OT: parenting and the santa barbara shooter

[SK in CV]

[quote=Blogstar]If the father is the director of hunger games how can anyone rule out fucked up family and low values?[/quote]

He was the AD. Still financially highly successful under most metrics, but not nearly as high profile. And I think I read somewhere AD for 2nd unit. His parents were divorced and he lived with his mother, who didn’t have near the financial means as his father. Maybe if he’d grown up in south central, his brain would have miraculously healed itself.

[scaredyclassic]

Not clear he was mentally ill. Seems like asperges, social anxiety disorder and a caricatured but not non mainstream views on material goods and hot chick’s coupled with extreme sexual insecurity and easy access to guns just set him off on a suicidal mission.

[NotCranky]

[quote=SK in CV][quote=Blogstar]If the father is the director of hunger games how can anyone rule out fucked up family and low values?[/quote]

He was the AD. Still financially highly successful under most metrics, but not nearly as high profile. And I think I read somewhere AD for 2nd unit. His parents were divorced and he lived with his mother, who didn’t have near the financial means as his father. Maybe if he’d grown up in south central, his brain would have miraculously healed itself.[/quote]
If he had grown up in south central we would be blaming his absentee father, his
welfare mom and his culture…not his brain. But we can’t do that when it is people like us. It is a huge disservice to humanity to blame the only the brain therefore the individual. It’s easier to unravel when you deal with all the causes rather than shut out what we don’t like to see.

[scaredyclassic]

Is it OK to thank soldiers for their services while not agreeing that much of the effort has anything to do with freedom? Can one be appreciative that there are idealistic kids who want to help their country and sad that the military industrial complex arguably hijacked the nation and their willingness to serve their country. as pres. Eisenhower warned us.

It does seem odd that cnn, which runs perpetual promilitary stories ran out of steam on Memorial day.

[NotCranky]

I joined the military , put myself on medical hold when I was 19 and got a free year of very expert counseling. I didn’t come from a good family so I had to do it all myself.
No one ever told me it was my brain only….my family came up quite a bit. I bet all of our kids families come up quite a bit if they are lucky enough to not to have had mommy and daddy, and the only shrinks mommy and daddy will allow blame it all on their brains for their whole lives.

[NotCranky]

Saw one headline, “Dad Blames Son…Rodgers” Yeah , they do that a lot….nothing but the kids brain….move along now.

[NotCranky]

First sign of trouble when they enter school, put em on drugs and tell them it’s all their fault, some syndrome, the system will go along with it, …carry on with your expectations for them and perhaps spoil them if you have the money, but don’t worry about anything real, it will all work out and if it doesn’t, it’s all the kids fault.

[Jazzman]

Isn’t the most important thing here that many people lost their lives. The next thing that stands out is that he was seeking psychiatric help, but was still able to buy semi-automatic weapons. However disturbed he was, his actions seem very disproportionate, and copycat in nature. He comes across on his videos as being melodramatic to the point of delusional. But none of that really matters. His actions do, and that he was able to do them.

[spdrun]

Many people seek the services of a psychiatrist. Unless the psychiatrist reports them as dangerous to themselves or others, the government can’t just take away their civil rights (like it or not, the 2nd Amendment is considered a civil right) because they made an appointment with a professional.

However, something was broken in the reporting structure that no action beyond a welfare check was taken in response to threatening videos posted online.

[zk]

[quote=Blogstar]
If I knew my kids had a really fucked up brain I might not put his spoiled little ass in a BMER and send him off to college where he can suffer and fuck some people up. Denial runs in good families, I guess.[/quote]

Some of the time, Russ, you seem to be saying that we shouldn’t blame it on his brain, and here you seem to be saying that it’s possible that his brain was f’d up, and the parents screwed up by sending him off to college where he could be a danger.

I’m curious about your opinion on mental illness. Do you deny that it exists, or do you deny that it could be at least partially genetic, or do you deny neither? I’d like to engage you in a discussion on the topic, but knowing your opinion on this is essential to starting it.

[NotCranky]

I am responding to comments , which should not be construed as wanting to have a professional style debate about mental illness. However, I will answer your question. Mental illness exists, yes. People can also do these kinds of murder rampages or alternatively commit suicide in isolation, without genetic predisposition to mental illness and some possibly have genetic predisposition to a serious degree and be pretty cool, though I don’t know them personally or it hasn’t been revealed.

[joec]

The thing that stood out to me (from the comments above) is the parents were divorced and he lived with his mom.

I don’t know about some of the other parents of little boys here, but I can see why some “moms” can have a tough time with rough boys and think dads don’t take the crap from little boys as much as moms (again, there ARE ALWAYS SOME MOMS WHO ARE TOUGHER TOO)…

since they were little boys themselves once (the dads).

Online articles are conflicting on both sides, but I don’t think many people will say raising a boy in a 1 parent household is better than 2 parents…

I don’t think it’s the parent’s fault this happened, but the environment just isn’t ideal and sounds like he had issues with no where to turn…I don’t doubt more and more mental issues arising from the poor economy.

[Jazzman]

[quote=spdrun] the government can’t just take away their civil rights (like it or not, the 2nd Amendment is considered a civil right) because they made an appointment with a professional.
[/quote]
Why not? He was seeing a psychiatrist and owned guns. He went and murdered six people. It seems a bit more that mere reporting failures here.

[zk]

[quote=Blogstar]
Having to have the hottest girls or hate them is a value system. [/quote]

I don’t agree with that. A value system says, “I value hot girls.” It might also say, “If I don’t have them, I’ll be miserable.” Having to have them or hate them is, IMHO, not a value system, but rather an inability to cope with not getting what you want. I see that as a personality flaw, not a value-system flaw.

Do you think his dad taught him, “If you can’t have hot girls, then hate them”?

You seem a bit upset at the attribution of his violence to mental illness. It seems that what upsets you is the reflexive assumption that he has mental illness and your perception that the parents aren’t being given any blame. But I don’t think that saying he has mental illness immediately and completely absolves the parents of any blame.

In watching his video and reading his manifesto (I’m only on page 40), he seems to have a very strong sense of entitlement. This, to me, seems to be at the root of the problem. Where does that sense of entitlement come from? It seems to have been so strong from such an early age that it’s hard to completely pin it on the parents.

Anybody with more than one kid knows that they come into the world different from each other. Isn’t it possible that some come into the world so different that no amount of parenting will save them? And isn’t it possible that some people come into the world such that only massive, super-high-quality intervention will save them? And then all the way up the spectrum to a genetic makeup such that only a really bad upbringing will ruin them and even to nothing can really turn them bad? And can parents of the only-saved-by-massive-intervention kids really be blamed if they tried their best and their kids turned out killers anyway?

Your three kids are all different from each other, as you’ve said. But they’re different in normal ways. I think that’s more luck than you realize it is. You’re teaching them to deal with life given their own unique personalities. That’s what good parents do. But I get the feeling that you aren’t really willing to accept the probability that some kids are just born f’d up beyond repair, or beyond the abilities of their parents to repair.

[CA renter]

I’ve seen kids who were born pure evil, and no amount of parenting or psychiatry would be able to save them. But I think that this type of entitlement mentality — including the belief that one is entitled to sex with beautiful women — is largely learned. But that learning can come from the parents, peers, the media, the larger social network, etc.

Asperger’s certainly didn’t help his cause, either.

One thing I will say is that his videos, the calls from his mother and psychiatrist, etc. should have warranted a bit more than a visit from police. They should have made sure that he didn’t have access to guns at that point (though he killed a number of people without a gun, too…something to keep in mind).

[Author]

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