Fuck, I thought crazy people didn't go to college

Actually Lanyx, it seems like just about everyone spends a lot of time on the computer these daysl

I wonder if this event will affect Harper’s plans to scrap the country’s long-gun registry. The Canadian anti-gun lobby just got another boost with the latest Columbine copycat incident.

And” Jack Thompson Right Again"

They’re everywhere, even in Canada. It happens, and there’s no single entity to blame, no person, no religion, no artist, no song, no television show and no videogame. It’s the whole combined with the wrong state of mind that’s to be blamed, if anything at all.

I can already smell the sweet stench of paranoia that’ll follow suit.

I can’t speak for other countries, but America is becoming, or already is, a nation of babies in wells. The biggest news stories here are isolated incidents of mediocre inter-domestic crime or accident that the mass of people latch on to as a way of expressing emotions like pity or compassion that they are otherwise unable to demonstrate in their ordinary, comfortable, and above-all safe lives.

It’s comparable in some ways to a Platonic form, a sort of child beyond the scope of the senses floating at the bottom of a well which can only be intuited and therefore shared amongst strangers through a kind of overwrought show of emotions.

And of course, the grandest display of the baby in the well phenomenon is the big September thing, something utterly devastating to a great number of people (New Yorkers), but however incomprehensible to most people across the country. I mean, what does, say, a Nebraskan who’s never even been to NYC really understand or feel about it? I guess you can abstract a kind of sympathy to prove you are a nice person or something, but there are many more tragedies just around the neighborhood, and of course, people dying of hunger and on-going strife all over the world, including America.

Probably my favorite (only?) treatment of this is found in David Cross’s “It’s Not Funny” record, about whether the people who work at the New York, New York casino in Las Vegas “felt it a little more” than the rest of us. (Which they apparently did from its WP entry.)

Firstly, people are particularly talking about this case because the site in question, VampireFreaks, has come up in no less than three murder cases in the last year. Let’s face it: most people do not suddenly get an interest in blood, death, and darkness out of a sunny outlook on life. People who have these sorts of interests tend to be depressed, angry, and hateful. Not all of them, but a large chunk. As to why they’re angry and hateful, who knows? The people interviewed said that this boy started out as a friendly young man who slowly started getting darker. No one’s managed as yet to get hold of a friend or family member to probe deeper, from what I’ve seen.

Now, that certainly doesn’t say that everyone who’s a goth, or even everyone who’s depressed and angry will go out and shoot people. But this person in question posed in online pictures with semiautomatic rifles and said that he wanted to die in a “hail of gunfire”. I guess people are upset that no one caught onto this, that no one - not the website administrators, not the people who visited his profile - realized that this person wasn’t just your generic angst-ridden teenager, but someone with major problems.

I don’t think anyone’s saying that being a goth freak makes you violent. Correlation doesn’t imply causation - but the fact that there is a correlation is something worth investigating, because doing so may help find the cause. To take Sin’s example, if we examine the point in time where lots of people eat ice cream, we may realize that it’s in the summer, when lots of people go swimming. If we totally ignore the ice cream, we won’t cotton onto that fact at all.

Also, the fact that “there are so many goths who don’t kill people” doesn’t really matter. The number of murderers in general is extremely small. If the percentage of murderers who are goths is much higher than the percentage of total population who are goths, then we have a correlation between being a goth and being a murderer. Now, is there that correlation? I don’t know. But in high-profile youth murders (that aren’t gang-related), these do seem to crop up quite a bit.

Cid, I’m glad you explained that correlation doesn’t relate to causation. I wrote a paper during my undergrad on medica violence. Basically in the research I have done, researchers seems to agree that media (tv, video games, music, etc.) has a very small correlation to violence (the averae seems to be about 2-3% of all things that cause violence). The more signifact correlation are upbringing, geography, and social class.

The people in your first example don’t do school shootings because they don’t get singled out through-out their entire school career. They blend in with everyone else, thus they have no reason to speak out or form paranoid delusions in their developing minds.

The people in your second paragraph also blend in, seeing as how Linkin Park is pretty wussy! hahah!

