ITT: We discuss the philosophy behind mass shootings

At least you made an attempt at civilized discussion and not shitposting OP

sorry

I'm just happy to not see everyone saying that these things wouldn't happen if guns weren't available because that seems like the biggest cop out answer going around right now.

Terrorism as norm and acceptable form of political involvement. Nobody is saying it, but everyone can see it. If you want to have a voice, resort to terrorism. Art of discussion is exiting the stage and being replaced by violence.

m=F/a

Or "it's just a mentally ill lone wolf". Well yeah, obviously it's not some kind of organization with a political program, but that doesn't mean there's no meaning to the fact that somebody had a need to do this and not something else.

Mass shootings are not the same as terrorism. Terrorism has a defined political goal and an ideology, which it makes clear in one way or another, usually through attributing the act to some known organization. Mass shootings on the other hand are pure abreaction.

But how does that translate to shooting up a concert instead of pulling a DFW?

You're so civilized that you let muslims terrorize you and wont even consider deporting their asses back to the middle east because that would be a violation of """""""""human rights""""""""""""""

first fart best fart

Man get mad
Man get gun
Man shoot other man for fun

Because that at least achieves something. If everybody who an heros did that instead the world would be a little more interesting.

Within humanity is a need which shows up in people unless they dominate their passions. This need comes first, and is the cause of war, violence, murder, etc. --- war and violence may ostensibly seem to be caused by political and economic reasons, but really it's just the unleashing of this need in undeveloped humans. This need which sometimes shows up in the people is called "the urge to destroy everyone and everything around you." It's a sort of mindless rage. It has existed throughout all recorded human history. This seems to be rising only because the creation of automatic firearms is pretty new thing in human history.

Despite this being a post from the CIA or FBI, I think this is undeniable true.

We've all had times where we thought that existing was so terrible that it simply shouldn't be. For some of us, it may just be a momentary thing after a breakup or when your mother dies, for some people, it's a mental state that may last weeks on end.

>that existing was so terrible that it simply shouldn't be
That's what there are bridges for. It takes quite a fucked up motherfucker to include other people in your little existential crisis.

I doubt it's an "existential crisis" in mass shootings.

Be american
Get shoot

People raised in stable social conditions (in this case, boomers) have an insufficient understanding of the depravities that human beings are capable of. Because of their skewed perspective, they reconstruct society under the false assumption that man is incapable of great evil and they no longer even bother to guard against the tendencies which they mistakenly belief are extinct.

Homicide, parricide, fratricide—these and all other evils are always sleeping within us. Only great saints, after the effort of many years, can say that they have begun to secure themselves against them.(1)

In the context of a world, it takes a great effort to keep them at bay even to the minor degree that society is not completely destroyed; we should never imagine that we can take this precious peace for granted.

(1): I recall a passage from a collection of the sayings of the desert fathers:

After 20 years of continuous prayer, a father proclaimed: “Forgive me, lord, for I haven’t started yet."

All the preceding material is a myth, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not true.

For my part, whenever I felt murderous it was because I received no attention from women and I was no longer able to talk to even a single person about my feelings.

You sound like a faggot

It wouldn't though, some shut in retired in a retirement community with a possibly retarded Filipino GF isn't going to have arms smuggling connections. Regardless of your stance on gun control that isn't really arguable

Or maybe it's precisely the vices that keep any society alive!

Don't rely on secondary sources for the answer. Many mass shooters left behind diaries in which they explicitly outline their motive. Just google the columbine shooters diaries and give them a read. tl;dr (They hate life and humanity and are absolutely miserable and judge existence itself as malevolent and evil)

There are only a few things that lend itself to the exploration of this distinctly American dadaism.

youtube.com/watch?v=rlBuoBV-Sa0

Bingo. This is exactly what mass killers write in their diaries.

"For my part, whenever I felt murderous it was because I received no attention from women and I was no longer able to talk to even a single person about my feelings."

