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I Came Across This and Found It Interesting

Started by Retribution, May 30, 2014, 10:32:09 AM

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Retribution

Like the title says, one of my friends posted this on FB. She tends to have a much more liberal bent than me, but as I hope comes off I try to live and let live as much as I can. So I read it, it goes against the grain of many things I hold near and dear and I do not know beans about the author. But it tends to make sense to me so I thought I would toss it out here, it could just be pretty pros but the fellow could also be onto something.

http://markmanson.net/school-shootings

Oniya

I think the author does have a point.  We often don't pay attention to what kids in that age-range say and do, or brush it off as 'being teenagers' or 'just kidding around'.  Look at how many cases of suicide or bullying come as 'a complete surprise' to the people closest to the kids involved.  And yes, after the fact, everyone tries to paste on their own pet theory as to how this could have happened, sometimes completely reversing the cause and effect.  I remember the outcries about heavy metal causing violence, but from a teenaged perspective I could see how someone who was already inclined to violence would gravitate to loud, frenetic rhythms as opposed to - oh, Barry Manilow.  Didn't mean that you had to be so inclined to like it, though,
"Language was invented for one reason, boys - to woo women.~*~*~Don't think it's all been done before
And in that endeavor, laziness will not do." ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Don't think we're never gonna win this war
Robin Williams-Dead Poets Society ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Don't think your world's gonna fall apart
I do have a cause, though.  It's obscenity.  I'm for it.  - Tom Lehrer~*~All you need is your beautiful heart
O/O's Updated 5/11/21 - A/A's - Current Status! - Writing a novel - all draws for Fool of Fire up!
Requests updated March 17

Retribution

Yes, I recall back in the 80s how the cry was about heavy metal music which I happened to listen to at the time. Now we hear the same things about rap and so on. I think what struck me most about the article is the comparison to terrorism in that the later is not a Muslim thing, but a disturbed person thing using it as an effective outlet for their mental illness for lack of a better description. Things like school shootings are the same thing the author argues just wrapped up in a differing package. I can buy that, I am not saying it is true but I could believe it.

Vekseid

The "It's not about mental health... but it is about mental health!" angle is kind of... odd.

Oniya

I think he's saying that whatever the underlying issue, we need to stay aware.  It's the fact that people don't take the signs seriously that allows all these things to happen.
"Language was invented for one reason, boys - to woo women.~*~*~Don't think it's all been done before
And in that endeavor, laziness will not do." ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Don't think we're never gonna win this war
Robin Williams-Dead Poets Society ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Don't think your world's gonna fall apart
I do have a cause, though.  It's obscenity.  I'm for it.  - Tom Lehrer~*~All you need is your beautiful heart
O/O's Updated 5/11/21 - A/A's - Current Status! - Writing a novel - all draws for Fool of Fire up!
Requests updated March 17

Retribution

That was my take on it also Oniya, but I agree with Vekseid that, that is kind of odd. What I took from it is that we all need to stop spinning things to our own little pet cause. Heck, look at the most recent tragedy: despite calls for gun control the first three people were stabbed, despite mental health calls the fellow had been under intense care virtually from birth, despite the fact the police were contacted prior to the killings the authorities apparently did not see a red flag, and on and on it goes.

So just maybe we should accept that it is a combination of factors, do all we can to address those, but on some level treat these tragedies like terrorism and take precautions to keep bad people from hurting good people since we clearly cannot predict it.

Oniya

On the contrary, I think his point is that we could have predicted that these individuals were planning what they were going to do.  The problem was that people were all caught up in their own concerns and denial and didn't pay attention to the clues that were being shoved in their faces - often by the shooters/bombers/killers themselves.  The whole section called 'Hiding In Plain Sight' goes into this in some depth.  There were phrases like 'he would often “joke” about blowing up the school and murdering classmates.' and  'People humored him and ignored him.'  There was talk about killers putting up videos where they announced their intentions - why do you put something like that on the Internet unless you mean for people to see it?  Why is this not a red flag?  In a way, it echoes George Metesky's letters to newspapers when he was the Mad Bomber, only in a much more traceable venue.

