generalspeaking

The Pathology of Raging Psychosis

People become disturbed, mentally unbalanced, and chaos ensues as they go off on a rage-filled rampage and commit mass brutalities. It is seen in China, and in Japan, although for both countries these episodes of people running amok and causing great harm to their communities, killing innocent people, are anomalies of rare proportion. And then there is the Unites States of America, a civil country with laws and a stern justice system and where people certainly know right from wrong.

All countries have large portions of their populations where poverty exists. Ignorance, rejection of an education system lives in comfort with poverty. But what appears most alienating has not that much to do with ignorance and poverty, but with the lack of roots, a social touchstone, the warmth of an extended family whose members care about one another and their welfare. Even small communities of people, as towns once were assumed to be; irritatingly nosy about everyone else's affairs, but concerned for them as well.

Those social comforts appear to have dissipated. As religious devotion and church attendance has fallen, and the nuclear family has shrunk, and people transport themselves elsewhere to look for employment because in the last few decades unemployment has grown, people become divorced from one another's well-being. And then there is the issue of easy availability of firearms. Guns and rifles that aid and assist a mad mind in its mission to destroy.

If any country fits that description quite readily, it appears to be the United States of America. Where, in the last several decades, it has become a commonplace, deplorable event that an individual or several acting together, are so introverted and anti-social, finding no comfort anywhere within their society, full of resentment and anger, their unhinged minds finding no solace anywhere, finds enemies everywhere. And embark on shooting sprees that leave a community utterly devastated.

Almost every community now has an emergency routine down fairly pat, to respond to the horror of a mass-shooting incident. Police "active shooter" squads are now the first-responders alongside ambulances. People with a lethal grudge, plan a demented revenge. Like the latest Washington Navy Yard shooter, a man undergoing psychiatric evaluation and presumably therapy, who reported his fear of people talking to him through the walls and ceilings of his hotel rooms, sending microwave vibrations into his body preventing him from sleeping.

Gunman Aaron Alexis, once a naval reserve officer, more latterly a contract IT specialist, visited the Sharpshooters Small Arms Range on Saturday, rented a rifle, bought bullets and practised his aim. He then bought a shotgun and 24 shells; the shotgun he had with him when he entered a secure building on Monday with a still-valid pass though he had been discharged and was undergoing mental health treatment from Veterans Affairs since August.

A guard stands outside the gate to the Washington Navy Yard on Sept. 17 in Washington, D.C. Thirteen people, including the gunman, were killed during a shooting at the facility a day earlier.  H. Darr Beiser, USA TODAY

After he shot a dozen people, civilians working at the Navy Yard, he was fatally shot by a responding police officer after a shoot-out with the police. His grieving mother has apologized to the public and particularly to those families whose loved ones were killed by her son. She mourns his death, but has comfort in the thought he can no longer hurt anyone. That he did hurt anyone was a surprise to the chief monk at the Wat Busayadham-mavanaram meditation centre in Fort Worth, Texas, where Aaron Alexis regularly meditated.

The meditation did nothing to allay his inner rage, giving him no peace and comfort in a world that seemed devoid of reason to him. When all along it was his own reason that had flown, and that had escaped his notice.

"This is a collective phenomenon. It's about American society and American culture", says Jack Levin, professor of criminology at Northwestern University in Boston, whose special interests for the past 30 years has been the study of mass murders.The trigger for mass murder, claims Professor Levin, can be traced to "the eclipse of community, the decline of neighbourhoods, the reduction in the communal aspects of everyday life".

Job loss, not much of a social welfare net, no universal health care, no financial assistance. "That's why most of these mass killers are middle-aged males. At the very time in their lives when they feel they should reach the pinnacle of success, they are instead sliding downhill fast. Their final gesture is to open vengeful fire on American society. So that is part of American culture."

Labels: Atrocities, Human Relations, Social Failures, Social-Cultural Deviations, United States

posted by Pieface @ Wednesday, September 18, 2013