<p>Holmes claimed he identified himself with Joker. Below are eerie Joker quotes from the Batman comic books that sent chills down my spine.</p>
<p>“In my dream, the world had suffered a terrible disaster. A black haze shut out the sun, and the darkness was alive with the moans and screams of wounded people. Suddenly, a small light glowed. A candle flickered into life, symbol of hope for millions. A single tiny candle, shining in the ugly dark. I laughed and blew it out.” </p>
<p>“Madness is the emergency exit. You can just step outside, and close the door on all those dreadful things that happened. You can lock them away… forever.”</p>
<p>This sort of thing is thankfully a very rare combination of genetics and environment.</p>
<p>Our understanding of schizophrenia is still pretty small despite working on it for many decades with large amounts of research dollars. Large-scale studies indicate genetic and environmental components but you would think that we would have figured it all out with all of the tools that we have today but we haven’t which implies that the mechanism is complex. The environmental factors that I’ve read about are maternal influenza (or something that causes a strong immune response in the mother), living in cities and strict parenting.</p>
<p>Only a tiny number of the folks with bipolar/schizophrenia/depression commit mass-murder - how do you figure out the cause with such small numbers? The best you can probably due is determine what they have in common but I don’t think that we can determine anything with certainty.</p>
<p>Some are speculating that he failed his boards and that’s what sent him into a downward spiral but it is just as likely that the spiral had begun and his academic struggles were a symptom of psychiatric issues. We don’t know any of that.</p>
<p>I disagree that studying this type of person and event just reinforces his need for attention. It may be true that the public interest feeds into his desire for recognition but it also helps us to recognize and intervene in similar situations. The events at Columbine High, along with other similar events, instigated conversations and education in school systems across the country about how to recognize and prevent potential violence. It also helped to begin important incentives aimed at the prevention of bullying.</p>
<p>Has this conversation/awareness led to less bullying? Some articles seem to say that the reports of bullying have increased due to willingness to report. Some indicate that the incidence of bullying in person has gone down, but that cyber bullying has increased and, due to the anonymity of the bullier, the victims now tend to suicide rather than strike back since there is no one to “hit.”</p>
<p>I find this to be a potent, probably relevant quotation. When an individual is faced with mental turmoil – not of a depressed mind, but of a lonely, anxious, hopeless chaos – consciously and unconsciously there is reason to assuage the tumult. Depression is suppressive; for most, this is the result. For some, particularly those with schizophrenic predisposition and a fascination (in this case apparently at least academic) with the interplay between subjectivity and external reality, madness is the mitigatory response, even the escape.</p>
<p>To moralize on Holmes’ acts or his conscience is to irrelevantly project a healthy mind that weighs the pros and cons of one’s impacts on community, with some modest valuation given to the self. Selfishness is an oversimplified interpretation of his act, I expect; it is more probably defensive anger, madness, means, and unwillful desensitization to others’ harm. He probably asked himself Why not? and had no cogent reply.</p>
<p>I disagree that analysis of the shooter is necessarily to the disrespect of the victims. We should still care about limiting the future occurrence of harmful acts, and a good look into the actor may aid in this prevention. His madness – and even given the madness, the act – was likely not inevitable. Combating gun liberty proponents with reason is also a pressing need, if we care about making our national community safer.</p>
I can only speak from my own experience as a teacher but, yes, I see a difference in students behavior since we have become more aware and more educated about bullying. Students report more because they feel empowered to do so. They often report things as bullying that are not really, by definition, bullying. But that’s okay because it keeps the dialogue alive and presents opportunity for more education. Were you suggesting that cyber bullying has increased because of more awareness and legislation around bullying? If it is increasing, and I haven’t seen any evidence that it has, it may be because of the increased availability and variety of technology. I also think it is difficult to cyber bully as an anonymous agent.</p>
<p>In my school system, students are held accountable for cyber bullying as well as “in person” bullying.</p>
<p>^ I agree with EPTR. The campaigns against bullying do, in my observation, seem to be leading to greater stigmatization of being a bully rather than being bullied. It also seems to be emboldening those who wish to hold bullies accountable, in lieu of the previously more popular tattling conceptualization. It seems unlikely that increases in cyberbullying are commensurate with decreases in other forms of bullying, so a net benefit probably exists.</p>
<p>I was wondering because I had read that the in-person bullying put a face on the bullier and that violence against those who do the bullying (and others) was viewed by the bullier as a potential response where in cyber bullying the dispair of the bullied person turned to self destruction.</p>
<p>I’m not technologically advanced enough to know if cyber bullying can be pulled off without the bullied youth being able to readily identify the sourse.</p>
<p>While he may be mentally ill, he had the presence of mind to protect himself, plan for months, hide and cover his purchases, and function very well. He was not suicidal. And if he was indeed bullied, he was 24. He may have been damaged by the bullying, but to do this was calculated, evil, and he was not out of control. He was very much in control.</p>
