Am I blaming the victims of the VA Tech shooting? No. I’m blaming the guy who picked up the gun and shot them. He did what he did; what he chose to do, but after, hearing about his experience in high school, seeing his videos and reading among his words “You made me do this,” I almost think he was shooting at everyone who’d ever mistreated him, or that he perceived as mistreating him; as well as those who laughed at the bullying, saw it but did nothing about it, or even approved of it.
I’m also saying that we as a people, as a society, have to stop our part in supporting the social systems and conventions that end up creating people like Cho and the others. Or, as Amy Traub said, “our attempt to understand doesn’t end with the casting of moral blame,” but with recognizing that there are things we can do, things we can change about our culture and our society if we choose too, that i help prevent more tragedies like this one. If that’s what we want.
Autism Vox -- On Some Comments about Cho Seung-Hui (lengthy comments on this post too):
Mention of Cho Seung-Hui possibly being autistic has been circulating on the internet throughout this week. Some charged exchanges have arisen on some blogs in regard to this; fears have been expressed about what such a connection—-of autism to what happened at Virginia Tech on Monday—might mean for the public perception of autism, and of autistic people in particular.
Respectful Insolence -- Vaccines caused the Virginia Tech rampage? (Via Autism Vox):
Never mind that blaming autism for the rampage is bad enough, but Moses has to compound the vileness by implying that vaccines can turn children into killers. Never mind that there is no good evidence that the mercury in thimerosal in vaccines in any way contributes to the development of autism or autism spectrum disorders. Never mind that the latest statistics from, for example, California show no decrease and, indeed, a continued increase, in its autism caseload in 3-5 year olds in the first quarter of 2007, now four years since thimerosal was removed from all childhood vaccines other than the flu vaccine, when by now, if mercury causes autism, we should have seen a huge decrease in the caseload. Never mind that there's lots of other evidence that shows no link between vaccines and autism.
MindFreedom -- I was a college student "mental patient":
As with any overwhelming tragedy, I'm also worried about what is waiting in the wings. We here at MindFreedom are pro-choice about people's choice to take psychiatric drugs, and when I was in college at one point i begged for antidepressants. However, after any major catastrophe, people experiencing prolonged despair and trauma and overwhelm and extreme differences and passion within this highly-conformist society... can end up on drugs, drugs, drugs, drugs, drugs, drugs, drugs, and more drugs, for years, decades and even life, all without adequate advocacy, information and alternatives.
The immensity, intensity and volume of the tsunami of psychiatric drugs hitting our young people -- both in and out of school -- is so outrageous, so potentially devastating, that it amounts to the Greenhouse effect of the mental health system. Currently the mental health system and our society are in denial. No "Al Gore" has emerged to go campus to campus, showing a slide show about how brain structures can be harmed from long-term high-dosage psychiatric drugging... and how there are better and more sustainable ways to help young people with mental and emotional distress and differences.
Writhe Safely -- Here It Comes:
People believe evil and psychosis are synonymous because we live in a system where evil acts can be pardoned by reason of insanity. Sometimes they come together in the same person, insanity and evil, check.
But to conflate the two is a logical fallacy, psychosis is not evil, and it doesn’t cause evil. Correlation does not imply causation, I assume most people understand this fundamental scientific principle. A person can suffer (and I do mean suffer) from psychosis without doing evil, and a person can do evil without exhibiting psychosis. But when evil and psychopathology co-exist in the same person we’re in for a shitstorm. A coercive, lock-em-up and throw away the key toldyaso shitstorm.
The Trouble with Spikol -- Tech Trouble:
Now that the photos and videos and writings have been released, it's reasonable to assume that Cho Seung-Hui suffered from serious mental health problems. But it's not that simple. It would be unfair to state, without elaboration, that Seung-Hui was mentally ill. That tars all mentally ill with the ol' violence brush--a damaging and innacurate perception that contributes mightily to the problem of stigma. It's too absolutist to say that.
Would it help, then, to identify the kind of mental illness he suffered? I don't think so. Whether he was chronically depressed or had OCD or anything else, the diagnosis cannot explain what he did. Yet I suspect that people will want a diagnosis because they're desperate for answers: Why did he do what he did? What makes a person do this?
Yet Another Never Updated Blog -- Don't draw the wrong lessons from Virginia Tech's misfortune:
The point is, we don't need to abandon recent efforts at inclusion and de-stigmatizing of people with mental illness. What we need is to take violent crime seriously, and understand that violent crime does indeed include intimidation, stalking, and arson. They aren't youthful errors. They aren't jokes. They aren't just little things that should be ignored. They are steps on a ladder of violent escalation.The Blogenberry -- Fallen records... fallen students:
I hope that all colleges will learn from this, not that mentally ill people are dangerous, but that crime is dangerous.
I think the events at Virginia Tech are no more understandable than the events at the University of Texas in 1966. The eerie randomness of shootings and mental illness in a society awash with weapons and violent mythology. A giant state school campus that is a training factory with aggressive recruiting of students from all races and backgrounds is going to come with its share of alienation. In global terms what is the context of this event? 32 dead can hardly match the nearly 200 dead in a single bombing in Baghdad (including 17 U.S. soldiers) this week. Yet there were no network anchors in Baghdad, no ribbons and candles and live broadcast vigils from Baghdad. No scrapbook for Baghdad even though its carnage is not unrelated to the random horrors at Virginia Tech.
Despite tantalizing talk of warning signs and disturbing behavior there is no real way to stop a Seung-hui Cho bent on slaughter just as there is no way to stop an Islamic terrorist, self-proclaimed martyr (recorded on videotape) on his way to heaven via the suicide bomb express. Suicide attackers in Austin, Oklahoma City, Baghdad or Blacksburg leave no real insights into their motives or lessons for preventing the repeat of their crimes. What they do leave are grisly, vivid mementos for the scrapbook. The attackers themselves have joined the ritual of their own deadly aftermath.
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