Thoughts on a tragic day

[jbg]

The horrible events of this morning occurred about an hour's drive from where I live. My sons' school was placed in lockdown mode. Everyone is greatly saddened.

Today's tragedy brings to mind Hilary Clinton's appropriately named book It Takes a Village to Raise a Child. While she is certainly not my favorite person or politician, the thinking behind the title rings true this very sad day.

There is something is missing in the analysis of today's tragedy amid the frantic calls for gun control (the gun was legally purchased by the gunman's slain mother). What is needed and indeed imperative is a greater sense of community and communal responsibility. This should be done by people acting as a civil society, and is not a governmental function.

We need to pay attention to our loners, our misfits. We need to ask them how they're doing. People understandably may not want to engage them as friends. Some tragedies may be prevented by a daily kind word from a society that shuns people who don't fit it.

Additionally, as a community we need to have an idea if someone is about to snap badly enough that we witness such an unbearable tragedy. Even though people are highly mobile there needs to be ties that bind. People should have known something about Adam Lanza beyond the ghoulish speculation on websites and social media the morning after. Rather than people being taught they should "mind their own business" people need to be taught the lesson that G-d taught early in Genesis when the Eternal asked Cain where his brother was, and Cain answered with a negative rhetorical question "am I my brother's keeper." The answer is "of course we are."

We have learned, too tragically what happens when we are not.

[Pliny]

A very sad day. Will we ever understand it? We are indoctrinated to treat everyone as equal. We are taught to fear strangers yet most people on the street are strangers.

We definitely have a deficiency in the "science" of the humanities.

[Moonlight Graham]

I agree with jbg, there is something lost in western industrialized societies today about a sense of community. How many neighbours on your street or in our apt. building do you know, or do you talk to more than once a year? I think people are disconnected today, and it's unhealthy because most humans lived within close communities, villages, and large families for most of human history until the industrial revolution increased mobility and turned small towns where everyone knew each other into isolating urban sprawls.

I think people today are extremely isolated. Once you leave high school, a sense of community can often disappear for a person. I remember growing up as a kid and I & my family knew every other family on our street and conversed with them regularly and the kids all played with each other. Now I'd be lucky to wave to a neighbour living 5 doors down in my car as I pass or talk to them once in a blue moon when some kind of emergency happens. Hilary Clinton might think "It Takes a Village to Raise a Child" but we don't live in villages anymore, which is part of the general problem today IMO with high levels of depression and social isolation.

edit: gun-access and mental illness awareness issues also need to be better addressed obviously. I'm also not saying the above was a specific factor in this shooting since we know little details yet, but of these sorts of incidents in general.

Edited December 15, 2012 by Moonlight Graham

[Guest American Woman]

This town did have a sense of community, though.

...this is a place that marks the year with a community tree lighting, an endless Labor Day parade running past the Main Street flagpole in which it's said everyone is either a participant or spectator or both, and an annual fund-raising lobster dinner at one of the five volunteer fire companies.

It's become a bedroom community for commuters to Manhattan and Connecticut's more toney coastal towns, but it has retained the rural character that was set in 1708 ...

"It's still very much a small town in its heart. People really know each other," said Dan Cruson, the town's historian who has written a number of books about Newtown.

http://news.yahoo.co...-011627597.html

Edited to add: From what I've read, Lanza likely got past security

because

he was known.

Edited December 15, 2012 by American Woman

[Pliny]

This is so true Moonlight and that is a sad commentary on society.

But our society is greatly engineered these days. We are less tolerant of differing views. We aren't taught that there can be different views. we are taught that we must all hold the same view and we can't talk to our neighbours because they might disagree. We can anonymously disagree from a distance on an internet forum but we must all be nice and agree on a social level. But all this does not cause us to be senselessly violent to even our own families.

It's time to wake up and not ignore what is obvious. Technologically we are too far behind in the humanities or on a totally wrong tack.

[August1991]

We need to pay attention to our loners, our misfits. We need to ask them how they're doing. People understandably may not want to engage them as friends. Some tragedies may be prevented by a daily kind word from a society that shuns people who don't fit it.

jbg, you may have a point.

Have you noticed that these "lunatics" don't shoot in a senior citizens home? They more often choose a school, or a shopping mall.

Why this choice of venue? If they were truly insane, irrational, they would choose randomly.

Then again, maybe they're not insane at all. There is possibly reason to their madness.

Edited December 15, 2012 by August1991

[Guest Manny]

Some tragedies may be prevented by a daily kind word from a society that shuns people who don't fit it.

Or to just anyone. Why not to anyone and everyone.

[jbg]

Why this choice of venue? If they were truly insane, irrational, they would choose randomly.

Then again, maybe they're not insane at all. There is possibly reason to their madness.

In this case he had been a pupil at the school. He knew the layout and could cause maximum damage without having to study the place first.

[msj]

Or to just anyone. Why not to anyone and everyone.

Written like a true reformed convict.

[August1991]

In this case he had been a pupil at the school. He knew the layout and could cause maximum damage without having to study the place first.

So, according to you jbg, he chose his victims. He was not an irrational lunatic.

(BTW, I disagree with you.)

[Guest American Woman]

We need to pay attention to our loners, our misfits. We need to ask them how they're doing. People understandably may not want to engage them as friends. Some tragedies may be prevented by a daily kind word from a society that shuns people who don't fit it.

People should have known something about Adam Lanza beyond the ghoulish speculation on websites and social media the morning after. Rather than people being taught they should "mind their own business" people need to be taught the lesson that G-d taught early in Genesis when the Eternal asked Cain where his brother was, and Cain answered with a negative rhetorical question "am I my brother's keeper."

Asking a person with personality/social disorders how they are doing is likely going to do nothing to prevent such tragedies. Seriously. It goes way beyond that, much deeper.