This is accurate. Mass shooters are completely alienated and totally bereft of social success and they resent those who have what they want. They think the successful don't deserve it and everything about life is unjust and all of the injustice falls squarely on them. This fundamentally evil existence is so terrible as to justify capping off people indiscriminately because they are part and parcel of it all.

The conditions of existence compel them to feel justified in murdering anyone. It is certainly an existential evaluation.

The guns he used have been outlawed since 1986 except for FFL holders and military/police - an FFL holder has never committed a mass shooting and registered automatic weapons are used in a negligible number of crimes because of the difficulty in obtaining permits to own them from the ATF, as well as their cost ($10k+).

There's no rise on violence, quite the contrary: we live in one of the most peaceful times in history. The thing is "random acts of violence" will hit a pacified society harder than anything

>The conditions of existence
That doesn't imply "existential" in the sense of "existential crisis". Otherwise we could consider even all sociology and political philosophy as existentialism. What makes them feel justified is their hatred for society i.e. the they're "mad at the world". Completely different from simply questioning the purpose of one's life. In fact, many feel they actually have a strong purpose in their life which is what justifies the act.

It's because we let mental patients run around loose and let them breed like vermin. Mental patients should just be lobotomized, institutionalized, sterilized and left to rot in the nuthouse.

>we live in one of the most peaceful times in history
That's only because war has been spread incredibly thin and everywhere, in homeopathic doses. Besides, how else can you maintain a state of peace but through the general war against anything that could possibly disturb that peace?

Man forces his will onto the world at large. How's that something difficult to understand? I think people unable to get the motivation for killing sprees are seriously lacking in imagination or theory of mind.

I'm sure at some point we'll get a mass shooter who will lash out because of his disgust at the way let mental patients run around loose and let them breed like vermin.

Shooting a large number of randos is a very abstract and impersonal kind of will though. Doesn't seem like they actually want to achieve anything.

Maybe mass shootings are the ultimate stress relief.

Prove that it was a lone pscycho and not an event planned by a larger group with ulterior motives, then we can discuss the psychology.

It was actually an antifa-isis-neonazi conspiracy led by the jews with muslim refugees as financial sponsors and chinese commies as PR agents while the drunk russians provide technical support.

Guys this is not an open question. The people wrote why they did what they did in their diaries which are publicly available to read. These diaries all contain common themes. If you actually care about finding out why they did what they did then go read them, instead of conjecturing and intellectual posturing.

Anger at society + egotism = thinking your own suicide is worth the death of 50+ people

>Doesn't seem like they actually want to achieve anything.

What's the one thing you can't obtain if you don't have success? A legacy. Now he has one.

Terrorism is distinct from independent massacres ala Columbine.

>These diaries all contain common themes.
Care to elaborate?

This, but unironically.

A legacy... of totalitariasm. In a tundra.

what we need to do is start panicking

I'd describe shooting a large number of people as anything but abstract. What do you think motivates people to kill presidents? Or to start violent revolutions? Feminicide? It's easier to ascrive a goal to crimes like these - he hated the president and wanted him gone, his wife cheated on him, etc - but is that really it? I think it all boils down to the lust for power and action and change; there's something infinitely alluring about doing things that reaffirm your will.

>What do you think motivates people to kill presidents?
Jodie Foster?

>I'd describe shooting a large number of people as anything but abstract.
The *will* to do it is abstract in the sense that there is no particular goal or target other than to kill a lot of random people. Obviously the consequences are concrete.

I don't think they're "lashing out at/getting revenge on society" or anything like that, in the case of senseless non-political violence. It's about satisfying the carnal and primal urges of complete and outright destruction that civilization must inherently repress in the individual. That's the root. It's the ultimate act of aggression indulgence. Civilization and the people around them are simply the objects they've been most sternly told they must leave be, so naturally it's what they end up aiming their sights on.

