h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

In an example of how he looked at a couple, he wanted to punish men for having what he didn't have, so you can still take it back to his sense of entitlement when it came to women.

You are right. My point was that when it comes to the relatives of the male victims they are probably unlikely to blame "misogyny" as the root cause of the deaths of their sons. There was that very emotional outpouring from the father of one of the male victims. He blamed the NRA culture for the death of his son.

Some of the responses to his outpouring of grief have been very strong calling him all sorts of names including the questioning of his own sexuality. There was that widely publicised quote from Joe the Plumber "Your dead kids don’t trump my constitutional rights". I suppose the quote although appearing to be insensitive at least brings clarity and honesty to the position of the majority (?) in the US.

The most important point for me that I was trying to get across this morning was in terms of understanding was to view this as an act of extremism not one of insanity.

Personally I think individual acts of extremism are difficult to impossible to understand in terms all things being equal what makes someone act out and someone act differently.

However we can better understand the circumstances in which extremism and violence thrives, is enabled and address them.

If this had been an act of say religious extremism, no-one would have had a problem putting a label on that, yet one that has an extreme misogynistic element there seems to be this inability to acknowledge that it is an issue and a tendency towards down playing its relevance. It is that *difference* that interests me, for want of a better word.

Neither did I seek to put any one particular issue above another or to a assign a single root cause.

P.S It is good to see you back StoneAart

There are many people who are so deeply hurt that they want to lash out and make others hurt as much as they do themselves, but sadly they don't see that it makes things worse, that is if they livelong enough to find out.

To some extent, in this world, you get back what you give out. As was said previously, you have to be a friend to have friends, and you have to accept yourself, and love yourself first but not in an arrogant way.

I think looking for a reason for evil is sometimes useless, but I haven't worked out yet whether some people are born evil and cannot change or whether there is hope for the future for some.


Thanks for confirming the glass wall thing, it is definitely there, even with a close friend and you described it exactly. It works both ways too.

Websailor

Hi folks, thanks for all the replies!

Stone Aart, I'd like to come to what you said before about the sex drive and Freud. As I understand Freud (though I'm no expert) he conceived of life drives, and death drives. (The idea of a death drive is one that might be very fruitful to ponder in cases of mental illness and destructive behaviour but I'd leave that for later). A 'drive' is not energy as such ... energy, strictly considered, is a physical thing, while a drive is a psychological motive, that drives a person's thoughts and actions towards a particular purpose. The sex drive, as Freud conceived it, is a creative drive, which biology instilled in people (and other living things) to move them towards acts (sex) that will lead to the creation of new individuals. If the sex drive is thwarted the idea goes, the purpose needs to be changed but will conform to the nature of the old drive. In my case it seems to hold, since my primary drives are towards painting, cultivating plants, and writing ... all of which are creative endeavours purposed towards bringing new things into the world, thus similar to the sex drive but changed. I am not entirely sure, though, that it works exactly like Freud thought. I think human psychology is more complex, that there are more inherent drives than he thought, and that a psyche can be 'rewired' in more ways than he imagined. I might write more about this later ...

Peanut, I agree that the man was a narcissist. But did you know that this, too, is a recognized mental illness? And there is therapy proposed for it: there are methods aimed at improving empathy, therapy aimed at improving temperament, and - in my view perhaps the most important - therapy aimed to teach control of impulsive behaviour.

The idea of a person 'snapping' and 'going crazy' does not fit what actually happens. Again I have to turn to my own experience: there is a spectrum from 'sane and in control' to 'insane and out of control'. I find myself somewhere between those extremes most of the time. So there's a spectrum, not just two different modes. As I see it: even people considered sane are not entirely sane, they have little bits of irrationality. Imagine a wooden board: it looks straight but is never perfectly straight. A straight wooden board put under pressure at both ends starts to bend. It may not be visible at first but there's strain on it. Put more force on it and it bends visibly. It seems to hold but internally some fibers are already breaking. Put enough force on it and it breaks entirely. A mind is similar to that (though it is of course a simple image). A mind gets distorted under stress ... it doesn't break all at once, little bits break progressively, only at the very end might it break entirely.

A factor in crimes like these is that it is often evident that the crime has been 'planned' for a long time. This seems to suggest the crime was not the outcome of a sane mind 'snapping'. I disagree. The plan exists because the mind has already long ago started becoming distorted. So the person is planning these crimes, thinking about killing lots of people. The planning may seem very rational. But underneath the rational plan there's an irrational motive. (The very idea of killing lots of people and then one's self is hardly sensible ... but may conform to Freud's death drive - IF Freud was right!) But the plan is not put into action because there is still enough of the rational mind left, to prevent the person from actually going through with the plan. This is where self control comes in! As an obsessive person I can assure you I have thought lots and lots of times of killing myself and also I have thought of killing other people, in my paranoid phases, because I was believing they were trying to harm me and saw it as self defense. I did not go through with those plans because my rational mind could conceive of how awful it would have been if I actually did. But if another person has these plans to harm or kill people and finally the point is reached where the rational mind can no longer overcome the irrational or psychotic impulses, then the person starts actually going through with the plan. There might at this stage still be enough rationality left to purposefully and methodically execute the plan. Perhaps the fact that the plan has been made earlier, while the person had more rationality available, enables a person who has lost almost all control, to still act in a seemingly purposeful way.

