Re: maybe we need to adjust our attitude about suicide?

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labels. labels are a problem.
Bullitt68 wrote: Wed Jun 05, 2019 8:06 pm Well I'm not going to go off on some long diatribe on Libertarian vs Democrat here.
i don't have an issue with you or your politics. i'm a registered independent, and have been for some time. i'm tempted to vote in the rep primaries next time in hopes of putting a rational person on their ticket. i agree, both parties have become self-serving entities that put their own power first. i wrote a lengthy piece about my politics and where i stand on the various forces imposing themselves on individual liberties, but i'll save that for another time.

i think it's obvious these mass shooters are mentally ill. what sane person would do such a thing? there's a broad spectrum of mental illness, and it can be argued that all of us suffer mental illness to some extent or other. very, very few of us are going to deliberately hurt other people.
kronkmusic wrote: Wed Jun 05, 2019 8:19 pm I kid, of course.
a little levity, even of the graveyard variety, can be a good thing.
Last edited by lurker on Wed Jun 05, 2019 11:11 pm, edited 2 times in total.
i'm retired. what's your excuse?

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lurker wrote: Wed Jun 05, 2019 8:23 pm labels. labels are a problem.
i think it's obvious these mass shooters are mentally ill what sane person would do such a thing? there's a broad spectrum of mental illness, and it can be argued that all of us suffer mental illness to some extent or other. very, very few of us are going to deliberately hurt other people.
kronkmusic wrote: Wed Jun 05, 2019 8:19 pm I kid, of course.
a little levity, even of the graveyard variety, can be a good thing.
There's some mean ass spirited people out there. Don't believe me - let me introduce you to my father in law who beat his kids and wife, I mean slammed them up against a wall when they were under the age of 10. I figure he's gonna go off anytime. Had to block his emails even. If he is around I CC just in case. Other wise he seems like just another Republican asshole.
We sit in the mud... and reach for the stars.
Ivan Turgenev

Prevent Suicides Call https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/t ... meone-now/

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lurker wrote:labels. labels are a problem.
i think it's obvious these mass shooters are mentally ill what sane person would do such a thing? there's a broad spectrum of mental illness, and it can be argued that all of us suffer mental illness to some extent or other. very, very few of us are going to deliberately hurt other people.
kronkmusic wrote: Wed Jun 05, 2019 8:19 pm I kid, of course.
a little levity, even of the graveyard variety, can be a good thing.
The thing is, most of these mass shooters don't suffer from a mental illness in a purely medical sense of the word, they really are just assholes who never learned anger management skills. You can call it toxic masculinity or any number of other terms, but the vast majority of them are not scizophrenic or manic depressive or anythig else medically definable. Maybe the medical community needs to change it's definitions of what it considers mental illness, I don't know, I'm not a doctor and I don't play one on TV. But really, the majority of these people are just massive fucking assholes. It doesn't take a medically definable mentally ill person to kill many innocent people, just ask every president, secretary of defense and secretary of state we've had for the past 50 years. Yes, every last one of them, don't kid yourself.

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lurker wrote:i have recent up-close experience with sciopathy and i think the hateful behavior toward others and self-loathing fit right in. but hey, i was a behaviorist, i did terrible things to rats and monkeys in the name of science, what do i know?
I think what we're seeing here with most of these mass shooters is different than the serial killers of lore. Most "traditional" serial killers have one or many medically definable mental illnesses. I could be wrong, but I see modern mass shooters as a cultural problem, and for how much I hate to say it, and for how much I may get some push back here for saying it, it's partially a gun culture problem. Gun culture in general, not here of course, ties the object of a gun to the masculinity of the man, like it's an extension of their dick (pardon my French). "The gun makes the man." That's what all their marketing points to, it's what the NRA has been pushing for decades. Yes, a gun is a tool, we all get that in here, but how many people post pictures of themselves on social media posing menacingly with a screwdriver or socket wrench or Skill 100 planer? How often do people scowl at the camera behind their push mower or weed whacker? When's the last time you saw somebody post a picture of their wet/dry vac and caption it "haters better recognize, don't tread on me! Molon Labe!"? I feel like calling these people "crazy" is a cop-out. It allows the general public to overlook the very legitimate cultural problems and just throw every murderer into this universal looney bin. If mental illness is a sticker that we slap on every asshole in the world, we're alleviating them and ourselves of any responsibility or accountability. We're essentially saying that anybody who kills somebody else can not possibly be a criminal, they're just "crazy" and it was out of their control. I say that people make decisions, based on what the world around them is telling them, and when the world around them is telling them that the only way to get redemption for their emasculation (see: incels) is with a gun, we shouldn't be surprised when assholes kill people with guns.

