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Because it's not an issue of race or economics. It's an issue of a person with no sense of agency, no ability to feel, no empathy.
They gain their feelings of agency by victimizing others.
And they feel justified because it is other peoples' fault that they feel powerless.
It's classic Sociopathic Personality Disorder or another mental illness.
Somehow this society missed the mental health issues in Black communities and got it all mixed up with issues of racism. Apparently it's been decided that killing and destruction, abandoning children, beating wives, selling drugs is normal victim behavior for Black people.
That's wrong. It's not normal, explainable victim behavior. It is Sociopathy, a brain condition. And it comes in all skin colors and economic conditions.
I'll add a little more. We as a culture justify this antisocial behavior by treating it as a normal response to victimization. "Well, wouldn't you do the same if you were treated badly?" But the truth is the majority of mature people have the ability to use common sense in responding to hurt and injustice and wouldn't hurt innocent people in its expression. And they don't want to hurt themselves by getting in serious trouble.
But youth? That's another situation. Tell them they are worthless or being used or looked down upon and they tend to take that to heart. Demonstrate to them through music and movies and violent street behavior that violence is the way to look strong, to be a person of consequence, to fend off further hurt. Then minimize their behavior by reciting history and you can train a lot of easily influenced youth.
These are really principles of poor mental health.
I often wonder how many people with sociopathic behavior may have fallen into maladjustment because personal power is so seductive. And learning how to create it for yourself is difficult.
Leave them on the street they get worse; put them in prison they get worse. Many criminals are able to stay out of trouble if they avoid association with other criminals. It's nearly impossible to achieve this in rehabilitation in current culture. It's everywhere and everywhere we explain it and sympathize with it. And those aren't things that will do anything to stop it.
It's a miserable fact in mental health that even victims, if they are hurting themselves or others, must be restrained and given consistent consequences until they can learn to do so for themselves. And they need to take responsibility for their own behavior and not blame others for what they choose to do. After all, their own behavior is one thing they are capable of having control over.
Deny them this and they self-destruct. We see it every day. What could be more cruel or indifferent than allowing that?
Somehow this society missed the mental health issues in Black communities and got it all mixed up with issues of racism. Apparently it's been decided that killing and destruction, abandoning children, beating wives, selling drugs is normal victim behavior for Black people.
That's wrong. It's not normal, explainable victim behavior. It is Sociopathy, a brain condition. And it comes in all skin colors and economic conditions.
Ok. I'll play along for debate.Another poster brought up the lone white gunman in situations like the shooting in Oxford, MI last week. For some reason, white entitled boys get angry at the world and feel they need to make others "pay" and punish society. Yet we don't see very much of that entitled sociopathy within the black community in inner cities with resulting mass shootings.
So why then, if it's sociopathy and not poverty/lack of education/generational as the reasons for inner city black shootings, (which you claim are also sociopathy), why are there then more sociopaths within the poor inner cities? (who just happen to be black?).
Today’s newspaper featured a heart rending story of an 18-year-old boy in Texas who shot and wounded three students, one of them critically (link), and one of whom declined medical attention. Of course, is very hard to interview these people because once they are arrested, they cannot really talk freely. Still, I would love to ask so these people why do you think using moral force in a schoolyard dispute is worthwhile.
In another story, a 29-year-old women cover for no good reason, attempted to push another woman how to Subway tracks in New York City (link). Again, why?
Are there any serious studies other than agenda-driven tracts about these fairly common, purposeless and tragic situations? Or in lieu of such studies, does anybody hear have any ideas?
Well, there is the common world that sees such as senseless and hence, doesn't understand.....and my world which can see so many different reasons.....and hence the reason to act.
Two examples from fiction. Ever READ Carrie by Stephen King? In it, the femme fatale is trying to convince her boytoy (Billy, right?) to join in her plot against Carrie. Billy tells her of a bully in the childhood schoolyard who came up against someone who could take him out and knocked him out. Billy then went over and kicked the down bully. Billy ends the story with "Now, I had a reason even if it was a p*ss poor one. But.....what did Carrie White ever do to you?".
Of course, we know the answer to that, more or less. From the mean leaders need "goals" to rally their people around, the weak are easy to take out and the femme fatale saw Carrie as the reason she got kicked out of school.
Ever see Solar Crisis? There, the bad guy is going to sabotage the solar mission because he believes it will hurt his profiteering. Critics argue that it doesn't make sense for him to act like that because if the mission is a hoax, he still profits but if it is real and it fails, he cooks with the rest of the planet, so why sabotage it? The point is......he believes what he believes and he has the means to put his belief to action and does so. For whatever reason he believes, he is putting the "rest of us" at peril.