This is why I consider it enormously important to teach people self control, discipline, impulse checking, all sorts of checking and controlling their thoughts, ideas, plans, desires - the caboodle.

Anyways I see extremism as a form of mental distortion. It is as far as I am concerned a very pertinent aspect of mental health. I tend to extremism in almost everything myself. I even think extremism is part of being human. Humans seem to have a drive towards trying everything, of trying to push everything as far as possible. I think this is part of what makes us 'successful' (not that I approve of all of this 'success'). But I find in myself that I naturally seem to have a momentum that impels me towards the very end of every road that I choose. This is again something I need to willingly control because many of those roads go into bad places when followed too far.

This certainly is a factor in human culture. People latch onto trends and follow them, often to ridiculous lengths, or until they get bored. Many people will ignore cautions and warning signs and go way too far ...

I think in this incident people see what they themselves have most trouble with. Actually most of the discussions I have seen, have stressed the misogyny angle. I've seen far fewer that have mentioned the gun control angle. I've not seen any that really went into the mental health angle. In my own case, I don't have anything to say about gun control, so I ignore that - but that does not mean it is not important. People in the USA need to speak about that. Here in SA the gun issue is quite different, and in most countries other than the USA there is not the same controversy.

I talk about misogyny here because it is an aspect I do think I can say something about. Again in South Africa attitudes are different but we do have patriarchal attitudes here. I would say though that we have less of a culture of sexual entitlement ... at least in my own culture.

Still in my own thinking I tend to focus on what I have most to say about that is most directly relevant, and this is the mental health angle.

I think Stone Aart is onto something about the 'punish the world' mentality. I have much of that, I really have had many occasions of wanting to curse and destroy all of human society as punishment for its crimes towards me and towards others ... especially for our crimes against nature and animals. But again my rational mind holds me back when I think of how horrible it would be for me to hurt anyone else.

OK I must finish this. Websailor, I do try and listen to people who try to communicate with me, really, it's just sometimes difficult to understand them.

Hi Willem, I basically agree with everything you said in the above comment.

I have been conceptualising "energy" as that which enables movement, and "drives" as directions along which movement occurs (psychological channelling of energy into forms of physical movement). These terms for me are "fuzzy" that is not defined precisely. Anyway I agree with the way you described them above.

I agree that the debate on mental illness is being stifled in the media. It seems to me that many won't even allow the debate to be started because they misinterpret the "intention" of such discussion ... thinking it is an "excuse" for what happened and a means of "shifting the blame" away from the culprit.

That for me is a complete misinterpretation of that discussion: discussion of mental states and illnesses is in my view entirely separable from the issue of "accountability and being held responsible for one's own actions".

In my view the person clearly had mental issues (but that doesn't excuse him from his actions)and there are issues to be discussed of a mental health nature and provision for a support system for it.

ps Hi Peanut

Hmmm, right to try and clarify some of the issues for myself I tried out this scenario. I am going to say now that I did from own cultural perspective, this is a UK court I am visualising here although I am not sure how realistic it is, no matter, he goes

Elliot Rodger survives, is arrested, then what?

Question one is he competent to stand trial on the face of the evidence we had up to a day or so ago. Others are going to emerge.

I think there is a case for yes. His personality disorder does not make him incompetent or unfit for trial. Here I am making a clear distinction between this and say someone in a psychosis.

I think if tried he will be found guilty.

At the sentencing stage mitigating factors can be offered. So what mitigating factors could the defence offer, well I would say his personality disorder and his age?

And the prosecution against, the hate element in this crime?

I would say that you could reasonably take his personality disorder into account for the defence and the hate element for the prosecution.

One does not counter the other out, what it does do is acknowledge both.

(Forget his age for now )

Ok legally here I am way out of my depth, so I suspect this is going to be lengthy term quite possibly in terms of sentencing we are bartering over a whole life order or getting out as an old man.

The next question what facility is he sentenced too. That I have to think through, again it is the principle that is important, he may be found guilty but his personality disorder may influence how we treat him afterwards and the nature of his confinement.

This for me clarified a lot, in the distinctions I am making and what I weighted into eventual conclusions I was drawing

I don't agree that the issue of mental health is being stifled in the media, what is being countered is that this was being automatically explained in terms of his actual mental health status and the state of mental health services and heavy emphasis was being put on this at the expense of the consideration of all other factors.

So it is a reaction to that, rather than stifling.

