sonnymax Posted June 19, 2015 Report Share Posted June 19, 2015 Not sure about that, sonny. There is nothing sane about murdering 9 people. "Insanity" means that the person either could not control their behavior, or they could not distinguish right from wrong due to mental illness. From all accounts, this individual was focused, determined and in full control of his actions. We tend to identify such people and their actions as "insane", "monstrous" or "pure evil" in order to protect and distance ourselves from the harsh reality that tragedies like this are the result of the fear, ignorance and hatred of those who believe they are losing their ability to exert power and control in our society. I can't follow you down that road. Besides, you kind contradicted yourself when you said being able to discern between right and wrong. Not sure in what reality murder is right, but it isn't in this one. And if he didn't realize it... If my perceptions of reality and capacity for judgment are severely impaired to the point where I cannot identify what is real and what is fantasy, and hence what is right and what is wrong in a rational world, then I meet the criteria for the legal definition of "insane". If these conditions are absent, however, and if I choose to kill an individual even though I know that to do so is wrong, I cannot plead insanity. As erwbol pointed out, most mass murders are not committed by people with severe mental impairments, nor are those with psychiatric diagnoses more likely to commit acts of violence like these. The point of my previous post is that society would like to think that "only a madman could do such a thing." It makes people feel safer and free of responsibility when such tragedies occur. I believe that what happened in Charleston is the result of the fear, anger and ignorance that is willfully spread by those who wield political, financial and cultural power in our society and are afraid of losing it. Horrible events like this will continue to occur on a regular basis until this dynamic changes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John L Posted June 19, 2015 Report Share Posted June 19, 2015 This really makes me depressed, like when Martin Luther King was murdered. The first thought is "damn, all it takes is one crazy idiot to set us back completely as a nation." Then you start to think that this is not just simply an idiot who fell from the sky, but a true product of the USA. That is what is most depressing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
clifford_thornton Posted June 19, 2015 Report Share Posted June 19, 2015 Not sure about that, sonny. There is nothing sane about murdering 9 people. "Insanity" means that the person either could not control their behavior, or they could not distinguish right from wrong due to mental illness. From all accounts, this individual was focused, determined and in full control of his actions. We tend to identify such people and their actions as "insane", "monstrous" or "pure evil" in order to protect and distance ourselves from the harsh reality that tragedies like this are the result of the fear, ignorance and hatred of those who believe they are losing their ability to exert power and control in our society. I can't follow you down that road. Besides, you kind contradicted yourself when you said being able to discern between right and wrong. Not sure in what reality murder is right, but it isn't in this one. And if he didn't realize it... If my perceptions of reality and capacity for judgment are severely impaired to the point where I cannot identify what is real and what is fantasy, and hence what is right and what is wrong in a rational world, then I meet the criteria for the legal definition of "insane". If these conditions are absent, however, and if I choose to kill an individual even though I know that to do so is wrong, I cannot plead insanity. As erwbol pointed out, most mass murders are not committed by people with severe mental impairments, nor are those with psychiatric diagnoses more likely to commit acts of violence like these. The point of my previous post is that society would like to think that "only a madman could do such a thing." It makes people feel safer and free of responsibility when such tragedies occur. I believe that what happened in Charleston is the result of the fear, anger and ignorance that is willfully spread by those who wield political, financial and cultural power in our society and are afraid of losing it. Horrible events like this will continue to occur on a regular basis until this dynamic changes. We're not talking about schizophrenia, narcissism or depression here. Sociopathology is, last time I checked, a mental disorder. Not all sociopaths commit murder (or any heinous crime) but more than a few murderers are sociopaths. I'm also not saying that a racist society didn't factor in here, but someone with this kind of "break" might internalize societal constructs in a way that, with a skewed sense of morality, they feel compelled to act on those constructs. Timothy McVeigh was not a well-adjusted dude, and nor was this guy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ArtSalt Posted June 19, 2015 Report Share Posted June 19, 2015 (edited) We live in dark times and not only in the US, we have 7000 machine gun armed troops on the streets in