Set Pro or Anti-Gun Aside. What Is Causing People To Flip Out?

I believe there are a number of factors involved. Some of the behaviors are liken to base animal survival. When you increase the number of rats competing for resources in an enclosure it produces abhorrent behavior to the point of cannibalism. Then there is the lemming like behavior of the copy cat killer. One leads the other off the cliff of insanity to their destruction and unfortunately taking the innocent with them.

I personally believe the issue is deeper. Years ago I began to notice the increasing behavior that has now become known as road rage. I have become convinced what is happening is a subconscious response to a feeling of being out of control, of being disrespected by others. If you have read any of my other posts regarding human longings I would suggest that is what is working here. When the story of these killers is revealed there is almost always a strong similarity. They feel disrespected or overlooked. They feel ostracized from their peers. They feel misunderstood and helpless and powerless.

Their longings for respect and relationship are blocked by the behavior of others. To overcome their sense of powerlessness they commit the ultimate crime of Cain, they kill their brother!

reply to post by grayeagle


I haven't seen your posts before but I will definitely look for them. I think you are on the money with it being similar to the 'snap' of road rage. That is very interesting.

And thank you Suspiria for your input. I agree that sometimes children brought up in suburban homes can crack if they are trying to maintain a facade of normalcy in a neglectful or abusive environment.

Very interesting stuff. Thanks for contributing your insight.

reply to post by PrincessTofu

So you're thinking maybe the sheer mass of people is triggering some primitive, instinctual flip-out response in some people?

It is more the mass of people relative to the size and resources of the environment. If the Earth was as big as the Sun then there still would be heaps more room and resources to grow as a culture, society and civilization, but in time such problems will still arise. In studying the fall of previous civilizations, access to resources along with the development of bad habits and detrimental cultural norms are very important factors.

As resources receive more demand, they come under more pressure to sustain. This pressure is reflected in human behavior, how most if not all wars come down to resources is the classic example. Oil prices, health care, food crops and water are just a few of the many resources under stress and increasing the challenges of daily life. Some more than others depending on where you are living around the planet, with some very extreme methods employed at times.

To compensate, some people are into preping to reduce there need on external resources, some are into video games as it is all just too hard, most just continue the daily grind and take it as it comes. A few just give up and take up arms as the simplicity of jungle rules releases the ongoing pressure of more civilized and sometimes unjust laws in this complex world.

There are many theories and possible reasons for exactly what triggered any such a massacre and every one will have its own unique aspects. But as these mass killing events do become more of a social norm increasing in frequency and damage than a rare exception it is ringing out the alarm bells for social stability and order. With the US fiscal management and policy in decline as inflation and devaluation sets in things will become even harder for the average US citizen. Increasing efficiencies in the use and distribution of resources through technology is one way out, but wither the cost to privacy and freedom is too much is a wait and see.

As for the triggering being primitive and instinctual or based more on the distribution and diversity of human interest and experience I am not sure. Maybe a bit of both with some group dynamics thrown in. Nature does have a habit of sorting out problems one way or another. On average it is winning, but when trying so many possibilities there are a lot of losers along the way.

reply to post by kwakakev


Very insightful. Do you feel that middle-class teens are so aware of looming economical drought that it sets them off? I always thought of teens as a bit oblivious to things like that, especially in households where the parents had secure jobs.

But as you stated your explanation of Jungle Rules, it could be something else going on in their lives.

reply to post by PrincessTofu


This is more important than the sheeple think.

2 seperate incidents of attacks on schoolchildren on the same day?

I wonder if it is going to get worse as we approach 12-21-12?

reply to post by PrincessTofu


I believe there are two core issues that provide us with our personal sense of substance. I define substance in this case as how we feel about ourselves; whether we see ourselves as adequate or not adequate; respected or not respected; or a part of the circle or outside the circle. These two issues are human longings.

#1. We long for purpose and impact. Our life has meaning because we have purpose. Our life has value because we have impact. My life matters. I am a hard worker! I am a good father or mother.

#2. We long for relationship. We want to be in community. We want to feel part of a larger group of like minded people. I am an American! I am an ATS member!.

I believe all the other emotional behavior and thinking revolves around our sense of those longings being either met or lacking. The more we feel threatened in obtaining or maintaining those longings the more intense our emotional responses. If someone appears to be disrespecting us our response may be anger or even hatred. If someone appears to be better than us we may become envious or jealous. If these longings are not met we can become bitter and resentful of others and attempt to put them in their place (which is usually below us).

