Why?
These suicide/mass killings are increasing at a exponential rate. And it almost seems like a contest gone out of control, where each succeeding suicide/mass killing tries to outdo the other. Killing a handful of people in a shopping mall is no longer notorious enough, so maybe taking out 20 kindergarten kids will set a new standard of repulsiveness.
I reckon few of these individuals who commit suicide and take others with them are not known to be unstable, troubled individuals. A major problem is this: just exactly what are people, who know these individuals are dangerous, to do about it? There are no really good options for them most of the time. I taught young adults most of my life in university settings and have seen my share of these unstable individuals.
A few examples come to mind. I was a new Professor at this one university and was a PreMed advisor in addition to my teaching assignments. The Chairperson called me up and said she was sending a student down for advising, to get her class schedule for the semester worked out. Ok. I go over her previous record of courses and we start picking courses for her to take the current semester. She was cooperative enough, just seemed a bit tense. But just when her courses were lined up she said she wanted to take Biochemistry. Trouble is, she already had taken Biochemistry and gotten a B. "Well", she said, "I didn't really earn a B and need to take the course over". I suggested she take it over, if she wished, some other time, get these newer courses out of the way. But she insisted she wanted to take it over now, while it was fresh in her mind. Ok. I let her.
When class lists came out I got a call from the Chairperson, "Reid, what the hell did you do?---you put that gal in Mary's (not real name) class. She has already had Biochemistry". I explained she wanted to take it over. "Reid", damn it, she was in Mary's class last year and tried to shoot her. I sent her to you so she would have someone neutral." So the police came to the first class and bodily removed her from the class. To my knowledge she never tried to kill anyone again, but for all I know maybe she did. The point is, there was a potential problem and nothing much was done about it. What should have been done about it? Beats me. Another potential bomb ticks away.
Another time a student came to me in a science course for non majors (Physiological Aspects of Drugs and Drug Abuse) and told me he had a handicap and needed special help. The handicap? He couldn't remember things very well.
That certainly doesn't sound like a handicap that bodes well for college but there he is, admitted to the University and in my class. I told him I have no training with such a handicap so can't judge what I should or should not do for him. So I do what most everyone does. I punt. I tell him whatever special must be done for him must come from an administrator in writing. And the notes came, one after another: the student needed to have another student xerox their notes for him; the student needs take home exams, etc. I have no idea what a take home test in a science course proves. The answer to a question is either in the class notes or the book and if he couldn't find it himself, someone else maybe could. And it gets better. This student had graduated cum laude, or one of those categories, from junior college. He was now a senior at the University. I never said boo about the situation to him since it would have been evidence of my obvious prejudice. At the end of the term I had no idea what grade to give him. He was a non science major, his ignorance of physiology was not going to cause harm to any patient so I give him a B. His exam scores were excellent, just like the scores would be for anyone permitted a take home exam. I have no technical basis to give him a lower grade. Not a single person ever complained about his special treatment----not any other student, not any administrator, and not me. The student arrived in my office just after grades came out. The guy was livid. Why didn't he get an A? This was only the second B he had ever gotten in college. For me, enough was enough. I told him, "Much as I like you personally we both know a B is a gift. If you don't want me to re-evaluate the grade and the whole process whereby you got such a grade, and not be so gift giving you better disappear as quickly as you can. Fortunately he did. The point? Here is guy everyone knew should not be in college, but he was let in and graduated with an amazing GPA. What is going to happen to this guy when he hits the job market? I can just hear the job interview. "What kind of courses have you taken in the area of _______? Answer: "I don't know, I don't remember." If this guy snaps some time down the road where would be the surprise? Even a normal person would have trouble handling going from cum Laude to unemployable. Remember, he went beserk because he got a B. What will he do when he can't get a job or retain one? Another ticking time bomb.
Next example: A Professor a few doors down from my office comes into my office and asks for advice. She is not in my department. It seems a student sits in the front row and exposes himself to her during her lecture. She is middle aged, sensitive, and not an ounce of toughness in her personality. Why come to me, I hardly knew the gal except for hello's in the hallway. Seems someone told her a lot of students were always waiting to see me because many of them were there with personal problems. That's an exaggeration but ok, what's the problem? Again, I do what most everyone does, I punt. I feel very sympathetic to her but also know anything I do would be considered the wrong person to have acted, and if anything I did backfired it would be blamed on me---not the right person to be involved in the problem. So I tell her she is best to explain the problem to her department Chairperson. Safe advice but worthless. The Department Chair will refer the problem to the Dean, the Dean to the Academic Vice President and somewhere along the line Campus security will be alerted, come into the classroom, remove the student and the student will be dropped from the class. Fine, except the question by the Professor involved as to whether this person is a danger to her will not have been answered. I don't know what she did. She never came back with any follow-up. My guess is she ignored his game, the semester ended and the student was no longer in her class. The can gets kicked down the road for another time, another place, maybe a rape at some point.
