Everyone seems to be focused on ways to address the Sandyhook and Colorado Theatre shootings lately, and see link below for an article about a 9 year old psychopath. Maybe what we need is a mediated online way for the potential perpetrators and victims of these crimes to interact and get their greivences and issues out before they become a society-wide problem.-- JesusHChrist, Jan 05 2013 9 year old psychopath http://www.nytimes....pagewanted=all&_r=0 [JesusHChrist, Jan 05 2013] Teacher surrenders weapon http://www.benningt...r-surrenders-weapon [tatterdemalion, Jan 05 2013] Is psychopathy a spectrum? http://www.ted.com/...sychopath_test.html [2 fries shy of a happy meal, Jan 05 2013] 3D printed gun http://www.newser.c...d-printed-guns.html [JesusHChrist, Jan 08 2013] Quadcopter with gun http://www.youtube....watch?v=Ax-DeybxBpY [JesusHChrist, Jan 08 2013] 180 Rule http://180rule.comCurrently my favourite site for understanding psychopaths. Please read some of these articles carefully; you may conclude, as I have, that applying mediation to the relationship between psychopaths and their potential victims is about as helpful as applying gasoline to the relationship between fire and valuable timber buildings. [spidermother, Dec 19 2013] Sandy Hook. Sorry. I lived in CT. and this school was well known.-- blissmiss, Jan 05 2013 People are simply hilarious, but nobody is laughing. Nobody can even begin to explain how dumb anybody is.-- rcarty, Jan 05 2013 I don't think psychopathy is caused by grievances. The idea that psychopaths can "get their issues out" is based on an out-dated and discredited mythology, namely, that of psychoanalysis.-- pertinax, Jan 05 2013 You have made a big mess here.-- rcarty, Jan 05 2013 You might be on the right track, there is certainly value in finding ways for potential perpetrators to show themselves before they act. But it's not an airing of grievances.-- tatterdemalion, Jan 05 2013 I disagree.
I don't know what the answer is, but I'm pretty sure that shunning the psychopaths isn't it.How did ancient cultures deal with their mentally ill children? The groups were smaller then so recognition of this condition early would not have let these kids grow to adulthood without everyone around them knowing that they just didn't give a shit who they hurt.
So what was the fix? Were they barbarically removed, or did they become trolls and boogeymen? Can these tendancies be channelled in a constructive way so that their self-serving could be beneficial to society if it can't be curbed? Are there environ'mental' (sorry bad pun) reasons for lacking empathic awareness?
yep... shunning doesn't seem to answer any of those questions.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Jan 05 2013 There seems to be some indication that many of our current leaders have this condition to some extent. When the impetus of society seems to be squashing everyone around you in order to be successful then it stands to reason that this trait would evolve in an organism.
Path of least resistance and all that.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Jan 05 2013 Seriously though, if you suspected this of your own child, what would you do? Would you really want them to be shipped off to Psychilligans' Isle to be immursed in the ways of HannibalLector-hood?
Put all of the ammoral people in one place... you're gonna have a bad time.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Jan 05 2013 Thing is, there are going to be a lot, lot, lot more psychopaths in the next few decades. A lot more.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Jan 05 2013 What are you basing that on; have you concocted something?-- rcarty, Jan 05 2013 No, but people are reaching a tipping point. People have done nothing for decades now, and they are about to have had enough.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Jan 05 2013 One problem is the rational polarization of psychobehaviour through socialization, whereby representations of psychopathology are objectified and selves modelled dialectically in opposition to them, and as a result of this normal deviances become subject to greater punative measures resulting a breakdown of social subjective identity, norms and values and thus psychopathology. For example those who use constant admonishment of criminal offenders as a purposeful means of controlling their own behaviour become moral and upstanding, take authorative social roles, and come to represent society to those who don't use the same model for self-control. As a result, an individual who starts out only mildy deviant, breaking the occasional rule, and does not identify with the psychopaths that authorities define themselves as inversely rational to, in development becomes inversely rational to the authority becoming a psychopath. Unfortunately, the rational polarization model that manifests itself in 'tough on crime' attitudes that act to regulate behaviour are not for everyone. Crimes such as murder which are heavily reviled, are the result of normal human feelings of ill will towards others, become coupled with the constant bombardment of messages about those who murder, and as a result those who feel this ill will must somehow reconcile their desire to murder which in some cases is understandably impossible.-- rcarty, Jan 06 2013 Could you bottom line that humongous paragraph.-- blissmiss, Jan 06 2013 Psychothapy is an outgrowth of externally forced sociopathy; "There is no Light without Dark"; scapegoatism.-- FlyingToaster, Jan 06 2013 //Thing is, there are going to be a lot, lot, lot more psychopaths in the next few decades. A lot more.//
My gut is screaming the same thing at me, while also screaming that it doesn't need to be that way just as loudly.My gut can be a bit deafening at times...
