Eleven Days until Christmas. Guess what some STUPID ASS does...

[bobover3 (imported)]

When such things happen, people have two questions: why, and what can we do to stop it happening again. The answer to the first is lost in the mysteries of individual psychology. The answer to the second is elusive. Witness what people at airports must now undergo for the sake of "security." One terrorist put a bomb in his shoe, so now every flier must take his shoes off before boarding. The terrorist won, and our security is still unsure. This soon becomes a political discussion, which we're avoiding, but I'd advise against any hasty reactive "solutions," or any attempt at political exploitation of the tragedy.

I offer this story about another tragedy to show how such things can happen in another society and without guns -

http://www.courant.com/sns-rt-us-china- ... 2318.story

Knife-wielding man injures 22 children in China

By Terril Yue Jones

December 14, 2012

BEIJING (Reuters) - A knife-wielding man slashed 22 children and an adult at an elementary school in central China on Friday, state media reported, the latest in a series of attacks on schoolchildren in the country.

The man attacked the children at the gate of a school in Chenpeng village in Henan province, the Xinhua news agency reported.

Police arrested a 36-year-old man, identified as villager Min Yingjun, Xinhua said. It did not give further details of the extent of the injuries.

There have been a series of attacks on schools and schoolchildren around China in recent years, some by people who have lost their jobs or felt left out of the country's economic boom.

The rash of violence has prompted public calls for more measures to protect the young in a country where many couples only have one child.

In 2010, a man slashed 28 children, two teachers and a security guard in a kindergarten in eastern China.

[janekane (imported)]

Allowing that "hell" is too good for the person who fired firearms in that school in Newtown, Ct, is true, then what happened released him from the hell of human society in which it is deemed right and proper to condemn a person whose childhood socialization experiences were so neurologically damaging as to to not only allow, but cause his tragic conduct.

However, I find that those who condemn a person for having been, against the person's will, shatteringly traumatized so as to have an unconscious mind that could take motor neuron control away from the person's usual conscious mind, are in the same sort of hell as is the person who fired the firearms.

Reciprocal retaliation is, as the late psychiatrist, Martin Cooperman, noted with respect to the "psychoanalytic dyad" a dastardly defeating process.

As terrible as was what happened to the children and adults in that school yesterday, and as terrible as is what happened to everyone involved in that terrible event, what happened to the person who fired the firearms was no less terrible, else those firearms would not have been used as they were.

In his intensive and extensive study of human mythology, the late Joseph Campbell observed that there is a story which is common to every culture he studied, though each culture has variations on this common theme. The story is of a time when people lived in harmony with their environment, in the tradition of Taoist philosophy, the change from that time to the present time of people living in disharmony with their environment has been named, The Great Separation. To me, a highly readable and informative account of this aspect of Taoist philosophy may be found in two books by Benjamin Hoff, "The Tao of Pooh," and "The Te of Piglet."

Please note with due diligence that I regard Taoism as a system of existential philosophy and decidedly do not regard Taoism as any sort of established religion...

Thus this posting is neither political nor religious in content or in purpose.

Nonetheless, to me, from an existenzphilosophie view, adding to the hurts of hurting person is the ultimate of abuses.

It has long been demonstrated that people who are "socially normal" make decisions in their unconscious minds and their conscious minds only become aware of a decision already made unconsciously while the unconscious mind is carrying out the unconsciously made decision. This work originally that of Benjamin Libet, has, so far as I can discern, never been refuted and never have been shown to be in any form of significant error. A good book on this, as I find it to be, is Benjamin Libet, "Mind Time : The Temporal Factor in Consciousness," Harvard University Press, 2004. A more recent book is that of Michael S. Gazzaniga, "Who's In Charge? : Free Will and the Science of the Brain," HarperCollins, 2011. Gazzaniga was the 2009-10 Gifford Lecture at Edinburgh. Gazanniga is also a past president of the Association for Psychological Science (of which I am a member).

My best guess so far is that "vitriol" thrown at a hurt and damaged person who acts out unresolved hurts and unrepaired damage is a main causal factor in the sort of terrible overt conduct, the firing of firearms at little children, that happened yesterday. More of what causes a terrible problem to repeatedly arise only becomes part of solving the terrible problem when people stop doing what causes the terrible problem to arise.

For now, I will attribute throwing verbal vitriol toward a severely hurt and damaged person to be prima facie evidence that the person doing the throwing is also severely hurt and damaged and the person doing the throwing is also expressing said person's issues with said person's idealized imago and "internalized bad object" cathected idealized parent imago. The doing of that comprises, in my experience, among the most socially and personally dangerous of all parent-role/child-role based interpersonal psychological transactional games. See Eric Berne, M.D., "Games People Play," originally published in 1964. Berne died in 1970 and Games People Play remains in print and is also available in electronic book Internet-downloadable form; I find that Games People Play, after almost 50 years in print, has not yet begun to become obsolete.

I note that, from time to time on the Archive, someone attempts to start a game of "Let's You And Him Fight."

Blaming the victim of shattering abuse for having been subjected to shattering abuse from people who were subjected to shattering abuse, that pattern having been built up over thousands of years, is the essence of Berne's game "Courtroom," a game that I find among the most shatteringly damaging of all human social transactional games, and one that I find is grounded on a severely serious misunderstanding of apparently pre-historic origin. Courtroom, in its most intense limit, is not a defeating game, it is an annihilating game.

