Virginia

[cats paw]

Hello, All-

  You have all so eloquently discussed this issue.  I just read this thread after my idealistic little Pollyanna self posted elsewhere. For some reason, I thought of what someone said about the personal is the political or is it the other way around? Actually I think the original meaning was for it to read both ways?

   I think it is very important that we all do first what everyone on this board is doing.  But then what?  My H and I were having a discussion about the issues related to Duke, Rutgers, etc. before the VT horror.   He got a bit aggravated by my passionate discussion, I think and he ended up saying that nothing can be done about it anyway.  I told him that if there was a way to join some group of Freedom Riders in relation to certain issues I would.  I got the impression he thought I was being silly.

   I am middle aged, so I do know that no one can do anything alone, and I also know the importance of saving that one little starfish as the little girl did in the story, though there are millions on the beach.

   During the Civil Rights Movement, Kent State, etc.  I was young, and have still not looked into all the history, but would the good things have been accomplished as quickly without public awareness made possible by broadcasting it?

   Does it count, what we're doing by having this dicussion, or is it a mild version of standing by and doing nothing and letting evil triumph?
 
   I fall into numbness, cynicism, and apathy at times, so how can I judge anyone else who does?

   Does it count when I speak my thoughts in public, or am I just tsk tsking, and it goes nowhere?

   Does the good old writing your congressman do any good?


Thanks for my brief soapbox, everyone-

cats paw       

[mudpuppy]

 Hi to you too Stormy,

You may very well be right that he was bullied. But there has to be something more than just bullying to cause one person to go postal while some other kid on the same playground being bullied in precisely the same manner turns out to be a model citizen.
Timothy McVeigh was apparently called a beanpole and given a swirly while in grade school. I believe many thousands of other kids are given the same treatment every year, but I only know of one who blew up a federal building.
I recently read the Columbine pair were not ostracized but were fairly popular, mainstream kids who created their personas of being shunned outcasts in their own minds.

I suspect each one of these mass or serial murderers has had a unique combination of experiences that may contribute to their sprees, or that they use to justify them. But every person who is wronged has to choose between living in spite of the abuse or descending into a fantasy world of self pity and going out in a blaze of glorious retaliation against those whom they know to be innocent victims. If abuse was the determining factor the world would be full to the brim with these types. As it is the world is much more full of people who despite enduring a lot worse abuse than these lunatics manage to survive and even thrive without having their body count and suicide note full of petty grievances making the headlines.

 I understand the desire to gain insight into their behavior and to condemn whatever abuse others may or may not have heaped on these few lunatics. But let's not lose sight of the fact that these people are the ultimate bullies. And in attempting to understand them let's not risk dishonoring the many who have been more severely abused and have resisted the temptation to lash out at the world and instead have striven to heal and do good to others not murder them. I haven't read anything these people have endured that compares to the abuse a good number of the people here have.

I don't believe one of the murderers we have spoken of was so mentally ill that they were absolved of legal responsibility for their crimes. They knew what they were doing was wrong and they chose to do it anyway. Not only does it dishonor their victims and their families to lay a portion of the blame elsewhere, it doesn't even give the murderers their proper due. They knowingly chose evil and pursued it. I choose to acknowledge their choice by laying the responsibility solely where I think it belongs; at their feet. I think it trivializes the choice they have made to place the blame elsewhere and it devalues the choice for good that others make when they resist the tempatations of evil. And I'm afraid that the more we endorse the idea that our moral choices are outside of our control the easier we make it for those marginal people facing the choice between good and evil to make the wrong choice.

mud

[Sela]

Hi all:

Been reading along this thread and thinking a lot.  I keep thinking of my friend.

She was one of the sweetest people I ever knew.  Kind.  Friendly.  Polite.  Generous.  Giving.  So very faithful and she relied on God so much.  She would offer hope to anyone who was lacking and she would give the clothes off her back, if she thought it would stop someone's suffering.  I know these things because I saw the way she treated people and I know the way she treated me.   She was a gentle and loving soul. 

We were very close.  Told eachother our deepest stuff.   She babysat my girls, sometimes for me, to give me a break, when they were younger.  She was fun and creative and joyful, so much of the time.  We had many laughs together and enjoyed many simple pleasures side by side for many years.

But she had dark secrets.  Lived through horrible traumas and had been hospitalized ....breaking down mentally.  She was on medication, which seemed to work for years and years.  She loved her sons, her friends, her pets and worked in a helping field, going into people's homes and helping them.  She did a wonderful job and received many accolades.  She was well-loved by many.

