Irony, School Shootings and the Search for Meaning

[abcdavid01]

I've been more interested in this particularly since Adam Lanza. I fit the profile and I worry that any son I'd have would wind up at least as bad if raised as I was.

Anyway, people can talk about guns and whatnot, but anyone sensible knows that only fixes the symptoms.

Then people are claiming we need to discuss the problems in mental health classifications. This at a time when gay marriage is receiving ever greater attention. The irony is astounding.

Nobody wants to talk real solutions because they don't like what it suggests.

Other areas that need greater attention are the suburban angle or the middle class angle. Bereft of meaning.

[clowny]

The kids I went to school with who turned out to be gay ALL had one thing in common; they were bullied/picked on a lot, and couldn't really stand up for themselves for whatever reason (too small and weak, too meek, etc).

In my opinion, american kids who are constantly bullied and picked on will usually become one of two things; gay, or the next school shooter/murderer.

[clowny]

I have to confess, although I normally despise police brutality, I won't complain when homosexuals are on the recieving end of it:

[abcdavid01]

When Adam Lanza died I was a few months out of quitting college. Every morning I'd drive to school and imagine flooring the gas pedal until I died or woke up in the hospital. I had all the makings of a school shooter. Students and teachers both know these things. They even said after Newtown that they pulled out 50 or so kids from the school system because they seemed at risk. Well that's just ostracizing them further. They're pointing to these 50 kids and telling them they're at risk for becoming mass murderers. That won't just f**k them over more?

Though they are often intelligent, high-performing boys, their peers tend to see them as unattractive losers, weak and unmanly. In a school culture that values sports prowess over academic accomplishment, they face rejection. The shooters are rarely loners, but tend instead to be failed joiners, and their daily social experience is full of friction. Since they are almost always mentally or emotionally ill, those rejections -- so common in adolescence -- take on greater importance and become a fixation. Rebuffed after trying to join friendship groups, they look for ways to gain attention, to reverse their damaged identities.

...

The shooting is the last act in a long drama: a search for acceptance and recognition. The earlier acts fail miserably. But once a shooter starts to talk about killing people, ostracism can turn to inclusion. Suddenly, he is getting the attention he has been craving. Michael Carneal, who killed three high school girls and paralyzed a fourth when he was a freshman in a Kentucky high school, pulled pranks, told loud silly jokes and stole CD's in an attempt to impress. None of it worked. But the day he started talking about shooting people, that began to change. The Goth group he desperately wanted to join wheeled in his direction for the first time.

http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/17/opinion/n ... l-shooters

I pretended to be a hipster in high school to limited success. Before that the closest people I had to real friends were the special ed kids, even though I was one of the smartest in the school. I also got suspended a number of times for gallows humor.

Adam Lanza was not normal. He suffered from morbid shyness and an inability to connect with his student peers and anyone else—a cold, withdrawn, hollow shell of a person to his classmates, an Asperger's patient to professional psychologists. Even under the best of circumstances—with a loving, caring, two-parent family consisting of a husband and wife who complemented each other’s strengths and worked together as a team—raising someone like Adam Lanza would be a real challenge.

http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2013/01/7488/

My parents have a shit marriage. They'd both admit it. My dad slept with a prostitute a year ago and my mom blames him for giving her cancer. But thank God they didn't divorce because I really would have killed her.

[clowny]

The shooting is the last act in a long drama: a search for acceptance and recognition. The earlier acts fail miserably. But once a shooter starts to talk about killing people, ostracism can turn to inclusion. Suddenly, he is getting the attention he has been craving. Michael Carneal, who killed three high school girls and paralyzed a fourth when he was a freshman in a Kentucky high school, pulled pranks, told loud silly jokes and stole CD's in an attempt to impress. None of it worked. But the day he started talking about shooting people, that began to change. The Goth group he desperately wanted to join wheeled in his direction for the first time.

The reason females don't become school shooters is because they have a much easier method of gaining people's attention: by becoming sluts and opening their legs to whoever is willing.

[abcdavid01]

That's pretty insightful. I never thought of it that way.

http://www.al.com/living/index.ssf/2013 ... ailed.html

[S_Parc]

Dave, you'd picked a really pertinent topic. I think it's interesting because we're in that 14+ year mark of 'American Beauty', the movie which shook me out of my childhood stupor. I'd pretty much given up on American society afterwards, as I saw that film as an omen of future times, not just a contemporary satire.

Since I'm in my mid-30s, my sexual orientation is pretty wired in, I'm 100% heterosexual but pretty much, do not associate with AWs, including the ones from early childhood, outside of mandatory business or networking opportunities. I call this M.O., being physically heterosexual but socially gay.

Now, take any other man, growing up in the 21st century and expose him to the society we're in today. Chances are, if he's a type A personality, being a killer could be his primary M.O. and his secondary one, being physically & socially gay, to find a sub-community to belong to. I think the number of heterosexual men, choosing robots for their mental sanity will once again, be a loner's subculture, not a sub-community like the gays.

[Ghost]

Another reason to give up on American society and move on: the U.S. has a massive violence problem (with much more surely to come under the surface) and absolutely refuses to go anywhere near to discussing the real reasons for its problems. Gather up a bunch of info on these men who act out violently and go out in a shooting. The similarities are there and plain to see. But American society refuses to see them because it implicates its own society in producing them.

[C.J.]

The sad thing is, western society naturally advocates social dysfunction. People aren't allowed to be themselves, and are punished for it in western society(if you aren't a worthless bum you don't get sex, friends, company of the opposite sex.) This is because that's what the western government wants - for the males to be stupid bums and for the females to be hoes as these people are easy to control. However, females don't have this problem of having to conform, as they naturally become a part of society one way or another - there are laws to help females in the western world, much more than males.

When the males don't get help or attention, they see no other choice, as the western governments don't truly honor special people. For the mentally and behaviorally challenged, the same thing happens - the only difference is that their defects are encouraged(some human mental defects are curable, and some may argue that ALL mental defects are curable) as they get special, positive reinforcement for their behavior.

When it comes to the western matrix, if you aren't a slave, welcome to depression, mental hell. Some folks have one more ounce of strength, to tell the world they won't take it anymore, and commit actions that aren't normal. That's because those people feel it's the only option left for happiness.

You can read many books about mental defects in humans and how they manifest, it could take ages to discuss such things.

[abcdavid01]

I wish all those people could find Happier Abroad also.