Armed Polite Society
Main Forums => The Roundtable => Topic started by: AZRedhawk44 on July 24, 2012, 03:01:44 PM
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This Batman shooting has me thinking about loners, and how they cope with their dislike of society.
It used to be, people that truly disliked society could melt into "the west" and find a place where they could be left alone. Elijah Reavis is one such example from the 19th century, that decided he just didn't want anything to do with most of the world any more than he was compelled to. He left his wife and daughter in CA forever, and disappeared into Arizona's superstition mountains. Once in a while he'd show up in town, trading produce from his gardens for whatever he needed. But mostly he liked being left alone. He's got about a quarter of the Superstition wilderness named after him in one way or another. The Apache even left him alone, because he was reportedly a fantastic rifleman and his .45/70 was something to be feared in his hands.
Reavis is a classic example of a hermit.
Perhaps a bit of a sociopath to him as well... American Heritage dictionary defines a sociopath as:
Someone whose social behavior is extremely abnormal. Sociopaths are interested only in their personal needs and desires, without concern for the effects of their behavior on others.
sociopath. (n.d.). The American Heritage® New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition. Retrieved July 24, 2012, from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/sociopath
In regards to abandoning his family, and his relationships with his fellow man, sure: he's a sociopath.
And there's any number of people like that in early American history. They go west. A few become criminals, but most just seek to live how they think they should.
This Batman shooter... he wasn't a hermit. Sure, he's a sociopath. But that gives sociopaths a bad name. This guy is a nihilist. Someone that believes in the absence of value in society, people and even himself. A destructive dislike and disrespect of boundaries, rules, or rights that transcends his own natural rights and comes into direct conflict with the safety of society. A murderer that intends murder for the sake of destroying social fabric.
Even the Unabomber wasn't a nihilist. He had a manifesto, some sort of system of belief that could be negotiated with and come to terms with, if one so chose.
Bin Laden isn't a nihilist. He wants Sharia Law around the world and the Caliphate to never have the sun set upon it, and he's willing to kill any infidels to get the job done. It's a system I disagree with and will fight to the end, but I can wrap my head around it and understand it if I choose.
Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, Genghis Khan, Atilla... not nihilists.
Jack the Ripper... not a nihilist.
Even Dexter (from TV) is not a nihilist.
The Columbine shooters, was there ever a motive or intended targets with them?
Not sure about the Giffords shooter, if we can consider that an act of nihilism or some sort of confused attempted political assassination.
The VA Tech guy, did we ever get a motive from him? What did he spout out about on his video tape that he made after the shootings before getting caught?
There must be "something" that these guys are searching for. Isolation, freedom, escape from something.
Is it the lack of a "west?"
Or is broke, broke; and just in need of lead injection and less speculation?
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Some folks become Hermits because society is full of Sociopaths and Nihilists :lol:
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He left the occupy SF group because they wern't radical enough for him. I'm betting he does have a message, we just don't know it.
I think the VT murderers deal just boiled down to a "girl thing", regarding the first two murders (two were shot in a dorm room before he started rampaging around the campus.
CO shooter is an orginized and vicious nutterbutter. I'm guessing he did have some reasoning (to much planning to not have some message)
And here's some food for thought, which came to me a day or so ago. I figure, as an Occupy type, he's probably supported gun control legislation in the past, and like us, has noticed the correlation between mass murders with firearms and immediate public calls for more gun control. So what if he used firearms as a way to get such legislatiin passed? We've all acknowledged he could have easily done a lot more damage and dealt more death with chemicals, too which he both had axcess and the know how to deply, yet he used a shotgun, a rifle and a pistol, weapons which he had signifigently less familarity with.
I think his choice of weapons was a part of his twisted little message.
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(https://armedpolitesociety.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg9.imageshack.us%2Fimg9%2F6923%2Fnihilism1ex3.jpg&hash=8d4be7e05bbc12f2e0a14ece3c0325a3228156ae)
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There probably should be some differentiation for plain old fanatics and true believers.
