The Viable Alternative

I rarely if ever watch the news, so really, up until a week ago, about three months after he killed all those people and then himself, I didn’t know much about Elliot Rodger beyond the fact that he was a 22 year old virgin who allegedly had Asperger’s Syndrome and was angry because he couldn’t get any girls.

However, after hearing his name brought up repeatedly and that he had made a bunch of YouTube videos including one a day or two before he carried out the killings, curiosity got the best of me and I went and watched a few of his videos, including his final video where he vowed to exact his revenge against society.

Naturally, like a lot of people who saw the video, I got the chills, not necessarily because he did definitely seem like a weird, creepy, nut job, though that was part of it, but because he kind of reminded me of the way I was when I was in my late teens, namely 18 and 19 years old. In fact, my 19 year old self would’ve been able to relate to him very well and might’ve gotten along with him.

Now granted, I was a bit younger than Elliot, and I did have some experience with women and I did have friends and little problem making them, but at the same time I was angry at the world and felt like a victim of society. Like Elliot, I felt that the world at large had wronged me and kept me from having the things I wanted in life. Like Elliot I felt awkward and faced a lot of rejection in life. And like Elliot, I had no game with women and couldn’t buy a date. The fact that all many of my friends were successful with women while I wasn’t only served to heighten my suspicion that life had a vendetta against me. .

Though I wasn’t crazy enough to take a firearm and start spraying away into crowds of people, I regularly entertained thoughts of suicide and I had a huge rage within against society at large. I fervently professed to hate people and wished death or harm on massive groups of people

The roots go back to when I was in the seventh grade at private school (Elliot mentioned in his video that his angst also started when he hit puberty). That was the year that cliques in my grade branched off into the “haves” and “have-nots.” The “haves” were the cool kids who went to all the cool parties and were popular with all the cool, pretty girls.

I was not part of the haves, but I wanted so badly to be accepted by the cool kids. My reasoning was that to be “cool,” people had to approve of you and think you’re cool, and by being “approved” you had now had the right to be popular. My sole aim became to follow these kids around so that I can get their approval, so I can be “worthy” as well.

To put an end to your suspense, these kids didn’t like me following them around. I was reluctantly tolerated by some who felt sorry for me, and for other more outspoken ones, I was told to go away and go back to the loser group where I belonged. For fear of jeopardizing my chances of ever eventually being “accepted,” I put up with the abuse and tried even kowtowing and kissing up to them more.

It truly felt like a rigid social system, like the Jim Crow South or apartheid in South Africa. I remember not being “allowed’ to do certain things because I wasn’t cool enough. If I wore cool sunglasses, or tried to say current slang, or sing a cool song, I was looked at with disdain and told to stop trying to act “cool” that I was just a loser.

I remember even being tried to be hooked up with the nerdiest girl in my grade who I absolutely refused to date because I thought I was better than that. Even then, I was met with disgust for refusing to fit in the place where they thought was reserved for me.

To make it worse, I started to develop acne quite early which developed into severe cystic acne a few years later. Let’s just say that that didn’t make things any easier for me.

Thankfully, I left this school after the eighth grade to go to a different high school and felt such a relief. Needless to say, the first year and a half at my new school wasn’t any easier socially, though with all the trials and tribulations, I still was grateful not to be in private school any more.

Into my sophomore year, I met a group of kids who I began to chill with on a regular basis and kept in touch with well after college, but during high school I always felt they were cooler than me. It felt that they all were cool because they had the approval from others of being cool. Because they were cool, I felt they had the permission now to be good with the ladies.

I never got that “approval,” and with being shy as well, I always felt like I was on the outside looking in. Like I was outside the window looking at a great party going on that the world has conspired to keep me out of.

Also, I had carried a sense of shame from private school about the way I had been treated and me allowing myself to be treated that way. This shame began to turn into bitterness in my senior year of high school This along with me not getting the “approval” I felt I needed further cemented my feelings that the world was against me. I began to go through bouts of depression which lasted for various lengths.

