Sturmgeist Press Release/ Finnish shootings

[V.V.V.V.V.]

Your 'argument' was the assertion that, because most students don't shoot their classmates, there's nothing about our educational system contributing to these kinds of incidents. The logic is obviously faulty and in no way engages the issue raised in this thread. You might as well stuff your fingers in your ears, say "Nuh unh!" and hold your breath until everyone agrees...or not.

I never said the educational system doesn't contribute to the incidents, I said it is more based on the person rather than the establishment. While the establishment probably does contribute to various kinds of torment kids face, the fact that few children become enraged enough to shoot up schools proves that it is not so much a problem with the establishment as it is a problem with the individual. You did not explain how the logic is faulty, considering that it actually is not faulty. It engages the issue because we are discussing how to solve the problem of children going insane and shooting up schools. I previously stated that I believe the problem begins at home, begins most likely at birth, and could be averted with proper parenting.

It's cool if you want to argue about this, but to stuff your ears and not listen to my points, and rather misdirect them is, frankly, tiring and does not help the situation at all.

Jreg: Yes, of course, my argument was not meant to be taken as literally as sane vs. insane. There are definitely degrees of insanity which cause degrees of problems, and must be dealt with accordingly. I agree with you there. The problem is how children let things get to them...but generally I can at least agree with most of the issues you raise (diagnosis being a sum of different parts and not just one thing) mainly because they are very relevant, and most problems are not merely caused by one thing. My point, though, is that it is a personal problem MORE SO than an institutional or social one; the problem with the individual must first be addressed, then you can look at separate things which may aggravate it.

 

[Scourge of God]

The educational system is an artificial and eminently correctable institution. Mental illness is, for the most part, a genetically inborn biological reality that no amount of treatment can cure.

The one is fixable, the other is not, yet you'd prefer to 'fix' what can't be fixed while ignoring the problem that can.

That is what we liked to call, in the parlance of my generation, 'fucking stupid.'

 

[V.V.V.V.V.]

Yes, the educational system could be changed, but why do that if the problem does not directly lie there? You are supporting a change which "may or may not" have any actual bearing on the situation. How can you say that it is not fixable to help a struggling student/child by taking a more active parenting/counseling role in their life?

And none of your "thin the herd" bullshit. The second you state something like that, you lose all credibility (not that I consider you to really have any in the first place, considering you are arguing to fix a system which does not necessarily have any direct correlation with the situation at hand as your "solution"). In the parlance of every generation, the idea of people flipping out and killing a bunch of innocent human beings as helping evolution is seen as fucking ridiculous.

 

[Scourge of God]

Look, there's no hard evidence that mental illness is the causative agent here either. Something like 20% of Americans have been diagnosed with mental illnesses, and the rates are similar in most other developed nations, but of those millions upon millions of people with mental illnesses, only a tiny handful go on shooting sprees. Any argument you're applying to schools applies just as surely to mental illness as the causative factor.

So, really dude, shut the fuck up or you'll look like an even bigger fool than you already do.

 

[V.V.V.V.V.]

First of all, thanks for giving up your point in an effort to prove mine wrong (or at least that's what I'm assuming by your use of the word "either"; correct me if I'm off mark).

Hey, I'm not saying all people with mental illnesses have problems controlling their violence; that is unfair, unjust, and not true. What I am saying is that if societal institutions surely are the cause for this, there would be more than a "tiny handful" of people with a violence problem...that's all. Thus, the problem is not so easily lumped into "school problems." It may indeed be a combination of problems at home, letting TV/video games get to you (that's the individual's fault, however, of course), and problems at school/outside of the home. In fact, I am fairly certain that it is a culmination of many bad things that may befall a poor kid. However, plenty of people have had traumatizing things happen to them that didn't go crazy and kill innocent people. Therefore, there must be something else at work here; something they are born with, which can only be fixed by proper attention (assuming there is no current medication/ready diagnosis for said disorder) at home, at school, and anywhere else.

 

[Scourge of God]

Then why have you been playing a zero sum game to this point? It's pretty obvious to anyone intelligent that we're dealing with the accretion of various contributing factors in these cases, so why try to make the issue one only of mental illness while specifically resisting making the sort of institutional changes that would likely reduce the pressure on mentally ill students?

