Compilation post -- National Day of Silence, VTech, Hiatus.

[fickle_goddess]

1. Today is National Day of Silence. I went to class, though nearly didn't due to fatigue and bad sleep, and spoke up plenty -- then realized during the mid-class break that it was the Day of Silence and I should have kept quiet. Damn. I hope you guys are doing a better job of observing it than I am.

2. VTech shooting tragedy happened on Monday. I

Comments

[fickle_goddess]

I thought that since the guy was going into classrooms and killing people, it was more about the university shooting than mass shooting. But yeah, he apparently hated rich kids and named people that he believed were out to get him, so I'd say paranoid, maybe.

He actually was told to get help and sent for counselling by a teacher, but apparently didn't go. He also had a history of stalking girls, and was banned from some of his classes. So it's not that he was going completely unnoticed or uncared for. People did pick up on the oddities of his behavior, did try to get him to help, and it didn't work anyway.

As for psycho freak, meh. I wasn't really serious about wanting people who go on killing sprees to not have any of the same interests as me, but I do think it's insane to just kill at random. If he'd shot only the girl who rejected him and her friend, then yes, I'd think that was still an awful thing to do, but it would make more sense to me.

Opening fire on a classroom full of people, then going away, coming back and shooting them again, then going away a second time and returning to shoot through the door when he realized that the students were leaning against to keep him out of the room -- I seriously do think that's psychotic. There's just such a level of malice there; he's so determined to kill them all and keeps coming back.

Plus, it was premeditated. He sent all that stuff to NBC, the videotapes and manifesto and photographs, so it isn't like he had a sudden snap. He'd been planning this. And to sit down, plan to randomly kill fellow human beings that you don't even know and can't have a grudge against... Psychopath. I'm sorry, but psychopath. Schizophrenic or paranoid, maybe, but my immediate impression towards that sort of indiscriminate slaughter is to think that the guy is absolutely insane.

[ceresi]

Well, if it was premeditated, it probably wasn't schizophrenia, since most schizophrenics suffer a severe lack of volition and ability to follow through on their plans, which is why you see so many of them living in boxes and muttering about the government instead of going on shooting sprees. On the other hand, there are dozens of similar disorders that leave people delusional enough to kill dozens of innocents that they don't know.

And psychopath/sociopath is an actual clinical term, and is used to refer to someone with antisocial personality disorder, which this kid clearly didn't have. My point was that yeah, he was insane, that's the sad part. He was as much a victim of his insanity as the thirty people he killed. He committed murder, yes, planned it and was ruthless and vicious about it, yes, but all of that was because he was ill. With anti-psychotic medication, hospitalization, and therapy, he could have lived a mostly normal life in which he would have been no harm to anyone.

I can understand loathing what he did, but to write him off as "absolutely insane" is unfair. Not just to him, but to everyone who has struggled with and persevered against a severe mental disorder, as preachy as I know that sounds. :\ And I think I'm done ranting now, but whatever.