Why are we producing monsters?

[leftyladyfrommo]

That was my first thought when I heard about the latest horrible shooting. These kids are psychotic monsters. Something in our society is creating these monsters. It's not enough to say they are simply mentally ill. These people are way beyond mentally ill. They are simply psychotic killers.

But we are also producing monsters on the right, too. These people who are so paranoid that they are married to their guns. People who feel so unsafe that they need to carry their guns with them all the time.

There is some serious rot in our society and we need to address that.

[Katashi_itto]

1. Totally agree

I don't think it's a fixable thing.

[closeupready]

2. "We" aren't. Some parents are.

[leftyladyfrommo]

4. So what do these parents have in common?

What is the common denominator in the houses that produce these children?

Too much affluence? Too much freedom?

What is making these children so angry that they are dying inside?

[seabeyond]

7. raising kids in this generation. the incoming information.

from the youngest of ages.

the vast amounts of info. the high speed. the flashing of pictures increased significantly.

when my children were the littlest, there were things i saw in this generation that was so beyond what any other generation has ever experienced.

years into the parenting i came to the conclusion that it was one huge ass boiling vat of an experiment on our children.

significant things were brought into the the kids life. significant things were taken out of the kids life

and this was the first generation that was going to grow up in these vastly huge changes in childhood.

i realized that a long long time ago. and i worked hard to keep a lot of the old, mixed in with the new. and address the issues as they came.

that took a lot of work and a lot of time.

another something parents do not have today. trying ot feed our kids.

[closeupready]

13. When I was in high school, a classmate told us his family had no TV.

He was from an affluent home, so poverty was not the issue, but I remember my classmates and myself talking about him behind his back, thinking how weird he was.

Now, I think they had the right idea. At a minimum, it was obvious they didn't just unleash him like a dog; they loved and cared for him and parents are supposed to do with their children.

[Sissyk]

38. +1

This I agree with 100%.

[closeupready]

12. Bad parents were probably raised poorly themselves.

So someone can be outwardly, materially successful, and yet be a bad father/mother.

[JNelson6563]

3. Acute narcissism and paranoia combined.

I think a big part of it is many coming from unhealthy environments. That prevents a child from outgrowing the survival mechanism narcissism and from there it can intensify.

Julie

[seabeyond]

5. we do not value life. and we certainly do not value women.

i guess the question would be... why do we not value life.... and why do we not value women

[PowerToThePeople]

6. Whateva. American Exceptionalism. USA! USA! USA! n/t

[The2ndWheel]

8. Probably doesn't help to call them monsters

There's really no need to dehumanize them. They're people, and quite real.

[GeorgeGist]

9. Just in case you were thinking something new is under the sun.

[YarnAddict]

10. Plenty of factors

Elliot Rodger wrote in his manifesto that he played "World of Warcraft" for up to 14 hours per day. If I recall, Adam Lanza also played violent video games. Does the violence in the games desensitize young (testosterone-fueled) men to actual violence? Or are people who are inclined to violence particularly drawn to these games?

I also read one article that postulated that the psychotropic drugs that so many of these killers are on may be a contributing factor. Do these behavior-modifying drugs actually induce violence, or is the violence a result of the behavior for which they are being prescribed?

Add the breakdown of the family--Elliot Rodger's parents (like Adam Lanza's) were divorced. Rodger was getting mixed signals from the three adults in his life. His stepmother seemed to want to put some limits on him, while his mother indulged him, meeting his "needs with extreme precision," while his dad seemed to be away much of the time. The custody arrangement seemed to change frequently, with little or no input from the children; I believe Rodger stated that he didn't like change.

[joeglow3]

21. I think much needs to be studied around the broken home

We know that one of the strongest indicators of a child's success as an adult is the marital status of their parents. We have record numbers of kids being born into single parent households. We have increasingly high numbers of divorces. Does this relate to what we are seeing???

[SaltyBro]

11. White male privilege is the main culprit

We will continue to produce monsters until this issue is addressed and stamped out.