 

[V.V.V.V.V.]

Because it is the most prevalent cause, from my view. Why bother saying that social institutions cause such things? Aren't you accusing me of the same thing you are guilty of by this point? Changing how a school functions will not benefit everyone; changing how parents attend to their children's mental disorders will benefit the certain people who need the benefits. It is the most rational way of dealing with the problem.

Would you change how the entire game of football, for instance, works, just to cater to a certain few individuals who have problems coping with how it is played now? Exactly.

 

[cookiecutter]

Scourge of God, you seem to have made a rather outrageous claim and then instead of defending it normally with evidence, you just started trying to bait V5 into saying something indefensible. He destroyed your argument and has not been baited into saying something stupid. Therefore I think you have failed.

 

[WNxScythe]

I'm taking Phil-21 Logic I could totally rip you all to shreds .

We just finished learning about all the different types of fallacies and incorrect arguments and let me just say... there is a LOT of that flying around in this thread.

 

[cookiecutter]

Enlighten us then oh wise one

 

[Scourge of God]

Because it is the most prevalent cause, from my view.

How is mental illness 'more prevalent' than our educational institutions?

Why bother saying that social institutions cause such things? Aren't you accusing me of the same thing you are guilty of by this point?

Not at all, you'll note that my initial response to the thread deals with three different contributing factors (how we educate and socialize children, mental illness and the availability of firearms). As a society, there's not much we can do about mental illness, which is a biological condition that no amount of intervention can cure. In the US at least, our Constitutional structure makes limiting access to firearms fairly difficult as well. However, the way we educate and socialize children is an eminently correctable fault. So why resist making the necessary changes? We'd end up with better as well as safer schools in the process.

 

[thisisaformicatable]

Wait...it's illogical to assume that since a greater amount of children are sane, the problem lies in the individual rather than a common establishment which all of them, at some point, attend? Call me a Christian then, because I must sure enjoy lacking logic...

You surely do. Your obscenely simplistic assertion falls apart as soon as you realize that the social system does not act uniformily on all individuals.

 

[V.V.V.V.V.]

I'm taking Phil-21 Logic I could totally rip you all to shreds .

We just finished learning about all the different types of fallacies and incorrect arguments and let me just say... there is a LOT of that flying around in this thread.

I have learned them all too you fucking dolt. Maybe next time, you could actually get in the argument as opposed to observing from outside then saying that you notice a ton of imperfections in the discussion.

@formicatable: Of course people interpret things differently. Since we've gotten this far, there's NO FUCKING WAY to know comprehensively what causes trauma which ends up with kids shooting schools. We've established that it is often/all the time an amalgamation of different things, depending on the background, social circumstances, etc. of the child/student. You do not know the answer either, so I think we're all at kind of a loss here.

Changing the system hurts more people than it helps. You cannot just snap your fingers and completely change how schools are run. This is why I believe that the problem should first-and-foremostly be tended to at home, if a problem is detected by the parents in the first place. If not, then it is indeed a mystery, and probably due to outside-the-home influence. No one can know conclusively, so this argument isn't really going to go anywhere exciting, new, or interesting.

But before I finish bothering, this is a hilarious misrepresentation:

How is mental illness 'more prevalent' than our educational institutions?

It's not, you ignoramus. I said that it is the most prevalent (relevant, pertinent) CAUSE, not the most prevalent OBJECT/CONCEPT/IDEA.

 

[thisisaformicatable]

@formicatable: Of course people interpret things differently.

That isn't what I said.

Since we've gotten this far, there's NO FUCKING WAY to know comprehensively what causes trauma which ends up with kids shooting schools. We've established that it is often/all the time an amalgamation of different things, depending on the background, social circumstances, etc. of the child/student. You do not know the answer either, so I think we're all at kind of a loss here.

Changing the system hurts more people than it helps. You cannot just snap your fingers and completely change how schools are run. This is why I believe that the problem should first-and-foremostly be tended to at home, if a problem is detected by the parents in the first place. If not, then it is indeed a mystery, and probably due to outside-the-home influence. No one can know conclusively, so this argument isn't really going to go anywhere exciting, new, or interesting.

