Recently there have been numerous threads on THR (and every other gun bulletin board) about mental health, mass shootings, gun violence, and the right to keep and bear arms. I've been putting some thoughts together on the various issues and how they interact (or don't interact), and wanted some feedback. I'm often debating anti-gun proponents and doing public speaking on the side for gun rights, so I spend a bit more free time than most people doing prep work, positing, speculating, and conjecturing about things.
That, and it's raining outside.
Before I go on, understand that by no means am I an expert on psychiatry, nor am I an historian, or an expert on social issues. I'm a computer programmer and network engineer who is cursed with the ability to think outside the box, and tasked daily to finding root cause of impossibly complex problems.
The last few weeks has seen public shooting incidents on a daily basis throughout the country. Each of these events has had various and quite separate causal factors, demographics, and scenarios; ranging from "I can't get a girlfriend" (California) to "I want to start The Revolution right here and now" (Nevada).
People are grasping at straws trying to find a root cause to these isolated incidents of violence. Some blame modern medicine, some blame the Government, some blame violent TV shows and video games, some blame divorce or the decline of family values.
Everyone seems to blame SOMETHING. But the hard reality is there is no single, definable reason to blame.
To illustrate this point, in another thread I posited (jokingly) that you should blame cell phones or the Internet, because before those things existed, the frequency of public shooting rampages was significantly lower.
But the truth is, you may as well blame indoor plumbing. Guns existed before indoor plumbing was common - yet it wasn't until after the widespread use of indoor plumbing that private individuals going on shooting "rampages" became a growing concern to society. (The same could be said of Color Television, or the Space Program, or Electricity....)
Keep in mind I am not proposing that Indoor Plumbing is the cause of the increasingly common phenomenon of social violence we are seeing in today's society. I am merely bringing this point up to suggest that any number of reasons could contribute to the violence.
I've found in the last 20 years of complex problem solving that the truth is generally the simplest answer. I learned this very early on in my career when working tech support. I spent an hour trying to help a customer diagnose why they weren't getting a video signal on their monitor from a new computer purchase. They'd turn on the computer, it'd make sounds and light up, but they wouldn't get anything on the screen. We tried various keystrokes to get in to BIOS, etc. I asked if the monitor was plugged in - "Yes, it is plugged in."
It wasn't until much later that I helped this elderly person find the root cause by asking "how MANY cables on the monitor are plugged in? There should be two, one going to the computer, one going to the power outlet on the wall." There was only one cable going to the computer. Problem solved. Give it power to run.
Looking at the issues in society we face today, I believe the root cause is staring us right in the face. Yes, there are infinite numbers of contributing factors - life is a complex and wonderful thing. But the root cause is the same - and it has to do a lot more with mental health than many would think, but in a completely different direction than we're trying to go.
Humans are apex predators.
We are hard-wired in our primitive minds to be capable of committing acts of violence to sustain our life. Just as "dogs typically act like dogs" (without training or education), they will bite when cornered by anything that appears to be a predator. Other animals besides dogs also exercise this same reaction, including humans. Animals around the world kill for food - anyone ever watching a domesticated indoor/outdoor cat "play" with a rodent before consuming it from head to tail, has witnessed violence on a most primitive level. (Cats are quite evil, toying with their food before eating it.)
To the point: People have a primitive brain buried deep in the rest of our intellectually superior consciousness. We KNOW this is a truth because of hard-ingrained primitive reactions that every human has - our physiological fight or flight response (adrenaline dump), our deep-ingrained feelings which aren't on a conscious level that compel us to either seek out or avoid danger, etc.
Being a hunter, I know this is truth, because I've felt "buck fever" before taking a shot to end a life, so that I can sustain my own. That rush is undeniably primitive.
Yet, our capacity for violence - our innate draw towards it, as apex predators, has been suppressed along with many other base primitive needs. We don't, as a society, hunt for food - there is no outlet there for many. Instead, society consumes neatly packaged and brightly labeled boxes by the millions of tons daily, isolating us from the "brutal" task of killing animals and butchering them.
Based on ratings, millions of people tune in every night to watch increasingly gruesome and violent television shows. Some people propose this is a contributing factor or even a "root cause" to social violence. I strongly disagree! All those shows do is provide the average suburbanite masses with a peaceful outlet for their innate desire to do violence - it defuses that instinct; suppresses it.