[whistler162]

65. You forgot to parrot White Priviledge

and all the pseudo buzzwords used to create discord and eventually helps create the nut jobs the OP asked about!

[Old Codger]

14. We have always

Had monsters in the world, I am not so sure about us "producing" them. If you look at the ones that appeared 40-50-60 years ago and figure a percentage of population at the time then look at the population now and extrapolate the percentages we will naturally have more of them.Then add in the faster information tracks we have today and many many more are going to be heard about much more frequently...24-7 news as opposed to half hour twice a day.. they were tragedies then and are tragedies now and something needs to be done about the proliferation of firearms in the hands of people who have no right to have them due to mental instability.
The answer is not ,I don't think, in making a slew of new gun restriction laws, although we definitely need some drastic changes in then along with stricter enforcement of existing laws.... We also need to make a serious examination of our diagnosis and treatment of the mentally ill..

[jberryhill]

15. Oh nonsense

There are 310 million people in the United States.

With a sample size that large, you are going to have monsters, angels, and everything in between.

In a population of 310 million, the behavior of a few is hardly representative of any sort of "trend", but humans can't resist the false perception of reality conveyed by "news" which, by definition, emphasizes the abnormal.

[leftyladyfrommo]

17. I don't agree with that argument.

Monsters were really rare when I was growing up. Things happened but every day. Not with anywhere near the frequency they do now.

[FSogol]

18. "Monsters were really rare when I was growing up." Not true in any way.

As a child, you were shielded from that type of news. Check out the old newspaper scans at your library for the decade you were born. Monsters were just as common for our entire history. There was no fabled "good old days."

[nomorenomore08]

19. Violent crime overall has declined. On the other hand, mass shootings have seemingly increased

in frequency. One of those paradoxes with no immediately obvious cause.

[hack89]

23. Mass shootings actually peaked in the 80's - remember "going postal"? nt

[nomorenomore08]

24. I guess I should've said that mass shootings among younger people have been on the rise -

or so it would seem, anyway. And the media certainly creates the perception that mass murder in general has increased.

[hack89]

26. The word perception is a good choice.

The incidences of mass shootings has remained pretty constant for 30 years.

http://www.boston.com/community/blogs/crime_punishment/2012/08/no_increase_in_mass_shootings.html

[Recursion]

34. *campus* mass shootings, however, are rising

Whereas workplace mass shootings are falling.

All in the context of "shootings" per se falling.

[hack89]

22. I suspect that when you were growing up lynchings were the norm in parts of America

so no, monsters were not rare. They were in fact so common they were clothed with a shield of respectability and social acceptance.

[Sissyk]

41. When did you grow up?

I was born in 1963. We didn't hear of them. We didn't have 5 "all news, all the time" stations. We didn't have message boards to spread the word around. We didn't have time to sit and discuss the atrocious murders that happened yesterday, last week, last month.

I wouldn't go back to those times for a million bucks though. Not all things are better not seeing the light of day. Like racism, sexism, homophobia. Without the internet, news stations, message boards; we wouldn't be calling out all those times we see the -isms and -phobias. But, we need to stop inventing new phobias.

[Humanist_Activist]

47. Actually its your access to information that's increased, society, in general, is less violent...

than it was 20-30 years ago or so.

Particularly among youth.

[leftyladyfrommo]

56. How can you possibly say that.

I grew up in Spokane in the 50's. We ran around all over the place by ourselves. We rode our bikes everywhere. We walked a couple of miles to school every day. No one carried a gun around. People owned guns for hunting but they were stuck away in a closet with no bullets in them. My dad owned a couple of hunting rifles but he never took them out unless he was going target shooting. They were never loaded.

Now parents are afraid to let their children out of their sight. Kids get off the bus and parents are always waiting their to make sure they get home safely. It isn't some big illusion that this is a dangerous world. It is a dangerous world.

I live in Kansas City now. You can't go into certain parts of town because it is so dangerous. We have terrible gang problems. We have terrible drug problems. Everyday someone is found shot somewhere. The police find bodies in people's yards. Or they are lying dead in parking lots or on the side of the road. And it is every day. Thugs walk up to people's cars and just shoot them through the windows. Or they pull up beside someone's car and shoot through the windows. And it doesn't matter that there are children sitting on the porch or watching TV in the living room. They are just collateral damage if they happen to get shot too.

