In the 1993 film Falling Down, Michael Douglas plays a divorcé and unemployed former defense engineer, William Foster, who goes on a violent rampage across L.A. while trying to reach his daughter’s birthday party at the house of his estranged wife.  Roger Ebert writes of this character:

What is fascinating about the Douglas character, as written and played, is the core of sadness in his soul. Yes, by the time we meet him, he has gone over the edge. But there is no exhilaration in his rampage, no release. He seems weary and confused, and in his actions he unconsciously follows scripts that he may have learned from the movies, or on the news, where other frustrated misfits vent their rage on innocent bystanders.

More often than not it would seem, the terrorists, foreign, home-grown, or, as in the case of Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, a mix of the two, could be defined as frustrated misfits venting their rage on innocent bystanders. Although each will have their own particular history, personality, and outlook on life (we are all unique, after all), there are usually broad commonalities that lead to their being misfits and feeling frustrated (we are the same, after all).

One of the key sources of frustration around the globe is the barriers to finding and keeping gainful employment.  In the Middle East, a continuing problem plaguing the efforts to stem the radicalization of the youth is the lack of jobs for the growing population of young adults, many of whom are well educated.   

While Falling Down at the time was described as exploring the angry white (American) male, William Foster was in many ways as much about the adolescent male in Cairo who sees no viable employment prospects for the future.  (A side note of not much consequence, but kind of weird: Falling Down was released on February 26, 1993, the same day that the World Trade Center was bombed by terrorists.)

Ebert also makes a very significant  point, which is in part what I have been driving at in my previous blogs on the topic of the Boston Marathon bombings: in his actions he unconsciously follows scripts that he may have learned from the movies, or on the news.

This may resonate with me more so because some years ago I had a therapist who was fond of framing his response to my comments with the notion that I was operating on old scripts in my head.  If I was to overcome the things blocking me, such as social anxiety attacks, I had to get rid of the old scripts and replace them with new ones. 

It may also be resonating more so because I have recently joined the ranks of the unemployed (although I would say at the moment that overall I am happier now than I was in the last years of that previous job).  At the time of Boston Marathon bombings, I was working on a blog about suddenly finding one's self without a job. 

Herbert Blau wrote in Take Up the Bodies about that moment after his stint as co-director of the Repertory Theater of Lincoln Center in New York came to an abrupt and quick end in 1967 after a disastrous production of Danton’s Death:

Nevertheless,  I wasn’t long at Lincoln Center before I felt rather like Captain Ahab on the third day of the hunt -- log , chart, and compass gone -- throwing his hot heart against the whale and ending up wrapped around it, caught in his own line, sounding.  Or maybe it was a hubris less heroic, even foolish, like the Yippies trying to levitate the Pentagon.  There’s nothing like failure to trip the images out of people.

Even though I was downsized because of the economy, it still felt like a failure, or more accurately, there was a part of me that felt like a failure.  I probably don't have to elaborate too much for the readers of Dagblog about the dynamics of males and their identity and self-worth as a function of their job and efficacy at work. There are few who want to experience failure in the workplace and career realms, who want to be, in the society of commerce and materialism, to be...a loser.

So at the time when one is having the images tripped out, one has to somehow still go forward and engage the world.  Blau relates about his moment after Lincoln Center to Karen Blixen in Out of Africa after she lost both her farm and her lover:

...she found herself looking for a sign.  One has to prepare the looking, the right climate of mind around the eye.

As for himself:

I saw no sign, but preparing, with some confusion, the right climate of mind.

This preparing the climate of mind around the eye is the key.  If, as Ebert describes Foster, one has a core of sadness in one's soul, if one is weary and confused, what kind of climate is prepared?  Preparing takes energy and motivation.  The last things one has when one is sad, weary and confused. One quickly and unconsciously reaches for the old scripts, the scripts with which one is comfortable (even if they don't result in positive outcomes).

Too often, especially with those of the male gender, those scripts contain rage against a perceived injustice or injustices, and rage quickly turns to violence directed outward toward the cause of the injustice(s).  When the cause is attributed to life just not being fair, when all one can do is shake one's fist at the sky, the desire to vent the frustration can lead to the innocents around to appear not so innocent.  

And while this all may be evidence that creating jobs should be the top focus for the world leaders, I would point out having a job doesn't stop one from going postal. It really comes down to a clash between one's expectations about how one's life should be, how one's life turned out, and just how one's script explains the discrepancy between  the two.

As David Byrne might say:

You may find yourself living in a shotgun shack
You may find yourself in another part of the world
You may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile
You may find yourself in a beautiful house with a beautiful wife
You may ask yourself, well, how did I get here?
Letting the days go by, let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by, water flowing underground
Into the blue again after the money's gone
Once in a lifetime, water flowing underground
You may ask yourself, how do I work this?
You may ask yourself, where is that large automobile?
You may tell yourself, this is not my beautiful house
You may tell yourself, this is not my beautiful wife
Letting the days go by, let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by, water flowing underground
Into the blue again, after the money's gone
Once in a lifetime, water flowing underground
Same as it ever was, same as it ever was, same as it ever was, same as it ever was
Same as it ever was, same as it ever was, same as it ever was, same as it ever was