I AM NOT ADVOCATING VIOLENCE NOR JUSTIFYING IT.
In the wake of the Onion’s routine release of their “No Way To Prevent This” article, people like to blame the perpetrator’s action on mental illness. That is, some sort of mental instability was the primary cause of a mass shooting. Logically, if that is true, then without that mental instability, the mass shooting wouldn’t have happened, the person would have…done something else.
But this is bullshit.
There is a science behind why people commit violence. Why We Snap points out several “triggers”:
- Life-or Limb
- Insult
- Family
- Environment
- Mate
- Order in society
- Resources
- Tribe
- Stopped
It’s completely reasonable to kill a person in self-defense. Almost no one denies this. That is the primary justification for the proliferation of guns in American society. This is not a mental illness.
At home, 72% of all murder-suicides involve an intimate partner; 94% of the victims of these murder suicides are female. There are a lot of reasons why men hurt and murder women, but fragile male egos that treat women as inferior and interpret their actions as insulting and as challenging to a man’s masculinity is an entire trope. And yet, the gender essentialism of traditional masculinity isn’t treated as mentally ill (or even just plain wrong).
Tucker Carlson was renowned for his supposed truth-telling about how the order of American society is being threatened by an invasion of immigrants. Trump did the same thing. A reasonable conclusion, then, is that the El Paso mass shooter was merely defending his beloved nation against this invasion of immigrants, whom he just so happens to hate because they threaten the order of society.
Similarly, the Nashville Christian academy shooter was trans. For many of us, transgenderism isn’t a mental illness, and thus not a cause of excessive violence in and of itself. However, coupled with the antagonistic relationship between traditional Christianity and transgenderism, several of the triggers that don’t assume mental illness make sense.
And, of course, tribe…oh boy! As American polarization increases among the electorate, the salience of tribes increases. Only like a week ago, GOP lawmakers that didn’t support Jim Jordan’s nomination for House Speaker were sent death threats over the phone. If you don’t vote for their guy, they’ll fuck you up! (But non-violently…listen to the clip). Being protective and supportive of people like you isn’t considered a mental illlness.
Again, I don’t believe any of this violence is justified, nor am I advocating for it. (I cannot stress that enough). My argument is that there are seemingly rational reasons to engage in violence in the moment. So, rather than scapegoating the mentally ill, maybe, just maybe, we should look to why it seemed like a rational decision for a mass shooter to kill a bunch of people. What was their motivation? What problem were they trying to solve? And why did excessive violence seem like a good way to solve the problem?
I believe this is a much better approach to any shooting or violence in general than the allowing an immediate pivot to mental illness as the causal factor.
They aren’t mentally ill, they’re terrorists.
This is the answer
To those who think terrorism is just another buzz word for political outrage:
“Terrorism, in its broadest sense, is the use of intentional violence and fear to achieve political or ideological aims.” -Wikipedia
If any murderer or attempted murderer has a 100% clear manifesto or political reasoning behind the violence they commit, it is terrorism.
“Terrorism, in its broadest sense, is the use of intentional violence and fear to achieve political or ideological aims.” -Wikipedia
So inter-nation violence is terrorism. I’m glad to finally have people agree with me.
Congratulations on derailing the conversation.
Sure, but then so is policing and excommunication. Using the broadest possible brush is an express-ticket to uselessness.
There is violence inherent in the system all throughout it, and yet we treat an individual employing violence towards various ends – any end, really – as inherently “wrong” when under any critical observation that’s obviously bullshit. The government can call upon the police to come and murder you for any number of things, perceived or real, right or wrong. And some of the things “we” as a society have decided are right or wrong have changed dramatically over time. And violence is not necessarily someone shoving a gun in your face – somebody losing their job and income, say, because they are a member of some outside group (gay, trans, the wrong color, the wrong religion, speak the wrong language, etc.) can be just as detrimental to their lives as putting a bullet in them. It’s just slower, and nobody writes headlines about it.
The real factor is hate. Hate is everywhere in American society and we basically don’t deal with it in any capacity whatsoever. It starts in gradeschool with all those bullies the administration does nothing about and just builds up from there. It’s batshit insane to behave as if people faced by hate and aggression their entire lives from the government, their teachers, other members of society, politicians, megacorporations, the police, the talking heads on TV, etc., etc., etc. might eventually feel pushed to violence to ether defend themselves from or punish their perceived enemies.
I agree with your assessment that implicitly painting all other non-violent people who have mental health issues with the same brush is also hugely detrimental. If “only” cracked people enacted violence we would never have wars. A quick glance at history (or the current news) will tell you all you need to know about that.