My post-formative years were spent being 'conditioned' by a psycho/sociopath, but I'm... stubborn, and wouldn't give that evil fuck the pleasure of breaking me. Rebelling against him is a good portion of what makes me, me.So I've been trying to understand that aspect of human behaviour since before I ever had words for what I was studying, and I still have no clue even though I've known several folks who fit that bill since then.
What I do know is that suppressing an inherent trait causes an equal and opposite effect in those strong enough to resist its suppression, which may be or may not be a synopsis of what [rcarty] said.
That's what I got from it anyway.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Jan 06 2013 //Could you bottom line that humongous paragraph.// I think he said that authority figures provoke people to be anti-authoritarian.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Jan 06 2013 // It smacks of "I recind all the negative things I said about my previous employer now I have another soul-destroying job"//
This I don't follow. However, for the record, I have the same employer as before.
//Meh, its your choice to be that vacuous.// Yay!-- MaxwellBuchanan, Jan 06 2013 [bigsleep] his comment is not in response to your annotation, but [blissmiss]' request for a summary of my annotation.
This notion of corporations as psychopaths was the idea behind the early 2000's movie 'The Corporation'. Pertaining most of your views regarding labour I do not disagree, and we have found common ground in being similarly critical over the years. However, I have noticed lately you've been agitated and quick tempered with your comments.-- rcarty, Jan 07 2013 //as mentor to this website// //big ego//
y'all don't get to say both: one or the other... or, arguably, one at a time.-- FlyingToaster, Jan 07 2013 //as a mentor to this website community//
Whoa, hang on there just a second. We Buchanans may be mental, but we've never knowingly mented.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Jan 07 2013 I think our increasing proclivity towards psychopathy, if it is indeed a trend, is aggravated by the ever- increasing noise of the marketplace; 'more, bigger, higher, faster, more grandiose explosions, louder, tougher tests, faster information, etc.' Capitalism has this tendency to push the limits beyond what is necessary.-- RayfordSteele, Jan 07 2013 If we're notionally discussing the perpetrators of spree shootings, it seems to me that we're making a mistake calling them psycho- or sociopaths, in that those are specific forms of mental illness/difference which stem from an inability to empathise with other people. Spree shootings, on the other hand, seem to be very much of the character of amok.
There is a quote doing the rounds from "How the Mind Works" from Steven Pinker which goes like this: ------------------------- "Amok is a Malay word for the homicidal sprees occasionally undertaken by lonely, Indochinese men who have suffered a loss of love, a loss of money, or a loss of face. The syndrome has been described in a culture even more remote from the West: the stone-age foragers of Papua New Guinea.