In the recent tragedy, as you said, the police were contacted - we should be asking why they didn't see a red flag, when obviously whoever reported it to them did.
"Language was invented for one reason, boys - to woo women.~*~*~Don't think it's all been done before
And in that endeavor, laziness will not do." ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Don't think we're never gonna win this war
Robin Williams-Dead Poets Society ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Don't think your world's gonna fall apart
I do have a cause, though.  It's obscenity.  I'm for it.  - Tom Lehrer~*~All you need is your beautiful heart
O/O's Updated 5/11/21 - A/A's - Current Status! - Writing a novel - all draws for Fool of Fire up!
Requests updated March 17

Retribution

Valid points that I cannot argue with. I guess what I take away from all of this is that we all better get used to more metal detectors and searches. It is a said commentary on what is happening with society though.

TheGlyphstone

Quote from: Retribution on May 31, 2014, 10:21:47 AM
Valid points that I cannot argue with. I guess what I take away from all of this is that we all better get used to more metal detectors and searches. It is a said commentary on what is happening with society though.

Which in itself is a sad sort of meta-commentary. We'll get more metal detectors and pat-down searches, but they'll still be random screenings. We can't single out people judged at higher risk because that would be discriminatory, but taking the same amount of freedom away from everyone is fine.

Valthazar

Not sure about you guys, but I wish this much energy and money was instead put into making our road system and cars safer.

consortium11

Quote from: Vekseid on May 30, 2014, 04:11:32 PM
The "It's not about mental health... but it is about mental health!" angle is kind of... odd.

I think he's taking a more nuanced position but doesn't explain it very well.

When he's arguing against those stressing the mental health aspects he's arguing against those who seem to be saying that if only Elliott Roger had received counseling or the like this wouldn't have happened... when he'd spent much of his life getting therapy/mental health help.

When he talks about the importance of mental health, he's talking about it as identifying "danger signs" and noting the sort of people in the sort of situation where they may consider doing this sort of thing.

In essence it's the difference between viewing mental health assistance as a catch-all solution and viewing a person's mental health as something to be aware of and something that can indicate there is something wrong.

Chris Brady

I've known this sort of stuff for years.  Every time a mass shooting in a public area occurs, I immediately want to know the how and why. Mainly because, like the article points out, it's almost always planned.

Instead everyone usually puts a political spin on it, racial issues, sexism, video games, whatever it is.  What no one wants to realize or think about is the real 'why'.

As for his 'It's not mental issues, it's mental issues.' tagline, it's that we focus on the wrong ones.  We pick at things like misogyny, racism, oppression, instead of realizing that a lot of these killers are psychopathic, sociopathic, or just plain psychotic.  These people are just 'wrong' in the head from day one, and we simply don't have the tools or the knowledge on how to 'fix' them, assuming it's even possible.  Instead we lament in how we 'failed' them, or how such and such is the 'cause', when there often isn't any, outside of 'bad brain wiring'.

I fully agree with this article.
My O&Os Peruse at your doom.

So I make a A&A thread but do I put it here?  No.  Of course not.

Also, I now come with Kung-Fu Blog action.  Here:  Where I talk about comics and all sorts of gaming

Austerity

The man's completely right, we economize our debate on these apparently flagship issues until there's an atrocity to goad some social debate.

By correlation, the issues become just as momentous as the act.. so, instead of picnic solutions (e.g. holistic mental health initiatives), we just wait until there's another tragedy to turn us into remorseful sociologists for a few weeks.

I liked it.  Thanks for posting.

Retribution

Well I will freely admit I am anti gun control as anyone who had read me much knows. But the senseless killings every time I turn on the news is making my head swim. We now seem to have a spree of stabbings:

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/school-stabbing-spree/stab-spree-suspect-alex-hribal-included-franklin-regional-yearbook-n122466

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/06/nyregion/brooklyn-stabbing-arrest-boulevard-houses.html?_r=0

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/12-year-old-slenderman-stabbing-victim-improving-family-article-1.1818318

Or hell the one California shooting spree started with stabbings. I am not sure if our news cycle is so intense now that we just see it more, if we have copy cats, but my general impression is WTF. I do not recall in the past there being one mass killing or another every time you turn on the news.

Oniya

Knives are damn easy to get.  Thankfully,  they are less lethal when you don't know what you're doing.  All the PA victims survived.  The Slenderman victim survived.  One of the Brooklyn victims survived.  And I can see no one is advocating 'knife control'.

