This morning I recalled a memory involving my younger brother, who to the world is an overachiever but privately despises his family and works psychological warfare on my mother’s dependence and my father’s willful blindness as long as my brother succeeds academically.

When we were younger, one winter day my brother and I were walking home from elementary school. Upon approaching our home in the cul-de-sac he noticed a group of neighbourhood children building a snowman. My brother walked over and as they were greeting him he commenced kicking and destroying the efforts of their creation. He had done this without provocation and continued even as the other children asked him, “why?”

The answer, of course, is that some men just want to watch the world burn.