Even the Romans recognized the need for a coliseum.
So what makes someone pick up a gun/knife/{insert tool of choice} to inflict random violence on other folks? And what about the propensity for younger folks to do this, demographically speaking?
First, younger people are more in touch with their primitive mind than adults who have had more time to successfully (more or less) conquer their Apex Predator instincts. Second, their hormones are MUCH stronger during the adolescent phase, leaving them less in control of their actions. And third; many have never been given a positive (or at least peaceful) outlet for their minds to exercise superiority over something. Many parents are content with throwing a television or computing system at the problem; and in many cases, that works.
I would propose that as a root cause:
As human civilization evolves, there is a certain percentage of people who simply cannot adapt to a peaceful life and snap. The vocations which "authorize" violence of any type are limited; law enforcement draws many, military careers, and so on. Many people find satisfaction as "apex predators" by climbing a career path and fighting for the top spot. Many successful entrepreneurs attack problems with a passion that is undeniably primitive.
But not everyone finds this. Youth are too young, and not invested enough in society to realize that there is an outlet for these most base of feelings. The vast majority of our youth have never picked up a bow or gun and taken a life (while hunting), to nourish themselves. The VAST majority of people have never butchered an animal to process their own food - even many hunters find the task distasteful and send it off to a processing facility, getting back packages of sausage and ground meat.
The shooting sports and other martial pursuits (martial arts) are another great example of feeling out the apex predator instincts. That gives individuals a method of conquering - or perhaps a better term would be harnessing - that base instinct of violence, towards a positive outcome.
The moral of the story:
Society needs to stop questioning "what causes violence" - and start looking at specific methods of tapping in to and utilizing that resource. Violence is not a "mental disorder", and it only becomes a mental health issue if it is allowed to become one. Every human is born with a seriously disturbing capacity to go forth and do violent acts - it's hardwired in to us, as without it, we'd starve and die. But you don't fulfill that instinct going through the drive through and driving off with a sack of food! Just as watching violent acts on television or video games only temporarily defrays that need (which eventually we become immune to; witnessing violent acts eventually leads to desensitization; which is nothing more than an immunity to watching violence, it does not solve the underlying problem of committing violence that our subconscious primitive minds require).
You might as well try to teach a cat not to play with it's food before it kills it and eats it - or a dog not to growl and bite when it's cornered by a threat.
If you bottle violence up, by trying to erase our base instincts, a certain percentage of the population will inevitably snap. Not every human is at the same point on the evolutionary chain, not all people are as advanced intellectually or in our reasoning facilities as others. Some people are born with stronger primitive brains, urges to commit violent acts. If those people are not given SOME outlet, they WILL eventually snap.
Violence is not a "gun issue" - guns are merely the most expedient tools many find. However, since violence is within every human, it DOES have the capacity to spread like wildfire if the suppressed masses are all suddenly "uncorked" at once. (Look at the Syrian civil war, or go back and examine any mass social upheaval, for what happens when an entire society has their corks pulled off the violence within us). We are fortunate - VERY fortunate - that it is a very small, nearly statistically irrelevant percentage of humans in our American society that go out and commit acts of violence.
But we will never eliminate it unless our society understands that it is one of the strongest of base instincts, and can NEVER be eliminated. We need to find a way of channeling our violent natures and giving youth who might not otherwise have an outlet a way to deal with it. (Healthy, strong people have football or other sports; but weaker children still have apex predator instincts; give them an outlet, or they crack under the pressure of it.)
I view hunting and shooting activities, as well as martial arts, as "healthy" outlets for children to exercise violence in a controlled fashion so they can crack that relief valve once in a while. The fact that children cannot exercise or even speak of these activities in schools which choose to pretend that violence doesn't exist in humans, should not be overlooked.
In summation - I believe that our failure to educate our children properly on base instincts and provide means of exercising basal instincts is the direct root cause of public violence in America.... and not firearms.