Final example: I had this energetic, inquisitive, excellent student in a class who always sat in the front row and bubbled with enthusiasm and got excellent grades. Wonderful success story in the making. Suddenly he starts sitting in the back row way off to the side and all the enthusiasm was gone. Hard not to notice. He comes into my office all tense and asks if he can trust me with a problem, to keep it to myself. I know right away this has nothing to do with my class, nothing to do with my field of expertise, and has danger all over it. But we do our ethical duty in such a case and say 'Go ahead'. Well he had inadvertently witnessed some sort of gang crime, I forget now whether it was just a brutal beating or a shooting. At any rate the guy was scared to death the gang was going to 'eliminate' him as a witness. He couldn't sleep, he couldn't study, he was afraid they might hurt his mother, the whole nine yards. He sat in the back of the classroom off to the side so no one coming to the class and peering through the door would be able to see him. Reality was clear enough. If he did turn them in the gang would claim he was part of the gang and was the one who did the beating or the shooting. And of course the life of his mother or himself would be real danger. What do we do in these situations? We punt. We protect the potential victim. first things first. I ask him whether he has any relatives anywhere he could stay with for a while. He has an uncle in Wisconsin. I never tell him what to do, just present options to him. He disappears and I get a note months later with no return address saying 'Thank you'. Fine, he is safe but yet another potential mass shooter is free to go out of control another place, another time. These suicide/mass murderers tend to leave a long trail of people who know they are unstable and dangerous. No one, including myself, has any notion of how to reduce their danger to others and we simply find ways to get them out of our own pathway. The can keeps going down the road, and we never know for whom the bell may toll.
I was lucky. Science courses tend not to attract most of these emotionally and mentally unstable students. And I had a personality which caused the Chairperson to prevent such KNOWN students from enrolling in my section. When another Professor would enquire why student X could not be put in my section, the Chairperson would remark, (She was cool in her own way): "Oh for Christ's sake, use some common sense, Reid is off the wall himself, and says things to students which normal students struggle with, let alone putting a student like that into his section." On the other hand, I always agreed to take a student which another instructor found intimidating or disruptive, but not emotionally or mentally unstable. The intimidating kind are another ball of wax and rarely were a problem for me. How to handle them is another story.
Now, to the answer as to why these suicide/mass murderers do what they do. I guess many people would come up with different answers. To me, it seems in many cases to be this: If the kidney doesn't function right, you get abnormal urinary function. And so it goes with other malfunctioning organs. If the part of the brain that deals with emotions and feelings malfunctions, then a person may have varied forms of emotional pain that don't go away. They can't go away as long as that organ malfunctions. Suicide may be the only answer they can generate. Perhaps some of these people not only want to end their pain, but they want others to feel the same kind of emotional hurt from which they have had to deal with for so long a time. "Nobody understands the pain I feel, well they will when I take so many people with me as part of my suicide." It is like these social rejects are going to teach us all a lesson about emotional pain. I guess they succeed.
No matter what is the reason why, the next question is how can we stop these kind of events? The ability to prevent any possibility of these events happening in terms of protecting potential victims is nonexistent. The American public right now is as well armed as Iraqis. It would take decades of intense personal invasion of rights to ever get these guns out of circulation. And for these suicide/mass killers, bombs would just replace guns. Google can help with that. Make the class rooms more secure? Good luck with that. Kids still have to go to and from school, or play games on fields, etc.
No one can take classified information about our country and publish it or share it without fear of imprisonment. By having divulged confidential information, our national security is compromised. Very well, the same logic leads to the same conclusion here. The name and history of someone who commits a suicide/mass murder should be confidential, and anyone who breaches this or writes anything about the person should face imprisonment. It is clearly the notoriety which drives this ever increasing occurrence of these suicide/mass murders. Everybody talks about it, everyone knows all about the person who did it. Even when psychologists correctly detail the mental state of the shooter, it offers no solution as to how to have stopped it. This latest guy was home schooled and friendless with no criminal record---is that an offense for which he could have been arrested? Such a shooting is a way for someone who feels like a nobody, mired in futility and anguish, to at least be somebody who everyone will know about, and those close to the victims then feel the equivalent kind of emotional pain of the shooter. In other words, as long as this is a way to become notorious and well known, some people who commit suicide will find this scenario attractive. How can they find it attractive? Look, I can't even figure out why anyone would commit suicide by jumping off a bridge or stepping in front of a train, etc. There are a lot more painless ways to end one's life. As long as this kind of event is a path to fame and notoriety, it will remain attractive to some. It gives new meaning to the phrase, "No pain, no gain." In other words our pain becomes their gain. If we can't remove the notoriety that comes with this kind of suicide, the frequency and degree of repulsiveness attendant to it will have no limits. This an age of problems fraught with complexity, global in nature, with increasingly potential devastation to human life on our planet.
Maybe Alice, of the Honeymooners, might opt to go to the moon these days.
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