re: #47 researchok
Decorum is about shame.
Manners are about shame.
Respect for parents, family and friends is about shame- and these are all good things which encourage good behavior.
I could on and on, but if Lanza had considered what he wanted to do would shame and humiliate his family forever, he might not have done it.
When I was a kid, I had an opportunity to cheat on some exam in school. I didn’t out of fear I might get busted and humiliate my parents.
At first I wanted to point out that a guy who kills his own mother probably isn’t ever going to worry about what happens to his family, but on the other hand… What if he killed his mother because of what she’d think of him after his little terrorist episode? He planned to end it the way he did, obviously, but on the off-chance that he was stopped by police action and remained alive, he might have realized that his mother would be ashamed of him.
Unless the boffins get something readable off of his computer’s hard drive, we’ll never know what the heck was squirming in his brain. I’m also assuming that his relationship with his mother had at least a small degree of normality at one time… Who the hell knows… But it’s a thought.