But it doesn't make any sense we might say! Well, can we, the sensible people understand a basic point in that it doesn't matter what we think. What matters is what he thinks and can he put it into action?
Quote:
Originally Posted by silibran
My theory on the school shooting is that disturbed teens follow the Columbine template. They are being neither clever or smart. They simply follow the known template. The reason? An hour of feeling feared and powerful perhaps. A desire for vengeance maybe. A striking out because of an unhappy life, or hope for notoriety.
There are so many guns out there, what do we really expect these days?
Well, perhaps we took away the good side of it.
When I was growing up, there was rifle team. Among other things, a means of anger management control, the ability to calm the body to put rounds on target.
Admittedly, my martial skills, judo too, did come before final maturity. It took being caught in an incident, being busted in a Regiment for fighting when I was trying to prove to another that it was useless to fight me, that taught me not to fight unless it was absolutely necessary.
Did we take away the teaching of such?
Last edited by TamaraSavannah; 12-12-2021 at 06:05 AM..
Because it's not an issue of race or economics. It's an issue of a person with no sense of agency, no ability to feel, no empathy.
They gain their feelings of agency by victimizing others.
And they feel justified because it is other peoples' fault that they feel powerless.
It's classic Sociopathic Personality Disorder or another mental illness.
You must mean antisocial personality disorder. The term sociopath is a lay term, and is different than psychopath (a criminal term). There are differences between the two. Personality disorders are usually a result of learned behavior. They are not diagnosed until the person is an adult (18).
Ok. I'll play along for debate.Another poster brought up the lone white gunman in situations like the shooting in Oxford, MI last week. For some reason, white entitled boys get angry at the world and feel they need to make others "pay" and punish society. Yet we don't see very much of that entitled sociopathy within the black community in inner cities with resulting mass shootings.
So why then, if it's sociopathy and not poverty/lack of education/generational as the reasons for inner city black shootings, (which you claim are also sociopathy), why are there then more sociopaths within the poor inner cities? (who just happen to be black?).
Are there more sociopaths in inner cities? I'm not sure of that. Don't get mixed up between issues of justice, issues of mental health and issues of race. Unequal applications of justice have nothing to do with diagnosing mental illness.
For years we have read that Black people commit less suicide from depression than white people. I'd say they just do it differently than white people do.
The answer lies in another impossibility - observant and educated parents who respond in a therapeutic manner at the first signs of deviancy. Familial failure to respond to a child's needs will forever be at the root of his adult problems.
These parents apparently had no interest in helping their son, though.
Det. Edward Wagrowski said he found messages from Ethan to a friend saying he had asked his parents to take him to a doctor after he was having hallucinations and hearing voices.
Ethan told his friend that in response to that request, his father gave him pills and told him to "suck it up." According to the phone messages, Ethan told his friend that his mother laughed at him, Wagrowski testified.
These parents apparently had no interest in helping their son, though.
Det. Edward Wagrowski said he found messages from Ethan to a friend saying he had asked his parents to take him to a doctor after he was having hallucinations and hearing voices.
Ethan told his friend that in response to that request, his father gave him pills and told him to "suck it up." According to the phone messages, Ethan told his friend that his mother laughed at him, Wagrowski testified.
Perversely, these parents may buy into the dated notion that there is automatically some stigma on them if their child has mental health issues, so they try to deflect, shame, laugh it off, tell the child to toughen up, thus ignoring a plea for help. This becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy -- now they ARE responsible, in large part.
(There's also a religiously-mediated aspect of this, if they are fundamentalist Christians, their sect may well give out the strong message that if they are doing Christianity correctly it's basically impossible to have these kinds of problems -- so admission that there's a problem is admission of insufficient piety.)
Prior to a general sea change in the 1990s it was common for parents of mentally ill children to be stigmatized as failed parents at best and the primary creator of their little "monster" at worst. To the point that perfectly functional parents trying to get help for their children, sometimes had their child forcibly taken from them. Thankfully this has faded substantially in the past generation, but remnants of this attitude still exist.
You must mean antisocial personality disorder. The term sociopath is a lay term, and is different than psychopath (a criminal term). There are differences between the two. Personality disorders are usually a result of learned behavior. They are not diagnosed until the person is an adult (18).
But I do agree that it's a mental health issue.
I always thought psychopaths are born while sociopaths are made. Is this an incorrect way to view the two terms?
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