Warning Signs
POSTED BY: Jongsstraw
UPDATED: Sunday, April 29, 2007 19:28
VIEWED: 14532
PAGE 3 of 15
All mass murderers and serial killers justify their acts by blaming it on the victims. But in the end, you’re taking the word of a mass murderer for the justification of his acts. It’s nonsense.
Nihil est incertius vulgo, nihil obscurius voluntate hominum, nihil fallacius ratione tota comitiorum.
Nothing is more unpredictable than the mob, nothing more obscure than public opinion, nothing more deceptive than the whole political system.
-- Cicero
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I hear what you're saying Finn, but you're completely hung up on the 'justification' angle. It's not like looking seriously at the cause and effect relationships of the situation is going to condone their actions. Doesn't it make sense to look at this from every angle and not just dismiss it with "they're crazy and evil"?
SergeantX
"Dream a little dream or you can live a little dream. I'd rather live it, cause dreamers always chase but never get it." Aesop Rock
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How many people in this country feel or have felt humiliated or hurt by the unnecessary words or acts of other people? I don’t really know, but if I had to guess, I would expect the number to be very, very large; a sizeable percentage of the country. And now how many of those people go out into a crowd of people they don’t know and start randomly killing people? Off the top of my head I can come up with two. I’m sure there are more but the number pales so miserably in comparison to the hundreds of millions who have felt the “cause” that random mass murder cannot possibly be the “effect.” If you’re interested in looking for a solution (and I’m not even certain that there is one), you could increase of chances of finding one by not searching in areas where logic suggests one does not exist. You seem to be acting as if I dismiss your argument with no contemplation, but that’s not the case. I’ve considered it, and I dismiss it, because there is absolutely no correlation and the only evidence that supports this claim are the predictable words of a mass murdering fruitcake.
So if you wanted to discuss some hypothetical angle to this, then that’s fine, but at least admit the absurdity of accepting a claim based on nothing more cogent then the rambling polemics of fruitcakes. Give me something, because right now, the only one you’ve got on your side is the mass murdering fruitcake!
Nihil est incertius vulgo, nihil obscurius voluntate hominum, nihil fallacius ratione tota comitiorum.
Nothing is more unpredictable than the mob, nothing more obscure than public opinion, nothing more deceptive than the whole political system.
-- Cicero
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Then allow me, in two words, to explain to you the cause and effect Sarge is trying to get across.
Carl Panzram
While an extreme example, probably THE most extreme example, his honesty about his reasons gives us a window to look in and observe our societys affect on many people.
I can put it in no more crystal clear terms than this.
We do unto them, and the moment they get the opportunity, they do unto us.
That isn't always the case, mind you, many of them do harm unto themselves, or each other, but in the case of Carl, he knew exactly why he was the way he was, and retaliated against humanity and their society in every way he could, and on occasion specific individuals like Taft, who we felt were more responsible than others.
Look into that window, look hard.
Not every child in our society will turn out like that, but our means and methods make damn sure every single one of them has the potential.
And all I hear is *tick tick tick* - none of you were in my social circle 10, 15, 20 years ago, but I been calling this one since the mid 80's, just wincing and watching the oncoming freight train while most folk huddled in denial.
It will get worse as the cycle speeds up and closes, and you have no clue just how "worse" it can get, pray you never know - the only way we're ever going to stop it is to break the chain and completely re-evaluate how we treat children from cradle to majority, and how we encourage them to treat each other.
Or, we can simply throw our hands up in the air and say they were born evil and there was nothing we could do, absolving ourselves of guilt and continuing to deny the obvious.
Never occured to any of you that part of why I am an Anarchist is to distance myself from a system and society that is downright horrific from an objective viewpoint, and on a fast course to self-implosion ?
I *know* where the roots of evil lie, it's doin something about it that's the bitch.
-Frem
Suggested Linkage
Today's Victim Could Be Tomorrow's Predator
http://www.vachss.com/av_dispatches/disp_9006_a.html
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If we're going to say that a person becoming violent is directly connected to chastisment & abuse from various quarters...when are we going to start the Don Imus rampage watch?
I'm no psycologist but it occurs to me that we have become so "poliically correct" that we are cutting our own throats.
I don't think its a huge leap to suggest that repressing behavior for "PC" is harmfull. Wheather it be ritelin, or punishing kids for being kids, seriously in recent years kids have been kicked out of school for playing "cops & robbers' on playgrounds.
Going back to Imus for a second...he didn't break any FCC codes, he didn't violate the law...he made an assinine remark. A remark that cost him his job & set off a firestorm of controversy...over an opinion?
Are we at the point where opinion is going to be codified? We already have varying dgrees of legality...consider this:
If a homosexual man kills a straight man it's murder, if a straight man murders a gay man not onnly is it murder...it can also be classed a "hate crime". That's pretty stupid considering the fact that I think murder is a pretty hatefull act already.
We are now classifying some speech as "hate speech" so that the argument can be made that there is some kind of speech that isn't protected by the Constitution...huh?
Just as we can legislte such things as non-discrimination...we cannot legislate a persons emotions. Put another way you can't change the hearts & minds of a people by law.
However such legislation & societal pressures can help to repress the voicing of opinion...repress long enough & eventually you will get a backlash that may not be expressed through speech.
