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Averick
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10 Dec 2007, 1:56 am

I say consequences.



Kurtz
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10 Dec 2007, 4:23 am

They feel so awful and worthless and evil that they need to create an external, objective proof of their monstrosity, like cutters do to make their pain real.

The killing is to justify their suicide.


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Aspie_Chav
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10 Dec 2007, 11:07 am

Nope. Explaining their emotional state isn't an answer because it doen't explain the evolutionary advantage of this type of behavior.



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10 Dec 2007, 11:27 am

Not sure. I will take a stab at this question.

The serial killer killed themselves because they grew to realize everyone they targetted reminded them of themselves.


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Kurtz
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10 Dec 2007, 3:37 pm

Aspie_Chav wrote:
Nope. Explaining their emotional state isn't an answer because it doen't explain the evolutionary advantage of this type of behavior.


Why would there need to be an evolutionary advantage? We are not in the original Environment of Evolutionary Adaptedness, which is the whole basis of evolutionary psychology - that we do things today which are maladaptive or counterproductive which in a hunter-gatherer society would be beneficial.

By that same token, there are many people who are alive today who would not be able to survive under those conditions. For instance, albinos would not last too long in equatorial Africa, and if the random mutation for albinism showed up, the person who was maladapted would die, making their genes die too.

So, what it seems like is that someone that is likely to kill a lot of people would not last too long in a hunter-gatherer where everyone know each other, you need a more advanced society to not be noticed, a society with individual dwellings and anonymity. Like albinos or others with genetic disorders like myopia it is easier for us to survive, so there is simply less pressure against a maladaptation, not an advantage for being a mass murderer.

amok, from wikipedia:

Running amok, sometimes referred to as simply amok (also spelled amuck or amuk), is derived from the Malay word amuk, meaning "mad with rage" (uncontrollable rage). Although commonly used in a colloquial and less-violent sense, the phrase is particularly associated with a specific sociopathic culture-bound syndrome in Malaysian culture. In a typical case of running amok, a male who has shown no previous sign of anger or any inclination to violence will acquire a weapon and, in a sudden frenzy, will attempt to kill or seriously injure anyone he encounters. Amok episodes of this kind normally end with the attacker being killed by bystanders, or committing suicide.

So, there is cross-cultural replication of this, and maybe the advantage is not with the guy that kills, but evolving a society where killing people like that is not tolerated. No man is an island, and all that.

What do you think? I'm just putting that out there, but it seems solid enough to satisfy evopsych.


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10 Dec 2007, 4:21 pm

Aspie_Chav wrote:
Nope. Explaining their emotional state isn't an answer because it doen't explain the evolutionary advantage of this type of behavior.

Evolutionary advantage of the mass murderer killing himself? Hmmm, taking his genes out of the gene-pool, perhaps? That's the advantage to the rest of humanity. For the killer, there are many reasons to kill others before committing suicide but I don't believe they see it as an evolutionary advantage to them personally.

Cyanide wrote:
That one was the infamous Columbine.
They were supposedly social rejects for the most part (which seems to be a stark commonality).
No, they had a good social circle of male and female friends. However, Harris endured bullying and hassle from jocks at school, particuarly after after his elder brother, Kevin, (who was a jock) graduated and went to college. They were on the fringes of jock culture at school which led to them associating with members of the Trenchcoat Mafia.

Cyanide wrote:
They also planned the shooting (which is also common among a good majority).
What actually happened wasn't at all what they'd planned, but yes, they'd planned in detail for at least 8 months beforehand.

Cyanide wrote:
Eric Harris was also an extremely angry person, as was shown on his online blog.
Don't forget that Harris wrote his journal knowing that it would be read after his death by people searching for answers. What you read is not necessarily what he truly felt but instead is his propagandist manifesto. He also took it off-line a year before 4/20 which was when it became more than just an angsty list of 'What I Love & What I Hate'.

Cyanide wrote:
He also took the antidepressant Luvox
He took Zoloft first and told his doctor it made him feel homicidal and suicidal, which was when his prescription was changed to Luvox. Luvox was helping him and he stopped taking it a few days before 4/20 so that he could 'build the rage' that he knew he would need to go through with it.

Cyanide wrote:
He started drawing up a hit list
The infamous Sh*t List - who doesn't have one of them? :roll:

Cyanide wrote:
and collecting guns long before the shooting took place
He had a BB gun, but the weapons used on 4/20 were bought for the purpose 4 months before.

Cyanide wrote:
Harris even went to a psychologist for about a year (which obviously didn't work).
He saw the psych as part of Diversion, following his arrest with Klebold for stealing from a van in Jan 1998. By then he was pretty contemptous of the police and played the psychologist along, saying and doing whatever would make him seem like a good, remorseful young man. The psych never saw through the charade, so it was never going to work.

Cyanide wrote:
He and Klebold carried out the shooting just 3 days after their senior prom, and not too long after Harris was turned down from joining the military because of his perscription for Luvox (the major bad event)
Harris never knew that he had been turned down by the Marines. A message was left for him to call the recruiting officer and he didn't do it. Being rejected by the Marines had nothing to do with the events of 4/20.

So, reasons for Columbine:

Harris had worked out that life as a member of modern society is pretty cr*ppy. He saw through all the stuff we talk about here as being 'NT shallowness'. At the same time, he was reading Nietzsche.

