“One kills a man, one is an assassin; one kills millions, one is a conqueror; one kills everybody, one is a god.”— Jean Rostand, biologist, author, activist
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Some People’s Opinions
Charlie Kirk’s murder is no better or worse than the murder of any other good person. All the talk about his murderer’s mainstream political, cultural, and religious affiliations is beside the point. There is no mainstream political, cultural, or religious movement that endorses the assination of anyone within their own culture. You cannot connect the logic of murdering another person within your own context with any generally accepted national platform or institution.
I realize this is somewhat vague. There have been generally unaccepted national platforms that advocate murder. There have been individuals who’ve murdered others under the auspices of institutional authority. But sane people are not sanctioned to murder others within their own domain for their own advancement.
Of course, we will allow and encourage murder when it is justified and legal. This limits murder to situations of mercy killing, self defense, protection, war, espionage, and such. In all cases the murder is not presented as righteous; it’s justified as necessary. It’s the most efficient thing to do.
A person who individually and unilaterally plots, plans, and conducts the execution of someone they don’t know for some intangible benefit is not sane. It’s a suicidal venture, not a sane plan of action.
Murderous States of Mind
I was suicidal once; it was the result of a hallucinogenic plant. The plant put me in a state of complete psychosis. Whatever actions I might have taken under those conditions would have in no way implicated any normal system of thought, political platform, or religious belief.
It was a hellish state of mind, but the experience was useful. I was entirely lucid and all of my thoughts were eminently reasonable. It was my perceptions and memories that were corrupted. It gave me the experience of finding myself in an entirely different world.
In this case, that was a profoundly evil and painful world. Luckily for me, I was in an immobile, blind, and non-communicating state that wore off after 15 minutes.
I’ve spoken with climbing partners and therapy clients who have killed people, or so I assume. These were soldiers or criminals, and each group had a different mindset. These people were having trouble adjusting to normal life, but they were not manics.
These people never entirely lost their minds, though they endured abnormal situations and acted abnormally. They were forced into psychotic behaviors they did not intend or want to repeat. These peoples’ lives could be redeemed.
An assassin’s state of mind—aside from those who act under the direction of some authority—is unhinged. Any talk of justice, punishment, or “setting an example” for psychotic behavior is preposterous. Psychotics don’t see the reality that you and I see. What a psychotic needs is to be brought back to a functional reality. And while psychopathy does not change, it still behooves us to better understand what triggers psychotic behavior.
We’re talking about the actions of a psychopath or a psychotic, but that does not mean they are irrational. It is the defining characteristic of a psychopath that their world seems perfectly reasonable to them and, what’s more, they execute their plans effectively. A psychotic can also behave effectively at times. You’ll appreciate this if you read the more lucid serial killers, such as Ted Kaczynski’s Manifesto (Kaczynski 2020), or the interviews with Edward Kemperer (Scott 2024).
Understand Psychosis — It Is Inside You
When people are forced beyond their limits they behave strangely. Normal people are stable and resilient but, in certain times and under certain circumstances, many people temporarily lose their minds. We might call these people mentally ill, but that’s only when their behavior is unacceptable. The rest of the time they are thinking normally, or so we assume.
The main and simplest difference between psychopathy and psychosis is that psychopaths are indifferent and antisocial, while psychotics are delusional and out of touch. We don’t know if Kirk’s murderer was more of one or the other, and they could display the properties of both. In addition, neither of these conditions exclude being normal some of the time.
Being psychopathic is not at all the same as being schizophrenic, but is related to psychosis. People generally assume there are more schizophrenics than psychotics, but I believe this is untrue. It’s just that schizophrenics are obvious in their presentation, have more difficulty in their lives, and are more likely to seek help.
The prevalence of clinical schizophrenia in the population is estimated to be around 1%. About 10% of the population experience temporary or enduring subclinical psychotic-like states. The most vulnerable are 14 to 16-year old males (Lindgren 2024).
If you live in a large urban area then there will be a homeless shelter around which you’re likely to find many mentally disabled people. Many of these will be schizophrenics. It would be easy to say that there are an equally large number of psychopaths but, in fact, I suspect their numbers are higher because psychopaths are not socially disabled and are effective at hiding maladaptive behaviors. In addition, some cruel and indifferent psychopathic behaviors are rewarded.
“Previous views of psychotic symptomatology as intrinsically pathological have been replaced by the idea that, in many cases, psychotic symptoms may fall within a spectrum of normal experience.”— Ian Kelleher (2011)
As a psychotherapist, I have learned that many of my clients exercise dysfunctional reasoning. I don’t know what this says about those people who do not come to me for counseling, but I suspect many “normal” people think similarly dysfunctional thoughts, they’re just not bothered by them.
I also work with highly sane and rational clients to better manage their interactions with irrationally behaving partners, family members, clients, and co-workers. Most of us in the West have a view of the world that’s tainted with psychosis that comes either from ourselves or those around us.
Can We See Through Peoples’ Masks?
