20 or more shooting victims reported in San Bernardino, CA. Police seeking active shooter

[jsroberts]

@Garymon

I am not a violent person. I don’t have mental issues. Never been in a fight. Never even really been in a verbal fight. I’m described as laid back and chill. But three times in my life I have been in a situation where I lost it. Pure fucking rage. No sense of self preservation. No logic. Nothing but tunnel vision. If I had access to a gun in those 3 moments, there would be three dead people and I would sure be in jail for life rather than working hard, paying taxes and raising a family.

@Garymon

Anyone can snap under the right condition. No prior mental issues required.

I think this is really important, although I’ve never personally been in a situation like this. I think it’s one place where culture is very important though. I think it was @anon50609448 who mentioned a study (this one?) comparing people in Chennai and San Mateo, California with schizophrenia who heard voices telling them to do things - both were often authoritative, violent, intrusive etc., but also very culturally conditioned. The voices in the US patients’ heads were much more violent:

Describing his own voices, an American matter-of-factly explained, “Usually it’s like torturing people to take their eyes out with a fork, or cut off someone’s head and drink the blood, that kind of stuff.” Other Americans spoke of “war,” as in, “They want to take me to war with them,” or their “suicide voice” asking, “Why don’t you end your life?”

In Chennai, the commanding voices often instructed people to do domestic chores — to cook, clean, eat, bathe, to “go to the kitchen, prepare food.” To be sure, some Chennai patients reported disgusting commands — in one case, a woman heard the god Hanuman insist that she drink out of a toilet bowl. But in Chennai, the horrible voices people reported seemed more focused on sex. Another woman said: “Male voice, very vulgar words, and raw. I would cry.”

While this refers to one kind of mental illness, I think it can be generalised - there are many things that we do impulsively under certain circumstances, and this is culturally conditioned. Somebody close to me (not actually me! ) is bipolar and recently had some serious problems that led to him being put in a mental hospital for some time. He wasn’t violent at all, he just had a walk down the street and an earnest discussion with a couple of police officers about why he wasn’t wearing any clothes.

The article claims that actually giving an avatar to the voices and negotiating with them with dignity and respect was an effective method that actually ended up reducing or even eliminating their influence over you. I think this is also something that can be generalised. What threatens people and what do they see as the response? Women having greater influence in society and controlling their own fertility? Muslims influencing our culture? The government taking our freedoms? Often the threats are much less harmful than people think, but a culture of paranoia and retaliation means that people only see a projection of themselves - violent men wanting to control women, dominate culture with their ideology and take other people’s freedom.

[nimelennar]

As far as I remember, they were all named Some Asshole.

[anon73629133]

@anon29631895 @Donald_Petersen

[Snowlark]

Nice find. I especially like this one:

In 2012, NRA spent $19.7 MILLION on independent expenditures for candidates to only tweet #thoughtsandprayers in response to gun violence

I had no idea prayers were that expensive.

[daneel]

Not just prayers now. Since the names came out,Ted Cruz is now at war with…somebody.

[sdmikev]

Not sure where I am demonizing mentally ill people, by calling the NRA crowd nuts. As in gun nuts. Because that’s what they are.
These radical gun owners and the NRA should be viewed as a terrorists.

[SteampunkBanana]

“Retard” and any of its subset should be taken out of your lexicon, that’s most likely the source of @celesteh’s anger.

[kupfernigk]

@jsroberts

Often the threats are much less harmful than people think, but a culture of paranoia and retaliation means that people only see a projection of themselves

I think that’s an excellent post.
There is other work that has pointed to similar conclusions. During the Victorian era in the UK, when religion was something of an obsession (the Oxford movement coming up against the Protestant evangelicals), mental illness usually took a religious turn. There seems to be a strong suggestion that the symptoms of this kind of illness do reflect the obsessions of a society. That is one reason why it is so dangerous to have politicians and others demonising social groups or stirring up violence; what to one person is free speech is to another person something that will cause a mental illness to result in an attack on a particular group.
It would be astonishing if the virulent verbal attacks on (for instance) Planned Parenthood and Muslims did not lead to violence, given the 1% or so of people who may suffer at some time in their lives from a serious mental illness. (Only a small number of those are likely to become violent, but a small percentage of 1% is still hundreds or even thousands of people every year.)

[kupfernigk]

@Snowlark

I had no idea prayers were that expensive.

“You cannot serve God and money” - what left wing hippy weirdo said that?

[anon50609448]

@kupfernigk

It would be astonishing if the virulent verbal attacks on (for instance) Planned Parenthood and Muslims did not lead to violence, given the 1% or so of people who may suffer at some time in their lives from a serious mental illness. (Only a small number of those are likely to become violent, but a small percentage of 1% is still hundreds or even thousands of people every year.)

I think this is misrepresenting the role of mental illness. If a person hears voices telling them to go kill the people at an abortion clinic or a rock concert then they are “mentally ill.” But if a person doesn’t hear voices, but instead convince themselves the same thing needs to be done via rationalizations, they are not “mentally ill.”

Those voices that the mentally ill person is hearing aren’t just a window into the mind of that one person, they are a window into the culture that person exists in. They are what our culture is more subtly saying to the rest of us. Hearing voices is probably more of a sign that your rationalization module is broken than it is that you have fundamentally different opinions than an average person. Basically, if you hear voices then you cannot incorporate the different urges and thoughts you have into a cohesive view of yourself so you see these thoughts as coming from outside of yourself. Given that these voices are saying to go shoot up a theatre, maybe that’s actually more sane than the person who is able to have a cohesive self-view that produces the same results.