Yesterday a six year old accidentally shot his grandfather with an assault rifle. The day before that a 3 year old accidentally shot and killed his toddler brother. It is just an endless awful string of death and tragedy.

in 2010 there were 31,076 gun deaths. 85 a day. 3 each hour.
In 2010 there were 73,505 non fatal gun injuries treated in the ER.
That is over 100,000 people a year in this country that are victims of gun violence.

Saying that it has always been this way is a huge cop out. It most certainly hasn't always been this way. And we have a huge problem on our hands that needs to be addressed.

[Humanist_Activist]

59. Because its true. Our violent crime, even gun crime levels have been decreasing since the 1990s....

which is when it peaked. Its now around what the rate was in the late 1970s.

Yes its still too many, but don't pretend its worse than it was in the past, particularly the late 80s to early 90s, when it peaked.

The United States is an outlier in gun deaths, compared to the rest of the developed world, and I don't particularly care for gun rights, but don't exaggerate the issue.

[Lurks Often]

16. It's the 24/7 news cycle that makes us think there are more of them now

I have no doubt that there has and always will be a minuscule percentage of the population that is both mentally ill and violently dangerous.

What has changed is the need for the 24/7 news to fill air time and the unfortunate fact that bad news gets better ratings then then good news.

[LadyHawkAZ]

20. Our society glorifies violence as a first resort solution

and normalizes negative emotional states like anger, jealousy, envy, competitiveness and greed, while shaming the better human traits like empathy, kindness, love, caring and bonding. We treat killing as a right and sexuality as filth. Half the country is still living in the Rambo/Reagan fantasyland.

We're INDEPENDENT 'MURICANS, in other words, bootstraps and suchlike, and how dare you call that "rot"?? YOU HATE FREEDUM!

[Dirty Socialist]

25. Perhaps that, coupled with

Too much competitiveness. Almost all of the other societies are more cooperative and community minded.

[LadyHawkAZ]

27. "Cooperation" was the word I forgot. Thank you. n/t

[The2ndWheel]

29. Are they better societies?

[Flatulo]

48. There would seem to be something to that. The

Scandinavian states seem to have a much more cooperative spirit. Teamwork, empathy, service to others are all strong.

Here it's all me, me, me. How quickly can I make my first million? How can I screw over my fellow citizens. And our relatively shitty safety net only reinforces our self-absorption.

I worked for a Danish firm a few years ago. The company supported and granted time off for community service. The Danes who came over here were surprised at our relative isolation and self-serving nature.

[AZCat]

50. That may be, but they still produce the occasional evil person.

Andres Breivik is one notable example.

[Flatulo]

54. Yes, there is a small but hard-core group of

R/W-ers who want to purge Europe of Muslims and others.

[elleng]

28. You are right, something(s) seriously wrong.

[Demo_Chris]

30. Every day, in a thousand ways, we tell people they are in this ALONE...

It's a dog eat dog world, every man for himself and the devil take the hindmost. It's not rhetoric, but reality, we REALLY are all in this alone. And then, when some kid behaves like the uncaring sociopath we have taught him to be we act shocked. "How," we wonder, "Could anyone do such a thing? How could they be so lacking in compassion and empathy? Don't they care even a little?"

The answer is NO. No they don't care. They care no more about the pain they cause then their victims and society cared about them. Which is to say not at all, no one gave a fuck about them before they opened fire.

[woo me with science]

39. Good post.

Noam Chomsky:

This is an extremely atomized society. People are alone. It’s a very business-run society. The very explicit goal of the business world is to create a social order in which the basic social unit is you and your television set, in which you’re watching ads and going out to purchase commodities. There are tremendous efforts made, that have been going on for a century and a half, to try to induce this kind of consciousness and social order.