Then some more trauma happened (I don't want to put the details here because I'd feel like I was disrespecting her privacy....making it possible for someone to identify her).  NO I won't do that!  But terrible trauma.....emotional....happened again. 

And she killed herself by burning her house down with her pets in it.



Did she really make an evil choice?



The woman I knew was not capable of making such a choice.
The woman I knew would give her life rather than harm a poor, defenseless pet.
The woman I knew had courage and a heart of gold.


My opinion:

Anyone of us......everyone of us.......is capable.  We all have a breaking point.  There is a place so deep and dark and forboding......that will allow any person in.....when the time is right...and once there, we are all capable of horrendous acts.   And it is possible for all to be driven there.

To get to that point......the mind goes nuts....or in and out of reality.  The soul goes numb....or ceases to be aware.    And all that is left is the pain.  Function is fueled by pain only.  And whether that pain is expressed by psychotic delusions and ravaging rage or by sheer despair and torment.......
the result is similar.

I think we are all capable, which is the scariest thought of all.


What stops some people?  Many never reach that breaking point because not enough stuff happens to push them there?  Or many people never get that hurt?  Or by the grace of God many are simply stronger or luckier or something??

What do I know?  Not much.  I know my friend had to have been out of her mind to behave like that.  And I bet these others.....were out of their's too.


How else can we define insanity?  Sane people just don't act like that, do they?

Maybe our definition of insane needs to change?

I just don't believe a person can be sane and do such things.  Make a conscious, sane choice.  Maybe a conscious choice but not a sane one.  They are aware of what they are doing.....but their brain just does not compute that it is insane.  It makes perfect sense to them because the wires in their brains are broken, burnt up, missing or otherwise not functioning.



Does that happen to evil people?



My friend was not an evil person.  She was a good person.  A very sick person, I believe, when she acted so insanely.



So, I find it hard to condemn people who behave in insane ways because I really think that is how to define such behaviour and that one must be insane to act/behave that way.  I feel sorry that they broke and acted as they did.  I think of their families and wonder if they are victims too?  Or part of the breaking process?  Stuff drives people insane, sometimes, and it's not their fault.  Sometimes, it's not anyone's fault, it's just where the breaking point happens to be.  Every one of us has a different tolerance of pain.....a different pain threshold.   Who can say where their's is?  Or that they will never reach it?



For the victims and their families, I feel deep empathy and sorrow.  They happened to be in the wrong the place at the wrong time, just like my friend's pets.   I believe these are selfish acts because no one else is considered when they are perpetrated.  The person may or may not be aware that they are acting strictly to satisfy their own selfish desires.  In that way, we are all a little insane, sometimes.   Who does not have selfish desires?  So even the victims may wish to retaliate and some......might.

And the cycle of abuse continues.


Most won't and that's the good news.  Most will try to survive and heal and some might go on to do incredible things......powerful, helpful, fantastic stuff that makes the world a better place!

It's a reaction to pain, I think.  Both types of behaviour.  And extreme reactions are possible in either direction.

What decides the direction, might be the real question?

Sela

[Brigid]

As sad and horrific as the events in Virginia this week were, we have to be mindful of how lucky we (those of us in most of the industrialized world, at least) are that events such as that are rare.  We don't live in a part of the world where on a daily basis we could be blown up at any minute by someone who has so much anger and hatred in their souls that they will strap a bomb to their bodies and detonate it in a public place, with the sole intention of killing as many innocent victims--young and old alike--as they can. 

How can we explain a mentality which allows for an act such as that to be OK and, in fact, celebrated?  How do we make that mentality stop?  It doesn't even seem to be slowing down.  Young people are jumping on that band wagon in growing numbers and we are helpless to change that mindset.  That's something which really frightens me.

Brigid 

[Hopalong]

Oh Sela.
There is a story.

I am sorry. What a tragedy.

I guess that's what I'm fumbling to say.

I just picture just about every human being in diapers, and I have a hard time hating for more than 5 minutes.

Hops

[BonesMS]

The more I hear, the more I'm leaning toward the possibility of paranoid schizophrenia...the flat affect, delusions of persecution in connection with this college mates, the verbal ramblings that don't make any sense.....that's my diagnostic impression.

Bones

[debkor]

Bones,

I was thinking that also.

Love
Deb

[CB123]

Bones,

Is that a chemical disorder?  I don't know a lot about some of these diagnoses--I know some are not really related to environment but to actual changes in brain chemicals.  Do we know enough to know if it is genetic? 

