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Real reason for shootings.
An item on the local news the other night caught my attention. Seems we had 145 shootings in Portland this year.
And most weren't gang related or while committing a crime (other than the shooting itself being a crime). And almost all were by young men in their teens and twenties.
What was the reason? According to the expert they interviewed it's because these young men have no skills in conflict resolution. They get upset with someone, and if they have a weapon, that's their idea of a solution.
This fits *so* well with a lot of stuff. Because if you think about it, guys that don't have guns will resort to some other weapon. To their fists if that's all they have.
If you are angry, you attack. No other possibility even *occurs* to them. And if you've lived thru that age range as a male, looking back you'll probably recognize that for a good chunk of it you were suffering from *major* anger issues. It's your body trying to adjust to all that testosterone.
The "macho culture" is another factor. It says that non-violent solutions mean you're a wimp, a weakling.
The macho culture is also responsible for the *real* motivation of mass shooters. They feel *entitled* (because they are white and male) to things like jobs, *unearned* respect, and girlfriends.
Add in the lack of skills in how to "resolve" issues other than violently, and guess what?
No, the problem is rarely mental illness. It's *culture*. The unrealistic expectation it instills in young men, and the way it discourages (practically forbids) males from even considering non-violent means of resolving problems.
We really *need* to break this cycle. We gotta get rid of this *stupid* "macho" BS.
Of course, just as with rape culture, we'll be fought tooth and nail by folks who've internalized it as normal.
BTW, I bet that a lot of bullying is related to this. As is the insane "sports team must win at all costs" attitudes in a lot of high school and some colleges. The stuff that lets jocks get away with (literally in some cases) with rape and murder.
And most weren't gang related or while committing a crime (other than the shooting itself being a crime). And almost all were by young men in their teens and twenties.
What was the reason? According to the expert they interviewed it's because these young men have no skills in conflict resolution. They get upset with someone, and if they have a weapon, that's their idea of a solution.
This fits *so* well with a lot of stuff. Because if you think about it, guys that don't have guns will resort to some other weapon. To their fists if that's all they have.
If you are angry, you attack. No other possibility even *occurs* to them. And if you've lived thru that age range as a male, looking back you'll probably recognize that for a good chunk of it you were suffering from *major* anger issues. It's your body trying to adjust to all that testosterone.
The "macho culture" is another factor. It says that non-violent solutions mean you're a wimp, a weakling.
The macho culture is also responsible for the *real* motivation of mass shooters. They feel *entitled* (because they are white and male) to things like jobs, *unearned* respect, and girlfriends.
Add in the lack of skills in how to "resolve" issues other than violently, and guess what?
No, the problem is rarely mental illness. It's *culture*. The unrealistic expectation it instills in young men, and the way it discourages (practically forbids) males from even considering non-violent means of resolving problems.
We really *need* to break this cycle. We gotta get rid of this *stupid* "macho" BS.
Of course, just as with rape culture, we'll be fought tooth and nail by folks who've internalized it as normal.
BTW, I bet that a lot of bullying is related to this. As is the insane "sports team must win at all costs" attitudes in a lot of high school and some colleges. The stuff that lets jocks get away with (literally in some cases) with rape and murder.
'Entitlement' and 'Macho' related, but non-identical
I'm not sure 'Macho' is an entire culture, or merely a cultural *element* that's used in many different cultures.
Note that I'm not disagreeing with your underlying point, but I think coming to a successful resolution of this particular set of issues is highly reliant on getting the structure of the problem precisely right.
In general usage, I'm accustomed to hearing both 'macho' and 'entitled' as terms of pure opprobrium. They're blanket condemnations, equivalent to 'evil'. And I think that's a problem, because there exist contexts in which either or both of them are both correct and appropriate.
So I think a good solution to '*stupid* "macho" BS' may be to replace it with a smarter form of 'macho', that can be generally trained (in both senses of the word at once) to a BS detector. Is this being English yet?
best,
Joel
no subject
Entitlement isn't evil. There *are* things we should be entitled to. But getting mad at the world because you aren't getting things that you *aren't* actually entitled to, that's a problem.
Alas, too many of the school shooters seem to have the "I deserve a girlfriend" idea stuck in their heads.
That's as much rape culture as entitlement with a big dash of "male privilege" thrown in. Yet another reason we need to stomp on those sets of memes. And it's why mass shooters are so overwhelmingly male.
Other parts of their sense of entitlement is due to "white privilege" being so ingrained that most don't admit it exists. With these guys, they are angry because they aren't getting the "privileges" they expect.
And that's why mass shooters are overwhelmingly white (and middle class). :-(