rise of the crazy
Today there was a massacre at Virginia Tech. Current reports indicate it’s the worst one in U.S. history with the death toll at 21 at the time of this writing (including the shooter). This is insane.
In the last 10 years (2007-1997) there’s been at least 10 school massacres in the United States.
In the previous 10 year span (1998-1988), there were only 4 in the United States.
The 10 year span (1977-1987) before that, there weren’t any in the United States. (There was one in 1976, though.)
What the hell is wrong with people? The population has grown in that time span, but I doubt it’s grown by those percentages. That means that the percentage of crazy people as compared to non-crazy people is growing faster than the number of people. Of course it could be that the number of college/school attendees is rising faster than the rate of population simply due to changes in the economy and social expectations and people who would normally have been crazy in small doses are given a venue for being crazy on a much bigger stage. Although personally, I’m leaning towards the theory that “the crazy” is just increasing…
Perhaps humans are heading for extinction? I remember reading/seeing once that animal populations under stress of extinction often exhibit odd and self-destructive behavior. (I can’t seem to find such a reference, though, so maybe I’m full of it…) Perhaps we’re on the way out. Or maybe certain types of humans or ways of thinking are. I find it odd how these school shooters of late seem to almost universally commit suicide in the end. It’s like they are so distraught and so alone and so broken that they know they are done for - but they are just selfish, petty, and bitter enough to want to take a bunch of others with them.
Sad.
April 18th, 2007 at 1:59 pm
I just got pulled over the other day, by an officer whom I had B.S’d with about 6 months prior. Yeah, I know, I couldn’t have been pulled over by a better person! Anyway, the speeding ticket he gave me reminded me of what he had said…. He was talking about how he’s looking forward to retirement in a few years, and I had asked him what was the biggest change he’s seen over the years of being in law enforcement. I was expecting drugs as his answer, but I was wrong. Him: “That’s easy. 10-73s.” Me: “Huh?” He explained that it was the Crazies. People going nuts. Ordinary run of the mill people that just loose it and have to be stuffed in to the back of a car and detained and mentally evaluated.
He said that over the past 10 years, it’s gotten really really bad from what it used to be, and when he started in law enforcement, the crazies were crazy, and sane people stayed sane. He said that it used to be easy to tell the crazies from the normal people, but now, there’s a large crossover of normal people that just lose it.
That’s what had changed the most, and not having to see good people go nuts every day was the main reason he gave me for looking forward to retirement.
Sean, I hope you’re not on to something here.
April 18th, 2007 at 2:08 pm
@Jerry: Scary. I’ve heard way too much agreement to the idea that craziness is increasing lately. Not just because of this school shooting, but before that, even. Whenever I’d bring up my theory that people are just going more insane with time I usually find others feeling that way too. Hmm.. How can I tell if the feeling of the world going crazy is not just a symptom of “the crazy” itself?
April 19th, 2007 at 9:16 am
Well according to Fox News the guy was already “crazy”. A few girls filed a complaint that he was stalking them almost two years ago. An acquaintance of his thought he was suicidal. They had a court order that stated he was mentally ill and a danger to himself and others. However the order never made it in to the system and therefore when he was sold the guns, the instant check couldn’t find any sort of problem. He wasn’t a sane person who just snapped, he was dangerous years before he ever did this.
April 19th, 2007 at 9:23 am
@Jerry 2: Oh totally. He was clearly crazy for a long time leading up to this. I wasn’t suggesting he was a perfectly normal guy who just snapped one day… just that the amount of crazy in the world seems to be going up. There’s plenty of crazy people out there who never do anything so destructive as kill a bunch of people, but they are still crazy and it just seems like there’s getting to be more and more of them.
April 23rd, 2007 at 1:56 pm
Is it always crazy males that do all the shooting? Could this have to do with the fact that they don’t know how to act “like a man”?
April 23rd, 2007 at 5:46 pm
Males do seem to be the common trend…
May 20th, 2007 at 9:02 pm
i thing sometimes we just want peace and quiet, and it becomes increasingly apparent that we are not going to get it.