I am not sure there is a comparrison with loners if they are not trying to kill people.
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Mass medial plays a BIG role. Television... Internet etc.
The idea to go out with a bang and try for a high-score in the infamy/body-count department is a viral meme. There have always been people with the idea (Bath Schoolhouse bombing etc.) but back then the best means the meme had to propagate was newsprint. Not nearly as visceral as television or video.
And even in the early days of TV, you only had the big three networks. Now since the 80's, there's the big-three, and there's a couple dozen satellite/cable stations as well...
So for any thoughts of "I'll make them pay", "I'll show them.", "They'll hurt like I hurt." now the potential audience of people a nutjob like this can affect or reach is exponentially larger too. From the media side of it to the equation of this pathology, it pushes and pulls on the perpetrators. They're pushed by the prior stories of mass shootings and spree killers, and they're pulled by the potential for the attention/audience.
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It used to be, people that truly disliked society could melt into "the west" and find a place where they could be left alone.
"Getting awful crowded in my sky."
- Capt. Malcolm "Mal" Reynolds
That's one thing the world really needs. A new frontier for folks. Previously, there was terra incognita that one could escape to. There isn't any practical form of "frontier" left.
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I would submit that loner does not necessarily equal sociopath. Loners are often loners because true, they don't necessarily want to interact with others or think of the needs of others, but they go to the trouble of isolating themselves so that the needs of others don't come up. The true sociopath is happy to be in the middle of a crowd and not play nice. Loners, if they happen to have to be in a crowd, will generally remain off by themselves or otherwise attempt to be unobtrusive.
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This Batman shooting has me thinking about loners, and how they cope with their dislike of society.
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I am not the only one here who resembles that remaek. There are degrees of "loner-hood" and there are degrees of dislike of society. There are vast numbers of ways in which we fit into the rather large box you have placed on the floor.
One of the issues I keep coming back to is the perceived locus of control of those who have gone off on rampages - regardless of the reason/cause expressed for doing so. What I come up with is that those who go on rampages seem to see the locus of control as being outside themselves. It's not just that the world is not right, but that the world not being right "controls" what the individual can or cannot do. Those that do not go off on rampages seem to see the locus of control as being internal - they are able to do what they want and often society be damned is their watchword. That's a whole lot different from ensuring that "Society delenda est" comes about.
As for folks being diagnosed (or described) as sociopaths - let us remember that many of those who run businesses are sociopaths, as are many of those who invent things that make our life better/easier/less physically tiring.
stay safe.
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Skid, no disrespect was intended in the association of hermit to sociopath in the context of this site's population.
Go back and re-read the definition of sociopath that I cited above.
And keep in mind one of the books that has had the greatest influence on my life is Atlas Shrugged. I believe that every hero in that work could be saddled with the label of sociopath, and wear it with pride.
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Mass medial plays a BIG role. Television... Internet etc.
The idea to go out with a bang and try for a high-score in the infamy/body-count department is a viral meme. There have always been people with the idea (Bath Schoolhouse bombing etc.) but back then the best means the meme had to propagate was newsprint. Not nearly as visceral as television or video.
And even in the early days of TV, you only had the big three networks. Now since the 80's, there's the big-three, and there's a couple dozen satellite/cable stations as well...
So for any thoughts of "I'll make them pay", "I'll show them.", "They'll hurt like I hurt." now the potential audience of people a nutjob like this can affect or reach is exponentially larger too. From the media side of it to the equation of this pathology, it pushes and pulls on the perpetrators. They're pushed by the prior stories of mass shootings and spree killers, and they're pulled by the potential for the attention/audience.
This. So very this.
He left the occupy SF group because they wern't radical enough for him. I'm betting he does have a message, we just don't know it.
Do you have a source for that? It would make a lot of sense. =|
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Do you have a source for that? It would make a lot of sense. =|
This photo: http://therevolutionroad.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/559284_2252262242950_921613279_n.jpg?w=549
Has been making the rounds at lots of blogs and second-tier news sources. And the "legit" news sources that one would look to for some kind of verification are the very ones who would sit on this information, if it is true.