[Art_from_Ark]

51. "People and their television sets as the basic social unit"

was the underlying theme of the short-lived television series Max Headroom-- and I think that is why it was so short-lived-- it cut too close to the quick for commercial network television.

[ismnotwasm]

31. We always have

They are no longer considered "normal" within a societal context. Jack the ripper as going strong at the same time it was legal to beat your wife, lock her up in a mental institution, deny her all rights to finance, inheritance, children.

Th same laws that were slowly wiped out didn't address the underlying expectations of white male privilege. This will happen in a generation or so, but not in ours. But it's so invasive, so sick, that it poisons our progress as human beings. Female and male.

[Progressive dog]

32. Violence sells on mass media,

it just seems that there are more monsters out there.

[TheBlackAdder]

33. Ease of Information (true or false) is the main cause.

Twenty years ago, the Internet was scarcely used. There were no real mass means of promoting an ideology besides school, church, groups, and family. There was also truth in media, which Faux fought to end.

Now, information, whether credible, fabricated, wingnut, or not is prevalent.

This altered and variant thoughts can attach to the psychology of an individual, and the vast number of supportive sites that reinforce such though only bolster those thoughts in that individual. So much unchecked information is out there that never really existed before. There are no controls on this information and it seems to be having a detrimental effect on many people, especially those prone to obsess about topics.

===

In the 1970's Jaws and Aliens were shocking movies, now they are passe. Realism in movies, fantasy first person games, anger in most every media form... but the largest is the breadth of false information. Not just silencing of thought, but the willful spreading of lies to achieve some goal.

[Kingofalldems]

40. Well they shouldn't be allowed to have guns

and we should tighten up our laws to make that happen.

[Shivering Jemmy]

36. Most organisms on earth would think us monsters

We are the most capable killing machines evolution has ever cobbled together.

It's unreasonable to believe that a weapon as powerful as us would never be turned on itself.

[Sissyk]

37. Where do I fit?

YOU: "But we are also producing monsters on the right, too. These people who are so paranoid that they are married to their guns. People who feel so unsafe that they need to carry their guns with them all the time.

There is some serious rot in our society and we need to address that."

ME: I am a woman that carries most all of the time. The only time I don't is when I am going into a place I know they are not wanted by the law. Do I have some fear? Yes, rational fear. No one but me, and the law, can tell me what I can do to not be raped and left for dead again.

Am I the monster, or is the person that raped and left me for dead the monster?

In my eyes, the serious rot not only comes from rapist, murderers, spree killers; but also from Parents that leave their children alone with the tv, the video games, the internet. I also realize mental illness also plays a big part of it, but that one is hard to talk about and find solutions to.

None of us really know who is on the other side of that screen. And putting all gun owners that carry, or collect guns, or target shoot, or hunt in the monster category is not only false, but hurtful and cruel. I try not to pidgeon hole any group in a small category when I don't know that person on the other end of the screen.

Thanks for reading my post and I hope to get a reply from you on my question and your comments on my overall post.

[YarnAddict]

43. When I read the OP

I must have skimmed over the link between "monsters" and "gun owners." When I re-read that, I found it appalling that someone who legally carries a firearm was described with the same word as a mass murderer.

People own guns for a variety of reasons, and no one has the right to call them "monsters" just because that is their choice!

Talk about paranoia!

[Sissyk]

44. Oh, I'm sure some were like you and skimmed over it.

However, others read it completely but will not stand up to the majority of gun owners being called monsters because they also believe my, and your (if you carry), right to carry is not legal, or ethical, or moral, or they have a phobia about guns. At least that's my opinion of what they post. I'm sure I will be corrected if I'm wrong.

[leftyladyfrommo]

55. Honestly? I don't want to be around anyone carrying a gun.

I don't know who those people are. I have no way of knowing what their motivation is or what their belief system is. I have no way of knowing if they have the training that all gun owners should have or the judgment to use it wisely. I have no way of knowing if they are unstable or just plain angry and looking for a fight.

If someone feels so unsafe that they need to carry guns around then I don't want them around me at all. They make me feel unsafe.