Psh, whatever, man. I’ll wear black, listen to Slayer till I go deaf, shoot things in CS till I get carpal tunnel, and play V:M all I want…I don’t have any desire to go out and commit mass murder, jeez.

That dude was fucked up to begin with, and the only reason such people are drawn to this subculture is because it’s all “OOOH, DARK!” And when shit like this goes down, people IMMEDIATELY look at their race/gender/religion/whatever and condemn it like it were the cause.

Goths don’t kill people, seriously fucked up people with weaponry kill people.

Right on, Sin.

Being the first attack in American ground since Pancho Villa (feel free to correct me) as well as an attack against an American symbol must count for something.

Shit, this feels like deja-vu. Isn’t it funny how it’s easier for the Jack Thompsons to decry the media rather than take their war to well organised lobbies such as NRA? Sink your teeth into that Mr Thompson.

While just a territory at the time (but still technically American soil), there was a little thing called Pearl Harbor. But still, that’s 60 years without an attack on American soil (discounting embassy bombings which technically belong to the nation the embassy represents). It may be closer to 58 years if those rumors about the Japs trying to start forest fires in the Northwest using balloons is true.

Also, add to that list every act of terrorism here before 9/11 as well, such as the Oklahoma City bombing, which people don’t seem to remember although it took the record until the Sept. 11.

Isn’t it funny how it’s easier for the Jack Thompsons to decry the media rather than take their war to well organised lobbies such as NRA?

What did the NRA have to do with this Canadian guy? What did the NRA have to do with similar massacres like the Columbine one?

Barely anything in contrast to the individuals who made the decisions to go crazy on people, and let’s face it–at least in the Columbine incident–the people who egged them on throughout high school who unfortunately didn’t know the score. I’m not exactly saying it’s their fault and I wouldn’t blame them or anything, but they did have a hand in it.

Now, that certainly doesn’t say that everyone who’s a goth, or even everyone who’s depressed and angry will go out and shoot people. But this person in question posed in online pictures with semiautomatic rifles and said that he wanted to die in a “hail of gunfire”. I guess people are upset that no one caught onto this, that no one - not the website administrators, not the people who visited his profile - realized that this person wasn’t just your generic angst-ridden teenager, but someone with major problems.

Isn’t the desire to die in a hail of gunfire rather than a “major problem”, a noble aspiration for a young man? If not, it is something new, because we’ve been teaching young males to be soldiers for as long as human memory until very recently, and it has always worked itself out by periodic wars and other violence, as well as a strong sense of law (getting your head lopped off if you fuck up).

There will always be individuals inclined toward violence, that is the one absolute lesson you can learn from history. Our modern societies are trying to do away with this, but cannot, and at the same time they remove the respectable conduits for violence–like war–they remove the other end that otherwise keeps the violent in line–the law.

Let the flames begin.

The NRA fights gun control, these people killed with guns they may not have got if not for the NRA, is the path I believe this argument was headed down. Although I believe the government taking guns away from the people, while preventing incidents such as this, crushes the feasibility of revolution and is a much, much, much worse step than allowing guns to be sold too easily. A populace without the hardware to revolt is one of the cornerstones of a dictatorship of any sort.

Saracastic response: It’s only noble if they want to get shot to death for God and Country after shooting minorities, silly!
Real response: The world also worked without computers for a long time, as well as any form of advanced medicine. Just because things work without them, it doesn’t mean it is not good to have them. Or, in the case of wars and violence, to prevent them. If you look at the patterns in world history, one of them is that, beyond technological advancements necessitated for survival, war does not advance civilization; if anything, war causes massive regression. The Hollywood Blacklist after World War II serves as an example of this; regressing back to the witchunts.

I agreed with everything you said up until ‘the respectable conduits of violence.’ People killing each other for any reason kills people just as much, they are just as dead and it is just as sad. Anyway, though, I would agree people have had violent streaks since the origin of species (indeed, it is argued that Homo Sapiens Sapiens became the dominant species on the earth by killing all the others that would rival it) and this will never go away, as insanity and random chance will never go away. The problem in these situations is that no-one looks into how to minimize it or how to give a non-lethal conduit to such violence, or how to better look for the traits of mental illness, because they are too busy making sure nobody sues them.
CYA has killed any chance to make any gain out of these things, as humanity cannot accept the fact that it is not someone’s fault, who they can concretely blame and extract from, therefor people shut their mouths because they don’t want to get drained for others’ grief.