People did know that Lanza has some issues, that he was different. That he had problems socializing. So what should the public have done? Should we force counseling on everyone who is 'different?' Because I would imagine that there are a lot of people out there exhibiting the problems that Lanza had, and I think it's safe to say that the vast majority of them will never kill anyone. It seems as if, in hindsight in situations like this, the conclusion is 'something should have been done.' But really, can anyone point to any specifics that should have pointed to public intervention? This is a nation of 312 million people, and among them, there are going to be some people with such problems. Should we treat them all as suspect? What about everyone with Aspergers - are they now suspect?

I'm not shooting down your idea, but I think it's easier said than done - and I think there would be negatives with that approach as well.

[WestViking]

We are, as usual, looking for a pill to make the pain go away. There must be something to prevent this tragedy from happening again.

Our history has many stories of deranged people committing mass murders. Today we are cursed with instant news of the latest horrors but we are still unable to deal with them. Our civil veneer cracks and we realize that Neanderthals lurk just under the surface.

We fear the beast inside us that our civility, decorum and manners may no longer hide one day.

[Guest]

So, according to you jbg, he chose his victims. He was not an irrational lunatic.

(BTW, I disagree with you.)

So, just a lunatic, then, but rational?

He went after the school his Mom was a teacher at. That he went to himself. I still find killing close to thirty people, many of them children, a mite irrational.

That said, the post you quoted did not in any way make the claim you said it did.

[Pliny]

It seems as if, in hindsight in situations like this, the conclusion is 'something should have been done.' But really, can anyone point to any specifics that should have pointed to public intervention?

This person, and most of those who are guilty of these bizarre incidents, had already been pointed out and were intervened with.

What about everyone with Aspergers - are they now suspect?

No. Asperger's disease has a neurological marker. This person was being treated with psychotropic drugs which are not a treatment for Asperger's.

[cybercoma]

No. Asperger's disease has a neurological marker. This person was being treated with psychotropic drugs which are not a treatment for Asperger's.

MK Ultra

Edited December 15, 2012 by cybercoma

[Guest American Woman]

This person was being treated with psychotropic drugs which are not a treatment for Asperger's.

Your source for that information, please?

[Pliny]

MK Ultra

MK Ultra was where a lot of the street drugs like LSD were researched. But MK Ultra was uncovered in the seventies. The problem is more with psychiatric drugs like SSRIs that came out of big pharma in the seventies. You never hear of most of the tragedies from these drugs because big pharma settles them out of court.

[cybercoma]

MK Ultra was where a lot of the street drugs like LSD were researched. But MK Ultra was uncovered in the seventies. The problem is more with psychiatric drugs like SSRIs that came out of big pharma in the seventies. You never hear of most of the tragedies from these drugs because big pharma settles them out of court.

Conspiracy theorists think the government is recruiting operatives and using mind control through psychotropic drugs to get these people to commit violent gun crimes in order to get public support for stripping people of their right to bear arms.

[Pliny]

Your source for that information, please?

Here you go.

http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/912296-medication

I will add also that most of the comorbid symptoms of Asperger's are treated with psychotropic drugs as the cited website also indicates.

The Doctor who discovered the neurological marker for Asperger's, thus taking it out of the broad wastebasket term "Autism" was a Neurologist named Dr. Fred Baughman.

Forgot to add the website!

Edited December 16, 2012 by Pliny

[Pliny]

Conspiracy theorists think the government is recruiting operatives and using mind control through psychotropic drugs to get these people to commit violent gun crimes in order to get public support for stripping people of their right to bear arms.

Conspiracy theorists think the government is recruiting operatives and using mind control through psychotropic drugs to get these people to commit violent gun crimes in order to get public support for stripping people of their right to bear arms.

Those days are gone, along with the MK Ultra program. I'm not certain what, if any, experimentation is going on today. Legislation was instituted to stop such flagrant abuses in human behavioral experimentation from occurring. The truth is that their mind control experiments were all failures anyway.

[cybercoma]

Those days are gone, along with the MK Ultra program. I'm not certain what, if any, experimentation is going on today. Legislation was instituted to stop such flagrant abuses in human behavioral experimentation from occurring. The truth is that their mind control experiments were all failures anyway.

I was sarcastically taking a jab at conspiracy theorists, man. I don't believe that crap.

[Guest Manny]

You don't believe that governments can secretly manipulate things and even commit hidden crimes?

[Guest American Woman]

Here you go.

http://emedicine.med...2296-medication

I will add also that most of the comorbid symptoms of Asperger's are treated with psychotropic drugs as the cited website also indicates.

The Doctor who discovered the neurological marker for Asperger's, thus taking it out of the broad wastebasket term "Autism" was a Neurologist named Dr. Fred Baughman.

Forgot to add the website!

Thanks for the link, I appreciate the information, but I'm asking for a source that confirms that Lanza was "being treated with psychotropic drugs." I've read a lot of speculation, but I have not read that he was being treated with drugs of any kind.

[gunrutz]

So, just a lunatic, then, but rational?

He went after the school his Mom was a teacher at. That he went to himself. I still find killing close to thirty people, many of them children, a mite irrational.

That said, the post you quoted did not in any way make the claim you said it did.

From what i heard this morning his mother had not worked at the school so his motives remain unlcear, in any case I agree with the op, we may think we are moving society in the right direction but perhaps not, or maybe we are and this sort of thing has no real answer or solution, it's a terrbily hollow possibility.

[Pliny]

You don't believe that governments can secretly manipulate things and even commit hidden crimes?

Some individuals maybe but not government in general. People in Government generally believe they are doing the right thing for people. The reason atrocities done by government occur are generally because the majority supported, voted for and got the government they were convinced they wanted.