When college came around, I had no problems making friends whatsoever. But again, I felt that they had an easier time at life than I did. They seemed cooler than I was namely because they had more success with the ladies, however everything seemed to be hard for me. This helped to further cement my feeling that I was a victim and the world just decided to take a dump on me.

Sometime during the first half of my first year of college I discovered that I could hate people as a way to deal with the pain and rejection I felt. It was seemed like such a cool and novel concept I thought to myself, “Sh*t, why didn’t I think of this before?” Now I felt I had a measure of power because I could choose who I could hate instead of being a hapless victim. Now, if someone offended me, instead of being hurt I could simply just hate them. And finally, now I could have revenge on everybody from my past who I tried to get to like me but instead disliked me by hating them all.

This was so cool to me that when I found out about this, I took the ball and ran with it like a madman.

On those weekends when I was depressed and decided that I hated people too much to even go out, I would sit in my dorm room wishing the roof would collapse at one of the parties and kill everyone inside. Though I cringe now at the thought, I thought it was quite funny then.

I went on to develop a group of sayings called “Ike-isms” which were a bunch of sociopathic anecdotes that spewed hatred and contempt towards people. One of them was, “Hate people before they hate you,” amongst many others. In my anger I would preach them with various levels of sobriety in dining halls, student lounges, dorm rooms and parties to anyone who would listen. Oddly enough, they made me kind of popular and people would stop me on the street and say, “Hey, can I get an Ike-ism?” and would walk off laughing. In fact, I remember being invited to parties so I can preach them to groups of people while everyone laughed and got a kick out of what I was saying.

The thing was, while they thought I was being funny, I was as serious as a heart attack about them. Hate became my security and made me feel powerful because it numbed my pain.

When my sophomore year came around, life seemed to prove to me more that it was against me and that nothing worked out for me. The frequency of my depressions increased until finally in the middle of my sophomore year, I hit rock bottom and stopped going to class and slept all day. Not only did I not care about people, but I didn’t care about myself either, and I started to set dates of when I was going to end my life if I didn’t feel better. I even planned the way in which I was going to end my life.

Luckily, at the suggestion of my mom, I started seeing the school shrink. After a couple of sessions he laughed off any suggestions that I had a chemical imbalance, and said what I was going through was a symptom of my age and I was eventually going to be just fine. He said he didn’t think I needed depression meds, but he gave them to me anyway.

Lo and behold, I started taking these meds and I started to feel better. Soon after I returned home for summer break and I started hanging out more consistently with friends I had met with college and their friends and I simply just had a lot of fun. We would meet up in the city and go to clubs, parties, different types of events, and sometimes just simply walk around meeting different people and talking to girls. A whole new world began to open up to me and my overall attitude started to improve.

It was during this time, probably a little after a month after I had gotten home, that I decided that I was done with the meds.

As I hung out with my friends and met all different sorts of people, a couple of things began to dawn on me. My friends that I hung out with and the people I met were what could be considered “cool.” They were good looking guys, good with girls, and dressed real nice. What I noticed though, was that each person was unique with his own style and swagger.

Each person had the success I desired but the ways that their success turned up were as unique and as varied as the individuals themselves. This led me to wonder and ask myself, “Okay, I have my own uniqueness just like everyone else, what would my own success look like? How would it turn up? How would it be different from everyone else’s?”

At the dawn of being 20 years old, these questions lead me to have some life altering insights and revelations.

For the first time in my life, I started to become inspired by my own individuality and realized that I had something unique to offer to the world that no one else had.

Starting to see myself differently, it also occurred to me that hating people was a huge waste of time because it actually hurt me more than the people I hated. I made a vow to myself, a vow that I may add I still keep to this day, that I was never going to hate anyone again. I also decided that the past was something to learn from and move on, and not something you use to define you.

The thing was, though I had this realization, I was still waiting around for someone to give me the right to go and get this success that was unique to me, and to express my own unique greatness.

This approval never came, but, the inspiration I felt about how my own “success” would show up steadily rose until it hit a point, very early into the following year, as I was riding the momentum of the excitement and hope present in the New Year, that I decided screw it, I was going to give myself the permission to go after the things I wanted.