But this is why limiting the conversation to 'guns' doesn't help.  I do think there's a lot of focus on these things in the news - a combination of 'bread and circuses' and Don Henley's 'Dirty Laundry' - but the details around the incidents don't seem to indicate a copycat crime.  With the 12-year-olds, I would bet that a little observance and discussion of their browser history would have brought their obsession to light a lot earlier - I keep a weather-eye on where the little Oni goes on the Internet and talk to her about it.  The Brooklyn killer had a history of violence and instability, which should have been addressed five years previously, when he tried to strangle his mother (I see no one is talking about telephone cord control either).  The PA stabber had written notes.

Awareness of our environment.  Awareness of the people in and around our lives.  Appropriate responses to signs that are often right there for the seeing.  This is where things are breaking down. 
"Language was invented for one reason, boys - to woo women.~*~*~Don't think it's all been done before
And in that endeavor, laziness will not do." ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Don't think we're never gonna win this war
Robin Williams-Dead Poets Society ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Don't think your world's gonna fall apart
I do have a cause, though.  It's obscenity.  I'm for it.  - Tom Lehrer~*~All you need is your beautiful heart
O/O's Updated 5/11/21 - A/A's - Current Status! - Writing a novel - all draws for Fool of Fire up!
Requests updated March 17

gaggedLouise

Quote from: Oniya on June 06, 2014, 08:09:03 AM
Knives are damn easy to get.  Thankfully,  they are less lethal when you don't know what you're doing.  All the PA victims survived.  The Slenderman victim survived.  One of the Brooklyn victims survived.  And I can see no one is advocating 'knife control'.

But this is why limiting the conversation to 'guns' doesn't help.  I do think there's a lot of focus on these things in the news - a combination of 'bread and circuses' and Don Henley's 'Dirty Laundry' - but the details around the incidents don't seem to indicate a copycat crime.  With the 12-year-olds, I would bet that a little observance and discussion of their browser history would have brought their obsession to light a lot earlier - I keep a weather-eye on where the little Oni goes on the Internet and talk to her about it.  The Brooklyn killer had a history of violence and instability, which should have been addressed five years previously, when he tried to strangle his mother (I see no one is talking about telephone cord control either).  The PA stabber had written notes.

Awareness of our environment.  Awareness of the people in and around our lives.  Appropriate responses to signs that are often right there for the seeing.  This is where things are breaking down.

Nods aye, but the folks who are the most dangerous, mentally, tend to shut themselves in with their obsessions and just let them grow to boiling point. The Sandy Hook killer as well as Anders Breivik (in a very different kind of society, but also a hardcore fighter paranoiac - more coldblooded and calculating though) or the Polytechnique killer in Quebec twenty-five years ago, all three  seem to have kept their violent obsessions and their whacky thinking cordoned off from any kind of public, everyday life where they might have been detected earlier.

Good girl but bad  -- Proud sister of the amazing, blackberry-sweet Violet Girl

Sometimes bound and cuntrolled, sometimes free and easy 

"I'm a pretty good cook, I'm sitting on my groceries.
Come up to my kitchen, I'll show you my best recipes"

Oniya

The point of the article, though, was that there are many, many cases where the culprit leaves these bread-crumbs and afterwards it's all hand-wringing and 'We didn't think it meant anything'.  Even Ted Kaczynski, who was living as a hermit in the woods when he committed the Unabomber attacks, had said enough things to enough people that his family had some suspicions of him even before the clinching 'manifesto' was published.
"Language was invented for one reason, boys - to woo women.~*~*~Don't think it's all been done before
And in that endeavor, laziness will not do." ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Don't think we're never gonna win this war
Robin Williams-Dead Poets Society ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Don't think your world's gonna fall apart
I do have a cause, though.  It's obscenity.  I'm for it.  - Tom Lehrer~*~All you need is your beautiful heart
O/O's Updated 5/11/21 - A/A's - Current Status! - Writing a novel - all draws for Fool of Fire up!
Requests updated March 17

gaggedLouise

#17
In an ideal world the really risky people (such as the Santa Barbara gunman, the Unabomber, Adam Lanza, the Yorkshire Ripper and so on) would get noticed and put in touch with doctors, psychiatrists or social workers in time - while persons who were mere fantasy copycats or unusually adept fans of Marilyn Manson, Turbonegro or Alice Cooper, and quite harmless, would be left alone. Alas, things often don't work that way and we can't rely on that happening - I agree there could be more vigilant teams of psychological specialists, curators and nurses (not to overlook teachers and priests) and ordinary people keeping their eyes open, but that's never going to catch all the most dangerous ones - or even get close to hauling them in before they have lost it and gone on their particular killing spree.