And besides it just looks plain stupid. I saw a man the other day all decked out in his tough guy outfit with his stupid looking gun and the ubiquitous huge beer gut sticking 2 feet out in front of him. That guy couldn't have run two feet without having a heart attack.

Those guys need to get a life. The thing they are afraid of is other guys with guns.

Sorry. I'm still so angry. We just had that shooting out at the Jewish Community Center. And the sniper who was shooting at cars as they drove down the highway in South KC. How many innocent people have to die before we get a handle on this?

[YarnAddict]

57. I don't know what laws will get a handle on this,

unless you want to prevent everyone from carrying a gun, and that simply isn't going to happen.

I wish there were laws that could prevent very mentally ill people--like Elliot Rodger and Adam Lanza--from obtaining firearms, but then you would be seriously infringing on people's privacy rights. Should we prevent people who have ever been treated by a psychologist/psychiatrist or taken anti-depressants from gun ownership? Maybe they shouldn't be allowed to drive either. Or be around children. How far do you want to go with that?

I live in a place where us non-gun owners are probably in the minority. I have no idea who is carrying, and who isn't, and it doesn't bother me a bit. I still go out and about and don't obsess about it. It's a much less stressful way of life than the constant fear you seem to live with.

[applegrove]

45. It used to be that some monster could find a wife and abuse her. Not so common anymore.

Domestic violence is taken seriously and there are ways out for women.

[stevenleser]

49. Two points...

#1 - I think that before humanity started to congregate into big cities, there was a lot more sense of community and people were more invested in each other and each other's happiness and well-being. That started to end with modern city life. People began to be alienated in larger numbers once that started to happen.

#2 - Until the last 60 years or so, the alienated did not have as much access to such efficient weaponry. Combine alienation and access to firepower and I think you get what we are seeing.

[lostincalifornia]

52. Include republicans as part of that club of monsters who have been weakening the gun laws

[vanlassie]

53. Lack of empathy is well understood. It

It forms, or doesn't, in the first three years of life. Failure to meet the needs if the child in the first three years risks sociopathy. Unmet needs after that point risks neurosis. It us a hard pill to swallow, but there it is.

[Laelth]

58. Interesting.

Where could I read more about these two theses?



-Laelth

[vanlassie]

61. Alice Miller. John Bowlby. Attachment Theory.

[Laelth]

62. Thanks. I am somewhat familiar with attachment theory.

I just had never heard this: bad attachment < 3 = sociopath, bad attachment >3 = neurotic.

I find that interesting and potentially enlightening.

-Laelth

[vanlassie]

63. I heard it specifically from Ken Magid, now deceased, author of

"Children Withiut a Conscience". And another author who's name I can't recall. But they referenced those earlier researchers among others.
Magid made the point, repeatedly, that a great number of these children grow up and sit in boardrooms and at the head of corporations. They can look perfectly normal. But they are sociopaths. They have no conscious. No empathy ever developed. This is EXACTLY what we are seeing. Barbara Bush, George Bush... Evil.

[Laelth]

64. Perfect, thanks.

My interest is somewhat personal, as I know someone who admits to being a bit neurotic, and the period of time in which neurosis develops (according to the theory in question) would match her history of parental neglect. I appreciate your time answering my questions.

Thanks.

-Laelth

[NM_Birder]

60. This latest monster was absolutlely mentalily ill.

Non political agenda driven debate is the key that will never find the right lock, to resolve social turmoil.

Leadership is not about getting re-elected, it's about LEADERSHIP , the "leaders" that are worshipped like demi gods are only interested in "leading " the sheep to vote for them.

It's why both parties daylight the constant wrong doings by the other, yet forgive their own party liars.

CHANGE THE FUCKING UNITED STATES FORIEGN TRADE POLICY TO FAVOR THE FUCKING UNITED STATES WORKER, AND GOOD LIFETIME JOBS WILL DRAMATICALLY REDUCE SOCIAL EROSION !

both parties fuck the American worker with overseas "partnerships" - and both parties are supported by ignorant sheep being led to slaughter ................ cheering their side all the way to the bottom.