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I, too, like Max, toyed with the parent philosophy of Libertarianism, Objectivism (Ayn Rand's stuff). But I began to find holes in it, all through it. And I found most prominent Libertarians and pols who claimed to be such were merely selfish elitist assholes, happy to engage in boardroom Socialism. I saw that too many were very happy to make it actually IMPOSSIBLE for poor people to "pull themselves up by their own bootstraps". It just struck me as a phony excuse NOT to directly address the very reason societies exist: To protect its members.

I'm not convinced that mass killers aren't mentally ill, or, at least, haven't displayed lots of warning signals. Of course, Stephen Paddock, the Las Vegas shooter is an outlier, being both older, and with no commonality with other mass shooters. Yeah, there are just mean sociopathic assholes out there, but someone obsessed with killing more people than Breivik, like Adam Lanza and others is, clearly, mentally ill.
No, not all murderers are mentally ill.

As I think through it, I think there needs to be a separation for analysis purposes of suicides and murder-suicides (which includes many mass killers).
"Even if the bee could explain to the fly why pollen is better than shit, the fly could never understand."

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YankeeTarheel wrote: Wed Jun 05, 2019 10:18 pm I, too, like Max, toyed with the parent philosophy of Libertarianism, Objectivism (Ayn Rand's stuff). But I began to find holes in it, all through it. And I found most prominent Libertarians and pols who claimed to be such were merely selfish elitist assholes, happy to engage in boardroom Socialism. I saw that too many were very happy to make it actually IMPOSSIBLE for poor people to "pull themselves up by their own bootstraps". It just struck me as a phony excuse NOT to directly address the very reason societies exist: To protect its members.

I'm not convinced that mass killers aren't mentally ill, or, at least, haven't displayed lots of warning signals. Of course, Stephen Paddock, the Las Vegas shooter is an outlier, being both older, and with no commonality with other mass shooters. Yeah, there are just mean sociopathic assholes out there, but someone obsessed with killing more people than Breivik, like Adam Lanza and others is, clearly, mentally ill.
No, not all murderers are mentally ill.

As I think through it, I think there needs to be a separation for analysis purposes of suicides and murder-suicides (which includes many mass killers).
There's holes in every politic. We just need to find balance. Certainly the religious right bible belt thumpers have no clue. Especially with LGBT. Our family has has a few of those but we all have embraced it.
We sit in the mud... and reach for the stars.
Ivan Turgenev

Prevent Suicides Call https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/t ... meone-now/

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Bullitt68 wrote: Wed Jun 05, 2019 10:44 pm
YankeeTarheel wrote: Wed Jun 05, 2019 10:18 pm I, too, like Max, toyed with the parent philosophy of Libertarianism, Objectivism (Ayn Rand's stuff). But I began to find holes in it, all through it. And I found most prominent Libertarians and pols who claimed to be such were merely selfish elitist assholes, happy to engage in boardroom Socialism. I saw that too many were very happy to make it actually IMPOSSIBLE for poor people to "pull themselves up by their own bootstraps". It just struck me as a phony excuse NOT to directly address the very reason societies exist: To protect its members.

I'm not convinced that mass killers aren't mentally ill, or, at least, haven't displayed lots of warning signals. Of course, Stephen Paddock, the Las Vegas shooter is an outlier, being both older, and with no commonality with other mass shooters. Yeah, there are just mean sociopathic assholes out there, but someone obsessed with killing more people than Breivik, like Adam Lanza and others is, clearly, mentally ill.
No, not all murderers are mentally ill.

