Demons

"On the individual level, Rodger’s complaint was mostly about his station. He believed, through whatever delusion of media or upbringing, that he was entitled to sex with beautiful blonde women and the lifestyle that suggests: fast cars, high status, the respect of peers. On the social level that type of complaint translates to misogyny, racism, hatred of the poor: one class demanding another serve its interests absolutely, even to the point of destruction. On the cosmic level those philosophies are intrinsically evil: they require self-love to the exclusion of real love, the love of others, and the love of God.

In my view, the most senseless thing to do in the coverage of this story is to agree to participate in Rodger’s delusion and claim his murders are evidence of an irreconcilable conflict between the interests of women and the interests of men. The reality is that the vast, vast, vast majority of men do not view women as interchangeable, and do not see us as reducible to hair color and body type. I refuse to tack this story onto recent trends like the “not all men” tag because absolutely everyone’s interests are being ill-served here. The dichotomy here isn’t, I think, between men and women; it’s between people who orient their love outward and those who orient their love inward, in other words good and evil. To lose track of that is to lose track of the source of the moral disorder and instead to get swept up in it."