Can you just imagine setting up an M2 Browning on a tripod, doing a few lines of coke in your underwear, and blasting some old rock-and-roll while you go to town? Sounds like a hell of a time

Of course, and I have to imagine that anyone who doesn't admit some sort of appeal in that fantasy is either lying or self-deceived

He says stress is the only commonality, sometimes external and sometimes self induced. Anyone have any other books on the subject? Other than lurid serial killer BS I mean.

Yeah it's appealing until the part where there are people on the other end of that gun.

Well obviously, user.

The guy was a multimillionaire married to an younger woman, played high stakes poker and had a large social circle. His brother told the media he has no history of psychological problems of any kind and no allegiance to any political/ideological party. For all parties involved, he was just another normal dude.

Classic fat fucking burger Logic. I'd rather be attacked by Jihadists every once in a while than my own obese, uneducated citizens on a daily basis. America is a silly, sad, hopeless wasteland without a culture filled with people who should not exist. The world would be a far better place without it.

Baudrillard has written something similar in The Spirit of Terrorism.

>All that has been said and written is evidence of a gigantic abreaction to the event itself, and the fascination it exerts. The moral condemnation and the holy alliance against terrorism are on the same scale as the prodigious jubilation at seeing this global superpower destroyed — better, at seeing it, in a sense, destroying itself, committing suicide in a blaze of glory. For it is that superpower which, by its unbearable power, has fomented all this violence which is endemic throughout the world, and hence that (unwittingly) terroristic imagination which dwells in all of us.

>The fact that we have dreamt of this event, that everyone without exception has dreamt of it — because no one can avoid dreaming of the destruction of any power that has become hegemonic to this degree — is unacceptable to the Western moral conscience. Yet it is a fact, and one which can indeed be measured by the emotive violence of all that has been said and written in the effort to dispel it.

>At a pinch, we can say that they did it, but we wished for it. If this is not taken into account, the event loses any symbolic dimension. It becomes a pure accident, a purely arbitrary act, the murderous phantasmagoria of a few fanatics, and all that would then remain would be to eliminate them. Now, we know very well that this is not how it is. Which explains all the counterphobic ravings about exorcizing evil: it is because it is there, everywhere, like an obscure object of desire. Without this deep-seated complicity, the event would not have had the resonance it has, and in their symbolic strategy the terrorists doubtless know that they can count on this unavowable complicity.

Helplessness
Sadness
Social alienation
Terrible self esteem
Painful unfulfilled romantic longing
Intense envy of those who have what they desire
Profound sense of envy and unfairness
Complete hatred of life itself and resent for being
Craving for acceptance and validation
Fantasies of taking revenge on the unfair structure of being
Feeling of life as a punishment
Seething anger and hatred
Grandiosity
Believing others are stupid and useless and that social conventions are laughable

Basically belief that being is evil, corrupt, sinister, unjust and painful and because it is so evil there is no reason not to enact their rage on anyone they see fit. To spite being itself. That is why they usually kill themselves afterwards too. Just to emphasize how much they really believe life is terrible and pointless. And really how more powerful a way to drive home that message can you imagine?

I understand there will be overlap in the things I have listed and it could be made more concise and precise but I don't have all day to write a scholarly essay on the subject. Go read some diaries and you will see that the themes I've noted are quite apparent.

people used to torture cats to death as a pasttime, we join gangs and stomp eachother, senseless violence is part of higher intelligence

dolphins and chimps just love to maim and destroy, it's will manifesting itself

i don't think there is some root cause, you want a why but there isn't one. it's much more scary that you can't compartmentalize and explain away and rationalize. what if quite simply this dude murdered strangers the same way that a hurricane hit an island. "but that's nature!" no, that just means that you can't comprehend how you could stop this 'natural occurrence.' you think you could go back in time and shoot this guy or give him counselling or ban his weapons. once elon musk invents a weather changing machine it's a moral imperative to save puerto rico

In a few years you're going to be living under a caliphate so enjoy your "culture" while it lasts.

Its basically the ultimate way to take out your rage towards life and humanity. And the thing is, they win in the end. They don't get punished for their actions or have to suffer at all. If you're already going to commit suicide, there's pretty much no downside to taking out others before you die.