It's hard for me to avoid the conclusion that easy access to high-powered weapons and assault rifles encourages mass killings, in the sense that for the candidate assassin, getting those weapons without having to expose yourself, without having to face making any long, complicated journeys for them or a lot of scrutiny with his real name exposed to police, gun control boards and so on when one is buying them - getting a high-powered firearm and planning how to gun down several people with it becomes an easier option. At Newtown, Lanza mowed down twenty-seven kids and teachers in something like two or three minutes. That would have been impossible to achieve with a knife or even an ordinary pistol. If he had tried to do it with a pistol or a normal hunting rifle, he couldn't have acted with that kind of speed and he might well have been overpowered, cornered and/or most of the kids escaping. Yes, he could have achieved his aims with an accomplice who was also armed, but guys like these are often lone wolves and exposing their plans to another guy, with one's real identity becoming plain to them, is going to be a high threshold.

This kind of debate does crop up every time there's a major killing spree in the U.S., so it's easy to understand why it makes people tired though.

Good girl but bad  -- Proud sister of the amazing, blackberry-sweet Violet Girl

Sometimes bound and cuntrolled, sometimes free and easy 

"I'm a pretty good cook, I'm sitting on my groceries.
Come up to my kitchen, I'll show you my best recipes"

Retribution

Well I have stated my stance on gun control so all I shall toss out is California has some of the most stringent control laws in the US. And leave it at that because we simply are not going to agree here.

On the subject of the article I originally linked the implication is, as other posters have observed, some people just are broken for lack of a better description. And we cannot always help them, but I keep thinking of the fact many, many, state mental facilities are being closed. People balk at mental health care being included in health care, hell I am not a mental health professional but I would think even plain old help being available for depression would help in some cases. I for one would sure rather my tax dollars go to such things, but like the original article said I am not sure that would help either.

gaggedLouise

I do agree mental health facilities closing or squeezing down, and seriously unstable people getting rushed out into the open, is part of the picture, and that's just as true in Europe too. People who are a danger both to themselves and others (even if they're not always the kind who would engage in mass killings), and who sometimes can't really manage their everyday life, are getting stranded in the city and sometimes reduced to living on the streets or dodging around as perennial guests of friends, short-term sleeping partners, pimps or casual contacts.  :-(

Good girl but bad  -- Proud sister of the amazing, blackberry-sweet Violet Girl

Sometimes bound and cuntrolled, sometimes free and easy 

"I'm a pretty good cook, I'm sitting on my groceries.
Come up to my kitchen, I'll show you my best recipes"

kylie

#20
           Interesting and it has a certain point on the 'notorious' and personal glory side of motive.  That gets lost a little in the thinly veiled bashing of the left (or at least apparent disdain for common social problems) along the way.  So I'm going to start sort of where my jaw dropped and work back...

Quote from: Chris Brady
As for his 'It's not mental issues, it's mental issues.' tagline, it's that we focus on the wrong ones.  We pick at things like misogyny, racism, oppression, instead of realizing that a lot of these killers are psychopathic, sociopathic, or just plain psychotic.  These people are just 'wrong' in the head from day one, and we simply don't have the tools or the knowledge on how to 'fix' them, assuming it's even possible.  Instead we lament in how we 'failed' them, or how such and such is the 'cause', when there often isn't any, outside of 'bad brain wiring'.
Having spent a good few years in sociology, I do understand how the focus on social "problems" can start to come off as awfully apologist.  IF what you happen to be most sensitive to when reading sociology is the slant of some authors to point out how people are all part of their society and how often enough people in general simply don't find a place to deal with all those issues well, then yeah there's a certain tone of community failure by default.  Sometimes people do invest a bit much in focusing on just one issue area throughout their careers.  In certain cases, some do overstretch and speak loosely to media outfits (or even sometimes, write academically it's true) as if fixing their area, would be a silver bullet for the situation at hand.  Or it can come across that way.  Still, you should understand that many people in sociology are actually dropping hints about social trends being an underlying, important part of whole classes of problems in general:  They are not necessarily trying to "solve" individual crimes in the police sense where you have to sell a very simplified story to a jury. 