As I think through it, I think there needs to be a separation for analysis purposes of suicides and murder-suicides (which includes many mass killers).
There's holes in every politic. We just need to find balance. Certainly the religious right bible belt thumpers have no clue. Especially with LGBT. Our family has has a few of those but we all have embraced it.
No, I'm talking systemic, structural holes that don't work any better than Trump's belief trade wars are easy to win. One of the most surprisingly enjoyable classes I took was Public Finance in Econ. I expected it to be dreadfully dull but it was fascinating. The instructor wasn't promoting a political philosophy, but was going through how public goods cannot be effectively provided by competition and must come from government--think streetlights. Sure, government staying out of lives as much as possible is ACTUALLY fundamental to the Constitution. But not to the detriment of the public welfare and national security. I mean, Rand Paul and Paul Ryan claim to be Libertarians...and they are unprincipled idiots.
"Even if the bee could explain to the fly why pollen is better than shit, the fly could never understand."

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This thread seems to be missing something. Oh, AND they have a special line for veterans too. https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/t ... meone-now/
People call to talk about lots of things: substance abuse, economic worries, relationships, sexual identity, getting over abuse, depression, mental and physical illness, and loneliness, to name a few.

Talking with someone about your thoughts and feelings can save your life.
We sit in the mud... and reach for the stars.
Ivan Turgenev

Prevent Suicides Call https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/t ... meone-now/

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Bullitt68 wrote:This thread seems to be missing something. Oh, AND they have a special line for veterans too. https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/t ... meone-now/
People call to talk about lots of things: substance abuse, economic worries, relationships, sexual identity, getting over abuse, depression, mental and physical illness, and loneliness, to name a few.

Talking with someone about your thoughts and feelings can save your life.
Thank you Bullitt :)

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When I mentioned the word “Libertarian” in my previous post I meant the social value of leaving certain issues untouched by law. I should have taken into account the economic nature of libertarianism would have come up in people’s minds. Thank you, Max, for explaining my own views on why I believe Libertarianism fails society (by not funding anything for the social good).

But my post was also meant to highlight the error that folks in the Left sometimes make due to fear of death: the nanny state. Suicide specifically is about death on ones own terms. It sickens me to see leftists so squeamish about death that they deny individuals the dignity and respect so important when questions of quality of life, terminal-illness, and/or pain is involved.
"It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of non-violence to cover impotence. There is hope for a violent man to become non-violent. There is no such hope for the impotent." -Gandhi

Re: maybe we need to adjust our attitude about suicide?

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been thinkin' on this. enjoy.
meanwhile, to dismiss the possibility that people who perpetrate these acts are mentally ill, whether diagnosed or not, yet offering up no alternative except that they are just assholes with anger management problems is preposterous. you, sir, might be an asshole with anger management problems. i might be an asshole with anger management problems. neither one of us is likely to walk into a workplace or school or random venue and start killing people we know, or don't know, all without a reasonable expectation of surviving the experience. i think there's more to this than "asshole with anger management problems".
i'm retired. what's your excuse?

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At just 17-years-old, Dutch teenager Noa Pothoven had already written an award-winning memoir detailing her struggle with post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and anorexia in the wake of sexual assault and rape. In her autobiography, Pothoven wrote that she had nothing left to live for.

At 16, she approached the Levenseinde, or "end-of-life," clinic in The Hague to inquire about euthanasia, but, according to an interview last year with local newspaper the Gelderlander, her request was rejected.

Last week, after years of battling mental illness, Pothoven announced on Instagram that she had begun refusing all food and liquids. "After years of fighting, the fighting has finished. I have now stopped eating and drinking for a while, and after many conversations and reviews it has been decided that I will be released because my suffering is unbearable," Pothoven wrote in a post, which has since been removed.
"I have not really been alive for so long, I am surviving, and not even that. I am still breathing but I am no longer alive."

On Sunday, Dutch media reported that Pothoven had died in a hospital bed in her family's home in Arnhem after she stopped eating and drinking.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/08/europe/n ... index.html

And the media got the story wrong and turned it in to euthanasia.
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

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