Easy to say we'll never know when research hasn't even begun. Snap my fingers? I'm thinking more along the lines of massive long term system overhaul. You are approaching the situation like the ATF at Waco. Get a clue.

 

[skeptik]

Then why have you been playing a zero sum game to this point? It's pretty obvious to anyone intelligent that we're dealing with the accretion of various contributing factors in these cases, so why try to make the issue one only of mental illness while specifically resisting making the sort of institutional changes that would likely reduce the pressure on mentally ill students?

This is the crux of the issue right here. The fact that this is even debated is pretty retarded. If you want to prevent future actions like this school shooting, you're going to want to approach it from multiple angles, including reinventing a school system less conducive to driving unstable people over the edge.

 

[V.V.V.V.V.]

I disagree and think that by doing that you can open up a whole new can of worms (making stable people perhaps more unstable?), but whatever. Yes there are multiple reasons, but what I think we were arguing for most of the time is the MOST prevalent one...the one that has the most degree of effect.

 

[skeptik]

I honestly don't see how you possibly disagree, as it's utterly foolish. You're not going to prevent school shootings at all if you don't affect change in the schools. This is about as commonsensical as it gets. If you don't change the schools, you're not going to change the school shooters. Changing the most prevalent cause (an ambiguous and impossible to know notion) will not prevent the other causes from making the same thing happen. And you're not going to turn somebody who is mentally ill into a normal person anyway. There is a reason that kids decide to shoot their schools beyond the simple fact that it's where they spend so much of their time, you know. They do it because they think that it's fucked up and that it fucked them up. Now why would they think that? What could we do to fix that? Maybe by changing the school systems.

Regardless, there is no possible way to prevent actions like this from ever happening. There are myriad causes for such things that any serious attempt at preventing every incident will have to be over the shoulder and in the mind of every individual in the world 24/7. Any event at any moment in time can trigger somebody to do something like this. Approaching this issue as if attacking one cause will neutralize all of the other causes is just absurd.

 

[V.V.V.V.V.]

What about the ones that don't happen at schools? I know this is off-subject, but it is a pertinent point. All of the people who do these kinds of things have something wrong with them mentally, which is aggravated by various circumstances. Yes, it would be utterly foolish for me to think otherwise if more kids shot up schools (this would prove that the problem lied more in the schools (say, a majority), but since not very many children do shoot schools, aren't you sensing something weird about the claim "school pressures make kids kill people at random"?).

Also,

There is a reason that kids decide to shoot their schools beyond the simple fact that it's where they spend so much of their time, you know.

Because I'm sure you know this conclusively. And don't even bring up "manifestos" because those are about the same literature level as "insane ramblings."

At this point I am actually leaning more towards formica's earlier point of "tolerate a shooting each year or two in various places" due to the reasoning expressed in the last page and a half here (mainly the establishment that it is a varied bunch of things which may/may not cause this). More lives can be saved by helping to prevent drunk/impaired driving, and the causation of DUI is much, much more streamlined.

 

[skeptik]

So what the people who actually commit these actions have to say about why they decide to do what they are doing is irrelevant? Okay, sure thing.

Most adolescents that shoot up public places (excluding gang warfare and petty crime) will have spent a considerable proportion of their lives within the halls of learning institutions. This is true of almost every child in America. In fact, they will likely spend more time in schools than anywhere else aside from their homes. So to suggest that the school environment is not very easily one of the most "prevalent causes" is just not looking at the situation. How many school shooters have expressed admiration for their learning institutions? How many of them have sung the praises of their teachers and waxed poetic at the expense of their loving classmates? School experience is pretty universally a chief component in setting these people off.

Also, your logic that more people don't shoot up schools so schools must not be a major factor is pretty horrendous. I don't know if anybody has addressed that yet (I haven't read the thread but I'm assuming not since you're still using this argument), but you're approaching the scenario in the wrong way. There are degrees of affectation involved here, it's not just a zero sum game in which either somebody shoots up a school and therefore the school fucked him up or somebody doesn't shoot up a school and therefore the school didn't fuck him up. I can postulate with relative confidence that school systems in America have fucked up tens of thousands, even millions of individuals over the past few decades. That doesn't mean that they shot somebody.

 

[V.V.V.V.V.]

