This might be too touchy of a topic right now, or just too political in general, but I'll suggest the thread anyway. There have been TWO mass shootings in the States in the last 24 hours. That's insane. What's even crazier is that it's getting to be more and more common. Focus: Talk about what it is within our society that takes people to the point where walking into a crowded room with a shotgun seems like the only acceptable alternative. Is it the media? Our growing sense of isolation? Pure mental illness? EDIT: In response to Shegirl: Do you think it's people's 'level' of crazy that's changing, or do you think that as time passes the amount of crazy you already had seems easier and easier to show the world? I guess I'm asking if people had all these thoughts and feeling before (i.e. prior to, say, the '70s), and only very seldom acted on them OR do you think that some part of our society is ratcheting up the levels people are actually capable of?
I think with the dip in the economy and the unemployment rate (which I read just this morning has fallen to 10%) things are getting worse as far as peoples level of crazy. People are lashing out for many reasons. Last week there was a news story about a robbery. The guy holding the gun told the cashier that his kid had H1N1 and he was unemployed with no medical coverage. Yes, we all know there are other avenues he could take to get her some care but for some reason this man felt violence was his only option. Sure media has something to do with it and some are indeed mentally ill yet, there is a percentage of these desperate people that are or were, normal members of society at one time maybe not long ago. I too wonder what makes them snap to such an extreme. I don't see this getting any better as we head into the holiday season either. Happy Holidays everybody! EDIT addressing EDIT. That sounds weird. Anyway, I think with the recent cases and frequency on the rise at this point with things as they are it's more geared towards society, and the limitations placed because of it, that are pushing seemingly normal people over the edge. Sure there will always be the whack jobs that get off on violence and power but when things are in the shitter and good people are unable to function going through the normal courses of their day, or what once was, they turn desperate. Desperation and hopelessness then tip them over the edge. Spell check caught shitter. That's funny.
I think the same percentage of crazy has always existed. More people=more crazy people. That being said, there are a 1000 factors that can make someone go nutty. I think that in the instant communication world we live in just makes those stories that much more shocking because we can get the information damn near instantaneous.
Honestly, there have been shootings throughout the entire history of the United States. This shit is as old as Jim Brown. We just are more in number, more densely populated, and have better firepower. It's damn hard to do this sort of shit in an agricultural society. You'd have to travel day and night to find 30 people, as opposed to having them all in one room. We tend to freak the fuck out every few years, forgetting that we did the exact same thing 5 years ago, 10 years ago, 20 years ago. The human brain is trained to see patterns, even where there are none. This same logic applies to economic downturns, epidemics, those-goddamn-kids-these-days, technological progress, etc.
I think that there are 2 driving factors on why there seem to be more going on, which are somewhat related. 1. The 24 hour news cycle. They have to have the time filled with something, so a mass shooting can keep the time filled for a while. Then if there is another one soon after, they will latch on to it. I doubt the office shooting in Florida would have gotten nearly as much coverage had the Ft. Hood event thing not happened. 2. I think some people see all the coverage, and it just makes something click in their mind, and they finally take that step of going off the deep end. They go, get their gun and go nuts.
This. It also seems there is a bit of "one-ups-manship"(huh?) going on too. I imagine today's angst filled teenager has to consider the possibility that their killing spree just won't get the attention it "deserves" if they only manage to kill one person.
I completely agree with the "one-ups-manship". It seems like the whole "go big or go home" mentality has switched over to muder-suicides. I also think there has been a mass desensatizing to everyone in general. Blame it on rap music, video games, TV, or whatever the hell you want, but it just seems like the general grasp on reality has slowly loosened with the emergence of the information age. That, or we're all programmed with governement chips in our heads (put in at birth) that set us off with a trigger word.
