|
|
|
beskeptigal
SFN Die Hard
USA
3834 Posts |
Posted - 04/24/2007 : 03:42:02 [Permalink]
|
Mentally ill people are a bit harder to care about or empathize with because of things like this murderous rampage. They can be dirty and ugly and they don't often get better. It might be hard not to feel they are such poor examples of the human species we might be better off without them. But think about that and ask yourself why you have empathy for someone with all the other defects people can have, yet when that defect is with the brain, it differs. That isn't right.
When you've seen people who have lined their houses with tin foil literally, or swallowed a bed sheet or castrated themselves you do at least realize they are ill and not living in the real world. Some people just shouldn't be held responsible for psychotic delusions. It makes no sense.
I didn't have any sympathy or empathy for Harris and Klebold. And it makes you ponder where you should draw the line and why. But when you get to the end of the spectrum where Cho clearly was, you are looking at a person whose brain is seriously malfunctioning. I really don't think a lot of people comprehend that, especially considering the news coverage has focused on evil and revenge motives. The reporters want to make this about something other than what it is about. They want a motive. The fact that motive is irrelevant, a fantasy, a delusion, gets lost between the psychiatrist who recognizes Cho's symptoms immediately upon seeing the recordings and writings, and what the reporter wants to hear. So the psychiatrist's diagnosis gets honorable mention, but the reporter moves on and the prize focus of the story goes instead to the reasons the reporter is looking for, because that's what the pattern is supposed to be. It's supposed to be revenge for relentless teasing of an outcast. Mental illness is merely one more opinion, no better or worse than the opinion Cho represents evil and the loss of prayer in school or whatever claim is made. The tragedy moves on to blame liberals who fought for patient's privacy rights to conservatives who refuse any gun regulations claiming each and every one is a slippery slope. All the while every story dilutes the facts. It was a serious mental illness, not merely a creep with a personality disorder.
They can't even get the blame right. All the attention is paid to whether or not the university notified the students of some nebulous threat sooner than they did. And some attention is paid to why being evaluated for suicidal risk didn't trigger a system alert a year later when a gun was being purchased. Can you imagine what the gun rights people would say if everyone who had a court ordered psych eval lost the right to buy a gun?
Have you seen a single news report that said the university had not implemented any of the FBI task force recommendations on preventing school shootings? See any reports that asked which other schools or school districts have also not implemented the recommendations? Has there been any news coverage of the need to monitor adult paranoid schizophrenics for ongoing risk of deteriorating and becoming a risk to themselves or others the same way we might monitor someone on parole or keep tabs on a sex offender? There's been reports on why nothing happened when Cho was seen by various agencies/people but nothing on the fact people's conditions change over time.
Anyway, the abuse in his head you speak of was there by way of a combination of defective genes and some environmental factor that triggered the illness. If it was there because of abuse, then I say, once you grow up, abuse or not, now you are responsible. How can you find someone responsible who's brain was completely misfiring?
|
| Edited by - beskeptigal on 04/24/2007 03:45:08 |
 |
|
|
Siberia
SFN Addict
Brazil
2322 Posts |
Posted - 04/24/2007 : 07:15:09 [Permalink]
|
| This reminds me of a time when a medicine student from one of our finest universities took a gun to a theater (which was in a mall) and started shooting during the Fight Club movie. There were about 30 something people hurt, but only one or two died, from what I recall. The media, naturally, focused on the guns situation and the movie's content - though, to be fair, they did interview the guy. He, too, had serious mental problems - he was paranoid to an extreme, he saw things, he was obviously ill. But nobody realized that until it was too late... |
"Why are you afraid of something you're not even sure exists?"
- The Kovenant, Via Negativa
"People who don't like their beliefs being laughed at shouldn't have such funny beliefs."
-- unknown
|
|
|
|
HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
Posted - 04/24/2007 : 15:16:53 [Permalink]
|
B., I have empathy for most mentally ill people, and philosophically for them as a class. As the saw goes, some of my best friends are crazy. It was Cho I specifically don't have empathy for. I certainly do support mental health efforts that may help to protect both the mentally ill and the public.
But Cho? I'm just glad he'll never kill again.
|
“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
|
|
 |
|
|
|
VA Tech: evil, fear, good ol' days, & other myths