I think we should be paying a lot of attention to what voices are saying to people, and a lot of attention to how the outliers in society (voices in head or no) are doing. They aren’t something else entirely, they are five standard deviations out - that means they give us clues about what one and two standard deviations look like. Basically, if you don’t hear voices, the voices are still there, you just either know they are you, or - more likely - you can’t hear them because they are influencing you subconsciously rather than consciously.

[William_Holz]

I think another part of that very issue is that it’s the most mentally disturbed among us are given platforms and positions in which they can rile people up and propagate their madness.

And somehow they get to be treated like ‘adults’ on networks that get the prestige of being called ‘news’ when they are embarrassments to actual adults and actual sources of news.

Seriously, these guys are basically terrorists without guns. They don’t have to do it themselves, they just encourage the crazies to do it for them.

THESE are the voices we should be worrying about.

[kupfernigk]

@anon50609448

I think this is misrepresenting the role of mental illness.

I may be very stupid but I don’t follow the argument you make subsequently. I didn’t make the connection between “hearing voices” and mental illness, you did.
Mental illness is like any other illness - its primary symptom is that in some way or ways it prevents effective functioning and causes unhappiness. That’s why undiagnosed people with mental illnesses may attempt to self-medicate with drugs; they are unhappy in its broadest sense.
People like politicians who attempt to destroy social cohesion may or may not suffer from such an illness; they may be doing it because they are psychopaths (not classified as a mental illness, see above), or because they have been brought up to believe that they are entitled to power and this is the best way to get it. The people who follow them may do so because they are fearful, or because they want a share of the power. But they are not necessarily unhappy or ill.

@anon50609448

Those voices that the mentally ill person is hearing aren’t just a window into the mind of that one person, they are a window into the culture that person exists in.

That was rather the observation that I was commenting on in the first place.

@anon50609448

Basically, if you don’t hear voices, the voices are still there, you just either know they are you, or - more likely - you can’t hear them because they are influencing you subconsciously rather than consciously.

I can’t comment on whether or not you are right; you may well be. But I fail to see the relevance to the question of whether the symptoms of mental illnesses are socially conditioned or not.

[enso]

@Aloisius

Private individuals at the time of the founding of the US owned far more dangerous weapons than probably anyone currently legally owns in the US including cannons, mortars, bombs, grenades and explosive shells.

The Continental Congress wasn’t ignorant about how destructive weapons could be and considering private citizens fielded their own navies, the fact that their weapons were sub-par by today’s standards doesn’t mean they were any less deadly (excluding nukes of course).

Can we quit fellating the founding fathers and their wishes sometime soon?

[SteampunkBanana]

Never. Their wishes included amending the Constitution, why wouldn’t I want to abide by their wishes that include the idea that times change and they provided a mechanism to keep up with it?

[enso]

@SteampunkBanana

Never. Their wishes included amending the Constitution, why wouldn’t I want to abide by their wishes that include the idea that times change and they provided a mechanism to keep up with it?

I didn’t say “abolish all their laws” but this “Well, the Founding Fathers did X or Y…” Who gives a shit anymore?

Fuckin’ cult of dead white Americans.

Should we own and screw our slaves like high minded Jefferson? I mean, these are the fellows that agreed that black men counted for 3/5…

[William_Holz]

@SteampunkBanana

Never. Their wishes included amending the Constitution, why wouldn’t I want to abide by their wishes that include the idea that times change and they provided a mechanism to keep up with it?

Well, they haven’t done THAT well. The framework was okay but obviously the system they designed isn’t working for us human beings (would we be worse off if Congress was filled with random toddlers?). It’s completely failing to put the best of us in charge of how our country operates.

They were okay, I guess…but I agree that we give them far too much credit as anything other than a stepping stone towards something better.

[anon15383236]

@albill

Fuckin’ cult of dead white Americans.

Should we own and screw our slaves like high minded Jefferson? I mean, these are the fellows that agreed that black men counted for 3/5…

Ooooh, so you want to shine a light on the hidden, decaying pillars still propping up the swaying edifice of de facto white supremacy?

RACE TRAITOR!

[Mister44]

Huh - so I guess they found and killed the suspects? Syed Rizwan Farook, 28, and Tashfeen Malik, 27. They were hosting a holiday party and left during an argument. Must have been some argument. Maybe they ran out of Pumpkin Pie? But I also read they had tactical vests etc, so obviously some pre-planning was involved. I also heard there is a 3rd person wanted for questioning.

ETA - no I guess they have a 3rd person in custody, but I have found like zilch about it.

[kthejoker]

There are psychological issues and madmen and mental health problems in other civilized countries.

We’re the only one with more than one mass shooting per day.

[jsroberts]

@kupfernigk

People like politicians who attempt to destroy social cohesion may or may not suffer from such an illness; they may be doing it because they are psychopaths (not classified as a mental illness, see above), or because they have been brought up to believe that they are entitled to power and this is the best way to get it.

I suspect that these people are sane in the clinical sense, but the damage they do is incredible. I was in the US with in-laws in autumn 2013, so I saw things like the government shutdown from Fox News’ perspective. You’re in a room with a person who is spouting such complete, dangerous nonsense that you can’t quite believe they have the gall to say it, but everyone around is acting like nothing strange is going on at all.

One telling moment was the Capitol Hill shooting incident when Miriam Carey drove through a security checkpoint without stopping and was shot dead. She had postpartum depression and possibly a couple of other issues, and it wasn’t clear exactly what her intentions were (although she wasn’t carrying a gun and had her young daughter in the car, so anyone could see that she was not a risk once the smoke had cleared). I think it was O’Reilly who commented that there was a mental health problem in the country, and it was sad that it had come to this. However, as it was impossible to look after every mentally ill person, the only option was to protect ourselves against them. I already considered him a terrorist by that point (in the sense of being someone who incites and uses public fear for political ends), but that was one of the moments that really brought home how little people like this care about truth and public safety, as long as their agenda is forwarded.