These longings are powerful! Very powerful! If we perceive others blocking or threatening us from obtaining their satisfaction we will FIGHT as if our life depended on it, because in our thinking and in relationship to these longings, we believe it does. If we feel someone is blocking us we may initially attempt to convince the other person to agree. If they continue to block we may try to manipulate and if that doesn’t work we may try to threaten by using anger or by shaming. If we believe they are blocking fulfillment of our longings they become our enemy.

These longings even drive our use of medications. If we area salesperson and we are not meeting our sales quota, we might be tempted to use coc aine to give ourselves an edge over our competition. If you are a mother who has an angry distant daughter you might utilize a pain killer to dull the pain of that broken relationship.

They impact our behavior. If I am a kid in the hood with a dysfunctional family I might join a gang for protection and for a sense of belonging. I might shoot someone just to feel the power from the ultimate impact on another person’s life. As a parent we might try to win our child’s affection by giving them whatever they want just to reinforce our sense of maintaining relationship with our kid.

Originally posted by VforVendettea
I wonder if it is going to get worse as we approach 12-21-12?

What do you think sets these people off?

It's hard to imagine it just randomly stopping.. it is also hard to imagine it happening at all. I hope it stops, also.

It's been going on since.. when was Columbine? 1999 or something? I hope it doesn't happen again.

For the last 15 years or so there has been a feel good agenda corrupting our children. A trophy for every child, win or lose they are told they won. They are not allowed to lose, period. They are coddled and convinced that they are the answer to the worlds problems. We are seeing the unintended consequences of this policy on a daily basis it seems. When we shove them out into the real world and harsh reality slaps them in the face they have no mechanism to cope with their failures. They turn bitter. Losing builds character and can be learned from far better than winning ever could. If you have children you should teach them that losing is a good thing and that they will in fact lose more than they win. Nobody wins every time at everything. They will not walk into the job force and instantly be running the show. Their ideas will be shot down repeatedly. They are not the sharpest knife in the drawer and there will always be somebody that is better at anything they do. Sure it is great to win and they should strive for it but they should not expect it every time. Our society is turning more bitter by the day. This is a big part of why that is. The mental health of our children requires that they accept losing as a learning experience.
Facebook is a big part of the problem and likely the masks they wear represent Facebook. A place where they socialize without the benefit of eye contact, body language, tone of voice etc. They make enemies and post their every thought for all the world to see. They lack the social skills needed to cope in reality.

It was just a mentally unstable person with access to fierarms. If your country is currently not being invaded, or you dont plan to take up arms to overthrow an illegitimate government Lybia style, then weapons need to be kept under locks.

It is insane to be completely disarmed with a full blown military in your country that might turn against you. It is just as insane to keep guns outside a locked arms cabinet in times of peace. Nothing good can come of it.

reply to post by grayeagle


Amazing! Thank you for posting something so enlightening in this thread. It really is almost like knowing what those whack jobs were thinking.. substitute a girl or a test here.. preps or jocks there... a humiliation in a math class.. a boss yelling at you..., I see what you mean.

Your post really adds a lot of clarity to such a confusing situation. Very helpful and insightful. Thank you.

reply to post by jimmiec


I agree that a trophy should earned. Being rewarded when you lose just seems silly. Thanks for that input, jimmiec.

Merinda, it clearly states that this is not a gun debate thread. There are many threads where you can discuss that. Please don't try to derail an intelligent discussion. You are nice and I'm sure your points are valid but that would turn the thread into 15 pages of bickering.

reply to post by PrincessTofu

Do you feel that middle-class teens are so aware of looming economical drought that it sets them off? I always thought of teens as a bit oblivious to things like that, especially in households where the parents had secure jobs.

Economics does regulate the supply of resources so there are strong needs and wants behind it. As a middle class middle age I am still struggling with the economy in trying to understand how it all works, a lot of history, a lot of reasons and a lot of conflict. The headline flashes of the fiscal cliff is just a short sound bite to a massive and complex problem. Bad habits and bad ideas driven by self interest is part of it, the shear complexity is also part, managing supply and demand needs to be done and the line just has to be drawn some where for what actually can be done. As for finding that fair balance, it is near impossible when so many secrets form the structure. There have been some improvements in the global economy over the years, but a lot of problems still remain.

