Posted on 08/02/2012 9:00:32 AM PDT by Rage cat
There is no inherent thing in a person that prevents them from carrying out acts of killing, or mass destruction. The thing that restrains a person is their upbringing. The morality and ethics that they are taught when they are growing up.
That fact becomes all the more important when they enter a field of study where they are dealing with the very perception of reality that those morals are based on.
There has been a long standing problem in research. That is the tendency for the researcher to go native. A researcher has to study the interaction from an independent third person perspective. To stay independent, he has to have a solid psychological/moral grounding to prevent his mind from getting caught up in what he is researching.
If he was not taught the importance of maintaining that moral/ethical/psychological grounding by people he trust, and people that educate him, then he can very easily get caught up in his own research.
His parents may be religious, but if he actively rejected their world view and embraced the moral relativism that his mentors, and classmates embraced, then he lost his mental foundation that allowed him to observe his research from a stable view point.
He is the modern equivalent of the researcher that went to the jungle to study head hunters. The one that started socially interacting with his research subjects. The one that started smoking the same mind altering substances as his research subjects. The one that started hunting heads along side his research subjects. The one that helped his research subjects kill the rescue team that was sent in to try to find out what happened to him.
He was studying how people perceive reality. To figure out how people that are classified as “insane” or “evil” think.
The irony is that he succeeded in his research. He figured out how those people view the world. But the problem is he did not have enough of a psychological foundation to prevent that way of viewing the world from taking over how he himself viewed the world. It made more sense than his own world view.
He went native.
I disagree with the hypothesis of the article.
Holmes went insane. It could have been from ingesting drugs (I have seen that happen) or it could have been sudden onset of schizophrenia or any number of other causes.
However, I have questions about what occurred:
1. We have witnesses on video telling news reporters that someone in the theater got a cell call or text and then went over to open the door for the shooter. Why no police investigation of the accomplice?
2. The shooter had his face covered. How do they know it was Holmes? Could the shooter have escaped while leaving Holmes dressed in a matching outfit to take the rap?
3. Holmes was waiting quietly in his car for cops. What happened to the homicidal maniac? So he went totally docile?
4. Holmes appears to be almost totally dazed and incompetent now. How did he learn to make explosives and “sophisticated” booby traps?
5. Are there people and groups evil enough to shoot up a theater and blame it on an insane man? For this question, I have an answer...YES.
However, neither I nor the public know enough to say for sure. Likely, we will never know the full truth.
The glaring gap in news coverage is “Who knew he was insane and failed to intervene or report it?”
In every case like this, e.g., the Giffords shooting, someone FAILED. The Left blames the firearm when the failure was by people in authority.
He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you.
That is one thing I find disconcerting about society. If you do something out of the ordinary, they automatically assume you are mentally defective. That there was some direct physical cause for it. They ignore the possibility that the education system, and society at large may have helped cause it. Or caused it outright.
Your idea that the thing called “sanity” is a feature that is inherent in a properly functioning, and undamaged mind….. is inherently flawed.
Sanity is a relative term. It just means that that a person does, or does not view the world in a way that we would consider “nominal” or “acceptable”. That world view (insanity) does not have to be caused by drugs or physical ailment. It can, and often does happen in people that have no mental ailment or drug abuse problems.
It is just the way they have learned to view the world. It makes more logical sense to them than our world view. To them, we are the ones that are insane.
The reason they think their world view makes more logical sense is because the way they was educated and raised lends it’s self to that way of thinking more than our way of thinking.
When you enter the world of education and thinking he was entering, then the relative terms “insane” and “crazy” are just considered societal constructs that are based on arbitrary, relative standards, and current societal norms. A quite limited and inflexible way of viewing the world. He, by necessity of his research would have already let his bounds of thinking reach far beyond that limited way of viewing the world.
To embrace the less constrained way of viewing the world and reject the more constrained view of the world we would consider as “sane” may make him “insane” in our view, but he arrived at that “insane” view of the world by pure logic. Logic based upon what he knew and was taught by the world around him.