France: permanently. This is the new reality. It seems to me we here in Europe are on the verge of a new dark age. Meanwhile, the US looks more like the Wild West everyday. Edited June 19, 2015 by ArtSalt Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hardbopjazz Posted June 19, 2015 Report Share Posted June 19, 2015 Why does South Carolina still raise the Confederate flag? The war ended over 160 yeas ago. The US flag was lowered to half staff in South Carolina and around the country. A sad day for all the world, not just the US. My prayers go out to the victim's families. Not much to say about such utter hatred. http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/06/19/why-south-carolinas-confederate-flag-isnt-at-half-mast-after-church-shooting/?wprss=rss_homepage Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Buddha the Magnificent Posted June 19, 2015 Report Share Posted June 19, 2015 To all those who believe mankind has somehow outgrown this kind of vile nonsense, or is in some way "perfectable," bless your heart. That being said, for most Savannahns, Charleston is like our big sister up the road, and our thoughts and prayers go out to our brothers and sisters in Charleston. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sonnymax Posted June 19, 2015 Report Share Posted June 19, 2015 (edited) We're not talking about schizophrenia, narcissism or depression here. Sociopathology is, last time I checked, a mental disorder. Not all sociopaths commit murder (or any heinous crime) but more than a few murderers are sociopaths. I'm also not saying that a racist society didn't factor in here, but someone with this kind of "break" might internalize societal constructs in a way that, with a skewed sense of morality, they feel compelled to act on those constructs. Timothy McVeigh was not a well-adjusted dude, and nor was this guy. Why do you assume this individual is a sociopath? Is it because of the heinous nature of his actions? Here again is the notion that someone must be "out of their mind" to do such a thing. I'm not saying he is "well-adjusted"or that his faculties are fully intact. What I am saying is that there need not be a "break" or uncontrollable impulse for someone to behave in hateful ways that most people cannot comprehend. Because of this, we as a society bear some responsibility when such tragedies occur. 25 years of clinical experience, including work with actual sociopaths, has made me realize that ordinary people have the capacity to create breathtaking beauty as well as unspeakable horror. Edited June 19, 2015 by sonnymax Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
page Posted June 19, 2015 Report Share Posted June 19, 2015 I wish peace and comfort for all the friends and family of those nine lost souls. Amen to that! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
clifford_thornton Posted June 19, 2015 Report Share Posted June 19, 2015 We're not talking about schizophrenia, narcissism or depression here. Sociopathology is, last time I checked, a mental disorder. Not all sociopaths commit murder (or any heinous crime) but more than a few murderers are sociopaths. I'm also not saying that a racist society didn't factor in here, but someone with this kind of "break" might internalize societal constructs in a way that, with a skewed sense of morality, they feel compelled to act on those constructs. Timothy McVeigh was not a well-adjusted dude, and nor was this guy. Why do you assume this individual is a sociopath? Is it because of the heinous nature of his actions? Here again is the notion that someone must be "out of their mind" to do such a thing. I'm not saying he is "well-adjusted"or that his faculties are fully intact. What I am saying is that there need not be a "break" or uncontrollable impulse for someone to behave in hateful ways that most people cannot comprehend. Because of this, we as a society bear some responsibility when such tragedies occur. 25 years of clinical experience, including work with actual sociopaths, has made me realize that ordinary people have the capacity to create breathtaking beauty as well as unspeakable horror. As someone from a family of very compassionate clinical psychologists, I didn't just get off the bus on this subject either. There are people who are disposed to do evil things and those require complete suspension of empathy. To say this is not discounting our fucked up society OR throwing people under the bus who suffer from a range of mental health issues. Ordinary people do unspeakable things in wartime and under great stress; this was a heinous act committed by one individual whose actions are certainly reflective of a significant amount of social problems, but to act as he did reflects something endemic to his person as well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
clifford_thornton Posted June 19, 2015 Report Share Posted June 19, 2015 But at the end of the day, racist people with or without serious mental disorders that have no access to guns won't likely be killing people. And that gets us into the political forum... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JSngry Posted June 19, 2015 Report Share Posted June 19, 2015 And back to the Alabama church bombing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