Is it a mental health issue? Yes, but not one we can test for, or should try to address as a "containment" issue. On the contrary. I believe that we should promote (certain!) overtly violent activities to provide a necessary relief valve for children. For without that safety valve, the violence builds and grows unchecked; and is only temporarily dispelled by witnessing violence, which eventually stops acting as a regulatory agent on the base urges.
That, and it's raining outside.
Before I go on, understand that by no means am I an expert on psychiatry, nor am I an historian, or an expert on social issues. I'm a computer programmer and network engineer who is cursed with the ability to think outside the box, and tasked daily to finding root cause of impossibly complex problems.
The last few weeks has seen public shooting incidents on a daily basis throughout the country. Each of these events has had various and quite separate causal factors, demographics, and scenarios; ranging from "I can't get a girlfriend" (California) to "I want to start The Revolution right here and now" (Nevada).
People are grasping at straws trying to find a root cause to these isolated incidents of violence. Some blame modern medicine, some blame the Government, some blame violent TV shows and video games, some blame divorce or the decline of family values.
Everyone seems to blame SOMETHING. But the hard reality is there is no single, definable reason to blame.
To illustrate this point, in another thread I posited (jokingly) that you should blame cell phones or the Internet, because before those things existed, the frequency of public shooting rampages was significantly lower.
But the truth is, you may as well blame indoor plumbing. Guns existed before indoor plumbing was common - yet it wasn't until after the widespread use of indoor plumbing that private individuals going on shooting "rampages" became a growing concern to society. (The same could be said of Color Television, or the Space Program, or Electricity....)
Keep in mind I am not proposing that Indoor Plumbing is the cause of the increasingly common phenomenon of social violence we are seeing in today's society. I am merely bringing this point up to suggest that any number of reasons could contribute to the violence.
I've found in the last 20 years of complex problem solving that the truth is generally the simplest answer. I learned this very early on in my career when working tech support. I spent an hour trying to help a customer diagnose why they weren't getting a video signal on their monitor from a new computer purchase. They'd turn on the computer, it'd make sounds and light up, but they wouldn't get anything on the screen. We tried various keystrokes to get in to BIOS, etc. I asked if the monitor was plugged in - "Yes, it is plugged in."
It wasn't until much later that I helped this elderly person find the root cause by asking "how MANY cables on the monitor are plugged in? There should be two, one going to the computer, one going to the power outlet on the wall." There was only one cable going to the computer. Problem solved. Give it power to run.
Looking at the issues in society we face today, I believe the root cause is staring us right in the face. Yes, there are infinite numbers of contributing factors - life is a complex and wonderful thing. But the root cause is the same - and it has to do a lot more with mental health than many would think, but in a completely different direction than we're trying to go.
Humans are apex predators.
We are hard-wired in our primitive minds to be capable of committing acts of violence to sustain our life. Just as "dogs typically act like dogs" (without training or education), they will bite when cornered by anything that appears to be a predator. Other animals besides dogs also exercise this same reaction, including humans. Animals around the world kill for food - anyone ever watching a domesticated indoor/outdoor cat "play" with a rodent before consuming it from head to tail, has witnessed violence on a most primitive level. (Cats are quite evil, toying with their food before eating it.)
To the point: People have a primitive brain buried deep in the rest of our intellectually superior consciousness. We KNOW this is a truth because of hard-ingrained primitive reactions that every human has - our physiological fight or flight response (adrenaline dump), our deep-ingrained feelings which aren't on a conscious level that compel us to either seek out or avoid danger, etc.
Being a hunter, I know this is truth, because I've felt "buck fever" before taking a shot to end a life, so that I can sustain my own. That rush is undeniably primitive.
Yet, our capacity for violence - our innate draw towards it, as apex predators, has been suppressed along with many other base primitive needs. We don't, as a society, hunt for food - there is no outlet there for many. Instead, society consumes neatly packaged and brightly labeled boxes by the millions of tons daily, isolating us from the "brutal" task of killing animals and butchering them.
Based on ratings, millions of people tune in every night to watch increasingly gruesome and violent television shows. Some people propose this is a contributing factor or even a "root cause" to social violence. I strongly disagree! All those shows do is provide the average suburbanite masses with a peaceful outlet for their innate desire to do violence - it defuses that instinct; suppresses it.
Even the Romans recognized the need for a coliseum.