            Manson does not convince me that misogyny, racism, or oppression have nothing at all of importance to do with any of it.  More to the point:  I would say we can still look for social reasons that also play into where these things happen, and what people think goes with being infamous.  A totally "random" mass killing could happen in just any public place to anyone at anytime in any fashion, but I'm not convinced yet that they are altogether that random.  For example, what IS it about schools and big government buildings that make them 'impressive' or is it even 'personal' enough targets to be chosen by American attackers often enough to figure in the news as often as they do...  (Yes Manson says they are only 4% of mass shootings, but I would fuss about the definitions and statistics starting with: Yes there IS a notable difference between 4 people dead in a private home, and 30 on a public campus.)  Why do the killers we do notice, not only or always  pick giant office building or better for fame and glory, a more highly symbolic office building like the WTC?  Why do they pick schools at all and why do they or we care much about those "personally", if the ideal is always something bigger?  And are you saying few of the killers have written anything at all about gender, race, or oppression as either part of their personal image-building or motives?  I would be surprised if that were true, but maybe we could check that further.

Picking through the article:

Quote from: Manson
Despite what media outlets would later claim, Eric Harris was not the victim of bullying any more than other students
It's been some years so...  Maybe, maybe not.  But I would be more open if they said who they were taking as their definitive sources on that or better, laid out some arguments on the matter.  Rather than a quick dismissal of what other media has said -- which works out very well leaving this author as the only person you should listen to without saying much of why...  I'd like to hear their argument for refuting so many others laid out at least a little bit up front. 

          They later say that the victims at Columbine were from various groups.  Well, shooters picking more than one social clique as targets does not in itself prove that bullying was not a motivating factor.  And it wouldn't mean it would have to be the only one, either.  Part of what nags me about this writing is the rush to find a single motive ("the singular cause" he says) -- coupled with the apparent eagerness to push all possible other causes and the very possibility of interlocking problems away.  This starts to feel like part of a broader agenda to silence social issues that are very much live in the broader society, whatever the particular psychological formula would be for mass murderers.  I do think the infamy as personal glory angle has something to it...  But this is also working overtime to bust people for checking about where power and inequality in society play a part. 

         It's hinting it doesn't matter at all if the winners in violent stories often get the girls or sex...  Suggesting it doesn't matter at all if we have more weapons around or fewer, in a society this size enough people are simply crazy (they would use knives if not guns argument).  Well forget for a minute the pressure of trying to find some one simple explanation:  If that part were true, are Europe and Japan somehow drastically under-reporting their homicide rates?  Are humans all murderous this frequently, and other parts of the world have managed to miss reporting it while America has not?  Or is it just that Americans are more crazy on average and that's just how the world is, it's in their blood?  Sounds weird to me. 

         Some notes:  To be fair, I suppose there could be a difference between mass murders and murders in general.  That MSNBC file does say US mass murders are less than 1% of gun deaths.  But if you are really concerned about things associated with mass murders, then I'm more with the crowd that doesn't see mass murders as so simple to achieve with knives day in and day out.  China has a spate of knife attacks lately, but not often 20 deaths at a time that I've heard of.

Quote
This past weekend, a student named Elliot Rodger from Santa Barbara City College killed six and injured 13, the latest in a long series of school shootings that are all but becoming a normal part of American tradition. As usual, the killer left a cache of material behind to explain his intentions and milk as much publicity for his personal grievances as possible. This time, the focus was on women, and how they wouldn’t have sex with him.
So...  Saying here the killer actually wrote about women clearly, but people should pay no attention to misogyny as any part of his self-image and motivations?  The only thing we ever need to know is they're all batshit crazy and we can't do anything about it, happens all the time, every two weeks in fact?  Get resigned to the killing cause they're crazy, don't worry that misogyny helped because after all, they might not kill women -- or not only women, anyway.  We might as well forget misogyny and other gender prejudice helps drive quite a few guys to kill other men and trans, while we are at it.  (Don't get murdered for dating or looking at the "wrong" type, now.) 

            A lot of the rest is potentially more interesting.  But this stuff above, nearly drives me off the whole thing.
Quote
Here’s what doesn’t get the headlines: Empathy. Listening to those around you. Even if you don’t like them very much.

           Here there is something.  And some of the rest is good.  But I would be surprised if just anyone could listen to some of these people without feeling threatened or alienated -- sometimes on the basis of race, class, clique, gender, etc.  There are examples here where counselors, instructors, etc. reported things and they were not pursued because, what exactly?  There was no process to police a society chock full of kids expressing general malaise on so many fronts, and bust into rooms left and right searching for weapons? 

