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Oh please This is not about religion. Why do we need antidepressants, anti anxiety medication among many other medications. Why is the suicide rate so high among teens now. I think it has to do with changes in our environment and changes in the foods we eat.
Maybe, I also think that the family unit isn't as strong as it was even 20 years ago. That sense of family and belonging is important and without it we lose our sense of self worth. (My opinion).
My generation we cared about family. Family, God, Country. We had ideas that grounded us and gave us a sense of purpose and belonging.
I am no Christian and haven't been for a very long time. That said the church isn't the great evil some would make it out to be.
An angry young man. No sense of self worth. No sense of family. No sense of community.
Angry with the world and frustrated. He feels that he doesn't fit in. Someone needs to be punished for it....
No self worth. Low self esteem and he needs to blame someone. Someone needs to be punished for it.
No loyalty to family. He doesn't care what shame or hardship he brings. Who cares what happens to them?
No sense of community, he's just the outsider. No sense of a safe haven, comfort zone. The community needs to be punished.
I am no expert, no shrink, but I have been the one who was bullied and targeted. The difference was I had a strong sense of family. I would never bring shame to my family or harm them in any way. I also played little League Base Ball. I had a sense of community. Our church was about love and everyone was nice to me there. (Community).
Much of America has lost these things. Parents use the TV to baby sit their kids. Kids are not taught to face challenge or to endure loss. Those participation trophies. LOL
Add a new element previous generations never faced. Cyber bullying... Cellphones taking photos at the worst moment and said photo used as a tool to harass.
Do you think we are the only country with kids who are bullied or have mental issues and on prescription drugs....single parents or deadbeat dads. Of course not. But these kids in other countries don’t have the access to guns like our kids have. That is the difference.
Who said he snapped? People often do things with perfectly calculated intent. Just because what they did was wrong or against the law, does not mean they snapped. Some people do things on purpose, zero care of the consequences.
He didn't "snap" or have some kind of breakdown. He has a long history of anti-social, unlawful, and dangerous behavior. You don't have 40+ interactions with the police before age 18 if your brain is in proper working order.
Bullying is an easy scapegoat, but just like with Eric Harris at Columbine, it ignores the history of the perpetrator and tries to gloss over the simple fact that some people are just wired wrong. How his wiring got busted is likely a complex weave of cultural, genetic and environmental factors, but no one single thing flipped a switch in that kid. He was busted from the word jump and one day he got hold of a bunch of weapons and ammunition. Yeah, it's that simple.
Read any/all of the proper psych profiles done on Eric Harris. He wasn't bullied more than other kids. He was actually bullied less and was himself a bully. Read his writings about being G-d, wanting to kill everyone he found to be inferior, which as G-d means everyone period, etc. Harris didn't "snap" and neither did Cruz. They planned and executed some proper evil. We want to believe there's some environmental factor we can dial like a thermostat to prevent this kind of mentally deranged evil, but there isn't. Busted wires, plain and simple.
Cruz did not snap. He's wired for evil, he got away with lots of bad stuff prior to the MSD shooting, and his eventual graduation to that level of evil was inevitable and not some product of mean kids in school. Accept that evil exists simply because it does.
He didn't "snap" or have some kind of breakdown. He has a long history of anti-social, unlawful, and dangerous behavior. You don't have 40+ interactions with the police before age 18 if your brain is in proper working order.
Bullying is an easy scapegoat, but just like with Eric Harris at Columbine, it ignores the history of the perpetrator and tries to gloss over the simple fact that some people are just wired wrong. How his wiring got busted is likely a complex weave of cultural, genetic and environmental factors, but no one single thing flipped a switch in that kid. He was busted from the word jump and one day he got hold of a bunch of weapons and ammunition. Yeah, it's that simple.
Read any/all of the proper psych profiles done on Eric Harris. He wasn't bullied more than other kids. He was actually bullied less and was himself a bully. Read his writings about being G-d, wanting to kill everyone he found to be inferior, which as G-d means everyone period, etc. Harris didn't "snap" and neither did Cruz. They planned and executed some proper evil. We want to believe there's some environmental factor we can dial like a thermostat to prevent this kind of mentally deranged evil, but there isn't. Busted wires, plain and simple.