<p>Anonymous cyberbullying is entirely feasible and is probably on the rise. I don’t think it’s the result of less opportunity to physically bully, though.</p>
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<p>In control of his plan and in control within his madness, yes. In control of reality, of that which would render his plan perceivably selfish, no. To label as evil is a nonanalytic relegation to morality when more likely we face an amoral, mad person. His mind tunneled. In that tunnel control is evident, but this says nothing of sane calculation.</p>
<p>I find it interesting that whenever somebody commits some particularly heinous crime, there is always a disagreement on whether the person was evil or insane. It’s my opinion that this discussion is a manifestation of a defense mechanism that we all employ to convince ourselves that the perpetrator isn’t like us–that we could never do anything like this. For some people, it is more comforting to think that the person was an evil monster–not like us at all. For others, it’s more comforting to think that the person was sick–that a healthy person (like us) couldn’t do something like this.</p>
<p>For me, the illness explanation is the most logical one–psychotic breaks occur in young people at this age. But there’s evil involved, too–that belongs (in my view) to the person who sold a 99-shot extra-large clip for an assault rifle to a member of the general public.</p>
<p>The destructive action seems sufficient to satisfactorily differentiate the shooter from ourselves. To turn to theories as to the internal source of the distinction seems merely to be a natural consequence for curious people. Evilness may be attractive in stably establishing the distinction as not potentially transient, but illness can befall at any time. Illness does not seem to comport with your hypothesis that our tendency to seek attribution is a defensive or comforting mechanism: There are not intrinsically healthy people and ill people but merely people who are healthy or ill in time. </p>
<p>Clinging to the relevance of free will seems to underlie the tendency to call upon the concept of evil. Evilness is volitional, cold, calculating. Illness is unintentional, unwanted. Sickness seems to exonerate; we want to blame and punish. Whom can we blame when the mind is broken? Can we punish without successfully blaming? Barbarically, the ingrained retributive desire finds simplistic routs to satiation. In falsely attributing destruction to the abstract rather than the psychiatric, we skirt an obligation to favor prevention over vengeance.</p>
<p>The little information that we have about the family would seem to point to at least the latter though and that maybe this wasn’t his first break with reality.</p>
<p>In the Virginia Tech case, the shooter died so that it was a lot easier to get information from schools and the parents. That’s not the case here.</p>
<p>I’d say that psychiatric problems affect at least mid-single digits in our population (some say that the numbers are a lot higher but I’m just going from minimum estimates) so every family probably has someone in their extended family with this problem though they may not know it. We also have a lot of cases due to wars.</p>
<p>For those that think that it’s evil, and choice, I’d suggest reading up on psychosis or talking to someone that has experienced it to see if you can get an idea of what it is like. Many may not want to tell you if it is something horrific - perhaps they can’t accept that something so bad is floating around in their mind.</p>
<p>For those who believe they need “to do something,” there are a few States that have passed their own bans on large capacity ammunition magazines and I think one State has banned assault weapons too.</p>
<p>You don’t have to wait on Congress. FYI–one poll I ran across said 58% of the people favored a ban on assault weapons. Keep your fingers crossed and your powder dry.</p>
<p>"He took bio and chem classes and he’s exceedingly intelligent. "
-You can find info on internet. No need to be intelligent at all. I do not think that Timothy was very bright above his sholders. Killing innocent people does not require brilliance at all. Many killers were not close to be smart at all.<br>
Oh, yes, he will claim whatever, Joker or…to appear to be shizo…he can say whatever he wishes, and we will be forced to listen to his garbage, system is very skewed, we will spend millions to protect the vicious beast…he truly deserves it, right?</p>
<p>Remember when Jared Loughner shot Representative Giffords and several others in Tucson? The media talk pundits on TV and in editorials, and some political figures were quick to say (wrongly as it turned out) that it was lack of civility in political speech that spurred the killer to do what he did. Rush Limbaugh was blamed. Something Sarah Palin had said was blamed. There was nothing to back up these claims, nothing to indicate that Loughner had even listened to Limbaugh or Palin, but yet TV talk shows were filled with this stuff for days.</p>
<p>Now we have another killer who by having his apartment filled with violent Batman images, dressing up like The Joker and choosing a Batman movie to do his deed was likely influenced by violent movie images. But no one is blaming the movie industry. For one thing, some TV networks are owned by or part of the same movie industry conglomerate. For another, they don’t want to blame something they like. </p>
<p>Violent images in movies and video games are not good for society particularly for those with unstable minds. Movies have cut down on the number of actors smoking in movies, helping to stigmatize the habit and cutting down on the number of young people smoking. Conversely, they show gay couples as normal, helping to unstigmatize them. Other examples: fashion magazines are being called out to stop showing stick figure models as an unhealthy example for young girls to emulate. Media does have influence. </p>
<p>To everyone who is wringing his or her hands asking what she/he can do, I have one easy response: “Stop buying tickets to movies of this type.” Do you think a killer would be influenced to violence by “The King’s Speech”?</p>