            We would need more on what they are broadly calling "mental health issues" there.  A simple fascination with Hitler literature isn't enough.  You don't know them simply from people being "angry."  There are a lot of angry young people in today's Western societies.  See riots in Britain, see riots in LA which Klebold and Harris themselves referred to.  You don't speak of fomenting revolution for kicks in a society with no internalized issues about oppression.  So in a sense, some people do "snap" over a whole mix of things.

              Yes, people should be more aware...  But everyone's going to be awful jumpy most of the time, if we go on pretending social issues aren't factors in the violence.  And more broadly: the issues go on, I bet you the violence goes on.  You can recruit as many cops and counselors and lookouts as you like, until then.  When everybody has pressing economic reasons to vent, and the media and the society are loaded full of competitive circuses and talk about winning the jungle for oneself, it isn't entirely surprising people don't always take notice.
     

Chris Brady

Um, Kylie.  You picked out some parts of his statement without linking the rest, and then make assumptions that have not been proven   That's exactly the danger that the article is pointing out.

You ignore that Eric Harris wanted to 'leave a mark' on society and had several sources of evidence to corroborate this fact.

Yes, bullying happens, every day and at every level of society.  On the internet and on the street, in schools, homes, workplaces, but very few people will take years to plan, gather equipment and execute a crime of this sort of magnitude.

The issue is that these people don't think like we do, and yet we attribute our own ways, which may be more socially acceptable and understandable, and we always end up wrong about it, especially when a tragedy occurs once again.
My O&Os Peruse at your doom.

So I make a A&A thread but do I put it here?  No.  Of course not.

Also, I now come with Kung-Fu Blog action.  Here:  Where I talk about comics and all sorts of gaming

kylie

#22
         I feel like you're tossing me sort of true believer generalizations here, with too little focus to even argue about it.  Convenient if you just aim to say, look again you'll see he's right about everything...  But not very precise.

Quote from: Chris Brady on June 10, 2014, 06:44:08 PM
You picked out some parts of his statement without linking the rest...
I'm not even sure if this is meant to mean, making connections he made in ideas...  Or more mechanically, "linking" something online that you wanted to focus on more.  Either way, you haven't said which leaps you are referring to that make so much difference, and that's a pretty long writeup over there.   

           Or you can just go off thinking it's so "obvious," or the full package is so brilliant that no one should question any of it perhaps.  So then, you don't need to bother.  Whichever.

QuoteYou ignore that Eric Harris wanted to 'leave a mark' on society and had several sources of evidence to corroborate this fact.

            I don't think saying how (and possibly why) he wanted to make that mark probably has something to do with class and perhaps more, is ignoring that he wanted to make it at all.  I'm saying those things are likely somehow part of the issues they had.   

Quote
Yes, bullying happens, every day and at every level of society.  On the internet and on the street, in schools, homes, workplaces, but very few people will take years to plan, gather equipment and execute a crime of this sort of magnitude.

             That's no good reason not to look into bullying as being among the factors.  There are lots of pieces to the puzzle.  In a country where one faction of adults is busy shouting "You simply can't take away my semi-auto weapons because look around, everyone has so many already, you'll never get them all...."  In that country, it makes sense to work on more than one angle.  Supposing all we had to do was watch for violent-sounding blogs, I guess I'm a little skeptical that law enforcement would actually be allowed to bust into every bedroom that has one.  I rather think some of the parents would be like, how dare you look at my house, my child, or even my weapons sitting around in here too.  And then if we could do it, I wonder if would-be shooters who thought that way would not learn to communicate in more subtle ways until the event.  Maybe I'm just cynical on this part, I'll allow for that?  It sounds too 'easy' to me, too simple. 

               Here in China where the government often busts people for saying things they don't like online, communities are constantly inventing new language tricks to avoid being pinned down in the search and censorship.  It's cat and mouse true, but they go on talking and sharing stuff.  Here the government is very active in pouncing on whatever they consider serious dissent...  And yet, on the mass murder front as well:  People still crash cars into Tiananmen Square or stab a dozen or two people in a train station without it being prevented.  And they get big news coverage, generally saying how "anti-social" or what terrorism it was but still if the question is fame and glory...  So what?  It's big-time coverage.  The government has to explain it somehow.  So I think, merely looking for a "few" violent-sounding posters to preemptively arrest, does not really solve the problem. 