The person who fired the firearms was, my best guess yet has it. playing an extreme game of Courtroom, playing concurrently the roles of accused and defendant, prosecuting attorney and defense attorney, judge, jury, and society-at-large. To me, Courtroom is among the most effective of annihilating transactional games; evidence for this comes to my attention with death toll of apparently 28 people in the school and its environs.

Who will learn? When will learning happen? Where will learning happen?

If not us, who?

If not now, when?

If not here, where?

[janekane (imported)]

Hey George. I understand. We all know that happens. Nobody expected this... (http://www.google.com/#hl=en&tbo=d&outp ... .7.0.1.1.0. 222.1139.0j6j1.7.0.les%3B..0.0...1c.1.-hcVotXcZd0&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.&bvm=bv.1355325884,d.dmQ&fp=deea5351658073c5&bpcl=39967673&biw=1024&bih=675)

Maybe that is the problem. Maybe there should be a Police presence in every school in the nation.

I am glad to be a Nobody, because I expected "this" and I expect many more such terrible events, unless someone pays accurate attention to what aspects of human society coerce people into acting with destructive violence as though violence will not beget violence. As a Nobody, I expect to be unable to anticipate such terrible events as happened yesterday in sufficient detail as to be capable of acting so as to help prevent them.

Prevention, I find depends on finding actually accurate, not merely proximate, causes.

[Dave (imported)]

Because tragedies happen with knives does not mean that we should do nothing to stop tragedies with guns.

That is illogical and not in a Spock STar Trek sense of illogic, it is mindless illogic, it is anti-society, self destructive illogic.

Roughly 32,000 people die in car accidents and to get down to that number we require licenses, registrations, insurances, seat belts, air bags, speed limits, child and baby seats, texting laws, and a whole host of other safety programs.

Roughly 30,000 people will die of guns shots in the USA this year.

Of them, over half of those deaths, roughly 18,000 will be suicides and yet politicians are arguing for less $$$ for mental health programs that would prevent some of these deaths.

Of the remainder, roughly 11,000 die of homicide or crime.

The rest are unfortunate accidents...

the question is why do we treat deaths from cars and guns differently?

Why doesn't the USA address mental health of suicides...

Why do the NRA types fight any logical form of registration and safety controls to keep the mentally depressed and suicidal from guns?

What is it about guns that makes them so privileged a method to kill?

let's explore that contrived mass killing by knives...

Since 1982, there have been at least 61 mass murders carried out with firearms

Of the 12 most deadly, 6 have take place since 2007 (this current one not counted in that number)..

SO far, the news only talks of ONE mass killing by knife. I must have a several dozen (that's 36) knives in my house for cooking, pen knives, and just plain ego stroking... At least eight to twelve of them are associate with dinner functions and butter spreading. I am guessing that other households have half that many knives. And yet, unless you are in reach of my hands, not on of those knives would kill.

I mean, it's not like you can have a drive-by knifing with stray knives spraying the streets, going through walls, hitting innocent victims. It takes several minutes to throw 50 or sixty knives. Not so with an automatic rifle.

CArrying 50 knives would look rather unusual. Yet, carrying 50 round clips for a Glock or Sig is simple and concealed and never noticed casually.

So please, make an argument for doing nothing about gun deaths that isn't so easy to refute as illogical and kinda stupid.

thanks to this reference for some of the numbers:

( http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/won ... ed-states/ )

[Slammr (imported)]

Most of the victims of the knife attack in China survived. Most of the victims of the gun attack in the USA died.

[bobover3 (imported)]

Sorry this has turned into a political thread. Not my doing.

I have a ready reply, but I don't think it's appropriate. Political posts keep being made and keep being tolerated - if they express approved opinions.

One thing I was saying was that the now-predictable questioning of American culture is mistaken. Mass violence is a daily phenomenon around the globe.

[foxytaur (imported)]

I feel sorry for these children but I have hopes they are in a better place. Not neccesarily in a heaven.(Sorry but i'm a firm believer that there's no such thing as a free lunch).

The universe may have a very funny way of achieving balance.

Good and evil may very well be ingrained in the universe since its primordial conception.

Experimentally testing for quantum foam for example may need to go beyond thinking in the dimensions that we currently reside in. after all we only use 10% at max of our brain functions.

It is possible we need to evolve more inorder to use our higher functions.

[kristoff]

Sorry this has turned into a political thread. Not my doing.

You're right, and it can stop now. Just remember the kids and the others.

[Dave (imported)]

When this thread appeared, I was going to post that what we knew then was all wrong and should not be trusted.

A) His mother did not work at the school. Neither did he.

B) They seem to have no connection to the school at this time.

C) The initial report of three deaths was wrong.

D) He isn't Ryan but is a Lanza.

E) He was denied access to the school, not buzzed inside.

f) he didn't just have handguns and may not have used the handguns he did have.

G) All day Friday, it seemed like the event took hours inside the school. Today there is word that it was more like minutes, possibly as few as two.

All sorts of other things were wrong, too.

I don't think we know enough to understand this yet.

Connecticut police will not release information about the person until the Medical Examiner finishes and they have that information.

[A-1 (imported)]

janekane,

Tell me how you know that the perpetrator was abused.

Then, pray tell, what was the nature of the abuse that he suffered?

If you knew that this was going to happen, then why did you not warn somebody?