We are fast reaching the "Tipping Point" and I don't mean POLITICAL.

[Tyler Durden]

Every population of "mammals" in crisis starts to react irratically. Happens in every psychological stress experiment ever conducted.

PTSD, Anyone?

The entire population is undergoing PTSD, not just the soldiers in Iraq: they're just the most extreme cases. Trust me, the worms are coming out of the woodwork and the worms are US.

Case in point: How many homicidal crazies have you heard about recently? I just moved to Owosso, MI, and who checks in at the best hotel in town, but the latest "Bonnie and Clyde." How about Florida? I haven't looked it up, but they tell me 3 young women are missing-TED BUNDY RISES FROM THE GRAVE.

How may nuts do you see on a daily basis? EVERYONE where I work has gone crazy; mostly paranoid, some other psychoses, but hey, who cares when you're batshit? To be fair I do work in the auto industry, but it's happening EVERYWHERE.

This is the score when the stress gets too high: the population goes cannibal. Happens with RATS, they overpopulate, overcompete and then their population crashes and it starts all over again.

Hell of a ride, kiddies.

So don't get real shocked by the Bushites. Hell, they're just the tipp of the iceberg. Down here in the dungeon is where they keep the REAL crazies, done in by society.

"Good evening, Clarice."

[ThoughtCriminal]

1. There's the "Hell is Full so they're Shipping them Here" theory

According to the movie, only head shots stop the brain eating zombies...

...Hey wait a minute!

[EFerrari]

2. I agree about mass PTSD. You could feel the trauma in the air

on the afternoon of 9/11. And the Cabal has been exploiting it to the hilt.

They seem to purposely retraumatize us when our avoidance or passivity are needed.

PTSD isn't only about hi volume violence. It's also about shutting down to stop the internal replay of trauma.

/typin'

[Tyler Durden]

3. It's not 9/11 or even Bush...it's EVERYWHERE...

...and EVERYONE.

My MOTHER is crazy. My BOSS is crazy. The nutz doing 80+ MPH on the Freeway are crazy.

The whole country, in fact, I'd bet they're crazy in Tokyo, in New Delhi, and Buenos Aires.

The entire SPECIES is going nuts.

[rman]

5. sure didn't start with *

Though he definitely piles it up good.

[Swamp Rat]

29. New Orleans

... we're fucking psycho, with not much to lose. :+

[catmother]

4. and add the disasters -- hurricanes, tsunamais, flooding, fires.

my 83 year old mom says "it's like the world is turned upside down".:crazy:

[Karenina]

6. Greenland and Siberia

are FUCKING MELTING!!!! Move along, nothing to see or feel here...

[Blue_In_AK]

19. And Alaska...

The climate's been way off here for several years.

[Dr Fate]

7. You are right. I myself am bat-shit crazy...

...self medication, DU and working on my "Mad Max car" seems to be my entire life.

[Nederland]

8. You'll have to do better than this

I mean, please, ad hoc observations about homicides?

Try putting together analysis of crime rate trends or consumer dissatisfaction or something with even the slightest bit of scientific basis to it and maybe you'll make a valid point.

[Dr Fate]

10. Good point. We confuse increased media reporting with increased crime.

Now, back to working on my Mad Max car.

[SmokingJacket]

12. New York Times just did an interesting article on this...

See my post below, or hey, I'll just put the link here too:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/12/national/12homicide.html?ex=1297400400&en=cdb21abf99ff0c1b&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

[Nederland]

21. Interesting read

I've heard that crime rates are directly related to the percentage of unmarried males between the ages of 15 and 30. Which, of course, means that China is fucked.

[KoKo]

26. This article from the NYT's focuses on Black Crime going up...though

It seemed to maybe be a propaganda plant...and we know the NYT's just loves to place propaganda from the Bushies...just like the WaPo...

Quote from article:

The police say the suspects and the victims tend to be black, young — midteens to mid-20's — and have previous criminal records. They tend to know each other. Several cities said that domestic violence had also risen. And the murders tend to be limited to particular neighborhoods. Downtown Milwaukee has not had a homicide in about five years, but in largely black neighborhoods on the north side, murders rose from 57 in 2004 to 94 last year.

"We're not talking about a city, we're talking about this subpopulation, that's what drives everything," said David M. Kennedy, director of the Center for Crime Prevention and Control at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. "When they calm down, all the numbers go down. When they heat up, all the numbers go up. They hurt each other over personal stuff. It's respect and disrespect, and it's girls."

[Tyler Durden]

14. I'm not specifically referring to HOMICIDES...

I'm referring to CRAZY PEOPLE.

Like ANY true NEOCON making less than $100K a year, proclaiming his allegiance to Bush, Like the Religious Fundies growing in number and praying for the end of the word.

16 states are getting ready to ban Homosexuals (M or F) from adopting children, and you don't think the country is NUTS???

