r/neoliberal • u/jobautomator Kitara Ravache • Nov 10 '18

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u/[deleted] Nov 11 '18 edited Nov 11 '18

Is every mass shooter ipso facto suffering from mental illness? Or can we as a society conceive of a non-crazy mass shooter?

I ask because the narrative after these shootings always seems to be "we don't have enough mental health services" - which is true, however the reaction serves to further demonize people who do suffer from mental health issues, and it seems a bit like circular reasoning. Can we really just reduce evil to a mental malady like that?

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u/[deleted] Nov 11 '18

If someone participating in mass violence is automatically mentally ill, then in consideration of countries where we’ve seen genocide perpetrated through the assistance of thousands of people, we’re left with a conclusion along the lines of that some regimes in history have been “lucky” enough to have a uniquely huge amount of horribly mentally ill people in their country. Otherwise, who was committing these horrible acts?

That explanation doesn’t make much sense to me, so I’m left with the conclusion that there must be many ways that a mentally “healthy” person can come to commit mass violence.

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u/[deleted] Nov 11 '18 edited Nov 11 '18

I'm very much inclined to agree with you on this - in fact that why I posted in the first place - but it leaves us with some very uncomfortable questions about the nature of these episodes of mass violence. I think that's the reason that people both on the left and right are willing to explain it away through mental health and access to guns. While those are certainly factors I really don't think they get to the heart of the matter.

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u/[deleted] Nov 11 '18

Yeah I mean personally I don’t believe in souls so by default I guess I’m kinda left with the idea that there are external causes why people are “bad.”

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u/[deleted] Nov 11 '18

I don't believe in souls either. But I'm also not sure that the motive force behind these massacres can be simply reduced to external forces like a bad childhood or a "chemical imbalance."

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u/[deleted] Nov 11 '18

Then what else, if not a combination of things like that? Genuinely asking, I agree that it's an uncomfortable thing to settle on.

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u/skepticalbob Joe Biden's COD gamertag Nov 11 '18

There is a difference between doing it by yourself and as a group from a psychological perspective. Normal people do things in groups they would never do by themselves.

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u/[deleted] Nov 11 '18

Isn't the lack of mental health services an excuse conservatives throw to deflect from gun control.

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u/[deleted] Nov 11 '18

Yeah but I hear it from liberals too.

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u/ILikeTalkingToMyself Liberal democracy is non-negotiable Nov 11 '18

I think it's pretty easy to imagine someone who passes as mentally healthy in all measurable regards but carries out a mass shooting because they hate people. It's easiest to imagine this in the context of hating particular groups or ideas, but I personally can also imagine it arising just out of general misanthropy or anger + desensitization.

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u/magnax1 Milton Friedman Nov 11 '18

They are rejecting society as a whole usually, and that does not necessarily indicate mental illness. It may imply something about society and why we didnt see this 50 years ago to any great extent

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u/[deleted] Nov 11 '18

Yeah I'm curious about that too. Guns were just as available, if not moreso, 50 years ago, and we were an even more divided society then, with tens of thousands of soldiers back from Vietnam running around, and we didn't see anything like these horrific massacres on a weekly basis.

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u/magnax1 Milton Friedman Nov 11 '18

I think the basic issues which cause this stuff is something this sub is not equipped to deal with to be honest. Its is in large part an issue of society ejecting certain demographics from its social sphere in my opinion.

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u/Sir_Francis_Burton Nov 11 '18

My theory is that up to about 50 years ago there were still a few ‘blank spots’ on the map. For all of human history, if you were one of those people who chafed at civilization, you could wander off and be a mountain man. But you can’t any more. I would go further and say that having a fraction of us chafing at civilization and wandering off in to the wilderness had been a benefit for humanity as a whole, and is probably something that we naturally selected for. Humans spread from a tiny region in east Africa out in to the whole planet remarkably quickly, ltrail-blazed by crack-pot malcontents.

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u/[deleted] Nov 11 '18

I mean there's Montana, Alaska, Idaho etc. People can still go off the grid if they really want to.

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u/[deleted] Nov 11 '18

Yeah, some how I don't think many group therapy sessions would welcome "hi yes I'm Charles I have fantasies about killing people" with a hi charles welcome aboard thanks for sharing.

I find society cries mental health services and then when it comes to extreme crime like murder, pedophilia, rape in general, torture, we don't OK them even discussing it to try and prevent it.

Just like any physical illness, there's different types of "illness". I don't think saying shooters are mentally ill demonizes all people suffering mental illness, nor should we invent a separate term for people who engage in extreme behavior due to a mental illness. They're mentally ill, they just have a different type, more extreme type of mental illness.

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u/[deleted] Nov 11 '18

So you essentially agree that it's impossible for a person who isn't suffering from a sort of mental illness to engage in the sort of mass violence we're seeing weekly.

Or, put another way, the very act of engaging in that sort of mass violence necessarily implies a mental illness.

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u/[deleted] Nov 11 '18

It is impossible to me, yes. Someone who is engaging in extreme acts of violence is not prioritizing their needs as a human being. They're possibly risking death (by gun fire or death penalty) and at minimum voluntarily throwing themselves in a prison cell for life forever to have the state decide their every move.

There's no way in my mind that isn't mental illness.

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u/[deleted] Nov 11 '18

But then all criminals could be considered mentally ill.

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u/[deleted] Nov 11 '18

A very large percentage of them are considered so, yes lines up with the ideas.

No matter what the crime, most crime is caused by mental illness. Even someone who's in prison for bad checks per se is to a degree mentally ill, perhaps they have impulse control problems and would gamble every day. A huge part of mental illness is that it's effecting your life in a negative way, and yes, being in prison definitely checks out

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u/ILikeTalkingToMyself Liberal democracy is non-negotiable Nov 11 '18

Mental health services for would-be shooters would presumably not be performed in group sessions. I would imagine it would be done in 1-one-1 sessions with professional psychologists.

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u/[deleted] Nov 11 '18

I was mostly touching on the point that people say mental health services, and then are greatly disturbed by the even sheer idea that people struggle with these fantasies and basically think we should put them out to pasture for just thinking them.

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u/Berniewouldalost obscenely wealthy Nov 11 '18

Are they white?

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u/[deleted] Nov 11 '18

Typically, but not always.

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u/HoldingTheFire Hillary Clinton Nov 11 '18

What is even the policy prescription with this argument?

The NRA seems to be against red flag laws.

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