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A question has been started (and I totally agree), should the carnage of the latest (and previous shootings) be publicly shown? [phillymag.com]

JackPedigo 9 June 3
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1

Absence of understanding is central to how and why these and other atrocities are growing in frequency and depravity. That fostering deficiency doesn't belong to perpetrators, but the public at large. Two primary facts underpinning these terrible events aren't given proper attention and they're huge clues that can lead to discovery of many of the secondary causes, none of which, incidentally, are related to the instruments of murder and mayhem.

Fact #1 relates to worsening over time; not a decade or two, but a much longer duration. The many decades long, gradual increase screams at us that, like other sicknesses, instead of correcting or erasing them, we're fostering them. There is no such thing as 'a pound of cure' to block this accelerating problem. It will require tons of cure aimed at the sources!

Fact #2 can't be any clearer These crimes (school specific) are committed by men; usually Caucasian and young. Other mass murders are an adjacent but obviously related issue. The racial aspect shouldn't carry nearly as much significance because our population is overwhelmingly white, but I think it still remains a valuable clue.

Little, if any courage, let alone reasoning power, is being mobilized to eliminate causes. That 'take' isn't some misguided excuse-making, trying to avoid necessary attention to a vital question of who's right to weapon possession deserves liberty of exercise suspended or forbidden. Constructive and destructive actions have causes. Yes, actions are required to mitigate destructive potential at least in temporary terms, but an oft used example of an upstairs bathtub overflowing clarifies. Mop and squeegy? Oh yes, vigorously! However, if the flow isn't stopped upstairs, the problem will remain and damage will increase.

To terminate a life, human or animal, is extremely discomforting; less so if survival or well being are 'on the line'. Harboring sentiments to harm or kill indiscriminately is but one of a host of symptoms, all of which point to emotional separation phenomena. Culturally, we boys are conditioned to this as part of our sexual role identity, allegedly as a sign of strength. To do what is perceived to be necessary and overcoming emotional resistance, relatively healthy character must 'separate' from and overpower instinctual distaste in order to kill. Thought of it alone, not only creates frightening anxiety, but deep, penetrating regret and loss of some high regard for self, after the fact. I know, this personally and my duties only pertained to animals. A person who derives any type of satisfaction or pleasure in such acts possesses a sick and potentially dangerous character structure.

Our 'civilization' manufactures sick character structures. Except for bombs, it is what our nation produces best! Fortunately, those damaged to an extent that they commit atrocities like school shootings and other 'mass murders' are still a small and often detectable minority. They are growing, however, and we as a people have a choice in how to correct it.

Our choice has always been there to use human properties, physical and functional, of mind and reasoning. If we don't stop what we're doing to create these people, recent history has proven that more bitter tragedies are on the way. Prevention is only to be found at the primary source. Thinking requires more than mind, though without mind all is lost. It demands the courage to 'follow findings' where they lead. This, because those of us who've survived the gauntlet of becoming civilized , are far greater in number and comfort than the deeply, sometimes permanently damaged. 'The comfortable' possess superb sub-conscious radar, detecting in advance (like lesser addicts) discomforting assertions about our way of life. They too, in their comfort, have also been harmed in development (nobody gets away free). No matter whom, you or I or our parents or progeny; we have all sustained pathogenic thwarting of primary drives to some extent. We survivors developed personal survive and thrive tactics that worked and in less severe developmental environments by and large. "So, we're okay, what the Hell's wrong with THEM?" We apply a falsely founded moralistic question like 'who farted' to those who could only consume the left-over beans and cabbage...

As with just about any kind of trauma, physical or psychic, females of our kind are stronger, more resilient and immensely better equipped to survive and 'carry-on' with demands of our pathogenic social organization. Males? Well, we pay dearly in many ways for those androgens turning us into what we are at about ten weeks into this life. We're endowed with many, often tragically misused, abilities that are called 'superior' only in a few narrowly defined sets of circumstances; for the good of and survival of the family, tribe, etc. of course.

My reason for commenting here isn't to try presenting a solution. Lack of herd courage keeps it just out of reach. It is to point to the fear instilling road not traveled because our dilemma demands brave questioning of so many principles we hold as dear as they are seriously in error.

