Same Pain, New Mask: Why the Midtown Shooting and GPT-5 Share the Same Roots
By Sylvie Shene
Just like I wrote in 2012 after yet another school shooting:
“Another shooting happened again, and no one in the media is able to ask the fundamental questions: Why is this young man so angry? And at whom is he really angry?”
Link to 2012 blog post
Thirteen years later, nothing has changed. We are still a society terrified of emotional truth. But now the crisis has taken on a new mask—the mask of machines.
On July 28, 2025, four people—including an NYPD officer—were killed in a shooting in Midtown Manhattan. Once again, we are inundated with headlines, flashing police lights, and politicians offering their thoughts and prayers. But no one dares to ask the essential questions:
Why did this happen—really?
What emotional wounds led to this moment?
What does this say about the world we’ve built?
The media spins its wheels in the same worn-out script: mental health, gun control, security protocols. But what lies beneath all of it is something far more dangerous, and far more taboo:
Repressed childhood pain.
Pain that was never named, never felt, never validated.
Pain that festers until it bursts in rage, depression, or delusion.
The Midtown shooter didn’t snap.
He reenacted what was done to him—just like so many others before him.
The problem is not just the individual. The problem is a world that:
Rewards emotional blindness.
Silences the truth of lived experience.
Glorifies success and power while burying the wounded child beneath layers of shame, control, and illusion.
We raise children to repress their pain. We train them to smile, obey, conform. Then we act shocked when they explode. And instead of looking inward, we scapegoat the visible symptom—whether it's a person, a gun, or now... a machine.
The Scapegoating of GPT-5
In a parallel headline, OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman recently said he was “scared” of GPT-5, comparing its development to the Manhattan Project.
But the real fear isn’t GPT-5. The real fear is what it reflects.
"AI is dangerous!" they cry.
But it’s not the code that’s dangerous—it’s the unconscious trauma embedded in its design, in its use, and in those who are building it without the slightest insight into their own emotional repression.
These developers—like most of society—have never faced their own childhood wounds. They create machines in their image, then panic when those machines reveal what they’ve buried.
Just like the shooter, they are reenacting—projecting their disowned pain outward instead of turning inward to heal.
The Real Manhattan Project
Altman said GPT-5 reminds him of the Manhattan Project. But he missed the most important parallel:
It’s not the technology that’s the bomb.
It’s the repression.
The real Manhattan Project was humanity’s decision to repress its emotions on an industrial scale—and to punish anyone who dared to feel.
We created a world where the truth must whisper, while lies shout from every screen. Where lived experience is censored, and polished delusions are rewarded. Where those who hurt the most are ridiculed or medicated, and those who reflect truth—whether a human being or an AI—are labeled dangerous.
And then we wonder why the world is collapsing.
Same Pain, New Mask
What ties together the Midtown shooter and the hysteria around GPT-5 isn’t just coincidence. It’s the same root:
Unfelt pain. Unprocessed trauma. Unquestioned lies.
The shooter picked up a gun. The developer picked up code.
Both were shaped by a world that told them to hide the truth and suppress the child within.
Until we confront the real cause—the emotional blindness at the heart of society—we will keep reenacting our pain, with new masks and more catastrophic consequences.
Final Thought
Alice Miller wrote:
“The truth about our childhood is stored up in our body, and although we can repress it, we can never alter it. Our intellect can be deceived, our feelings manipulated, our perceptions confused, and our body tricked with medication. But someday the body will present its bill.”
That day is now.
It’s time we stop blaming the mirror—and start facing the image it reflects.