How do people get crazy enough to become mass murderers?
First a disclaimer: I am in no way a psychologist or any other kind of professional on wetware. I am a computer geek/nerd/admin. You know what that means? Not exactly good on people skills. But here we go...
Questions have been voiced about why the mass murderers seem to be male, white middle class. A few possible explanations entered my mind today, centered on a few peculiarities in the american society as seen from the outside. I could be way off... Please don't feel insulted.
A psychologist claimed that a lot of the maya calendar hysteria was rooted in a need to fear something. To feel a contrast to our easy life. That without any fear in our lives we would go crazy.
And it struck me. The USA is the country of litigations. The country where everything has to be safe, or it will cost you. The country where people don't dare hold childrens birthday parties at home because they fear what would happen if a visitor hurt him/herself. Where playgrounds must be so safe the only reason children don't fall asleep is that they have never experienced a better one.
Add in double standards. Americans are extremely good there. Pretend to be so religious. Go to church. Because if you don't your environment will react. You can be the same person all you want, but if you don't pretend to be a good christian...
And remember to always be polite. Never, ever say a foul word or raise your voice. Talk behind peoples back instead of tackling them head on.
Do white middle class boys grow up with so few challenges and so few dangers that they have a bigger chance of going crazy? Do the double standards add to it? Do all kinds of minorities either have other family values or meet so many challenges that it actually saves them mentally? Do women meet so many challenges just for being women that they are saved? Or do they handle the problem differently?
Or is it just me who should go back to writing shell scripts instead of trying to understand people?
Or is it with so many double standards we are driving our children and friends insane? It seems to me, we tell the kids school is safe/it is not safe to play outside at home. Today you can play outside, just don't leave your yard. The policemen are good people - Do NOT talk to any stranger. You can tell the doctor what's wrong, he is not really a stranger. etc.
SvarSlettSome good points, male, white. Male is carrying the gene of violence, no doubt, and white can afford a gun, or, if a black has a gun, he'll be put to jail at once.
SvarSlettFor normal person, they don't kill people, so, no matter how precisely u're explaining, the only reasonable answer is: madness. The interesting part is, modern civilization tends to protect mental patients, especially in the Western, well then, they're keeping a time-bomb around, no complaint.
But is it madness because of overly sheltered lives?
SvarSlettUSA is a large place so statisticly they will have more nutters. They also get by default the right to access guns and ammo and with that you have the recipe for problems.
SvarSlettWhat is more disturbing are those that go around blaming anything from TV to Video games based upon nothing more than to offload the blame from guns. But that be the NRA for you. Instead of saying, ok we need to have some control and responsibility on gun control they promote the ability of everybody at both ends of the idiot scale to have guns.
This is also concerning given that to drive a car you have to pass a test but to own a gun you just have to pass the money over for it.
It is messed up and with that no different to many aspects of life, just currently it is the media's focus and as such topic of the moment. This is how politics truely works. It reacts instead of seeing the problems before they happen.
I have observed that common sence and sanity do prevail in the end, albeit at a slower pace than you would imagine. Something that takes you a minute to come to a conclusion can take years and years to be actioned and then many more until it is done right. Look at banks, things get fixed slower than you would like.
I would advicate `cat /dev/media >>/dev/null` as it will only frustrate the sane.
I agree with you, Paul Gray , even if this is drifting into another debate altogether. Gun control is another issue.
SvarSlettHere I am more interested in why white middle class males seem to be so disturbed. From abroad we see it just in these mass murders, but are white males overrepresented in various forms of mental instabilities? Could this psychologist be onto something with a need to have something to fear? Has the litigation culture in the USA rendered life too "safe"?
Several Norwegian insurance companies now refuse to insure US branch offices for norwegian companies. Especially outlets/shops. Too high risk of litigations for all sorts of crazy things. I hear about people who don't dare to have childrens birthday parties at home because they fear litigation if someone comes home with a bruise. WTF? They are children! Children are supposed to be wild. Get bruised. Bleed a little. Learn how to cope. How to fall. How to get up again.
You could say it is the lack and with that the approach to punishment parents take these days. Used to be children got a smack for being bad, nowadays they get banished into isolocation into there fantasy worlds. In a less well of family then banishing a child to a bedroom shared with other brothers is perhaps not ideal and they still give there child a light slap. In many ways the carrot and stick approach to parenting has completely turned the stick into cotton candy.
SvarSlettBut that would be true in many other countries, and with that it boils down to ease of access to weapons.
It is also worth noting that as years go on we find more and more to tell our children what not to do and in that one or two are bound to pick the wrong challange to stand up to. Children used to play with catapults, homemade explosives the works and they learned responsibility, sometimes the hard way. Now a days any child doing one of many things the politicians generation of children had open to them would be locked up as potentual terrorist etc and labeled.
It is also worth noting that the News media have become more and more biased towards negative stories and with that focus more on bad news than good, making everybody alot more down, depressed and bitter. Which don't help for somebody unstable on the edge and clearly had parent issues and for all we know bullied when he was at primary school age and has only gone about expressing that in the worst possible way later on in life.
So whilst the cause will always be dynamic the effect can be better controlled without any sane people having to blanketly give up chunks of freedom. Sure you can have guns, just have to take a driving test so to speak. Not ideal but its a level of protection that does not exist currently.
In the UK we don't have legal access to guns and those that can are vetted. So with that the worst we get are a handful of children stabbed and loss of limited life as apposed to the more automated tool known as a gun. Not saying it is impossible to happen in the UK, just alot more unlikely and that is due to a more zelous gun control that what I'm outlining for the USA. a good positive and sane step would be gun liscencing which required some vetting, but the NRA want it all or nothing and that has hurt any advancement in preventing such story's becomming true. Almost a seasonal story from the USA thesedays. This time they might improve things, but it is a reaction to a problem that already existed before the issue at hand.
We are becoming weaker. We lack spiritual strength because we (as a species) have a less spiritual life. So, we are always expecting bad things, like if we have fear of happiness; as if we don't deserve happiness. That's one thing that might contribute to stupid doing.
SvarSlett