clifford_thornton Posted June 19, 2015 Report Share Posted June 19, 2015 Yes. Many horrible acts can be - and have been - committed by other means, but the easy availability of firearms cannot be separated from this incident and comparably terrible acts. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JSngry Posted June 19, 2015 Report Share Posted June 19, 2015 No, it can't, but it's waaaaaaay too easy to think that it's any kind of root cause rather than an obvious symptom. We don't have a race issue, we have a gun issue. We don't have a race problem, we have a mental health problem. We don't have a mental health problem we have a race problem. We don't have a gun problem, we have a race problem. On and on it goes Twitter is all lit up with celebrity sorrow and celebrity follower's sorrow. It's all so fucking cheap, cheap shallow emo feel-badding, Sad people everywhere, like WHERE CAN WE STOP THIS INSANITY? Sad people looking for blame so they can get over it and go back to being happy people. Fuck that. The triteness of it all is sickening. People haven't lost their minds, people have surrendered them, sometimes willingly, sometimes not. But consider this - "Racism Is A Disease" needs to e taken as more than a t-shirt slogan, because any time you go to mass projecting rather than perceiving and processing, you've already jumped the line in terms of logic, and when does unchecked illogicality ever NOT devolve into some kind of insanity? And yeah, I'm talking to you gangbangers, and I'm talking to you ignuntass rednecks, and yeah, I'm talking to you big-city provincials, and yeah, I'm talking to you xenophobes and misanthropes and sexual predators and just ALL you sick fucks who look for the quick convenient truths collected and served all at once rather than the simple logical ones discovered step by step and case by case. I'll go so far as to say that "murder" is in fact quite logical as a means of self-preservation. What need to be examined and dissected is all the ways that "self-preservation" has warped from a matter of being an immediate urgency to this weird extrapolated "cultural" thing to where simply knowing of this "other" sends you to THAT gear, hey, we got more people, all kinds of people, having "others" in their mind right now than is healthy for anybody but "the devil", so sure, let's regulate them guns for loonies, but let's not kid ourselves while so doing. People done got collective stupidcrazysickscared, period. My pet theory is that we have passed the planet's built-in capacity for a sustainable healthy and sane population, but that's just a pet theory, and I stay at home a lot. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
clifford_thornton Posted June 19, 2015 Report Share Posted June 19, 2015 Do you think for a second that I don't think we have a race problem? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JSngry Posted June 19, 2015 Report Share Posted June 19, 2015 Do you think for a second that I don't think we have a race problem? No man, not even, and sorry if it came off like that. I'm just tired of all the simplistic, segmented, tunnel-visioned "analyses" that I hear saturating any time something like this happens, Every asshole with an opinion mounts the media outlet of their choice (said with full self-awareness here, btw) and projects their personal "cause" onto it, like this is the ONE BIG THING that WE NEED TO ADDRESS, and I call bullshit on all of that, because like it or not, guns DON'T kill people, people kill people, if people ARE mentally ill, what is making them that way and how do we stop it, and since we DO have a race issue that has pretty much fucked up EVERYBODY concerned, what's been driving the resistance to that getting fixed, and it all, all of it, eventually comes back to self, the collective will never be fixed until the selves within are fixed. Goat-herding the collectives into same thought won't get it, hell, that's how we are now, "us" vs them", in damn near everything. For instance, look at how "race" and "culture" have somehow been allowed to become sorta mooshygooshy the same "thing", and beyond that, how "culture" and "tradition" have gotten squashed even more together, like if you like to wear gimme hats because they're kinda fun sometimes, that then becomes your expression of "tradition" of your "culture" because that's a "White thing", that's what "we" do because - critical thoughtprocessing pivot - THAT'S HOW "WE" ARE. And really - not really. Maybe, but that's the easy way out and give the other person less need/motivation to find out more. Which goes back to my theory about some intangible planetary population line having been crossed. People are in each others way more now than ever, and the rush to internalization through digital isolationisms and virtual "societies" only highlight that more. Change the gimme hat to a baller's cap or straw hat or a hijab or captain's yacht cap or whatever...it's lazy thinking which leads to lazy people doing lazyshit, and whoever it was who talked about how trivial the action of murder is had it right, not in terms of victims, but in terms of perpetrator - is that REALLY the best you could come up with as a human being? You're a sorry piece of used fuckup if so. simply put - people are the same as they've always been - creatures of extraordinarily complex capacities yet prone to the basest, most reflexive