He had less of a problem with being bullied than the fact that the bullies at Columbine were given special favours and a blindeye was turned to their behaviour because they were jocks. To him, the corruption of authority in school represented the corruption of society as a whole - sheeple allowing themselves to be pushed about and abused by corrupt authority figures, all trying to climb the social ladder regardless of who they trampled on beneath. Hence his contention that 4/20 was about 'natural selection'. He wanted people to understand that Columbine was not a typical school-shooting, primarily caused by personal teenage angst. He intended the victims to be representatives of society - it didn't matter to him who they were personally.

I'm not sure whether he and Klebold decided to kill themselves and then decided to take other people with them, or whether they considered suicide either at their own hands or by cops as an inevitable consequence of blowing up the school and shooting people running away, and therefore was a sacrifice worth making. They were both certain that they would become famous as a result, and that other disaffected people would follow their example. They saw themselves as heroes so I tend to think they accepted suicide as going out in a 'blaze of glory'.

I also think Harris had issues with his older brother being more popular, taller, better-looking, a respected jock and all-round good guy - Harris had a good relationship with Kevin but was living in his shadow, hence in part his problems with his parents. And he was scared of not being as smart in the real world outside school as he thought he was. He was narcissistic and not becoming the successful smart guy he thought he deserved to be was not an option.

Harris was the mastermind behind Columbine - Klebold was depressed but not taking anti-depressants, had secured a college place and been with his parents to sort out his accommodation. Klebold also had some doubts about 4/20 a three or four months beforehand. Without Harris I don't believe Klebold would have gone through with it.

Sorry that got a bit long but I see so many myths perpetuated about Columbine and it was one of my interests a while ago. :oops:



Aspie_Chav
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10 Dec 2007, 5:31 pm

Humankind, men at least are basically a soldier. What soldiers do is to fight to win a war for his collective. A soldier is basically like on cell in an organism of the collective. So if he dies the collective lives on.


When he kills as much of the of the enemy as he can and ends up surrounded by them. To prevent himself from being captured and information be tortured out of him or becoming a slave for the benefit of the enemy, he will commit suicide.

A mass murder has the same gene as this soldier.



techstepgenr8tion
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10 Dec 2007, 8:35 pm

Aspie_Chav wrote:
Humankind, men at least are basically a soldier. What soldiers do is to fight to win a war for his collective. A soldier is basically like on cell in an organism of the collective. So if he dies the collective lives on.


When he kills as much of the of the enemy as he can and ends up surrounded by them. To prevent himself from being captured and information be tortured out of him or becoming a slave for the benefit of the enemy, he will commit suicide.

A mass murder has the same gene as this soldier.


I don't know... in our society people aren't exactly starved for healthy outlets for that and if they don't have them they make them in other ways. Serial murder seems to be something either fetishistic or something where they just have a fantasy of grandeur about themselves or what they're doing - it quite often also takes being the kind of person who just naturally lacks the recoil reflex, that and I'd say serial killers vary and a great many aren't exactly the most varile men/women out there.



Aspie_Chav
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12 Dec 2007, 8:22 am

techstepgenr8tion wrote:
I'd say serial killers vary and a great many aren't exactly the most varile men/women out there.


I don't understand elaberate



monty
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12 Dec 2007, 12:08 pm

Aspie_Chav wrote:
Humankind, men at least are basically a soldier. What soldiers do is to fight to win a war for his collective. A soldier is basically like on cell in an organism of the collective. So if he dies the collective lives on.


When he kills as much of the of the enemy as he can and ends up surrounded by them. To prevent himself from being captured and information be tortured out of him or becoming a slave for the benefit of the enemy, he will commit suicide.

A mass murder has the same gene as this soldier.


That whole metaphor of humans as cells of the super-organism has limits. OK, we can think of soldiers as immune cells that protect against foreign intruders. But the immune system can go haywire and attack the body - it could be mild like hayfever or serious like deadly autoimmune diseases. What is the evolutionary value of multiple sclerosis or rheumatic fever?



techstepgenr8tion
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12 Dec 2007, 9:34 pm

Aspie_Chav wrote:
techstepgenr8tion wrote:
I'd say serial killers vary and a great many aren't exactly the most varile men/women out there.


I don't understand elaberate


Just as if not more often skinny geeks. Its almost to suggest that the most alpha people who have no natural way to displace role would be the ones most likely to be serial killers - and geeks do have more than enough ways to displace as well; so many first-person shooters out there it could make your head spin.



manzanita
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12 Dec 2007, 11:35 pm

Aspie_Chav wrote:
Nope. Explaining their emotional state isn't an answer because it doen't explain the evolutionary advantage of this type of behavior.


It is incorrect to assume that every behavior must have an evolutionary advantage in humans in our current environment.



Averick
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13 Dec 2007, 6:14 am

Humans aren't of a 'collective' yet anyway. We have yet to evolve to such.



Aspie_Chav
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13 Dec 2007, 7:50 am

manzanita wrote:
Aspie_Chav wrote:
Nope. Explaining their emotional state isn't an answer because it doen't explain the evolutionary advantage of this type of behavior.


It is incorrect to assume that every behavior must have an evolutionary advantage in humans in our current environment.


I understand that. In peace time, that behavior is not needed but in war time it probably is.



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13 Dec 2007, 7:54 am

Averick wrote:
Humans aren't of a 'collective' yet anyway. We have yet to evolve to such.


There is callective in verious levels. Individual, Family, Tribe, Town, Nation and race. I acknowledge that an individual will also perticipate fight involving verious types of level. Family feud, tribe fights, racism( fight of races).

You only have to look at sports to understand the working of internal external competition. Without the internal competition in soccer the premier league games England would not be able to compete nationally.



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14 Dec 2007, 10:16 am

cause they know that the society wont accept them in any possible way.