Many participating here have managed to overcome what I call existence in 'the theological brine' but many disappointingly consider residues worth preserving until a new brine can be found or mixed'; a new, perhaps secular, salvation racket can favorably coat their skin and continue insulation from raw realities.

Theologies, incidentally, share something meaningful with Fact #2. Their sourcing and execution remain exclusively male dominated. Good clues shouldn't go to waste.

Silver1wun Level 7 June 4, 2022

Shielding the results of the carnage only allows the enablers to continue push their narrow view. To me I see a lot of anger and frustration going around. Millennials are experiencing a high suicide rate because many feel there is no life for them (and they are right). I totally believe many who commit suicide and are angry try to take others with them and we have ample evidence for this. People (mostly men) get a sense of being able to express their rage before ending it for themselves. The only reason politicians are on board support the carnage is that they receive money from the industries involved in manufacturing the weapons.

@JackPedigo The other side of that political 'coin' is the value of such events in gaining votes via pandering to those with a purely emotional, short-cut reaction of legislation while ignoring the causes.

Suicides are symptomatic of the same frustrations caused by being born with a set of instinctually programmed 'expectations', into a world that has erased and forbidden practically everything that nurtures those instincts. They are far too numerous to include in an informal opinion section. One recent example is, however, a shortage of baby formula.

Baby 'formula' has only been with our kind for about 160 years; readily, market available for about 100. We are mammals but appear to have even forgotten THAT, in this sick existence comprised of artifice everywhere one looks.

@Silver1wun So a part of the reply concerned a lack of a particular resource. It is a well known fact the when resources become hard to get people start to compete and place others in categories, deserving and not-deserving. Women, children and outsiders go to the bottom of the list. However there is another aspect which I posted a few days ago. It's about who is able to get into and thrive in politics.

”The late Professor Albert Bartlett, Professor of Physics at the University of Boulder, Colorado, wrote a book called The Essential Exponential for the Future of our Planet, with a chapter called “Democracy Cannot Survive Overpopulation.” When he moved to Boulder in 1950, the population was 20,000. There were 9 city councilors. By the time he was writing, Boulder’s population had grown to 100,000, and there were still 9 councilors. He wrote: “in effect today we have only 20% of the democracy we used to have in 1950,” because it is harder for the individual to get access to a representative. Professor Bartlett said the massive increase in electorate sizes for members of Congress made it impossible for them to personally represent their constituents. They ended up getting their campaign support, and ideas, from lobbyists and well-funded propagandists. “As a result,” he wrote, “we often get one dollar one vote versus what used to be one person one vote.” There is a crowding out effect, and people become alienated.”

@JackPedigo You cite valid, typical points on similarities between democracies and how they ultimately devolve back to the original forms of human gfovernment since the advent of male domination and conquest.

Democracy does not work and we've known that for millennia while still trying it over and over again. All forms of government, including self-government, ultimately decay into the strong man tyranny. This, because of something 'under the radar' that goes unconsidered.

If we want freedom and successful, egalitarian self-government, we must change the human character structure formed in the fascist family structure. It is the psychological 'safe-zone', born of the real or ideal father figure, provider and owner of all; the omnipotent overseer who passes judgment on and permission for everything that takes place. This is the human (unconscious) safe security zone. It is the father who loves us and will take care of us. Bill, George, Barack, Donald or Joe; it matters not. Each successive consolidation of power assures an ass to ultimately become our 'protector', our hero, our salvation.

@Silver1wun My uncle was German and grew up under the strict male dominant hierarchical system. I knew other Germans who were sent to prison camps and all said when they learned about the democratic system it was a revelation. There are different forms of government and in much of Europe the central government has more control over what is said, publicly and the power of business. That has helped maintain some semblance of a democratic system. Here, as I quoted, more and more it is being controlled by the business whose job it seem to be to deregulate the federal system.

@JackPedigo " She stated the problem exactly.

@JackPedigo

@JackPedigo My focus isn't on who specifically degrades self-government. It is on how it happens and has happened for over 6,000 years of male dominance, ownership and conquest.