Growing up there are lots of things to worry about, money is important but not the only one. Family background does influence what we think about but there are many exceptions, some rich kids can only think in terms of money, some poor kids are carefree as they have each learnt how to function in their environment. Most teens are oblivious to many things as there is a lot to this world and it all takes time, some have just learned that poker face with perceptions of money similar to god, everyone has different ideas.

But as you stated your explanation of Jungle Rules, it could be something else going on in their lives.

Yes, as for the actual trigger each case will be different, unless there is some Black Ops program running. It is like the straw that breaks the camels back, we can put up with so much until the stress finally overcomes our ability to withstand it. For some it might be a big event like breaking up with a girlfriend, for others it was just one glass of spilled milk too many to finally break. Generally, things like abuse, not fitting in with society or pain are behind people fighting against their environment but there are many, many reasons and causes.

Originally posted by Kryties
I had this conversation with my wife a few hours ago....


....basically the average person has been put under more and more stress as they are expected to perform in todays modern world. Those that have underlying mental conditions are the first ones to crack as slowly, but surely, society unravels.....

...methinks we aint seen nothin yet.........

What kind of stress did this motherfu**er was under that made him murder babies? Why don't they quietly kill themselves if they are under so much stress? Twenty something year old living with his mother! Stress? give me a break ! Pure fuc*** evil not stress!

We are also a society bombarded constantly with negativity. For example...the evening news will pummel your subconscious with 25 minutes of death, doom and destruction and toss you a 3 to 5 minute feel good story about something generally trivial.

This ads up. Now consider we have the fake doomsday of Dec 21, 2012 and all the crap around that flooding people's minds. We have a "fiscal cliff" that is going to make the poor even more poor and remove the hope of anyone unemployed from getting a job anytime soon. This is more crap but...it is what is being pounded into our skulls constantly. Is there little wonder that some people just snap? When people become hopeless, the either become helpless or aggressive.

I put a huge blame on the media. The type of info they choose to put out. How it is presented, the subject matter. They are intentionally creating hopelessness in some people. They spend billions in psyche studies to know how to spin a story to get the desired reaction in the larger percentage of people.

They want people to feel helpless and hopeless...cause when they do, the turn to their owners and cry to be protected...

Just my opinion.

Originally posted by Jeremiah65
We are also a society bombarded constantly with negativity. For example...the evening news will pummel your subconscious with 25 minutes of death, doom and destruction and toss you a 3 to 5 minute feel good story about something generally trivial.

This ads up. Now consider we have the fake doomsday of Dec 21, 2012 and all the crap around that flooding people's minds. We have a "fiscal cliff" that is going to make the poor even more poor and remove the hope of anyone unemployed from getting a job anytime soon. This is more crap but...it is what is being pounded into our skulls constantly. Is there little wonder that some people just snap? When people become hopeless, the either become helpless or aggressive.

I put a huge blame on the media. The type of info they choose to put out. How it is presented, the subject matter. They are intentionally creating hopelessness in some people. They spend billions in psyche studies to know how to spin a story to get the desired reaction in the larger percentage of people.

They want people to feel helpless and hopeless...cause when they do, the turn to their owners and cry to be protected...

Just my opinion.

I am sorry but please don't start looking for excuses for these people. What can the media possibly show that would make somebody kill children in elementary school? I already heard that the video games are to blame, fluoride in the water, chem-trails, fiscal cliff, easy gun access, growing up with divorced parents, CIA mind control, basically anything you can think of is to blame for what a MONSTER did.

He decided to take the guns, kill his own mother, drive to an elementary school and shoot little, helpless innocent babies. There is no reason other than he was cold blooded evil piece of shi*..

reply to post by whatsecret


Actually I think Jeremiah65 made a good point regarding the escalation of crimes such as this. Generally the first school shooting people remember is the Columbine shooting which occurred in 1999. There was much doom and gloom end of the world theories regarding Y2K, or at the minimum a complete and total breakdown of infrastructure due to computers not being able to handle Y2K. Real people, intelligent educated adults were even concerned enough to stock up on supplies to last at least a couple of months.

There was one before Columbine that many people have probably never heard of.The Bath School Disaster. Which still remains the Deadliest School massacre.

