Hey all,
Forgive me for being blunt here but I wonder why people get surprised that this happens and say they cannot understand the motivation behind it. These things never shock or surprise me because it is really a logical extension of humans who are put under stress with no support systems. Follow me over the flip..
So here we have a guy who was on meds, which means he was probably suffering from depression as that is the most common issue. In the USA we drug, not deal with problems, so he gets tired of being a zombie gets off his meds and has no mechanism to deal with the overwhelming issues of the world or his own emotional upheaval. Now, how many people do you REALLY know at any educational facility? He probably did not know on a deep personal level anyone that he shot at, because being doped up on meds makes it hard to connect. So he is faced with dealing with a crushing darkness, decides we are all going to die anyway, says fuck it and kills people he really doesn’t know. This is not hard to imagine. People get shocked but then forget we have troops in Iraq “trained” to do the same thing. You aren’t trained to kill strangers. You are trained how to shoot a gun, but killing people you don’t know doesn’t take all that much if you are depressed.
Remember, killing is a base instinct we are conditioned to repress to have a functioning society. The societies that have the least amount of killing in them are the societies that support a communal living environment, make life easier for their members and stress cooperation, not competition. The USA is all about competition and who cares about the other guy as long as you come out on top. It is not that hard to see how people could easily kill each other after prolonged exposure to that kind of thinking. Look at business lingo, “We made a killing on that product!” “Let’s smash the competiton”, “Hostile takeover” etc etc etc. In schools kids are not taught how to work together, it is all about getting the highest test scores etc. So the USA is a society that is rewarding predatory behavior, in the wild, the best, toughest etc. are the ones that survive. Even in colony behavior with ants, all the ants in a colony may work together but they will destroy any other colony they come across.
So we are pretty much doing this to ourselves, there is no reason to be shocked by it or surprised or wonder how it could happen here. All we do as a country is ignore real problems, cover them with meds, pretty pics and celebrities, never address anything and then act surprised when the results of our actions are detrimental. It is how the USA has always been. These kids/young adults killing people are the end product of our ideals as a country.
Face it, we created them.
2 comments
…actually a few ones. But I think our “drug first ask questions later” approach to problems is also a part of our consumerism. We have to spend money on a product to make ourselves feel better…and then we feel like we should be all done, having purchased and used said product.
My grandma was schizophrenic, and actually had a bad muscle condition due to a lifetime of taking meds (side effects). She needed the meds, no doubt about it. But she was most healthy when she also had a support system around her, people who cared about her and loved her visiting her daily. Including her in parties and celebrations. Spending holidays with her.
Drugs can keep mental illness at bay, but they are one part of a larger treatment that involves human connection. The way we do health care just doesn’t lend itself to that type of treatment, unfortunately.
resort to violence either. I know you weren’t implying that either. But when a violent act does occur and it is tied to mental illness some underlying assumption always seems to get cast.
I think when things like this happen it is easier to digest when it is seen as a random individual act rather than a reflection of us as a society. Americans aren’t too keen on closely analyzing the beloved myths they have about their country. I imagine it is the same in other countries but we seem to be particularly interested in killing one another as a final declarative act. Then as you say acting surprised afterward.