Also in terms of being stifled, being able to broaden this individual story out to a lack of provision of care or services are somewhat stymied in that in this individual case he had access to high quality services and his issues were well understood.

>> Elliot Rodger survives, is arrested, then what? <<

Hi Peanut, for me I hadn't thought that far ahead. I was just thinking of the immediate circumstances of the action, the action itself and the type of things "needed" for such a circumstance to occur.

This means at this stage I cannot even contemplate what would have happened if he had survived and was arrested. That in a sense is "advanced stuff". I am on level 101 whereas you are considering level 213 or level 301. It would depend on the legal system etc. This means I may not be ready to be in a position to even consider your comments if your comments were written from that perspective.

Other cases that I have been following on and off are the Anni Dewani murder and the issues surrounding the extradition of the husband Shrien Dewani to South Africa, and of course the Oscar Pistorius case. Those cases have all been about legal issues to a large extent ... and mental issues ... which on the face of it seem to be attempts to avoid being held accountable or being tried in court.

But I view these separately from the case that has been raised in this conversation.

PS Actually I am going to consider your scenario. He would be arrested and found guilty of multiple homicide and then either sentenced to death or life in prison - probably something like 600 years. The mental issues will be raised but the court will determine he had enough awareness to have knowingly made a choice to plan and kill. So he would be held accountable for his actions.

However if I have an interest in this case it was how his mind got to this state. One could say he was or became an extremist misogynist as there is no denying that the action was extreme and based on a misogynist frame of mind. However I would be interested in how he got to that state.

Hi StoneAart

Just for clarity I wasn't coming at it from a legal perspective, or from any huge amount of legal knowledge, it was just a way that I worked through to see if it would be helpful in organising my thoughts.

For me it did, as to if it also had a use in framing them for and communicating them to others I don't know.

>> ... to broaden this individual story out to a lack of provision of care or services are somewhat stymied in that in this individual case he had access to high quality services and his issues were well understood. <<

I hadn't got round to thinking about this comment. Having now read and digested its contents it seems I didn't know enough about this case to realise that for this case there was ample support. In that case the access to guns becomes more critical ... why was he allowed to stock up on weapons and ammo.

ps it seems I know so little about this case that I should just stick to trying to understand the mind and how it can get to such a condition.

I s'pose I am somewhat less interested in the individual case because I think much of what we have to hand now is not new and does little to further our understanding.

I don't think it is also a issue of dis-interest.

Actually in terms of understanding I think it is more valuable to look at the key issues we are discussing here, gun control and culture, mental health, misogyny, extremism and hate on the internet and off, is not to put them into the context of an extremist act.

Of course an act like this is horrific, so grabs the headlines and a wider interest but there is a much greater value in my mind to put all of these issues into a more day to day context where the much greater harm occurs.

A general comment here, not so much related to this discussion, while the endeavour to understand is not a bad one I feel that focus on the 'news worthy' distracts from focusing on the everyday impact these issues have and where we can do a much greater good by focusing on them and addressing them in this context.

Maybe some of the other issues could be discussed on a separate thread. I thought this conversation was started specifically to consider and understand from the individual psychologically related perspective

I have been wondering how that across. I didn't wish or intend to change the direction of approach of this thread, at the time of writing I was expressing a difference of personal approach.

Both are equally valid.

Also the stated intent was to also try and identify how to prevent such act in the future. In this endeavour then the psychological perspective is an aspect of trying to gain a full understanding but by no means the only one. I am drifting when it comes to this, I am aware of it and will try to get back more back on topic

We can look at numerous issues here. Like I said in my own case I want to look at the specific mental health aspects involved here. Although this event is an extraordinary one I can see in it issues relating to mental health that are poorly understood and that - if we understand them better - can not only perhaps help avoid more such spectacular incidents but also help with people with problems that don't go as far as this, both on the side of the victims as on the side of the perpetrator.

A bit pressed for time this evening - I'll try and catch up properly tomorrow.

I have just finished taking notes from Joe Simpsons "Touching the Void" about a 1985 mountain expedition that went wrong with Joe Simpson having too cruel his way back to camp after breaking a leg and falling into an ice crevice.

One of the fascinating aspects about it is something he called "The Voice". Here is a particularly interesting section:

"… there were two minds within me arguing …. The voice was clean & sharp & commanding. It was always right, & I listened to it when it spoke & acted on its decisions. The other mind rambled out a disconnected series of images, and memories and hopes, which I attended to in a daydream state as I set about obeying the orders of the voice."

Hi again folks, another busy night ... I'm thinking of starting up a new journal posting or two aimed at specific aspects. Perhaps one thread for misogyny, and one for mental illness. Perhaps another for yet something else? Any suggestions, Peanut?

Very interesting thing you mention there, Stone Aart, I'll see about some info on 'Touching the Void'. Makes me think of 'hearing voices' which often occurs in schizophrenia, but I've never experienced it myself...