[PolymerMan]

I think the majority of the shooters are mentally ill... but not all. Many are just violent people, who can't control their lust for revenge, commit murder, hurt people, etc. Just plain evil.

 

[PolymerMan]

Huh!? If you can’t control yourself enough to keep from shooting a place up, violent is a given. So is psychotic.

And that's not mental illness - because ???

Okay... you guys deserve my explanation. I watched much of the Parkland Shooter trial, and I don't believe for a minute that miscreant was mentally ill. He was a violent, pathetic, anti-social person. A misfit... but there wasn't a shred of evidence that he was truly mentally ill in the sense that his brain had some sort of imbalance of neurotransmitters, or physically damaged cortex, or that alcohol fetal syndrome was responsible for his behavior. As the prosecution pointed out 99% of people that suffered alcohol fetal syndrome do not exhibit violent behavior, etc. In fact, most mentally ill people are less likely to be violent and become a victim of violence themselves. He was just a selfish miscreant and a intrinsically violent person that was just incorrigible. I just don't buy into the mentally ill theories the leftist psychologist want to label people who still possess archaic homicidal tendencies that the earliest hominids displayed. He just could not be tamed like a wild animal.

So that said, I believe humans are the product of evolutionary development... and in our natural state... we are in fact very violent animals. It is how we became the apex predators on this planet. It is the very simple rule of nature... Kill or be Killed. It is our assimilation into a society, a civilization that that has controlled the animal in all of us. Its law, religion, the fear of God, behavior for the greater good, that has tamed the animal we really are, the apex predator on this planet that **** sapien evolved into.

There is a lot of political science, psychology, religion, anthropology has to say about who we really are. You can't say a person is mentally ill, if he is doing precisely what his genetic predecessor was doing... say 5000 years ago. I am not religious but we do have biblical stories about Abel and Cain, brother killing brother? Right. It is in our history. Its in our fundamental political philosophy found in Thomas Hobbes' work 'Leviathan' where Hobbes describes how we evolved from living under the law of the jungle (where might and violence makes right) into a civilization where our behavior is governed by law, and a social contract. But even with religion, law, and culture... we have not genetically changed all that much since the first humans walked this earth.

Now, I don't expect everyone to accept my version of who we are, but even psychologists believe that by our innate genetic nature we are probably the most homicidal, violent animals on the planet. There have been numerous papers that have been already written on this subject... that our homicidal tendencies are actual the norm, and it may be very well be how we evolved and why we survived to become the most prolific and successful mammal on the planet.

Humans Are Genetically Predisposed to Kill Each Other

The rate of lethal violence is 7 times higher than the average for all mammals.

www.psychologytoday.com

“Step back and view our species objectively from the outside, the way a zoologist would carefully observe any other animal, or see us the way every other creature perceives human beings. The brutal reality could not be more evident or more horrifying. We are the most relentless yet oblivious killers on Earth.

“Our violence operates far outside the bounds of any other species. Human beings kill anything. Slaughter is a defining behavior of our species. We kill all other creatures, and we kill our own.

We know from a wealth of archeological evidence how violent we once were perhaps hundreds or thousands of times more violent than we are today. Imagine that? If you think a homicide rate of 6 per 100,000 is high... it may have been 6000 per 100,000 five thousand years ago. Heck one of the greatest civilizations of ancient times... the Roman Empire had slaves fighting to their deaths in the colosseum as a form of pure entertainment, no different from how we use soccer or football as a form of entertainment.

PREHISTORIC VIOLENCE WORSE THAN TODAY'S

scholar.lib.vt.edu

 

[PolymerMan]

It's called evil.

Many of the Parkland School Shooting parents, during their victim impact statement referred to the shooter as an "animal", which I thought was the most appropriate term, because its so true. The difference between most animals and civilized people is that we are governed by laws, culture, respect for life, religion, fear of god, karma, or whatever. Whereas many wild animals have no sense of right and wrong, often governed by raw hard-wired genetic instincts.

 

[PolymerMan]

Except that with few exceptions wild animals don't kill out of sick pleasure. They do it to survive. When I hear of some scumbag being called an "animal" I feel it's an insult to animals everywhere.

Funny thing though, the wild animals who do sometimes kill out of anger, or jealousy, or even spite most often tend to be chimpanzees... our closest animal cousins.

First of all I am sure there are many exceptions. There are many animals that don't kill period. Many of the grazing animals on the African savannah don't kill their own members and if there is aggressions, its generally males like wildebeest fighting over male supremacy to win the right to a female. Although I have seen films where some of the larger antelopes and wildebeests have killed by trampling hyenas and smaller carnivores trying to get one of their calves.

Okay so now the point I make is that in nature, aggression is part of the Darwinian code for survival of the fittest. In fact, aggression is very much a trait that is inherited via DNA and passed on to the next generation. What it does is it insures that the winner of a life and death struggle will live to pass on that specific aggressive trait to the next generation. There are many facets to it. In early humans for example, among hunter gathers, it could mean life or death of a clan, especially if food resources were scares. So killing the neighboring clan in cold blood murder meant more food for your clan and your progeny. We have an aggression trait that made homicide a favorable trait for early humans and well into modern times. When we developed agriculture and settled down, and civilization rose around agricultural basins... that murderous trait became a problem. But some of these psychologists are now recognizing is that it isn't some sort of mental defect... rather its some inherited behavior that lurks within us, and has always been with us and was at some point in our past beneficial to our survival.

Now as far as killing for the joy of it... well there are lots of exceptions there too. I have seen a video of a pod of Orca killer whales playing with a seal. They tossed it back and forth like a badminton shuttlecock. I have also seen videos of lion cubs toying with a small tiny antelope calf... literally biting it and tormenting that thing, but they had already eaten because their mother killed the mother of the antelope; which brings me to my favorite cat. My Himalayan cat I bought in 1982... a beautiful Blue point Himalayan long hair. Anyhow, she was the sweetest thing around humans, she would rub against your legs, demand to have her neck scratch, and every morning she would jump into my bed and sit on my chest and purr like a well tuned sports car until I got up and fed her. I never own a sweeter animal for a pet. But my God, she was the most wicked, mean, merciless huntress that would kill for the joy of it. I over fed that cat so she never needed to kill to eat, she was also finicky eater, but if she ever saw a small animal, a lizard, or a mouse, she would catch it and toy with it until it was dead. Never ate anything she caught. The first time was in Florida when she caught a series of lizards. We have these small brown anoles all over the place in Florida. She would catch one and gnaw off the legs and feet alive. Then other times she was really good at just playing with it. First time I realized how dexterous house cats were with their claws. She caught one and she would wear it out. She would allow it to escape, and then swipe at it and with one claw extended like an index finger, she nailed the lizard and dragged it back. She would do that over and over again tormenting that lizard. One time she caught a mouse, and played soccer with it. I though she was playing with a sock ball out of my laundry basket. But no it was a mouse that she tortured to death and then dropped it by my feet.