Plato also stated correctly that a tyrant 'ALWAYS first appears as a protector'.

The promises of protection/salvation always appeal to the melancholic craving of the nascent 'safe-zone', motivated by promises of Paradise by any name. The price is always paid in abdication of our reasoning and loyalty in return for 'pie' that never comes.

One other favorite example is part of my profile. Alice (in Wonderland) inquires about why there isn't jam if its supposed to be 'jam every other day', to which the Queen replies that 'today is not another day'.

Theological and ideological rackets work that way. Sad news to face, but true, that until we return to our natures as Nature herself has given us instinctually we have no reason to expect anything other than newer forms of self-destruction destruction or inescapable tryanny.

Call them what you will; corporations, charismatic saviours equipped with this or that map to Utopia. The masses are afflicted, all of us by degrees, with the desire for 'somebody else to do it'.

@Silver1wun We all are responsible for degrading the self-governance movement. Once we start to produce more offspring than can be supported then nature takes over. The hunter-gatherer societies learned their lifestyle could support only so many of us and tried to limit their progeny to 2 or replacement level. The advent of agriculture sealed our fate.

1

I've been thinking about this too, and I believe it should be made public.

BitFlipper Level 8 June 3, 2022
0

Well programmed the public is.

Oldman51 Level 7 June 3, 2022
1

One of the main things that turned opinion on the Vietnam War was nightly footage......

AnneWimsey Level 9 June 3, 2022
2

This is the first photo of American war dead during WW2 that most American saw of their own dead. Here is LIFE magazine’s reason for publishing the photo.

“Here lie three Americans [the editorial began].
What shall we say of them? Shall we say that this is a noble sight? Shall we say that this is a fine thing, that they should give their lives for their country?
Or shall we say that this is too horrible to look at?
Why print this picture, anyway, of three American boys dead upon an alien shore? Is it to hurt people? To be morbid?
Those are not the reasons.
The reason is that words are never enough. The eye sees. The mind knows. The heart feels. But the words do not exist to make us see, or know, or feel what it is like, what actually happens. The words are never right. . . .
The reason we print it now is that, last week, President Roosevelt and [Director of the Office of War Information] Elmer Davis and the War Department decided that the American people ought to be able to see their own boys as they fall in battle; to come directly and without words into the presence of their own dead.
And so here it is. This is the reality that lies behind the names that come to rest at last on monuments in the leafy squares of busy American towns.”

WORDS ARE NEVER ENOUGH.

Sierra4 Level 8 June 3, 2022

Compare that with the banning of even coffins returning from 'W's' war in Iraq. Typical republican, they want to hide all the unpleasantries.

2

That's probably what the perpetrators would like. As much as I would like to think the intention is to highlight the unnecessary horror of the spectacle and push GOP members to finally enact strict (or even just SOME) controls, I suspect they've already demonstrated how likely they are to do so. They're too well paid to work against those interests. In the end, you end up rewarding the shooters and putting the families through it all over again, every time the media puts it on loop.

I agree. We don't understand the mindset of people motivated by violence. They aren't repulsed by the same things that normal people find horrific. And seriously, this would be torture to bereaved families.

So who cares if the perpetrators get some sort of glee out of this. The idea is to motivate the overwhelming majority and to show them this could happen to their kids.

@JackPedigo My point was that the GOP has already show to not give a flying fuck about legislation to curb gun violence, so you advance this naive notion of showing the carnage in the hope of persuading those you know you won't persuade and end up harming those who have already been harmed. Sounds like a net loss to me.

@chalupacabre Again, the overwhelming majority want change. Showing carnage will motivate more to stop saying they care into action. There are members of the GOP who feel it is time to start restricting gun access.

2

I concur with the other responders...I'm glad the media on such hate crimes has been limited...I feel we talk enough about it...and apparently we continue to tolerate the killing.

Robecology Level 9 June 3, 2022

@Garban

I'm honored.

4

Only if the families approve.

5

Anything that might drive the point home works for me, if the families are agreeable.

We don't need to look any further for our next mass shooter than anyone who doesn't value human life over firearm possession.

LovinLarge Level 8 June 3, 2022
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