Posted on 01/29/2013 7:10:33 AM PST by SunStar
Before we turn up the volume on the Second Amendment. Before we trot out data proving that more guns lead to more violence — or don't. Before we re-live every senseless mass murder and make children afraid to step into a movie theater, school or mall. Before all of this and worse — experts would be wise to examine a phenomena that has been the impetus behind so many recent attacks on innocent civilians: Long before the perpetrators reached for a weapon, they lost their desire to live.
That's right. It doesn't matter whether we're talking about Khalid al-Mihdhar and 9/11, or James Eagan Holmes opening fire on movie-goers in Colorado, or more recently, Adam Lanza, the 20-year-old responsible for the school massacre in Newtown, Conn. We now know that in each of these cases, the assailants felt they no longer had a reason to live. And it is this unnatural state that enabled them to commit unimaginable acts. Once a person makes a decision to die, the most abhorrent atrocities become permissible. There are no longer any consequences to fear: no arrest, no jail, no trial, no families of the victims to face, no remorse, no nothing. Dead is dead.
Historical anomaly
Consider this: John Wilkes Booth didn't shoot up the Ford Theater. After aiming his gun at President Lincoln, he ran. He hid. He tried to get away. The same goes for Lee Harvey Oswald. He didn't open fire on the people who lined the streets to catch a glimpse of the president's motorcade. Even disturbed killers such as Ted Bundy, Charles Manson and John Wayne Gacy went to great lengths to keep their crimes hidden. Why? Because the drive to survive — to thrive, to propagate — is the strongest instinct among all living organisms. Self-preservation is a fundamental urge in nature. But in recent times, this instinct has gone awry.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, antidepressants are now the most prescribed drugs in the USA, climbing almost 400% from 1988-94 through 2005-08. Not surprisingly, the biggest jump is among preschoolers and adolescents. And if that isn't a clear warning of what lies ahead, then perhaps the fact that an estimated 1 million people in the U. S. report attempting to commit suicide each year — and that one succeeds every 14 minutes — will trigger an alarm. The number of people who no longer wish to live has been steadily rising in the past two decades, even before the recession. That suicide rate among military veterans we are so worried about? It is rising to civilian levels.
And it's not just the U.S. Globally, suicides have risen 60% in the past 45 years. We have a widespread affliction on our hands that is affecting the entire human race. An affliction we understand very little about. An affliction we continue to sweep under the rug and blame on guns, the economy and every other thing. An affliction that has become a preamble for mass murder.
Small actions don't help
I wouldn't go so far as to say that separating motive from means won't be helpful. We can and should make it difficult for unstable citizens to get a gun, rent a plane, build a bomb or have access to deadly poisons. But in terms of the bigger picture, these solutions look disturbingly similar to raising the debt ceiling, taxing the wealthy and claiming we've addressed our fiscal problems. Or drilling for more oil and behaving as if we'll never run out. We know these quick fixes are designed to ameliorate our immediate pain, but they don't go to the heart of the matter.
Today, fast-firing assault weapons grab international attention, but that is not what makes people like Adam Lanza so dangerous or what gives us reason to fear more such attacks; it's the fact that Lanza had no will to live. That's not a problem that can be solved by gun control or arming school guards.
It is a problem about people. The reach of the problem is far deeper. The CDC reports a million Americans try to kill themselves every year, but twice as many make plans to do it. While suicide claims a victim four times an hour, one of our friends, family members or neighbors thinks about it every two minutes.
If we have any hope of curbing tragedies such as Columbine and Sandy Hook, we must not allow rhetoric or short-term mitigation overshadow the opportunity to address the real culprit behind mass violence. Thriving, happy, connected human beings don't use guns to harm others, no matter how plentiful. They don't fashion fertilizer or airplanes into bombs. And they don't need the government to regulate these things. Nature has designed us so that the will to live acts as a deterrent against anything that threatens our continuation — including opening fire in a public place.
Fix this, and it won't be long before gun control is superseded by self-control. And at the end of the day, isn't this a far more lasting alternative than surrendering hard-won liberties?