             Btw though...  Either the news is getting more active at picking up shootings in the past 15 years, or those shootings are getting much more frequent than I recall hearing of when I was younger.  I recall when Columbine came along, it was a sort of wall to wall discussion for months.  Now we've heard of so many this year already -- it's sort of, "Oh that same thing again this week, just a different campus."  No?  So if you think the answer is more for the media to tone it down and not pay as much attention...  Then ironically, people could get so desensitized it's barely "news" anyway.  In which case if the author is right...  Maybe shooters will have to find higher profile targets  to feel like they got more than a tiny 'blip' of notice (if they can, as maybe not everyone is good at breaching federal buildings).  I wonder.
     

Oniya

The point that the author was making is that simply looking at the 'hot-button issues' isn't going to do it.  As parents, we need to be aware of our kids.  As teachers, we need to be aware of our students.  As employees, we need to be aware of our co-workers.  When someone says things like 'they'll be sorry they messed with me', we need to pay attention and not just roll our eyes and say 'Fred's on one of his rants today'. 

It's not just gun control.  It's not just bullying.  It's not just misogyny, misanthropy, hate speech or what-have-you.  It used to be when someone made a comment like 'Maybe we will even start a little rebellion or revolution to fuck things up as much as we can' or talk about 'blowing up the school and murdering classmates', people took notice.  Nowadays, unless it interferes with our personal activities, like our ability to access YouTube, or blocking our drive to work, nobody gives a damn. 

I remember sitting in a traffic jam when some guy was threatening to jump off the American Legion Bridge near DC.  Do you think anyone in that traffic jam gave a flying fuck about the guy other than the fact that he was blocking traffic?  I'm not holding myself out as innocent either.  But this is what the author is talking about. 

Paying attention to one's surroundings is a survival necessity that humans are losing.  If we paid more attention, we'd be more likely to see the people that need help and the people who are just plain dangerous before they reach a point - either from desperation, instability or sheer cussedness - where they end up inflicting casualties.
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Quote from: kylie on June 06, 2014, 04:28:12 PMSo...  Saying here the killer actually wrote about women clearly, but people should pay no attention to misogyny as any part of his self-image and motivations?  The only thing we ever need to know is they're all batshit crazy and we can't do anything about it, happens all the time, every two weeks in fact?  Get resigned to the killing cause they're crazy, don't worry that misogyny helped because after all, they might not kill women -- or not only women, anyway.  We might as well forget misogyny and other gender prejudice helps drive quite a few guys to kill other men and trans, while we are at it.  (Don't get murdered for dating or looking at the "wrong" type, now.)

Quote from: kylie on June 06, 2014, 04:28:12 PMYes, people should be more aware...  But everyone's going to be awful jumpy most of the time, if we go on pretending social issues aren't factors in the violence.

Seung-Hui Cho made extensive references to his hatred of "rich kids" (and the rich in general) in his videos and notes. Following the "social factors in violence" approach surely that means that we should attempt to make it socially unacceptable to criticise the rich for being rich or to argue that there is something wrong with wealth inequality or the like?

In addition, I'll also leave this here as it says things far better than I could. It's from a letter to the Guardian in response to one of their comment pieces which, to use its own words to summarise the article, argued "Was misogyny the reason a 22-year-old man went on a killing spree? Hell yes.".

QuoteAs a specialist working with patients who have neurologically based mental health problems, I was dismayed by Hadley Freeman's offhand attitude to Elliot Rodger's mental health history (Elliot Rodger was a misogynist – but is that all he was?, 27 May). Freeman is wrong to take Rodger's extreme statements about women at face value and depict these as evidence of both individual and societal misogyny.

Rodger has been described as having suffered from Asperger's syndrome, a neurodevelopmental disorder characterised by impaired social behaviour, often with rigidly held distorted ideas regarding interpersonal relationships. People with Asperger's, who frequently have a long history of frustration and bewilderment in their relationships, can form pathologically negative ideas from these experiences. Low self-esteem, social inadequacy and loneliness form a cauldron for angry feelings in the absence of the ability to process these feelings in a healthy way.

This is a far more complex picture than Freeman's assumption of a culturally induced misogyny. We need to understand people who suffer from mental health issues, not use them as a vehicle for a diatribe.
Dr Annie Hickox
Consultant clinical neuropsychologist

I'll finish by noting that two girls recently stabbed a friend of theirs 19 times in an attempt to kill her. Their reason? In essence, "because of Slender Man".

Just like Elliot Rodger, they gave the reasons behind their attack. Should we take their "Slender Man made me" argument as seriously as you seem to take the misogyny in Rodger's?