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As of this writing, 14 people died and more than 70 were wounded in the Aurora, Colorado, theatre massacre. I can’t imagine the pain and horror felt by the people in Theatre 9 and their families and other loved ones. Please pray if you swing that way…and even if you don’t.
How to you get to be that crazy by the age of 24?
The man alleged to be the Aurora, Colorado, theatre assassin will undoubtedly turn out to be Nucking Futs, but how do you get that crazy that fast?
I’m going to go out on a limb and say we are going to find out that the people that loved him knew he was crazy. In all fairness to his family, I’m betting they never thought he was dangerous. However, when they heard what he is alleged to have done, they never doubted that he was capable of it.
The usual cultural suspects will be dragged out…it was guns…it was television…movies…video games…drugs…bad parents…acceptance of gay people…the devil…
James Holmes lived in a world where all of the above existed, and he killed people. Other people live in the same world, and they don’t kill people.
Why?
In Catcher in the Rye, by J. D. Salinger, Mr. Antolini tells Holden Caulfield he is worried about him. He tells Holden he is heading for a fall;
“This fall I think you’re riding for – it’s a special kind of fall, a horrible kind. The man falling isn’t permitted to feel or hear himself hit bottom. He just keeps falling and falling. The whole arrangement’s designed for men who, at some time or other in their lives, were looking for something their own environment couldn’t supply them with. Or they thought their own environment couldn’t supply them with. So they gave up looking. They gave it up before they ever really even got started.”
The question I need the answer to is, “What did James Homes want that this world couldn’t give him?”
The human mind operates on oxygen, electricity, chemicals, and experience. That’s a simplification, but it’s accurate.
One day, these four elements in James Holmes’ brain kind of turned into the metaphoric devil on his shoulder and began to whisper that this carnage would fix what was missing from his life.
What flipped the switch? Will they find a tumor? Was it too much religion? Was it not enough religion? Was it the “wrong” religion?
Was it an elbow to the head in a pickup basketball game? Was it one too many tokes on a doobie? Was it fracking poison into his water supply? I want to know…in the words of Gunnery Sgt. Hartman in Full Metal Jacket:
“What is your major malfunction, numb-nuts? Didn’t Mommy and Daddy show you enough attention when you were a child?”
What broke? Why did it break? When did it break? Can we predict or detect it, and if we can, can we fix it?
I think these things every time something like this happens.
When your brain starts to misfire and you start down this road, how fast do you pass the point where you can still ask for help? Do you even know when you need help? Maybe whatever goes wrong is undetectable, and one morning you wake up and think, “I’m going to need some tear gas?”
Some people drink and become alcoholics. Some people take drugs and become addicts. Some people hear Helter Skelter and believe God is telling them to commit murder to start an apocalyptic war between the races.
We need to figure this stuff out, man.
In the past we had clubs, spears, and arrows. We invented gun powder and that led to bombs, bullets, and bigger bangs. The technology of death gets better and better, but people have gone on killing sprees since all we had was rocks and sharp sticks.
I live in Chardon, Ohio, where, so far this year, four students were killed in a school shooting, a man committed suicide by cop, and a divorce-fueled murder/suicide took place at a local auto repair shop. Incidents like this one in Aurora, Colorado, or like the three in Chardon make you wonder if people are starting to get crazier faster.
Today, I am just asking the questions. I don’t pretend to have the answers, and I may only think this because I’m afraid someday I’m going to wake up and think, “I need some tear gas, or I don’t think I’ll wear pants anymore.”
My deepest fear is that my mind will betray me in the end through some electrical malfunction or a lack of oxygen or an overdose of some usually benign brain chemical.
There are no guarantees, and I’m frankly sick to death of seeing that proven time after time…I’d like to register a complaint to the person or persons in charge, please.
10 Comments
Damn psychobabble. In DSM 6: Humanity. Incurable.
S’all backwards. The world gave him something he did not want.
That same quote that the previous responder responded so pre-emptively to is a really fine quote. Thank you for isolating that out of the Salinger book. Very nice quotation.
I want you to also check out my diary entry today a few hours ago, my first foray onto FDL participation.
It is “How do members of trading systems think?” By “members” I mean all of us, the members of this world: i.e. “capitalism”
“We need to figure this stuff out, man.” You got that right. When someone dies from an unknown disease they take biopsies, and send them to a pathologist. This person should be studied before he goes to the criminal justice system.
Medications prescribed for various ailments have too many side effects that aren’t reported. I’m not speculating anything, just stating some facts.
Don’t have an answer either. But one thing we *do* know is that as resources are increasingly horded by a select few and the rest of us must make do on less, mental health care funding has been taking a substantial hit … and we never really invested that much on the issue in the first place.
Dwindling avenues of support are butting up with skyrocketing need caused by increasingly long-term stress the current financial and political situation has inflicted on so many people. In 2008, there was Hope™ … now, it’s a media blitz asserting the current situation “the new normal” and there will be nothing better – in fact we’re lucky if things don’t get far worse.
I think that’s more a potential contributor to the general situation question rather than necessarily to the current tragedy in specific. There is also this weird “snap” thing that seems to happen – and someone goes on a killing rampage. And it’s not just an American phenomena and it seems to span history. Don’t know what to say about the causality, but I can’t help but think if we were investing a lot more resources into ensuring mental health was being cared for across the board that we’d catch a lot more of the cases before any sort of tragedy occurred simply by default.
Also. I had always approached the issue from worrying about *other* people snapping … never occurred to me to worry about it happening to myself. That opens a whole new avenue to be paranoid about … thanks a lot. (great post, btw).
Another thought. As lakota implies … to the extent we *do* address mental health; it’s to throw various cocktails of psychotropic pharmaceutical goodness at the patient and send them on their way. The side-effects are indeed often deadly. Suicides seemingly related to commonly prescribed treatments are also terribly troubling.
That whole part of our approach really needs to be addressed.
Lots of loonies in my neck of the woods. I suspect pharma changes, And added stress. Expect to see more of same.
copying my response to a similar subject by Cassiodorus:
Seems appropriate here, too.
Hmm, links did not xfer, and no edit, but they are here at Cassiodorus’ post.
And why would we have inequality of wealth as the observable correlate?
Inadequate mental/physical healthcare,improper diet,HUGE amounts of stress…
I myself do not discount the very probable experiments the gov’t is conducting on the ‘effects’ of high frequency soundwave bombardment,
or whatever the latest human experiment might be…
I know I read paranoid,but seriously people,there is so much we really aren’t informed of.
The way i look at it is that shit happens. Even more shit happens when you cram more and more people into the same amount of space. it’s just what happens. there isn’t an explanation that will satisfy you. You have to to just accept that shit happens.
kinda like the way I look at terrorism. I literally NEVER worry about that shit either. It just happens.
The gnat’s nibble here and there that is terrorism is unfortunate, but it’s going to happen, no matter what we do, so STOP FUCKING SPENDING ALL OUR MONEY, AND ABRIDGING OUR RIGHTS WITH PARANOIAIAC(?) MILITARISM TRYING TO ELIMINATE THE “BAD MEN”, AND TERRORISM IN GENERAL!!
To reiterate, you just have to let go, man. this shit isn’t ever going to change. People kill people, it’s our nature, only now that we allow them access to weapons of mass destruction, the carnage is more profound.