No one is as they appear to be because no one has just one personality. You have no idea of what other personalities exist behind a person’s socially presented mask. The one thing that all of us are taught is how to behave, not how to think clearly or pursue virtue. The purpose of all public education is to create personalities that respect social order.
If you’d like help understanding, call me.
Whenever an assassin appears among us, people react as if this represents a huge dislocation and a wild exception from the norm. If you better appreciated how common it is for people to think irrationally, then you would be less surprised. Subclinical psychotic-like experiences occur in 5-8% of the adult population, with higher rates for adolescents (van Os 2009).
Most psychotic experiences do not lead to a state of enduring psychosis, but that does not mean a person is immune in the future. Psychotic states may recur under certain circumstances, especially if a person finds themselves depressed, disturbed, or encouraged. In contrast, psychopathy is a more persistent state of mind.
“Of individuals with new, incident subclinical psychotic experiences at baseline, only 8% had persistence of the psychotic experiences at the subclinical level whereas 84% no longer presented with any psychotic experiences.” — J. van Os (2009, 190)
The reason we have a large number of homicidal people has little to do with cultural, political, or religious beliefs. It is related to the large number of psychotic and psychopathic individuals in the general population whose behaviors we accept, tolerate, condone, fail to recognize, consider as normal, elevate to management, and elect to public office.
The Awfulness of This Event
“People who don’t appreciate the awfulness of this event aren’t just lacking empathy — they’re naive. They apparently don’t realize that political violence pushes us backwards on the civil society evolutionary timeline.”— Jeff Maurer (2025)
I don’t agree with what Jaff Maurer implies. “Awfulness” is a moral term but he seems to be using it predictively. And while it’s easy to agree that awfulness is immoral, it’s hard to see that this event has not emerged from an already awful situation. In that case “this event” is like the dying canary in the coal mine. What’s awful is not the canary’s death as much as it is the toxicity of the coal mine.
But what is the coal mine in this metaphor? Is it people’s general attitudes, the high percentage of triggerable psychopaths or psychotics, or the vulnerability of the general population to violence? I believe this event indicates all three vulnerabilities.
The 100 days of full-scale internecine slaughter in Rwanda in 1994 was carried out by the “normal” population, and not by extremists or recognized psychopaths It was, however, institutionally triggered and coordinated (BBC 2019). 800,000 people died as neighbors murdered each other, and even family members murdered other family members.
What To Do?
I almost wish Charlie Kirk’s murderer was never found. At least that would keep people focused on the issues that underlie the situation. Now that it appears the assassin has been located, people will isolate this person, ascribe fault to their beliefs and associations, renormalize their own situations, and absolve themselves of further responsibility. There will be more sensational news, but few people will analyze the event any further.
What we should do is make an effort to understand the deranged mind, not for academic interest but because we all have some degree of vulnerability and responsibility. This person drifted into an illogical and homicidal world. For the most part, we don’t know how to see this before it happens, and we don’t know how to bring these people back.
Some are saying we must lower the level of vitriol. Others advise punishing anyone who expresses antisocial opinions. These are superficial measures that will not make enduring change.
What is needed is the empathy to understand how a person with a seemingly promising future can effectively commit their own suicide for no plausible reason. You know that empathy is not sympathy; we are not looking to make this event less awful, that much should be clear. But people also mistake empathy for a measure of condolence, and that’s not what it is.
Empathy creates understanding not agreement. Understanding only leads to agreement when you agree with the logic. In this case there will be no logic, but there still needs to be understanding. Understanding of the twisted logic that leads from perception of events in the world to assassination and self destruction. If you call this “the insanity defense,” then it’s our insanity that we’re defending.
References
BBC (2019 Apr 4). “Rwanda Genocide: 100 Days of Slaughter.” BBC News. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-26875506
Kaczynski, Theodore John (2020). Industrial Society and Its Future: Unabomber Manifesto. Independently published.
Kelleher, I., and Cannon, M. (2011). “Psychotic-like Experiences in the General Population: Characterizing a High-Risk Group for Psychosis.” Psychological Medicine 41(1):1-6. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/45166726_Psychotic-Like_Experiences_in_the_General_Population_Characterizing_a_High-Risk_Group_for_Psychosis
Lindgren, Maija (2024Aug). “Psychotic-like Experiences in a Nationally Representative Study of General Population Adolescents.” Schizophrenia Research 270: 237-45. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0920996424002974
Maurer, Jeff (2025 Sep 10). “The Full Badness of the Bad Thing.” https://www.imightbewrong.org/p/the-full-badness-of-the-bad-thing
Scott, Peter (2024). Kemper on Kemper: Interviews & Encounters with a Killer, Broken Bottle Press.
van Os, J., Linscott, R. J., Myin-Germeys, I., Delespaul, and P., Krabbendam, L. (2009). “A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of the Psychosis Continuum: evidence for a psychosis proneness-persistence-impairment model of psychotic disorder.” Psychological Medicine 39, 179–195. https://www.lydiakrabbendam.nl/images/publications/2014/08/VanOsPsychologicalMedicine2009.pdf
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