So what makes someone pick up a gun/knife/{insert tool of choice} to inflict random violence on other folks? And what about the propensity for younger folks to do this, demographically speaking?
First, younger people are more in touch with their primitive mind than adults who have had more time to successfully (more or less) conquer their Apex Predator instincts. Second, their hormones are MUCH stronger during the adolescent phase, leaving them less in control of their actions. And third; many have never been given a positive (or at least peaceful) outlet for their minds to exercise superiority over something. Many parents are content with throwing a television or computing system at the problem; and in many cases, that works.
I would propose that as a root cause:
As human civilization evolves, there is a certain percentage of people who simply cannot adapt to a peaceful life and snap. The vocations which "authorize" violence of any type are limited; law enforcement draws many, military careers, and so on. Many people find satisfaction as "apex predators" by climbing a career path and fighting for the top spot. Many successful entrepreneurs attack problems with a passion that is undeniably primitive.
But not everyone finds this. Youth are too young, and not invested enough in society to realize that there is an outlet for these most base of feelings. The vast majority of our youth have never picked up a bow or gun and taken a life (while hunting), to nourish themselves. The VAST majority of people have never butchered an animal to process their own food - even many hunters find the task distasteful and send it off to a processing facility, getting back packages of sausage and ground meat.
The shooting sports and other martial pursuits (martial arts) are another great example of feeling out the apex predator instincts. That gives individuals a method of conquering - or perhaps a better term would be harnessing - that base instinct of violence, towards a positive outcome.
The moral of the story:
Society needs to stop questioning "what causes violence" - and start looking at specific methods of tapping in to and utilizing that resource. Violence is not a "mental disorder", and it only becomes a mental health issue if it is allowed to become one. Every human is born with a seriously disturbing capacity to go forth and do violent acts - it's hardwired in to us, as without it, we'd starve and die. But you don't fulfill that instinct going through the drive through and driving off with a sack of food! Just as watching violent acts on television or video games only temporarily defrays that need (which eventually we become immune to; witnessing violent acts eventually leads to desensitization; which is nothing more than an immunity to watching violence, it does not solve the underlying problem of committing violence that our subconscious primitive minds require).
You might as well try to teach a cat not to play with it's food before it kills it and eats it - or a dog not to growl and bite when it's cornered by a threat.
If you bottle violence up, by trying to erase our base instincts, a certain percentage of the population will inevitably snap. Not every human is at the same point on the evolutionary chain, not all people are as advanced intellectually or in our reasoning facilities as others. Some people are born with stronger primitive brains, urges to commit violent acts. If those people are not given SOME outlet, they WILL eventually snap.
Violence is not a "gun issue" - guns are merely the most expedient tools many find. However, since violence is within every human, it DOES have the capacity to spread like wildfire if the suppressed masses are all suddenly "uncorked" at once. (Look at the Syrian civil war, or go back and examine any mass social upheaval, for what happens when an entire society has their corks pulled off the violence within us). We are fortunate - VERY fortunate - that it is a very small, nearly statistically irrelevant percentage of humans in our American society that go out and commit acts of violence.
But we will never eliminate it unless our society understands that it is one of the strongest of base instincts, and can NEVER be eliminated. We need to find a way of channeling our violent natures and giving youth who might not otherwise have an outlet a way to deal with it. (Healthy, strong people have football or other sports; but weaker children still have apex predator instincts; give them an outlet, or they crack under the pressure of it.)
I view hunting and shooting activities, as well as martial arts, as "healthy" outlets for children to exercise violence in a controlled fashion so they can crack that relief valve once in a while. The fact that children cannot exercise or even speak of these activities in schools which choose to pretend that violence doesn't exist in humans, should not be overlooked.
In summation - I believe that our failure to educate our children properly on base instincts and provide means of exercising basal instincts is the direct root cause of public violence in America.... and not firearms.
Is it a mental health issue? Yes, but not one we can test for, or should try to address as a "containment" issue. On the contrary. I believe that we should promote (certain!) overtly violent activities to provide a necessary relief valve for children. For without that safety valve, the violence builds and grows unchecked; and is only temporarily dispelled by witnessing violence, which eventually stops acting as a regulatory agent on the base urges.
