It is intriguing to me that James Holmes, as a student researcher in his teens, was interested in the distinctions between fantasy and reality and, particularly, that subjective experience of one’s inner world might possibly alter temporal recall and one’s perception of what actually occurred in one’s past.
I think his fantasies also radically altered his perception of reality in the present.
I suspect that elements of his actual past ignited a suppressed hatred of authority.
Growing up amidst an onslaught of multi-media fantasy entertainment as an escape from otherwise mundane or oppressive conventional reality, I can almost understand the lure of megalomaniacal fantasies and imaginative antihero role- playing combining to create an intense inner world of extreme exotic adventure.
The critical distinction and departure is allowing that subjectivity to cross over into objective reality and then acting out the extreme fantasies in destructive and deadly defiance of societal imperatives, decency, conventions and common sense.
Holmes illustrates the danger of a very tenuous hold on reality and actual identity. That, or the compulsion and chaos of his confabulated inner world captivated and cut his last link to sanity and social accountability, making him a monster incarnate.
Even on this board we’ve all witnessed people whose focus and pet conspiracy theory is somewhat fixed, even fixated, yet still fragile due to a possibly fantasy prone series of supporting premises that don’t conform to conventional thinking. But even our wildest woo will be contained within the walls of our real world.
This Holmes lost his sure lock. And his grip. He unleashed his inner demon. The devil is in our detecting it in advance.