I'm waiting for one of the higher profile right-wing pundits to go with this, presuming that they'll try to do some fact checking before putting their reputation on the line before running with it.
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That's one thing the world really needs. A new frontier for folks. Previously, there was terra incognita that one could escape to. There isn't any practical form of "frontier" left.
There's a lot of empty space in Alaska and Canada.
But most of us no longer believe we can just take off for the wilds--we don't have a self-sufficient mindset anymore. So, aside from the Timothy Treadwells, what outlet is there?
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In a land the Spanish once had called the "Northern Mystery'
The rivers run and disappear, the mustang still lives free ...
Didn't quite work out so well ... =|
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There's a lot of empty space in Alaska and Canada.
But most of us no longer believe we can just take off for the wilds--we don't have a self-sufficient mindset anymore. So, aside from the Timothy Treadwells, what outlet is there?
Doesn't matter if you do anyways... some busy-body forest ranger or DHS person will jump in a helicopter and come harass you anyways.
The West was The West because it was outside the range of enforcement of society's regular laws, and a place where only free association and a man's word were capable of building agreements and resolving problems.
The only "West" I can think of right now would be in Africa.
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Speaking for myself as a hermit, I don't dislike society.
I just don't want it in my home. :lol:
It's like finding peace and solitude inside since there's so very little left of it outside.
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It's not that I'm antisocial, I just don't like people.
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It's not that I'm antisocial, I just don't like people.
Said much nicer than I would.
jim
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Well, I'm allergic to people, have more than 6000 rounds of ammo and doing something like the CO thing never crossed my mind. Dunno how you get there. Sure he's a nihilist, but there are new modern problems at work here, convincing worlds of textured alternate reality, and in the real world if you don't like the tune we have drugs for that.
We know he acted out a scene from a graphic novel where a villain with orange hair shoots up a theater. Bet we find out he's heavy into alternate reality gaming and modern chemistry, prescribed or otherwise. I'm most emphatically NOT saying games and movies made him do it, I'm saying that the make believe land found someone who couldn't sort real and not real.
And, he's gonna test my usual disdain for state imposed capital punishment. Perfect case, we know he did it, no hight tech evidence inscrutable to Joe Average Juror. It was heinous. Of course the insanity defense will come, but he didn't know what he was doing! Good, then he won't know the difference when we hang him.
And yes, we need a safety valve for nutballs. Of course back then we had a bit less PC and sometimes leaving town for the wild west was not exactly voluntary. And I guess it should be noted that most of us are here because the misfits of Europe needed a place to be.
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There's a lot of empty space in Alaska and Canada.
But most of us no longer believe we can just take off for the wilds--we don't have a self-sufficient mindset anymore. So, aside from the Timothy Treadwells, what outlet is there?
Most of the anti-social set would probably balk at being squeezed out the southern end of a north-bound bear.
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And yes, we need a safety valve for nutballs.
We used to have one, in a manner of speaking. Nutballs would usually come up against the wrong person and get their arses kicked but good. Now everyone's afraid of lawsuits so bad guys are just left to be bad guys lest their rights be infringed.
That isn't worded quite as well as I intended but I'm rushing. You know what I meant.
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And, he's gonna test my usual disdain for state imposed capital punishment. Perfect case, we know he did it, no hight tech evidence inscrutable to Joe Average Juror. It was heinous. Of course the insanity defense will come, but he didn't know what he was doing! Good, then he won't know the difference when we hang him.
He is the poster child for capital punishment. Him and Nidal Hussein and the nutjob that shot Giffords and the others.
In cases where there is absolutely not a single shred of doubt, that's when the death penalty is appropriate.
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We used to have one, in a manner of speaking. Nutballs would usually come up against the wrong person and get their arses kicked but good. Now everyone's afraid of lawsuits so bad guys are just left to be bad guys lest their rights be infringed.
That isn't worded quite as well as I intended but I'm rushing. You know what I meant.
Ayup.