CB

[BonesMS]

Bones,

I was thinking that also.

Love
Deb

Thanks, Deb.

Bones

[BonesMS]

Bones,

Is that a chemical disorder?  I don't know a lot about some of these diagnoses--I know some are not really related to environment but to actual changes in brain chemicals.  Do we know enough to know if it is genetic? 

CB

I recall reading about twin studies that indicate that schizophrenia can be genetic.  Something goes wrong with the brain chemistry that results in schizophrenia.  Paranoid schizophrenia can be the worst illness when the individual becomes a danger to self and others.

Bones

[axa]

Fifty years ago were there mass killings of kids in schools?

What has changed?

Where is personal responsibility?

Was there no mental illness 50 years ago?

Were people not abused 50 years ago?

Were young men not angry 50 years ago?

These are the questions I am left with. 

I think in many ways society has improved in the intervening time but I also think in many ways society has disimproved greatly.

We all make mistakes, we are angry but most of us do not go out and kill another.  Why because it is WRONG.  We choose not to do it because it is wrong.  Many people with mental illness do not abuse, hurt, kill others.  To buy guns with the intent to kill another human being is wrong.  It is a choice.

I am with Mud on this one.

I think in some ways we as a society have become so "understanding" we have lost sight of right and wrong.  I am sorry that that young man felt so much anger and pain but he choose to do what he did.  He had a choice in ending his own life, those other kids did not want to die.  I don't hate him, hating him makes no difference but my compassion is with the families of the dead kids.

Some part of me feels it is just how it is now.  This is the way we live.  This is the society we are all contributing to. 

This is our reality.

axa

[Stormchild]

Don't forget the whole concept of schizophrenogenesis. There is a reason that certain behavior is called 'crazy-making'.

Isn't it wrong for kids to be allowed to torment and mock other kids, beat them up, and even throw them in Dumpsters while yelling racial slurs at them? Isn't it even more wrong for adults to watch all this and NEVER DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT? [The obvious interpretation being, they secretly support and endorse it.]

What do you expect from people who are treated that way ALL THEIR LIVES? Awe-inspiring sanity and grace? A Nobel Peace Prize?

I know what I am talking about, and I STILL have the scars on my back where my dear little schoolmates put out their cigarettes when I was in ninth grade. [My crime? Good grades, bad eyes (glasses) and reddish hair.]

I was lucky. I found a way to escape and I got therapy, and I never reached the point where I felt that innocent third parties deserved to suffer because of anything I had experienced.

But I know that helpless rage. I will never be able to forget what it felt like, to want to hit my tormentors back just as hard as I was hit. To want to do whatever it took to make sure they would never, never be able to hit, or mock, or torment me - or anyone like me - again.

Anybody who hasn't been through that has no right to tell me what to think about it. Not in my case, not in anyone else's.

[Portia]

Practical view? -  www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2059749,00.html


"Even posthumous attention beats being ignored."

We don't have many school shootings in the UK. We do have increasing knife-crime in schools though. I imagine I'd find it 'easier' to shoot someone with a gun, or several people with an automatic gun, than to kill them at close range by plunging a knife into their flesh.

[mountainspring]

(((Stormy)))

[Stormchild]

Um, folks... most of what I was describing above actually happened to this kid we're all talking about.

I was taunted, physically beaten, stalked before they had that name for it by brats who laid in wait for me on my way home from school, and yes, burned with cigarettes once when I wore a summer dress with a low back.

But the things I listed above, except for the cigarette burns, are all things that happened to this kid, and are now being reported in the papers.

That is the point I'm trying to make. It's all well and good for us to pontificate about how we'd never do any such thing, but we've never been put to the test the way he was, have we?

The fact is, we have no idea what we would do, if pushed all the way to the edge and beyond, and we also have no idea where our own edge is... never mind someone else's.

Bottom line - to me: If we don't want these things to happen, we have to stop accepting and condoning and enabling and even rewarding emotional abuse. That won't prevent hallucinating nutcases from doing crazy things with no motivator at all, but it would probably prevent more school and workplace violence than we want to admit.

And the very fact that we don't want to admit it helps to perpetuate it.

Portia, long time no see. Hope you are doing well. Thanks for the link, from which I've lifted this quote:

For a lucky few, school and college are where we first distinguish ourselves. But for the majority, they are the site of first humiliation, subjugation and injury. They are almost always our first introduction to brutal social hierarchies, as they may also sponsor our first romantic devastation. What better stage on which to act out primitive retribution?

This author 'gets it'. God help us, as a society, we still don't.