In my opinion, the education system, and his mentors are just as responsible for his killing as he is. They are the ones that taught him enough to set him on the roller coaster ride without enough knowledge to handle the results. As the old term goes… “He knows just enough to be dangerous.”
What I find odd is that none of these witness's commented on his orange/red hair. I realize he may have had on a cap but that theater was filled to capacity. Someone had to have been sitting next to him or directly behind him yet no one said “the guy with the bright red hair got a call”.
Once again, I differ with my esteemed Fellow Freeper.
I have run mental health facilities and have had over 200 mental patients in the Army unit that I commanded. Psychiatric outpatients were assigned to my company while they were being processed out of the Army.
I have also been a civilian hospital administrator. In addition, I have had in-laws and other relatives who were certifiably insane.
My observations:
1. Many people have minor neuroses, e.g., obsessive-compulsive disorder, and they function just fine. In fact, some behaviors, e.g., ADHD, may have aided our survival at some point in our history. Also note the accomplishments of some people who were severely bipolar.
2. The difference between neurotic and insane is that insane people cannot function. They cannot live without assistance. They don’t have a different view of reality; they cannot perceive reality.
For example, one of my former engineer colleagues began thinking that everything that people said to him was in code. He wrote down what people said and tried to decipher it using algorithms.
He also thought that everyone with the letter K in their name wanted to kill him. Is that an opinion that he developed or is that a severe mental malfunction? Luckily, his family got him on meds to treat his paranoid schizophrenia before he killed anybody.
3. Almost all mental illness is driven by pathology. I have seen people damage their brains with inhalant abuse, bad drugs, etc.
I have also seen people go insane after viral illness. There is ample evidence that Borna virus, carried by domestic cats, causes schizophrenia and other mental illness. The recent research implicating a protozoan parasite from cats is another good example of pathology.
4. A psychiatrist friend, who often served as an expert witness in criminal trials, once told me, “The truly insane are normally harmless. An insane person will try to kill you with a carrot instead of a gun. 99% of the people claiming the insanity defense are simply evil bastards.”
5. My experience is why I question whether Holmes is the actual shooter. He seems to be incompetent and insane, not evil.
I don’t think university profs convinced him that evil is just another world view.
I think we are just arguing semantics here.
According to your view, the difference between an evil person, and an insane person is the way they arrived at that altered perception. an insane person arrived at that via ailment distorting his view of the world, while an evil person arrived at that perception through real world experience and logic, how ever twisted.
In your opinion, is a crazy person, one that has a messed up perception of the world caused by ailment or outside influence?
The line between insane and evil, and crazy is a blurry one.
I don’t see as big of a difference between them. They have a world view that falls outside of what we consider “normal”. No mater how they got there, the effects are the same.
Preventing it from happening, requires you to determine if it is a physical or societal ailment, and act appropriately. If it is a physical ailment, try to find out what that ailment is and treat it. if it is caused by his environment (society) then try to change it to prevent it from happening again.
Kudos for your civility. I am sometimes loathe to comment on FR for fear of the nasty backlash when I disagree with someone.
Agreed, we need to focus on preventing the kind of attack that happened in Aurora, whatever the genesis.
As for me, whenever I see a person exhibiting either insanity or evil, I plan to act immediately. I have seen the consequences of people who fear to take action.
A very interesting anomaly is Obama’s press conference at the hospital. Where he talks about a spurting neck wound that is supposed to explain all the blood behind the theater. No way. There are a lot of strange details.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTKWch9WKzQ&feature=related
Great observation. We have a lot of researchers these days with an amoral humanist foundation. It’s downright dangerous. When the boomers retire and all memory of ethics is lost, look out! Psychopaths rule the day in liberalism’s “values.”
I disagree.
People are of course taught morality and ethics while growing up. Even those with a horrible childhood are taught horrible ethics, often by example.
Each person can choose whether to accept or reject their upbringing.