The amok man is patently out of his mind, an automaton oblivious to his surroundings and unreachable by appeals or threats. But his rampage is preceded by lengthy brooding over failure, and is carefully planned as a means of deliverance from an unbearable situation. The amok state is chillingly cognitive. It is triggered not by a stimulus, not by a tumor, not by a random spurt of brain chemicals, but by an idea. The idea is so standard that the following summary of the amok mind-set, composed in 1968 by a psychiatrist who had interviewed seven hospitalized amoks in Papua New Guinea, is an apt description of the the thoughts of mass murderers continents and decades away:
"I am not an important man... I possess only my personal sense of dignity. My life has been reduced to nothing by an intolerable insult. Therefore, I have nothing to lose except my life, which is nothing, so I trade my life for yours, as your life is favoured. The exchange is in my favour, so I shall not only kill you, but I shall kill many of you, and at the same time rehabilitate myself in the eyes of the group of which I am a member, even though I might be killed in the process."
The amok syndrome is an extreme instance of the puzzle of human emotions. Exotic at first glance, upon scrutiny they turn out to be universal; quintessentially irrational, they are tightly interwoven with abstract thought and have a cold logic of their own." -------------------------
It seems to me that in labelling spree shooters psycho/sociopaths, all that is being achieved is an alteration of the definitions of those terms. Yes, psycho/sociopathy are interesting, scary and warrant further investigation. But from my position of ignorance, it looks like they're not particularly germane to the spree shooter mindset.-- calum, Jan 07 2013 Did someone say something about stringing up skeet shooters?-- RayfordSteele, Jan 07 2013 //stringing [MB] up just as an example ?// It's been tried before. My own fault for taking an LED Torch (or "Demon's Eye", as it became known) into Norfolk. I only escaped because I was able to predict that the sun would rise at around daybreak, thereby convincing them that I had powers best not trifled with.
//spree shooters// Perhaps it might be worth finding an alternative word to replace "spree". "Spree" is a jolly word, associated with lighthearted merriment. It may have been used ironically in the first place, but it now seems to have become a routine and clichéd prefix or suffix to "shooting".-- MaxwellBuchanan, Jan 07 2013 binge?-- calum, Jan 07 2013 Tantrum?-- zen_tom, Jan 07 2013 Spree is the exact word to be used. Using the folk song Johnny McEldoo as a musical case study, we observe a record of several companions setting out on a day of merriment with abandon in a certain discursively rational context, the fellows are impressed by eachother's actions drinking and eating, but one fellow in particular Johnny McEldoo expresses inordinate desire and could not be controlled, considering the attempts at rational alignment of his companions become challenges, and an ever increasing bill does not regulate his consumption. The story ends in violence when not niether Johnny McEldoo's societal nor the shopkeeper's ideal rational economic controls fail, and the situation comes to blows.-- rcarty, Jan 07 2013 Tantrum is something else. The world is full of ferociously stupid people in important social roles, such as parents, teachers, and anyone else you can name. There should be no surprise at murders.-- rcarty, Jan 07 2013 What is this thought a result of?-- rcarty, Jan 07 2013 Quantum fluctuations in dark grey matter mostly.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Jan 07 2013 Getting hung up on which word to use is maybe not the best use of our time.-- tatterdemalion, Jan 07 2013 And so fell the Halfbakery...-- MaxwellBuchanan, Jan 07 2013 I have an idea to get rid of all the ammo. That way they would have to hit you with their gun.-- xandram, Jan 07 2013 I don't believe "screening" will ever be effective in detecting or deterring spree or mass killings.
What I have suggested is a requirement that firearms users must have a "firearms liability insurance policy" and present evidence of its validity at point of sale to purchase ammunition.
This is a logical development of the "background check" concept supported by gun lobbies such as the NRA, and keeps the government out of the equation, except for the passage of the "Firearms Liability" requirement law.
Certainly, it would be easier to implement than mass screenings of potential psychopaths or outright banning firearms.-- whlanteigne, Jan 07 2013 [------------------] ...........^-- rcarty, Jan 07 2013 Insurance company screening would be excellent, as no risk is feared so much as a risk actuarially assessed. State involvement is unavoidable, as a means of preventing uninsured ownership or use of a firearm. Premiums for high risk groups rise, creating an economic pressure and govt crackdown such that only rich white people will have guns. This will appease the NRA and not lose anyone any votes.-- calum, Jan 07 2013 random, halfbakery