I didn't say this in my initial post, but I think it has a great deal to do with the family unit. Not just the typical nuclear family (mom, dad and kids), but "family" in the sense that you belong to a broad community where people care about you and listen to what you have to say. I'm an only child and my parents are divorced. However, everybody remains close and I have a huge extended family. When I got sick last year there were no fewer than six immediate family members by my bedside in a foreign country. At any point during the day, I can pick up the phone and call somebody with whatever problem I'm having and either vent or get help solving it. I'd have to guess that the people who go on shooting sprees, or even those who are just harmlessly crazy, are suffering somewhat from isolation. In my circumstance, even if something snapped in my head and I went off the rails, I have a suspicion someone in my family would sense something was wrong BEFORE I started shooting and address it. Between the ever-increasing divorce rate (where, presumably, most post-divorce families are not as close as mine) and the isolation technology is creating, I think it's making people crazy. How can technology be isolating? It connects us better, right? Wrong. It limits the amount of one-on-one, face-to-face interactions we have. I certainly don't study this kind of thing, but logic tells me that the more isolated you are the bigger you tend to preceive your problems as being. That may have something to do with the 'kick in the door and start shootin' crazy we are seeing so much of.
Sadly these kind of actions have been going on since long before even I was born. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_School_disaster http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe_Elemen ... ool_attack And there are scores more throughout history. Think back 65 years ago when a government of a so called civilized country killed 10 million people just for shits and giggles. Who knows what makes people snap? I'm actually kind of glad that the Ft. Hood shooter is still alive so maybe we can gain some insight as to his mindset and what the hell pushed him over the edge to do such a cowardly and heinous act.
You know what really sucks? Sharing last names with the Fort Worth guy. In case being Pakistani wasn't bad enough.
the really scary thing about this is that there is no exact formula for what makes someone do this. In some of my college courses we've studied serial killers and school shooters (forensic psychology, personality psychology, abnormal psychology, sociology of deviant behavior, etc) and although some have familiar trends, there are no direct linking traits. Some studies say that a better positive male role model, positive contact with females, etc help "lonely" males develop a little bit better socially but honestly we as professionals just don't know. One interesting question though that i've entertained is why does this seem to be a genderized isssue? Very rarely, if even ever at all do we here about women acting out in these ways. Also there are some studies that this is a racialized issue where the focus is more on white males. (my ideas behind this relate to the media and how they attempt to display the different races and racial issues to the general public. PM if you want more info) that's my two-cents for what it's worth. The most important thing though is making sure that the families are taken care of and that the true victims (the families of the victims) are the ones who recieve the positive attention and not the killers whom the media are often found glorifying in some way or another.
My guess is that men are socially conditioned to be more violent, and towards retributive behavior by physical means. Compare the level of violence and physicality in men's and women's sports. Even in the same sport, there is a marked difference between the type of behavior encouraged by the rules and coaching. Look at the different attitudes displayed towards childhood and adult fighting across gender. You can argue day and night about the causes and morality of it, but we expect, condone or even encourage markedly different levels of violent behavior from women and men. There may in fact be underlying genetic/biochemical differences at play here as well, but I am dramatically under-qualified to speak to that.
It's bad enough that people flip out and cause these horrible acts. Maybe we can get some answers out of this latest asshole, because he get the chance to kill himself like they usually do. Of course, it will never end here. The 24 hour news poisons (Fox especially) and the idiot talking heads will dissect this, find some family members or employer to blame, and eventually conclude that the cause of this horrible mass killing is obviously teenagers having sex, gay marriage, and violent video games. We should be ashamed.
I think a part of it is how self centered we have all become. Everything is about ME ME ME and if something doesn't go my way, well someone has to pay. So you have some people who feel like everyone is against them and instead of just ending their miserable lives, they are going to make as many people miserable first. A guy loses his job and can't find one. Well he is sitting at McDonalds looking at these guys coming in for their lunch and thinking why should they be so happy when he's miserable. It's like the kid that steals other kids toys and breaks them. He doesn't have that toy, so why should they?
As for it being gender specific, I have to agree with MoreCowbell's statement of women not being as retributive. I'm reminded of Lt Grossman's findings in On Combat (or was it On Killing?) of women tending to internalise their issues and stresses. Women are more likely to hurt themselves than lash out on such a grand scale.
Hey look, it almost happened again. Christ on a cracker, the world is going nuts. At least no one was hurt this time.
oh don't get me wrong I severely lack the credentials also, these are just things i've found in my studies so far. It just seems to be a really unstudied issue about whether this is something inherently genetic based off when we were trying to bring down the mammoth and protect the cave, or whether we as a culture have socialized ourselves to be come hyper-violent.