As for the whole September 11th debate, I’ll agree it gets a lot of attention as far as tragedies go, perhaps more than it deserves, but there are several reasons for that. First, it was an attack by someone else on the nation in which these people live; the Oklahoma City bombing was an individual from our own nation who did damage to it, more like a slight illness within your body that hurt, but you get over it. 9-11 is somebody punching you in the face. Again, it hurts, and you get over it, but you’re pissed at the guy who punched you in the face. You can see that whatever you ate made you sick at your stomach and you did something wrong, but this was an attack by another national entity. Second, it was a very symbolic attack. Were, say, Oklahoma City fictitious, the degree to which it was ineffectual is almost laughable; of all the people trying to be killed, few were actually in hte building. September 11th was an attack on the tallest buildings in the world (or second or whatever), a symbol of national pride to some degree, and a symbol of capitalism. I would think you would understand the idea of such symbolism, given that I was 11 when this occured and picked it up on my own, and you are an elitist literati, but I suppose the real world is too base for you to even think during your analysis of before you speak.

Oh, and just for the record, non-violence is one of the founding principles of Goth that separated it from punk of the era (although many punks rejected violence, many more accepted ad nembraced it), as well as slower music and more literary/poetic lyrics and themes that had less to do with politics. It also grew out of the Clash camp of punk (if we are to take the common road of divind punk, hisotrically, into two camps; Sex Pistols and the Clash), stressing non-violence or “creative violence” (necessary violence to provoke greater change or defend yourself; revolution, for example), and takeing the Clash’s tendancy to reference materials, although changing the materials. History aside, Goth is a non-violent movement, is the essential point.

Ahem, I knew something flew past my radar. I was thinking of mainland U.S. The embassies are U.S. soil, however 9/11 were the first time American homes (with the broader meaning of the word) were destroyed by a foreign enemy.

Sil: I’m not saying NRA is responsible for this particular Canadian guy. I brought up NRA as an example of a powerful pro-gun lobby. For a shooting to take place you need a gun. Regulation would curb the availability of guns. Not that illegal arms dealing would disappear or something stupid like that but it would require more effort and raise a few eyebrows when e.g. a kid comes asking for a gun. “Just getting it for my ol’ man, sir!”

I’ll discard as crap the whole “respectable war” and ask for one clarification. How do our societies remove the law (quote below)?

Sin, Walhalla: I’m just glad it wasn’t at your school (which, being the only Montreal college I’ve heard of before this, naturally when I first saw the teaser for the news article I was worried it could be/might be there). Until it occured to me that either of you might know some Dawson students anyway. Neither of you’ve said anything to that effect so I’m hoping this means everyone the two of you know is all right.

Also, I don’t know how the fuck 9/11 and Pearl Harbor got introduced to this thread and I have no intention of actually bothering to read how the rest of you brought it up. Gee-Zus.

Real response: The world also worked without computers for a long time, as well as any form of advanced medicine. Just because things work without them, it doesn’t mean it is not good to have them.

Computers and medicine aren’t biological phenomena or otherwise intrinsic parts of the humanity experience/psyche; is my claim…

If you look at the patterns in world history, one of them is that, beyond technological advancements necessitated for survival, war does not advance civilization; if anything, war causes massive regression.

War may not advance the entire set of humanity, the point is that almost every time it advances the interests of one of the sets of people who waged the war. It’s a hard thing to deny: the conquering wars of Rome and other ancient empires and afterward of the barbarians, the wars of religion and nationalism in the late middle ages and early modern period, the revolutionary wars, and the victory over totalitarianist idealogies in WW2.

