The child murderer Marcel Hesse has turned himself over to the authorities. In his lawsuit the media and the crooked lawyers who will work for him, will try to tell that he is a victim of society. But he isn´t.

He abandoned societie´s ethics, but not societies virtues and values

In his 1844 work “The ego and his own” Max Stirner told us, that we have to free ourselves and find ourselves — make ourselves our own property — from any external influence, like society, church, etc.. Well, Hesse abandoned the ethics of the society with his killing, but he still represents the values and virtues of our society which are productivity and fame.

He was unemployed and a user of the 4chan /b/ board, where he posted after his crime. He published a chat log, where he talked about how he would kill himself or do something that would make him famous. If he had chosen to kill himself, he wouldn´t even overcomes the ethics of society, but with his decision to kill and get famous with it he overcome ethics. This may sound like a statement which would say that he has been a victim of society — but nothing would be more far from the truth! With his decision to overcome the ethics of society, he proofed that he was able to act in some part independent of society. He was just to weak to apply this concept to all areas of society — he also could stay unemployed for all his life and dedicated himself to the practise of Kendo only, which he was a practitioner of — which leads me to point 2:

2. He chooses the destructive side of his will to power over the creative side

Nietzsche said that a person is driven by the will to power, the will to rule over other people. We could do that in two ways: With being creative and create things other people need and buy or by being destructive and use violence and force.

Hesse was unemployed and the media also say that he was an introverted person. Our education system is laid out on it to create some people as something which is seen by society as losers. In our society in which the main virtue is productivity, Hesse was seen as such a loser.

Ralph Waldo Emerson said in his essay self-reliance: “It is easy in the world

to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy

in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst

of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.”

Hesse made it himself easy: He used his destructive side of the will to power and kill a child to achieve fame, which in our society counts as an indicator of productivity, instead of using his creative side of the will to power and going the way of what Emerson described as a great man.

Again, this may sound like a defense of the theory that Hesse was a victim of society, but that´s not true. Men make their own decision independent of society and he also made his own decision.

3. Unauthenticity

Hesse was a follower of the image board 4chan. He was addicted to video games. In my article about Heidegger, Drugs and authenticity I explained how some activities like drugs lead to inauthenticity. Internet, video games and social media (to which I would count 4chan) are such things. So he decided to be driven away from live instead of trying to live authentically and get his life straight.

So what would be a victim of society?

A victim of society is someone who chooses to opt out of society as a whole, acts authentic and uses his creative side of the will to power and get´s punished by society for it.