Whatever I had previously wished people would validate me with, I now validated myself with it. For instance, rather than wait for others to perceive me as “cool,” I instead decided to think of my own self as cool.

When I would see a girl that I previously thought was out of my league because I didn’t have the “right” to talk to her, I now told myself that I had that right.

Qualities that my friends had that I wanted I began to visualize myself as having them rather than getting depressed because I didn’t have these qualities or envying them for it.

Things that happened to my friends that I wanted to happen to me, I would picture myself in those situations, firmly believing that it was my birthright to experience the same things.

Things that I wanted people to think of me I began to think them of myself.

Life has a weird sense of humour, because as soon as I started giving myself the self-validation to get the things I wanted in life that I so desperately sought from others in the past, I now began to regularly get it from others. I would think to myself, “Damn, why couldn’t I hear all this in Middle School and High School?”

Having now appointed myself the right to live the life that I wanted that was geared to my own tastes, and believing that I was the “best” and thus deserved the best, I began to go after the things I wanted, and sure enough, my life began to change.

In fact, a few months later, my life had transformed to the point that I couldn’t even recognize or fathom the life I had a year earlier where I was sitting in my dorm room depressed, angry and suicidal.

Women started to treat me differently and my dating life completely changed. When I would go out to clubs, I would meet people who took a liking to me and they would get me into the club for free. People would randomly give me discounts in stores. My grades improved as well as the relationships with my professors. I made more sales at my job and the customers would take a liking to me, even asking about me after I had to quit.

All this I realized myself without a mentor, or being taught in school, or shown by my parents, or having read in a book.

The anger I previously harboured towards the world came from the fact that I felt it had the power to decide my well being and my self-worth and I resented it for the power I unknowingly gave it. I felt that the world was what was supposed to appoint me the permission to be the things that I wanted to be and I hated the world for not giving me that permission. The Illusion told me I wasn’t worthy and I believed it and hated it for telling me so.

I looked to the world to determine my self image. When The Illusion gave me back an ugly, unflattering image, I believed it to be true but was angry because I wanted something better. However, The Illusion refused to give me anything better and I had no idea that it was totally up to me to create for myself what I wanted.

Listening to Elliot Rodger in his video, it was truly clear to me that he shared those similar feelings about himself. Like me, he had absolutely no idea that it was within his power, not the Illusion’s, to appoint himself the right to be the person who he wanted to be and have what he wanted to have. He didn’t know that it was within his power to reject the labels placed on him by The Illusion and choose his own. He, like me, felt the world owed him something, and he subsequently lashed out when he didn’t get it.

Why I didn’t go the path that Elliot did? I believe it was namely because while still harbouring a lot of the same thoughts that he had, I was more social and had more friends. Being social and having friends to talk and laugh with prevented me from being continuously alone with my toxic thoughts and served to break up any possible momentum that could’ve driven me over the edge had they not been tempered.

Elliot, with just about no social interaction, was only left with himself to deal with on a regular basis, and so when he would entertain those sociopathic thoughts, he was able to bounce them off of himself with little interruption from someone who was more balanced. This provided the perfect environment for these thoughts to fester and grow like a pressure cooker until he exploded.

I believe also that talking to shrink started to put the bug in my head that I wasn’t as bad as I made myself to be. That helped quell the depression and insanity.

Also, looking back at some of my lowest points, I was more a danger to myself than to others. I didn’t have it in me to go into a crowd and start offing people with reckless abandonment.

Because I had the benefit of friends who I looked up to and social interaction, I was eventually able to realize that the life I envied in others was possible for me in a way that was unique to me, and that it was within my own power to appoint myself the right to attain that life.

Those two realizations started off a chain of mental shifts that served to take away the anger I had towards the world. By no longer feeling like a victim of the world, I saw no more reason to hate people. Feeling empowered took away the danger I may have been to myself. It was these realizations that enabled me to discover, at 20 years old, the foundation of The Viable Alternative.

Hope this helps.

Ike Love