Stick a pin ANYWHERE in Africa...and the WORLD isn't NUTS???

People are being KILLED for a POLITICAL CARTOON...and the World isn't NUTS???

Consumer dissatisfaction my ass.

Drive on ANY major freeway and COUNT the bumper stickers supporting something like "1 man + 1 woman = 1 marriage" and you say the Country isn't NUTS????

LOG CABIN REPUBLICANS...and the Country isn't NUTS???

We are in the next thing to a DEPRESSION and less than HALF of the country VOTES...and the Country isn't NUTS???

GAWD do you have FAITH or WHAT?

[Nederland]

20. Response

I know you are referring to crazy people. What is lacking is scientific proof that their numbers are actually increasing.

[Squeech]

9. Question

I've heard about that rat experiment for decades, but I've never found a real citation. It's the kind of thing I try to Google up periodically and can never find. (Actually there are a lot of those; my Internet research skills plainly suck.)

But anyway: can you provide me with a good citation?

[Tyler Durden]

15. Been looking for it for YEARS.

I had a copy of the actual study at one time. I used it as a "Coffee Table Book" as I'd had it professionally covered. DOG knows where it is.

This study showed that rats under individual stress (constant rotation of test parameters) went psychotic and stopped eating. The second portion was the one I think you've seen: the closed environment-fixed food/water-capped waste removal study? The one that ended with the rats' poplulation at a level unsustainable due to disinterest in breeding or other survival instincts.

We ain't rats, but we're sure behaving like them, and that's not a complement to the rats.

[Squeech]

17. Thank you

from one stressed-out rat to another :hi:

Yeah, the closed-environment study is the one I'm thinking of. The way I've always heard the story, they do it all the time at major research universities. I figure if they really do do it all the time, there'd be a lot more traces of it in the literature, especially on the net.

[Tyler Durden]

18. I believe they stopped doing that test.

It started looking cruel. I know in a PSYCH class I took in 1973 that they said it was done to death, and besides it was unnecessarily cruel to the animals in the study.

[SmokingJacket]

11. Violent crime on the rise in cities....

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/12/national/12homicide.html?ex=1297400400&en=cdb21abf99ff0c1b&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

And it doesn't have anything to do with drugs or gangs either -- it's people flipping out over unimportant things.

I'd say you're onto something.

I've been feeling more and more anxious and hopeless since 2000 (a brief hiatus when I was sure Kerry would win the election... :(

[Tyler Durden]

16. They used to say "going Postal" a few years back.

Now EVERYWHERE is the Post Office and it no longer matters if you work there.

Watch the faces in the next line you're waiting in. Scary. I used to make conversation and say things like "...no problem. I've got time. Not the cashier's fault. Nice weather..." Last time I tried that, the guy looked like he was going to POP me one.

[Tsiyu]

13. Culturally, stress has been shown to cause a decline in "humanness"

Adults in high stress starvation situations often abandon children, for example, but we are talking in a population under EXTREME stress.

Your examples are random and don't really mean much. Where I live, people are basically civil and good to each other. I have seen no huge change in paranoid or psychotic behavior.

But this is small-town, mountain life. I have no firsthand knowledge of how people in American cities are doing.

[Greyhound]

23. Just cause the water only comes up to your ankles doesn't mean

the flood isn't coming.

[Tsiyu]

28. Of that I have no doubt

Just pontificating about my neck of the woods.

One of the benefits of living in a lower income, rural community is that people are used to hardship and they tend to help rather than hurt their neighbors when the going gets rough.

[Spider Jerusalem]

22. Welcome to the behavioural sink...

next stop, mass die-off.

The frog's been boiling for decades now, but no-one's noticed...'boiling? Nonsense! This water feels WONDERFUL!'

But now we're really starting to cook, and soon the flesh is going to be flaking off the bones.

[magnolia]

24. Interesting observation.............

I'm not sure that we have more crazies now...or if the veil on our craziness has been lifted...deliberately. We are a country of exhibitionists. I can't believe how much personal information people reveal on the internet, on TV, wherever possible! It used to be that we kept our skeletons in the closet and our crazy relatives locked away in the attic. Now they have their own websites and are appearing on Dr. Phil!

[Spider Jerusalem]

25. We have more EVERYTHING now.

The human population has more than doubled since 1960 (from 3 billion to 6.5 billion), and the population of the US has increased by 50% since 1970. The more people there are in a given population, the greater the occurrence of dysfunctional behaviour (random violence and aggression, mental illness, suicide, et cetera). The phenomenon is referred to as a 'behavioural sink'.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_sink for further info.

[HereSince1628]

27. The formal ecological term is G.A.S., it's a real phenomenon

=General Adaptive Syndrome

Some would argue it's not quite so generalized or functionally adaptive, but basically its a broad physiological reaction to environmental stress.

[RagingInMiami]

30. A lot of is environmental

It's all the lead in the water, all the hormones and chemecials in our foods.