to go crazy, so to speak, and suddenly do things nobody would possibly expect.

I know that something of this sort could happen to me. I hope not. I don’t expect it to happen. But I know myself — and the hidden inner thoughts which I don’t share with others — well enough to know that I could crack and become violent.

And I also know that everybody who knows me would tell reporters that this was something they never saw coming from me.

We’re all potentially unstable, under the right circumstances. The veneer of civilization that’s all around us helps to keep us in check — but that layer is thinner than most people imagine.

None of this is to justify or excuse Long, of course. In order to live together in a society, we’re forced to hold those horrible impulses inside and not act on them, so he’s responsible for his actions.

Was Long crazy? I can’t possibly know his mental state on Tuesday, but I’m certain that some form of insanity is built into every one of us — including you.

I am most afraid of the people who have hidden their dark sides so successfully that they don’t even know what’s lurking inside. I’m less afraid of those who can say — as I can — that we’re capable of reverting to violent savagery under certain circumstances — but who can say each and every day, “I’m not going to kill or become violent or evil. Not today.”

We’re all more like Robert Aaron Long than we want to believe.