Cruz did not snap. He's wired for evil, he got away with lots of bad stuff prior to the MSD shooting, and his eventual graduation to that level of evil was inevitable and not some product of mean kids in school. Accept that evil exists simply because it does.
While I think Psychotropic drugs contributed to these kid's eventual psychotic and violent behavior, you are spot on in regards to these kids being sociopaths. Even without the drugs, these kids were crazy crazy crazy. We try to blame society for a bad egg all too often, but some people just aren't right. Anyone that has studied Columbine or read the things that Eric Harris wrote can plainly see that Harris was a time bomb. He was not the poor bullied outcast the media made him out to be 20 years ago. He was actually somewhat of a bully himself as you have pointed out, and popular with the opposite sex almost like a young Ted Bundy.
I think the argument is what exactly constitutes "snapping?" Both Harris and Cruz had the willingness and desire to do what they did long before they did it, which means they never really snapped in a sense; however, at what point did they become psychopathic killers willing to kill? Were they like this from birth, or was it only partly genetic with other contributing environmental factors. I tend to believe there is a good chance that if both of these kids could have made it into their 20's without lashing out in a serious way, they most likely would have became your typical non-violent narcissistic sociopaths that exist in large numbers throughout society.
While I am not blaming the drugs solely, I think they play a big factor in these attacks. I think there are tons of psychotic kids in this country that have both the desire and lack the empathy to do things like this, but I feel like these drugs often push then to the point to where they finally act on their desires. It's almost like how drugs such as cocaine, meth, or alcohol can release the violent tendencies of some individuals, but unlike most recreational drugs, many of these psych meds have far more lasting long-term effects. You don't just sober up from their effects. They seem to permanently change certain people with a particular brain chemistry almost overnight.
My opinion, as a grandmother of a young adopted granddaughter with mental health issues, is that there aren't enough beds in long term care facilities for the children that are already showing violent tendencies, that they just medicate them with different drugs and put them back in the regular classrooms.
I wish it was different. I think the medication is just masking many of the warning signs, while also changing their brains.
Psychotropic drugs just like most school shooters. The kid wasn't even bullied just like the Columbine kids
He was just another kid with some issues that became severely compounded buy mind altering drugs.
Easy access to the weapon he used and a complete failure by LE certainly didn't help prevent the situation, but make no mistake that Psychotropic drugs were what caused him to "snap."
Oh please. Are you a psychiatrist. Otherwise you have no idea what you are talking about. So stop spreading this nonsense
On one hand, it could be a lack of religion. I mean, most religious people have a moral compass that would prevent them from doing such a thing. This isn't to say that religion could have been the answer. This sn't saying that religious people wouldn't kill, either.
Natalie, I think you may have hit on an important point with your remark about suicide.
Why is the suicide rate as high as it is? Could Cruz have been driven to the point of suicide and had planned to never left that school alive? Could he have just said "F" it, and said he was going to take a bunch of people out?
Peer acceptance is a big thing. A lack of being accepted, and insulted regularly, could have been the tipping point.
With no real knowledge, all we can do is speculate. But, I think the natural destination of this conversation should, or could, bring a very likely cause to the forefront again; bullying. At this point, we don't know what the exact cause was but, bullying (as a catch-all term) does seem to fit, even if a very loose fit.
I just find it odd we don't have many answers to so many questions.
ETA: If you look at a lot of the past mass shooters, many of them seem to have been social outcasts. Well, based on physical appearances, at least.
Actually, religion is not good for schizophrenics because they tend to have messianic complexes.
Neither Eric Harris nor Dylan Klebold were on psychotropic drugs, or drugs of any kind, at the time of the shooting.
But they had been and stopped, and that causes big problems. Psychotropic drugs have to be weened off over several months, and they still cause problems. But Harris was a psychopath and would have snapped no matter what. Klebold probably wouldn’t have snapped in that way without the influence of his psychopathic friend.
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This is not about religion. Why do we need antidepressants, anti anxiety medication among many other medications. Why is the suicide rate so high among teens now. I think it has to do with changes in our environment and changes in the foods we eat.