A very large number of those with horrible childhoods become good people as adults.
A much smaller, thankfully, number of those with good upbringings choose to behave monstrously.
I'm listening to a book right now on the Leopold and Loeb case. Both had a perfectly normal, indeed highly privileged, upbringing. They chose to turn to evil, out of boredom and a highly mistaken superiority complex.
On re-reading my comments above, I realize I've been too dogmatic. Some people really are insane, others choose to do evil for a variety of reasons, and some are perhaps a combination. Very hard to tell which.
Hi, m_f:
What is “THO” ?
TIA!
It was a midnight showing. Did other people dress in costumes related to the movie.
Like Rocky Horror Picture Show and Mommy Dearest, people showed up in costume.
Even if it was not a costume event, maybe people just nudged one another and pointed out the idiot in costume.
Most likely the witnesses are simply mistaken. Probably, Holmes faked getting an urgent call and ducked out the exit door, propping it open. Believing him just trying to avoid disturbing the audience, people who saw him do it were not alarmed and saw no need to secure the door or summon ushers. Then he went to his car, conveniently parked a few feet away, suited up, grabbed his arsenal, and returned for the attack.
As for accomplices, it was reported the police were interested in a Korean grad student attending the same school as Holmes. But he was cleared of any involvement.
2. The shooter had his face covered. How do they know it was Holmes? Could the shooter have escaped while leaving Holmes dressed in a matching outfit to take the rap?
Absurd conspiracy theory. There is no need to introduce a "real shooter". It makes far more sense that he acted alone. His apartment was rigged to blow up and divert the emergency responders. It took days to unrig it.
3. Holmes was waiting quietly in his car for cops. What happened to the homicidal maniac? So he went totally docile?
I'll grant you, that was strange. I would have expected "suicide by cop" or, at least, a better get-away plan.
4. Holmes appears to be almost totally dazed and incompetent now. How did he learn to make explosives and “sophisticated” booby traps?
He's faking his insanity. As for his explosives expertise, remember, he was, until very recently, a grad student in a highly technical field.
5. Are there people and groups evil enough to shoot up a theater and blame it on an insane man? For this question, I have an answer...YES.
Who? CIA? NSA? KGB? DNC? Of course, any of those outfits — even the last one — would never come up with anything with so many ways to go wrong. And, at minimum, they would have made sure their patsy didn't fall into police hands.
The glaring gap in news coverage is “Who knew he was insane and failed to intervene or report it?”
Remember Charlie Whitman in 1966? From his doctor's notes (Wikipedia):
Dr. Heatly's notes on the visit confirmed the visit with Whitman, reflecting his claim of hostilities: "This massive, muscular youth seemed to be oozing with hostility...that something seemed to be happening to him and that he didn't seem to be himself." Dr. Heatley also referenced an ominous statement that Whitman did not refer to in his letter, "He readily admits having overwhelming periods of hostility with a very minimum of provocation. Repeated inquiries attempting to analyze his exact experiences were not too successful with the exception of his vivid reference to 'thinking about going up on the tower with a deer rifle and start shooting people'." Whitman never visited Dr. Heatly again.
History doesn't repeat, but sometimes it rhymes nicely.
The only time a person can make a choice is when he has a friend or relative or fellow citizens that tries to set him straight and gives him the opportunity to make a choice.
When a person is surrounded by a monolithic culture, where everyone tells him what he already thinks, then he has no choice to make.
At that point, the only thing stopping him from doing bad things is the punishment that the society at large will hit him with if he does it.
If he no longer fears that punishment, or think the whole society at large is a farce in the first place, just thing to be toyed with and destroyed, then there is nothing to restrain him.
Possibly, though I would contend a truly monolithic culture has never existed. Certainly our present society is not monolithic. Possibly it is less so than ever before, with the interwebs providing a truly effective way, for the first time in history, for those of uncommon beliefs to find each other and develop their own subcultures.
With FR a leading example.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.