The
amok runner appears as an outlandish phenomenon from another
world, quasi an alien. It is precisely the arbitrary senselessness
of these acts that gives rise to the dark fascination surrounding
them. The amok runner leads an average, faceless life. It is
in hindsight, after the deed, that one first begins to believe
that small deviations were recognizable: a certain reclusiveness,
a special predilection for guns, maybe a little outburst at
a family gathering, etc. Because he suddenly kills, anonymously
and without any real motive, the amok runner embodies the absolute
negation of peaceful everyday life. In his blind rage he is
a caricature of Justitia, of the democratic principle. Where
every passerby could be a perpetrator, everyone can become a
victim, at any time. As randomly as an anonymous glance, the
bullet can suddenly and groundlessly hit any and every person.
In an era that meets destiny with statistics and fear with prevention,
the amok runner condenses the characteristics of an evil, which,
as risk, probability and eventuality, is permanently present
and nevertheless only potential.
In the societies of the twentieth century, it is possible trace
the development of a new form of evil, of a new economy of evil,
which is closely related to claims settlement: statistics, the
development of insurance companies and the role of probability
calculation make it somehow clear that evil has taken on the
form of the accident, the case of loss or damage, where it is
less personifiable, less individualizable, being instead a possible
eventuality. Risk is the name that we have given to such eventualities.
Vogl perceives a new question here: “Can this case of
loss or damage, this radical, most extreme case of loss or damage,
be envisaged? If it could, I think that its face would be that
of the amok runner – a strangely pallid, strangely impersonal,
strangely unindividual face.”
