A Strange Notion of Honor

A Strange Notion of Honor

These are the depressing news stories that just make you shake your head in disbelief. From October 6, 2008 KNBC:

Karthik Rajaram, 45, was found dead with a gun in hand by police officers who followed a trail of carnage from bedroom to bedroom through the big, two-story house in the Porter Ranch area of the San Fernando Valley.

Investigators quickly found two suicide letters and a will, and determined that the man once worked for a major accounting firm and was at least the part-owner of a financial holding company, Deputy Chief Michel Moore said.

"We believe that he has become despondent recently over financial dealings and the financial situation of his household, and that this murder-suicide event is a direct result of that," Moore said.

The man wrote in his suicide letter that he felt he had two options -- to just kill himself or to kill himself and his family -- and decided the second option was more honorable, Moore said.

I suppose if this guy was about to be arrested for some horrifying crime, I could understand his notion that there was some "honor" in committing suicide. (Some years back, I went through Time magazine's anti-gun propaganda article, "Death by Gun," categorizing the various deaths. I was tempted to create a category called, "Psychiatrists/psychologists committing suicide before trial for child molestation" because there were so many incidents in that category.)

I can understand why someone who is suffering from a painful, terminal illness might decide to take his own life, to end the suffering. I want to cry when I read about cases like that--and it happens a lot--but I can understand why for some people, it might seem the best way out of a horrible situation.

I can understand why someone who is in a terribly degrading situation--with no way out--might be tempted to do so. In nineteenth century San Francisco, when Chinese slave/prostitutes had become so old and sick (usually from tuberculosis) that they could no longer work, their pimps would lock them in their rooms with a lethal overdose of opium, so that they could commit suicide. (The pimps certainly weren't going to release them from their cells.) Under those hopeless conditions, I can see why someone might decide that it was time for the degradation and suffering to end.

But what financial circumstances would lead you to kill yourself? Is life so hard at 45 that the prospect of working at Home Depot or Jack-in-the-Box is worse than killing your family and yourself?

And what "honor" is there in murdering your family members? I can't imagine anything less honorable.

The gun was purchased September 16--so it appears that California's 15 day waiting period for handguns didn't help any. (Of course, as this graph shows, the evidence for its efficacy is rather elusive.)

If you are someone reading this, depressed about your financial condition, remember that the current craziness is going to come to an end one of these days. The markets will recover--and if you don't do something stupid, like sell all your stocks, you will see your portfolio and 401k recover. So don't something stupid like that, and especially don't do something stupid like this guy did. And above all: there is no honor in killing innocents.