On Satanism, Swords and Slipknot

The country has been going on the last two days about an 18 year old boy who killed another boy at school with a sword, and then attacked two gardeners. The original reports described the boy as being dressed in a balaclava, with his face smeared in black paint. Details emerged later in the day about how the boy blamed Satan for his actions, and was dressed like the drummer in a band called Slipknot. He was also high on drugs at the time.

I'm fed up with people blaming a supernatural force for their own actions. I'm fed up with others believing those who blame a supernatural force for their actions. I'm especially fed up with those who blame *music* for "Satanic" acts. People must take responsibility for their actions, and parents need to reinforce this behaviour from birth.

In matric I did a speech for the Senior Best Speaker competition about this very matter. I didn't win the competition, but I feel the same way about it now as I did in 1994: music is *not* evil. If you take a psychologically troubled person and let their imagination get away with them, then they will try to find anything to blame except themselves. Now throw drugs into the equation.

Police have released statistics which show that violent crimes are usually as a result of drug abuse. There are countless articles worldwide defending this point of view (check Google), and I am inclined to believe it. Drugs cause an altered state of consciousness that affect a person's ability to tell right from wrong, and music and Satan are the convenient scapegoats.

So to all those people out there bringing up the heavy metal and Satan angle, stop your shit. It's tired and worn out and I don't buy it. For the amount of heavy metal music I've listened to, I should be a raving Satanist by now, killing cats and other humans by the dozen. I've only willfully killed one animal before, and I'm not proud of it (it was a hunting party, I was 14 and it was a hare), and although I joke about killing stupid people all the time, I don't act on it. Probably because a) I take responsibility for my actions, and b) I'm not high on drugs.