I agreed with everything you said up until ‘the respectable conduits of violence.’ People killing each other for any reason kills people just as much, they are just as dead and it is just as sad. Anyway, though, I would agree people have had violent streaks since the origin of species (indeed, it is argued that Homo Sapiens Sapiens became the dominant species on the earth by killing all the others that would rival it) and this will never go away, as insanity and random chance will never go away. The problem in these situations is that no-one looks into how to minimize it or how to give a non-lethal conduit to such violence, or how to better look for the traits of mental illness, because they are too busy making sure nobody sues them.

Whether or not you or I respect it today, the profession of war has been a respectable, and probably the most respectable, one for a young man to take throughout history. People DO try to find other paths for the violent to take, the thing is all they can come up with, and will be able to come up with, are other professions which today are things far removed like manufacturing or paperwork, that aren’t adequate. It seems things have been this way since the dawn of the agricultural age, when the women called men back from the hunt to settle down, plant crops, and raise livestock. It’s a good trade, for me, but it has its costs.

The fact that the shooter used this piece of shit ensures that the NRA had nothing to do with it.

I’ll discard as crap the whole “respectable war” and ask for one clarification. How do our societies remove the law (quote below)?

People found guilty of crimes throughout Western history were punished severely. In Ancient Rome, the lowlifes of the world were thrown into the colosseum to be killed. That is assuming, of course, that the family of his victim didn’t get to him first and hang his entrails from a tree. The world used to be a dangerous place, and humanity could not afford to support, as we do, millions of ne’er-do-wells in prisons, which seem more like hotels these days anyway. Those who performed deeds harmful to society forfeited their life. I think in time, we will come to realize that the world is still at heart a dangerous place, and that we cannot afford to shelter criminals. A nihilist morality is at the heart of modern “rehabilitation” systems.

Isn’t the desire to die in a hail of gunfire rather than a “major problem”, a noble aspiration for a young man? If not, it is something new, because we’ve been teaching young males to be soldiers for as long as human memory until very recently, and it has always worked itself out by periodic wars and other violence, as well as a strong sense of law (getting your head lopped off if you fuck up).

Except that he showed no interest in being a soldier, just in violence. Being a soldier is indeed a noble goal, because it shows altruism and a sense of loyalty to your country. This just indicates being a thug.

The point stands. There are plenty of thigns humanity has existed with for a lot time, or withuot, that it would be better to rid ourselves of or better ot have. Technology is the easiest example to find from the top of my head, is all.

This is false. It gives them more territory or prevents them from losing it. The only time when war has really advanced anyone is during nomadic tribes invading and conquering agricultural, or more focussed, civilizations, which formed important cultural melting pots and advanced both societies with the ideas of the others. However, almost all other wars have regressed humanity, on both sides of it, in every way save technologically.

No. These did not advance anybody. Rome’s cultural advances occure mostly before its period of heaviest conquest or after them, during its founding and during Pax Romana. Wars are what lead to the internal decay that eventually destroyed Rome. The so-called barbarians (who were arguably much more civilized than the Romans in many cases) lost great leaders and were put under cultural repression of the Roman Empire until they were able to break free, thus cutting off any advancements of their own culture for a long time.

What form of advancement did these give? They were mostly big dickwars nobody ever won because they weren’t allowed to die. The “advancement” out of the religious wars is that several majour world leaders (or important figures, anyway) still seem to believe we are fighting in a crusade, and choose to show it with crashing planes into big towers and retaliating against people who had nothing to do with those planes because they are of the same religion. All nationalism has ever advanced is humanity’s xenophobia and bigotry.

Wars of revolutin set a country back years, usually, since it fights a devastating war wherein all the casualties are on its side. They simply allow it to advance in a better direction after the war is over. The victory over totalitarian ideologies in WW2 was a war of survival. Nobody advanced, they simply stayed alive. That is all it was. Totalitarianism was by no means eradicated; look at the Soviets even during the war for proof of that.