Rebecca D. Costa, author of The Watchman's Rattle: A Radical New Theory of Collapse, is a former CEO and founder of Silicon Valley start-up Dazai Advertising.
In government schools, children are fed a toxic diet of futility and blame for the ills of the world by environmentalists, while secularists outlaw any mention of God, the Creator and Preserver of the universe.
Now why do you suppose the young are taking anti-depressants? Adults have taken away childhood. Sometimes the penalty for that is death.
We live in a society that promotes nihilism. Idiot leftist like Richard Attenborough go around saying that humans are a plague on the planet, and kids are fed this drivel in elementary school being told that an endangered frog is more important than they are. Rainforests cry and bleed. The Earth “has a fever,” as Gore says. Humans are apparently the cause of every bad and negative thing in the world, and as such, we are to be condemned and castigated at every turn.
This sort of negativism being fed to our kids leaves them listless. They’re told to “explore their sexuality” when morality and nature say, “I’m not supposed to be interested in my best friend that way.” They go to the Internet and post nude pictures of themselves for approval by “peers” when in reality it’s a bunch of pederasts and faggots looking to get off who are on the other side of the screen.
Kids today are brought up outside of the church, outside of the love of God, they’re brought up in a world that espouses sexual promiscuity, recreational drug use, and dependency on government for everything from cradle-to-grave.
Is it any wonder why kids are so depressed? The natural drive is to succeed and prosper, but they’re constantly beaten down when they’re even perceptibly “better” than a peer. That sort of conditioning is damaging to the psyche and is leading them to use anti-depressants and anti-psychotic medications. After a period of time, they become zombies who want nothing to do with anything and feel their only way out, their only way to be recognized for anything they do is to become “popular” through the use of violence. The media promotes it.
If we don’t change the way our children are raised and teach them the value of life and a love and reverence for God, we, as a society, are truly lost.
Rebecca D. Costa understands the depth of the horror. Thanks God for people like her...
This is a national disgrace. How have we allowed so many of our children to be drugged like this? I know an elementary school teacher who says that half the kids that go through her school will at one or another be recommended for pharmaceutical treatment. It's an outrage.
Truth bump!
“We have a widespread affliction on our hands that is affecting the entire human race.”
Yep, and it’s called “postmodernism”.
Personally I blame radical militant feminism, post-modern liberalism, and HIPPA laws.
It doesn't work.
to examine a phenomenon that has been...
or-
to examine phenomena that have been...
In English we still make subjects and verbs agree in number.
Amen to #3.
You and me both, FRiend. The feminists have destroyed what it means to be a man. Two, going on three, generations of American boys have been raised as emasculated eunuchs.
There is an excellent book on the subject of the destruction of traditions and culture, [After Virtue], it was written by a former Marxist; Alasdair MacIntyre.
Although I do not agree with everything he suggests, It exposes a number of false premises on the far left.
Sounds like the warrior culture that’s been around throughout history.
What better way to go than in battle?
Demented psychos shooting toddlers brains all over the wall are not products of a “warrior culture”. A warrior culture weeds out these mutants. A liberal culture calls them victims and gives them preference and benefits.
And paradoxically, adopted perpetual adolescence.
This is a VERY WELL WRITTEN article and TRULY sheds a great deal of light on the CORE ISSUE behind these maniacal mass murders.
‘Nature has designed us so that the will to live acts as a deterrent against anything that threatens our continuation — including opening fire in a public place.
Fix this, and it won’t be long before gun control is superseded by self-control.’
I think most everyone already knows this, yet no one knows how. How does someone go about fixing something that nature screwed up? How does anyone even know who needs fixing before they break?
I remember the first time I heard the term “death by cop” - it was a little while after antidepressants hit the country...
Philosophy now teaches what is post-modernism. The only reality is what the individual perceives. Nothing outside your own experience really exists. You are totally alone. There is no God, therefore there is no absolute truth.
People, kids, need to know the truth. The father of lies is deceiving them and killing their hearts and minds, withering their souls.
read in AM
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