Bifo has written a book about mass shooters where he connects the phenomenon to neoliberalism's pressure to become the winner. I think it's simplistic bullshit tbqh.

Banic

Too boring to be true.

My news station just said they wanted to add metal detectors to these places. It's already started friend.

No.

Some people commit acts like this and others do not. People want to know what the differences are between them and therefore what explains them. You completely dodge the question. You could dismiss literally any line of inquiry into any difference in behavior with your logic. It just completely short-circuits any intellectual investigation.

Exactly!

Positively moronic idea. Doesn't surprise methat it is a French intel

how could you both have such convictions—even in your moments of greatest despair—that it would be just to prescribe non-existence for all others? does not your despair unhinge your relations? does not this unmooring of the self undermine your confidence?

F=ma(t)

>French
Italian

Just white male things

>We've all had times where we thought that existing was so terrible that it simply shouldn't be. For some of us, it may just be a momentary thing after a breakup or when your mother dies, for some people, it's a mental state that may last weeks on end.
That's been my mental state for the past couple of years and I still don't get why people do mass shootings

*doesn't surprise me that it was posited by a French intellectual. It has to do with the fundamental torture of having no social status whatsoever and all of the negative emotionality that accompanies that. These sensitivities exist in most animals as most animals organize social hierarchies. It is a problem fundamental to human nature, not to neoliberalism in particular or any culturally adopted principles.

Noted.

it's not an intellectual investigation, it's baseless faith. whether you find THE root cause, or make an informed guess, or fail to find anything at all, the underlying explanation is 'something' (found, assumed, or to-be-discovered, it's there)

stalin's father beat him and so that's why he murdered millions. nothing can change what stalin did, but now we can compartmentalize the abhorrent behavior of a fellow human being. it wasn't MAN, it was trauma. and you can prevent forest fires moving forward by not beating your children and preventing others from doing the same. millions of potential stalins foiled in the developing stages.

what if there's nothing to intellectually investigate? what if this man was always going to shoot and stalin was always going to dictate? what if it was simply a confluence of events?

yes, i am dismissing the inquiry full stop, because the fact that there is an inquiry implies there is something to find. blind faith that there is a reason.

Because you still blame yourself instead of seeing the systemic causes. I'd say anyone with a good sociological intuition has a potential to become a mass shooter.

Suck my dick europoor, you couldn't even invade a bus station bathroom

>system causes
also my problems are undeniably 100% my fault

it sucks but w/ever

>stalin's father beat him and so that's why he murdered millions.
This is what happens when pop-psychologists become historians.

should there be a IQ, morality, and psychological well being test to decide if you should be allowed to live?

>stalin's father beat him and so that's why he murdered millions
Is THIS the dumbest thing ever said on Veeky Forums?

we will ask people if they believe IQ is an accurate measure of intelligence. If they say yes, we draw and quarter them using four Ford F-250s.

I support this.

>t. IQ

do you guys read posts or just react to key phrases?

...

Because they simply just do not care at all about, anything they just want to be violent towards others before they off themselves. It's a caged tiger suicidal mentality. All these shooters badly want to die but they want to externalize their hatred first. It sounds like you haven't hit peak apathy and rage yet. If you're going to die, and you hate the world and everyone in it, then why not take out a few before you go? Your name and actions will go down in history. It's the final, pyrrhic, victory. The shooter won.

Yeah, keep reading Mike Hollebitch. Not going to happen. You're living in a Randian nightmare and you'll probably get shot in the face while reading Atlas Shrugged in a coffee shop. Your country is shit and an embarrassment to western civilization.

What ghe fuck is going on in this thread

just react to key phrases

You are conflating understanding motivation with blaming environment for actions.

It is the only genuine counter-cultural expression and the only living art form in late modernity.

>hurr durr I measure my individual worth my country's military prowess.

Get the corn syrup out of your ears, lose some weight, and realize that you're being deeply oppressed by "freedom" memes.