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I’m just going to go ahead and leave this here:
That’s the level of mentality we’re dealing with. No humans died… this time.
And also, please don’t conflate understanding why some people might resort to violence for their own reasons stemming from hate/bullying/political indoctrination with actually condoning it. OP put a big disclaimer at the top of his post specifically refuting that, and I am refuting it as well. Your thought process does not equate to the thought processes of others. Other people are not perfectly rational and believe it or not – neither are you! (Or me, or anyone else.)
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It’s completely reasonable to kill a person in self-defense. Almost no one denies this. That is the primary justification for the proliferation of guns in American society. This is not a mental illness.
I respectfully disagree.
Ah, fuck it. No respect intended. The entire culture of the USA is having intercourse with legumes.
My argument is that there are seemingly rational reasons to engage in violence in the moment. So, rather than scapegoating the mentally ill, maybe, just maybe, we should look to why it seemed like a rational decision for a mass shooter to kill a bunch of people. What was their motivation? What problem were they trying to solve? And why did excessive violence seem like a good way to solve the problem?
You are describing how therapy works. Mental health care addresses the problem this exact way
Therapy teaches you to identify and ignore these issues and urges, like a good little capitalist drone. It does nothing to address the actual underlying societal causes.
Therapy teaches you to identify and ignore these issues and urges, like a good little capitalist drone
Nope
It does nothing to address the actual underlying societal causes.
How exactly is a therapist supposed to address societal issues 😂
This is you: “How is a Band-Aid supposed to address getting shot???”
It’s not, obviously. It’s not even an answer to the same question.
Can you point to any time in history where there weren’t serious societal issues occurring? Somehow people managed not to go on shooting sprees up until about 30 years ago.
What’s false? You found an instance of one shooting that happened in the '60s and that proves what exactly? We had more mass shootings than that this year by the second day of January.
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I disagree with the notion that moral wrongness makes a behaviour a mental illness. Well adjusted people are still capable of violence. Do you believe every soldier or police officer is mentally ill? I think calling it all mental illness is a cop out for people who want to pretend humans have no bad side. Remember the Milgram experiment? I guess they were all mentally ill too.
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You seem to be implying people murder because they desire to. There’s definitely some people who do and perhaps that should qualify*. But a lot of people kill who don’t want to kill and sometimes intentionally do so anyways and that’s what OP seems to be talking about.
Take people working at slaughterhouses, for example, who kill regularly for pay. I don’t think it takes mental illness to do such a thing. People regularly drive cars, for example, despite how many people they kill, most of which are caused indirectly via things like pollution. It doesn’t mean someone is mentally ill for driving a car to the store. Of course most people don’t think about the impact of their actions on the lives and health of others, so its not intentional killing. But are you suggesting someone who in conscientious of the impacts of their actions is mentally ill for driving anyways? Given the outcome is the same, I don’t see why thinking “I know this is killing others, but my convenience is worth their sacrifice” to drive a car wouldn’t be mentally ill while using a gun to kill someone who you don’t want to kill in order to defend yourself or your loved ones would be consider mentally ill.
I see a lot of this inability to understand what is right from wrong in so many young people’s beliefs these days
Illness shouldn’t be conflated with immorality. Nothing in OP’s comment suggests they don’t think murder isn’t wrong.
*Personally, I think illnesses in general should be based on how they affect the person with it, not others around them so I’d still disagree that a desire to murder would be indicative of illness, but that’s a semantics thing that puts me at odds with the common usages, colloquially and medically. Someone carrying a bacteria but having no ill effects does not have an illness, even if they can spread it to others and those people do get ill as a result. Not sure why we treat mental illnesses differently. Socially unfit behaviors/desires should be classified differently and conflating the two leads to additional stigma for those who have illnesses. Not really relevant to this discussion though.
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By any definition and certainly by all standards of humanity, a desire to kill people IS indicative of mental illness. It is actually one of the few red flags that can get you instantly sent to a psychiatric facility for lock up if you mention it in a counseling session.
That the practice of mental health identifies the desire to kill people as being indicative of mental illness is a good argument. I’m just going to concede that point.
There’s still the problem of one person not having the desire to kill someone to them…well, desiring to kill others. Being mental ill doesn’t explain anything. In other words, even if we define a deeply humiliated person as being mentally for wanting acting to take lethal revenge, for example, characterizing them as mentally ill fails to explain the relationship between their humiliation and their will to murder.
It’s at this point that I’ve realized the title of my post is wrong, and I’m actually arguing that mental illness doesn’t explain excessive violence. So…uhh…yeah. We’ll argue another day!
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