When, pray tell, did I utter the word “profession”? I am the equivalent of a third-degree black-belt in Muay Thai. I have dislocated a man’s arm, knocked out three of his teeth, broken his jaw, broken his nose, broken nearly every bone in his hand, slammed my forehead three times into his face, broken four of his ribs, nd been almost as badly beaten by him, and gone out of a very heavily bandaged meal at a Chinese Buffet that night with him and without any hard feelings. This seems, to me, a greatly superior avenue for agression and violent urges. However, since it is not a profession, obviously nobody can use such a thing to remove the stress and inherent violent tendancies they have. Such a thing can only be done through careers, I understand.
War has not always been so widely respected a profession as your romanticized view of history would have you believe, either. A good deal of societies, especially in early history, shunned war and much more greatly respected farmers, who actually supported society rather than making other societies come in and destroy your society. Priests and scholars have always been more respected; in China, the highest aspiration for peasants was to one day become a beurocrat.

It seems things have been this way since the dawn of the agricultural age, when the women called men back from the hunt to settle down, plant crops, and raise livestock. It’s a good trade, for me, but it has its costs.

Yes, quite. Because the shooter uses a low-quality firearm, those who wish firearms to be legal obviously have nothing to do with him legally obtaining it. Everyone knows the NRA only lobbies for cool guns, while vehemently encouraging the powers-that-be in washington to ban the sale of crappy guns. It is frequently heard at their meetings, their essential doctrine, that only certain guns, deemed awesome enough on the Heston-o-meter be legalized.

Indeed. Most hotels bar your room and forbid you to leave it and have abusive, psychotic guards who may watch you while you urinate if they so choose. Hotels also perform a full cavity search before entering, put you in the same room as rapists, do not allow you to possess coins or wear your own clothing, and regulate your life to the letter.
Just like fucking hotels, I see what you mean.
White collar prisons could be argued to be different, but keep in mind, they’re rarely used, since the rich in America can mostly get out of anything if they really want to. If they fail, then at least their brief time in prison will be nice and not too rough on the superior class. As long as their guards aren’t among the Untouchables, they should be just fine to go back to their high-caste life when they get out of prison.
Also, in history, women were killed for cheating on their husband, but the same did not happen to men. If you killed a slave, you had to pay his master some silver. If you helped a slave escape, both you and the slave were put to death. If you struck your father, at any age, your hand was cut off at the forearm. Let’s go back to history. I call free, land-owning male, you can be my slave, wife, or child.

Um, no. No it is not. The idea of compassion and rehabilitian are at the heart of “rehabilitation” systems. It doesn’t really work out that way very often, but being killed for making a single mistake is not a good system to go back to, at least not while there is an oppressive government who can easily fake mistakes that get you killed as it is. Making people get killed for more crimes makes Muwia’s all the more common in the world.
The reason it was not used in history was primaily either a bloodthirsty regime, populace, or a lack of food surplus required to support them. We have the food surplus, and our populace’s bloodthirst can be adequately slaked in film withotu having to resort to public executions as a means of entertaining them. as for a bloodthirsty regime, there’re still a whole bunch of countries filled with non-white people left to take care of that problem before they have to start murdering criminals to get their kicks.

Well yes, but the implication seemed to be concerned with foreign attacks. Oklahoma City was “just” domestic terrorism.

No. These did not advance anybody. Rome’s cultural advances occure mostly before its period of heaviest conquest or after them, during its founding and during Pax Romana. Wars are what lead to the internal decay that eventually destroyed Rome. The so-called barbarians (who were arguably much more civilized than the Romans in many cases) lost great leaders and were put under cultural repression of the Roman Empire until they were able to break free, thus cutting off any advancements of their own culture for a long time.

Rome takes a lot of flak around here for some reason I don’t know. The scope of Rome’s achievment is so mind-boggling that I don’t think anyone from the school of The People’s History of the Universe will ever convince us otherwise, as much as they often try, and the pinnacle of Rome is decidedly the reign of Augustus, at which point Vergil and Ovid were working and a thousand other things I care a bit less about. This period is largely the gift of great conquests by the Republic. The Pax Romana was not your kind of idealized peace between all nations of the world, it was rather peace within the empire, as it still fought a number of wars on various fronts during that time. The so-called “progressive” movement just can’t seem to handle that war was acceptable throughout history.