actions. Easily manipulated to predictable common outcomes with what should be shockingly little effort. I love everybody. But I like just a very, very small number of them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tim McG Posted June 20, 2015 Report Share Posted June 20, 2015 (edited) So...um, why is this thread even allowed? I got my ass booted because of a disagreement with one of the owners of this website based on the fact we did not agree. To wit: I understand the need to vent. I do not, however, understand the existence of a thread which is obviously political in nature. Call me spoiled. Edited June 20, 2015 by TimMcG Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JSngry Posted June 20, 2015 Report Share Posted June 20, 2015 Outrage over murder is political? Concern over mental health is political? Awareness of racial problems is political? Violence, insanity, racism, these are all things that are political in the solving (or "solving", not in the acknowledging. The only thing so far even remotely political here is gun laws, and nobody's really debating or discussing that past the point of crazy people being armed is probably not a good idea, and would anybody care to claim otherwise? Fully noted, though, that that's a good place to draw a line as far as that subject goes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tim McG Posted June 20, 2015 Report Share Posted June 20, 2015 I have no comment. I am not allowed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JSngry Posted June 20, 2015 Report Share Posted June 20, 2015 Tell you what, dude - I'll let you monitor what the Euro/Englo members post that they apparently think the moderators are oblivious to. Otherwise, welcome back, stay healthy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sonnymax Posted June 20, 2015 Report Share Posted June 20, 2015 So...um, why is this thread even allowed? I got my ass booted because of a disagreement with one of the owners of this website based on the fact we did not agree. To wit: I understand the need to vent. I do not, however, understand the existence of a thread which is obviously political in nature. Call me spoiled. I have no comment. I am not allowed. I wouldn't call you spoiled. Indignant is more like it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JSngry Posted June 20, 2015 Report Share Posted June 20, 2015 Is this going to turn into a thread about the thread? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scott Dolan Posted June 20, 2015 Report Share Posted June 20, 2015 (edited) Jim is spot on about this. We're always looking to point the finger of blame, but it's because we want to put a nice, tidy little bow on it so we can move on and get back to "normal life". It wasn't racism, or lax gun laws that killed those people. It was a crazy lone nut who thought, for whatever reason, killing 9 innocent people was just an acceptable/necessary thing to do. And no, we as a society most definitely do NOT bear some of the blame. That sort of self flagellation is an attempt at empathy that just doesn't have any weight to it. It's meaningless rhetoric to make oneself feel as though they've done their societal/human duty. And in complete honesty it's performed with the same cold disconnect as paying taxes. Edited June 20, 2015 by Scott Dolan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Clunky Posted June 20, 2015 Report Share Posted June 20, 2015 Like everyone I'm deeply saddened by this awful event. The events and the response reveal both the best and worst of the human condition. Every country has their problems in their society. Outsiders need to be cautious before casting judgment and offering solutions. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aggie87 Posted June 20, 2015 Report Share Posted June 20, 2015 (edited) My wife posted this on FB earlier this morning. I think it's a good read. Anti-intellectualism Is Killing America Social dysfunction can be traced to the abandonment of reason The tragedy in Charleston last week will no doubt lead to more discussion of several important and recurring issues in American culture—particularly racism and gun violence—but these dialogues are unlikely to bear much fruit until the nation undertakes a serious self-examination. Decrying racism and gun violence is fine, but for too long America’s social dysfunction has continued to intensify as the nation has ignored a key underlying pathology: anti-intellectualism. https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/our-humanity-naturally/201506/anti-intellectualism-is-killing-america Edited June 20, 2015 by Aggie87 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brad Posted June 20, 2015 Report Share Posted June 20, 2015 (edited) I just don't know what to say. This seems like 60 years ago. It's actually more like 150. Violence against African Americans has been going on forever. This was the church of Denmark Vesey which was burned down after his slave revolt failed in 1822 and he was executed. Violence against black churches was rampant during Reconstruction and after. This can be likened to a mass lynching of which there are thousands of victims. No, you have to go back much farther. Edited June 20, 2015 by Brad Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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