Cristian Ghinea urges less attention for Norwegian killer

After the attacks in Norway, society is focusing too much on the perpetrator and his motives, warns cultural journalist Christian Ghinea in the daily România Liberă: "This is precisely what the attacker wanted: that we should know who he is, where he comes from, what he thinks. He wanted to confuse us with his crazy ideas in the hope that many of us would take him seriously. It's human nature not to write off such a crime off as a mere coincidence. ... It's such a terrible thing that a person would shoot people at random on an island that we inevitably try to make sense of it. That we're talking about a psychopath here is not enough for us. We feel compelled to understand him. But we never will. It's an illusion, but we still feel the need to do it. However, by trying to we are doing exactly what the attacker wanted us to do. ... It's a dreadfully perfect vicious circle: we can only escape by trivialising the horror. ... But that would be inhuman. To remain human we must try to make sense of this atrocity. And psychopaths will profit from this attention in future: they know that we humans want to stay human."

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