What form of advancement did these give? They were mostly big dickwars nobody ever won because they weren’t allowed to die. The “advancement” out of the religious wars is that several majour world leaders (or important figures, anyway) still seem to believe we are fighting in a crusade, and choose to show it with crashing planes into big towers and retaliating against people who had nothing to do with those planes because they are of the same religion. All nationalism has ever advanced is humanity’s xenophobia and bigotry.

Besides pointing out that the Crusades (which I didn’t intend by “the wars of religion”) were a major event in the start of the Renaissance, I’ll also have you know that a decent number of people, called Protestants, are somewhat grateful for having earned their right to exist through warfare, among other things. Another group of people, called the French, are glad to have rid themselves of the English threat to their self-determination. The Italians are grateful for having unified their nation and installed leaders more to their favor (instead of the Pope). Likewise, many nations of Europe once defeated Napoleon, who threated to be their emperor against their will. I certainly know that the vast majority of Americans are proud of their self-determined nature, which was won through a great deal of bloodshed. This list can stretch to eternity, and it seems you of all people, some breed of revolutionary egalitario-anarcho-progresso-rational-democrat would embrace the use of war in these contexts. There is always someone waiting to conquer and subjugate you if you are not strong, and you very rarely have a say in it in that case.

Wars of revolutin set a country back years, usually, since it fights a devastating war wherein all the casualties are on its side. They simply allow it to advance in a better direction after the war is over.

Thanks for supporting my argument.

Nobody advanced {from WW2}, they simply stayed alive.

Americans disagree with this.

When, pray tell, did I utter the word “profession”? I am the equivalent of a third-degree black-belt in Muay Thai. I have dislocated a man’s arm, knocked out three of his teeth, broken his jaw, broken his nose, broken nearly every bone in his hand, slammed my forehead three times into his face, broken four of his ribs, nd been almost as badly beaten by him, and gone out of a very heavily bandaged meal at a Chinese Buffet that night with him and without any hard feelings. This seems, to me, a greatly superior avenue for agression and violent urges. However, since it is not a profession, obviously nobody can use such a thing to remove the stress and inherent violent tendancies they have. Such a thing can only be done through careers, I understand.

A surprising argument from you of all people. I wonder, how much have you paid for lessons in Muay Thai? Oftentimes there is an extra price for each belt test. How far away is your school and how do you get there? By car? With gasoline? The Chinese buffet couldn’t have cost more than $10, although I’m guessing your friends’ medical bills must have cost a bit more than that. Were your opponents of age and supporting themselves at jobs? I wonder if their divers broken appendages forced them to keep off work for a few days and lose pay. I am afraid that, to use the terms of your movement, the martial arts are not “democratically accessible”.

Just like fucking hotels, I see what you mean.
.

Exaggeration aside, most prisons are certainly more comfortable than what the inmates’ precursors had to deal with.

Um, no. No it is not. The idea of compassion and rehabilitian are at the heart of “rehabilitation” systems. It doesn’t really work out that way very often, but being killed for making a single mistake is not a good system to go back to, at least not while there is an oppressive government who can easily fake mistakes that get you killed as it is. Making people get killed for more crimes makes Muwia’s all the more common in the world.
The reason it was not used in history was primaily either a bloodthirsty regime, populace, or a lack of food surplus required to support them. We have the food surplus, and our populace’s bloodthirst can be adequately slaked in film withotu having to resort to public executions as a means of entertaining them.

The idea that we “owe” something to the most violent felons is a nihilist notion (in the bad sense of the word, since it is so confusing). It is Christianity without the God. The complete backwardsness of the US penal system is betrayed by the idea that inmates can earn college degrees on death row. Do we have the food surplus? Certainly, we can probably afford the food, oh, only that we don’t have a planned economy and farmers aren’t growing food for inmates out of the kindness of their hearts. The cost to not only feed, but shelter, and guard the millions of inmates in this country is an absurdity. The staggering costs of our millions of inmates is generally acknowledged to be a problem.

Check.

Guns like the Tec-9 used by this guy and the guys in Columbine were bought legally at NRA gun rallies even though they’re not legal in Canada.