The Bath School disaster occurred on May 18 1927 in the small hamlet of Bath Township Michigan. It is still to this day the worst mass school murder in American history. On May 18 1927 local farmer and school board member Andrew Kehoe began his day by bashing in his wife's skull with a shovel and leaving her body in a wheelbarrow behind his barn. Kehoe had a grudge that he was planning to settle that day. Andrew Kehoe had been elected to the post of treasurer of the Bath Consolidated School Board in 1924. While on the board he fought furiously for lower taxes. He blamed a recently passed property tax for his family's financial plight (his house was foreclosed on). The property tax had helped to finance a new modern school house. It was this new school house that Andrew Kehoe planned to destroy on that sunny spring day in Bath. In addition to his duties as the treasurer of the school board Kehoe had volunteered also to do maintenance work on the building. This presented him the opportunity to set his diabolical scheme in motion. It's believed that sometime in mid 1926 he began to place bundles of explosives in and around the foundation of the school building. He was able to purchase dynamite under the pretense of using it to remove tree stumps on his farm. He also planted dynamite and gasoline bombs at certain locations around his farm. On that morning in May he loaded up the back of his pick up with metal debris,scrape,nails and any other sharp metal junk he could find. His pick up was also full of explosives. It's believed that about 8:45 am he set off the explosive devices he had place all over the property and drove away in his shrapnel laden pick up truck. The local fire department and police responded to the scene of the fire. About forty minutes into fighting this fire at about 9:45 am the firemen heard the loud boom and were able to see the Bath Consolidated School building explode. Kehoe had set off the explosives he had placed in the school building. The building was full of students and their teachers at this time. Thirty eight of the students died as a result of the explosion that day. Two of their teachers also perished in the blast. Andrew Kehoe wasn't done with his deadly work either. About half and hour after the explosion at the school Kehoe arrived at the chaotic scene. Calling the School Superintendent over to his pick up he reached into the truck and drew out a rifle and fired into the back of his pick up setting off the explosives there and sending a rain of shrapnel into spectators standing nearby. Four more people plus Andrew Kehoe were killed by this blast. In total forty six people including Andrew Kehoe died that day in May of 19

source

Looking back in history 1927 was 2 years prior to the stock market crash, although not of singular import regarding the Great Depression, the country was in a mild recession.

In our current times the media is filled with stories of economic woe, national debt skyrocketing, Home foreclosures, bank failures, car manufacturer and bank bailouts, Not to mention how difficult it is to obtain a job that pays a living wage without a college degree, and the cost of student loans and long term debt, often to obtain a degree but unable to find employment using that degree. Frankly there is a lot of doom and gloom coming at society from all directions which does lead to hopelessness, especially in young adults ...unless you unplug and live off the land.

reply to post by kwakakev

Many great points in all of your posts kwaka.

Yep, I agree with the population thing. More people = more stressors. Added to that, wih more population, there are more people born with "problem".

Also many other good points from others on here too.

Increase the frequency of "those with problems" and naturally there would be an increase in potential violence. Whilst it is good to have a caring attitude for those with disorders, it means that those genes are being multiplied in the community. Then the genetics side is only one part,the concepts of changes due to foods and/or chemicals could also be a big influence.

The road rage switch was also a good point, the removal of one's control would cause frustration and in some people, that would be enough to tip them over the edge.

One other point that might be in play is the judgemental attitude of the whole of society towards others. If one makes a mistake, maybe even a HUGE mistake. These days one could end up ostracised by society and one's mistake publicly brandished across the internet, papers, TV or radio even if the said mistake occurred years or even decades earlier. ( I have seen this happen to a close, good, upstanding collegue). The "name and shame" is a double edged sword. sure, it can possibly make people think twice about their actions but there are some primitive animal drives that I am sure would override any thoughts of future consequences. Hence, someone stuffs up, then is publicly "marked" (figuratively) then that person has a deep welling anger and hatred that is conually fed by the ongoing actions of people around him/her. Bottom line is that the person becomes so enraged that they up the anty and lash out at society.

Oh the irony, it leads to me hating judgemental people, but wait, I'm then judging

??????????


Just my thoughts, not coming from any authoratative position

The Government!

I have been thinking the same thing. What is the core of all this violence that is happening in our country? Some like the Sikh Temple shooting can at least have a possible motive attached to it but the ones like Aurora and the latest just seem beyond any reason whatsoever. Which leads me to suddenly be more curious about things like MK-Ultra and mind control. I mean it just seems like this sort of thing only happens in third world countries, to see it happen here at home just makes me believe it is something extra ordinary in reguards to purpose and motive.