Yes, and why didn't all of the people who got fucked up by the system shoot people? Perhaps due to a genetic dysfunction of some sort, which is heading back to my original point.

I'm still failing to see how it's illogical to say this:

"Schools do not cause school shootings."

If this were not true ("Schools do cause school shootings."), don't you think there would be a lot more school shootings? It's logical. However, thanks for misrepresenting my point by saying I am playing a "zero sum game" and putting words in my mouth. Remember the word prevalent I used a while back? That applies here. Schools can absolutely be a factor, but it is more often something which occurs earlier in life (inception is a nice starting point), which is augmented by suffering and torment inflicted by society/schools which reaches its climax in a mass catharsis of killing.

By the way, just to use a recent domestic example, the dude who shot up V-Tech was pretty messed in the head BEFORE he went to the place. The Wikipedia article is fairly heavily cited so it seems like a good place to go here:

Fellow students described Cho as a "quiet" person who "would not respond if someone greeted him." Student Julie Poole recalled the first day of a literature class the previous year when the students introduced themselves one by one. When it was Cho's turn to introduce himself, he did not speak. According to Poole, the professor looked at the sign-in sheet and found that, whereas everyone else wrote out their names, Cho wrote only a question mark. Poole added that "we just really knew him as the question mark kid."[47]

Karan Grewal, who shared a room with Cho at Harper Hall, reported that Cho "would sit in a wood rocker by the window [in his room at the dormitory] and stare at the lawn below." According to Grewal, "Cho appeared to never to go to class or read a book" during his (Cho's) senior year," adding that Cho just typed on his laptop, went to the dining hall and clipped his hair in the bathroom, cleaning up the hair afterwards. Grewal also reported that he witnessed Cho riding his bicycle in circles in the parking lot of the dormitory.[35]

Andy Koch and John Eide, who once shared a room with Cho at Cochrane Hall during 2005 and 2006,[48][49] stated that Cho demonstrated other repetitive behaviors, such as listening repeatedly to "Shine[50] by the alternative rock band Collective Soul, a 1994 singles chart hit from their album Hints, Allegations, and Things Left Unsaid.[51] Cho wrote the song's lyrics "Teach me how to speak; Teach me how to share; Teach me where to go" on the wall of his dormitory room.[39][52][53] Koch described two further unusual incidents, including one where Cho stood in the doorway of his room late at night taking photographs of him (Koch) and a second incident where Cho repeatedly placed harassing cell phone calls to Koch as "Cho's brother, 'Question Mark,'" a name Cho also used when introducing himself to girls with whom he was allegedly obsessed. Koch and Eide searched Cho's belongings and found a pocket knife, but they did not find any items that they deemed seriously threatening to them.[49]

During Autumn 2005, Cho told Koch and Eide that he had an imaginary girlfriend by the name of "Jelly," a supermodel who lived in outer space and who called Cho by the name "Spanky" and traveled by spaceship.[54] Koch also described a telephone call that he received from Cho during the Thanksgiving holiday break from school. During that call, Koch said that Cho claimed to be "vacationing with Vladimir Putin," with Cho adding "Yeah, we're in North Carolina." In response to Cho's claim, Koch told him "I'm pretty sure that's not possible Seung."[55] Because of Cho's troubling behavior, Koch and Eide, who had earlier tried to befriend Cho, gradually stopped talking to him and told their friends, especially female classmates, not to visit their room.[56]

Koch and Eide also stated that Cho was involved in at least three stalking incidents, two of which resulted in verbal warnings by the Virginia Tech campus police.[56][39][52] The first stalking incident occurred on November 27, 2005.[57] After the incident, according to Koch, Cho claimed to have sent an instant message online to the female student by AIM and found out where she lived on the campus. Eide stated that Cho then visited her room to see if she was "cool," adding that Cho remarked that he only found "promiscuity" in her eyes.[58] Eide added that, when Cho visited the female student, Cho said, "Hi, I'm Question Mark" to her, "which really freaked her out."[56] The female student called the campus police, complaining that Cho had sent her annoying messages and made an unannounced visit to her room.[57] Two uniformed members of the campus police visited Cho’s room at the dormitory later that evening and warned him not to contact the female student again. Cho made no further contact with the student.[58]

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