The other issue is the fact that we no longer teach a concrete grasp of right & wrong, without that compass things can go horribly wrong.
Cho got exactly what he wanted...a media event that got him on national TV, his face in virtually every home, & a spot on NBC news.
I wonder if Cho knew the difference between being famous, & infamous?
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Quote:
Originally posted by SergeantX:
You can't honestly be arguing that subjecting people to systematic psychological abuse doesn't make them more likely to lash out.
Actually I deal with that every day. Systematic and continuous pschological and even physical abuse, usually of women or childen.
Its called Domestic Violence and while "the burning bed" might happen once in a while I get cases of "but he loves me this time, so drop the charges" every day.
Its Battered Woman Syndrome (misnamed because it applies to men and children too), a cycle of abuse. Cycle, meaning more then once using intimidation, emotional abuse, financial abuse, threats, isolation, male privilage (although thats a sexist idea since I've seen it the other way around), children (as in making someone feel guilty "for the children"), minimizing, denying, blaming, and finally physical violence.
I've found that most often there is no lashing out, rather its accepted and even expected. Its a rare individual that can break the cycle either by violence or by simply "getting out".
H
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Quote:Wow. You were either a bully or a jock in your youth. It's possible to abhor what Cho did and not defend our whole system of control through fear. So why you INSIST on defending a system that has created a society with the highest child abuse, murder rate, and incarceration rate of the industrialized world? Yep, I can see that it's working for us and we "want" it.
Social chastisement is not necessarily a bad thing, and some of it is important to maintain the norms and competition in our society, which whether we will admit it or not, we all want. In some cases, it may go too far, especially when it becomes motivated by social class, physical or mental abnormality, gender or ethnicity. But that’s all something completely different from and has no relevance to the act of going into a crowd of strangers and randomly killing people you don’t know or have probably never met. These two things, the mass murder and social chastisement, have no relation.
In my humble experience, nobody that I know was ever improved by crticism, punishment, and bullying Bullies are not particularly bright, nor do they enforce "social order" in the schools, they're simply exercising their "need to dominate and subdue other students and to get their own way". The victims are often guilty of nothing more than being shy (which is one of the most stable personal characteristics) and insecure. And because bullying exacerbates these characteristics, these children often become permanent victims. They get to look forward to year after year of being terrorized at hands of antisocial snots with GREAT self esteem who have intimidated an entire class, sometimes even a whole school.
So- what does a child learn by being bullied? What did Cho learn from being bullied? Nothing except that it's somehow an unforgiveable crime to be quiet, shy, and insecure. And what could you threaten Cho with so that he wouldn't commit mass murder? The death penalty? Too late, he did that himself.
I agree that school bullying is not the ONLY cause of Cho's behavior. But in other nations, where corporal punishment is banned (Iceland, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Norway, Austria, and Germany) bullying does not precipitate murder, it tends to cause suicide. And in fact, those nations- not exactly hotbeds of misbehavior and crime- take bullying very seriously and are doing their best to eliminate it. So much for needing social chatisement to enforce social norms!
again! A special mention about defending "competition": WHY? I see a lot of snide remarks about how today nobody "wins" because nobody "loses". I think a lot of people tend to confuse winning and losing with the notion of unearned self-esteem (see bullies) but it is possible to earn self-esteem without being pitted against other children. The "target" doesn't have to be another kid, it can be ANY difficult task, even one requiring cooperation. Look at Roger Federer, arguably the greatest tennis player ever. He doesn't play against his opponent, he has set himself historic goals and he plays against THAT.
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Always look upstream.
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Quote:It is possible to teach right from wrong without tolerating or engaging in worngful behavior. A person how can't figure out how to do that must be pretty stupid.
The other issue is the fact that we no longer teach a concrete grasp of right & wrong, without that compass things can go horribly wrong.
Quote:Cho got himself killed. Focus on THAT for a moment.
Cho got exactly what he wanted...a media event that got him on national TV, his face in virtually every home, & a spot on NBC news.I wonder if Cho knew the difference between being famous, & infamous?
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Always look upstream.
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Cho got himself killed. Focus on THAT for a moment.
I got that, so did he...he killed himself (at least according to the official story), he knew exactly what he was doing.
He chose the method of his own end & in his own way. There are those who would say his last moments were an unmitigated success.
Not everyone who lives fears death, & is it not said that dying well is the best revenge? Are there not those who believe that death in battle surrounded by ones enemies is a glorious end?
I got that he's dead, did you get that that was what he wanted. Suicide/Homicide bombers are dead after thier glorious moment & they are delighted to do so. Cho saw himself in ways that we don't...in his mind I have no doubt that everything he did was justified & right.
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Of course everything he did was justified and right, but that doesn't mean he was a happy camper about his impending death.
I was in the ER with our kid once when the EMTs brought in a woman who went under the kitchen sink and drank everything she could find: bleach, drain cleaner, dish soap.... whatever was handy She was in the curtained assesment area next to ours, so although she was only semi-coherent I eventually got the whole story: two small children, an abusive boyfriend. no job, no family nearby. She didn't make it of course. Eventually she slipped into a coma and died. What would drive someone to do that?
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Always look upstream.
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