inkbluesky

Most of what I read is garbage. It’s not my intention to read garbage only that in searching for interesting articles much it turns out not to be very good. I could stick to some regular sources, but when a reader does that they tend to create something of a intellectual fishbowl for themselves. Garbage does have its lessons in critical thinking, American psycho

In which various commentators try to find someone to blame for Cho Seung-Hui’s murders: Sarah Baxter blames, abet indirectly feminism,

When Cho killed 32 people at Virginia Tech, the horrific slaughter revealed not only the poisons lurking in popular culture but the crisis of young males in a feminised society, says Sarah Baxter

Camille Paglia takes the same route,

Cho is emblematic of the crisis of masculinity in America. “Women have difficulty understanding the mix of male sexual aggression with egotism and the ecstasy of self-immolation,” she says. Or to quote Martin Amis on that other killer, Fred West: he became “addicted to the moment where impotence becomes prepotence”.

That Cho felt impotent and was having a crisis of masculinity must have started very very early,

But in Seoul some family members described Cho as alienated even as a child. After watching the videos of him posing with his weapons, his furious 82-year-old grandfather said, “Son of a bitch. It served him right he died with his victims.”

There is at least a hint here that Cho’s problem was organic. They have found a gene for shyness and other personality traits is it just possible that Cho was born with a personality disorder that became exacerbated by his environment - his failures at positive interaction with others.

The family was already worried about Cho, then eight years old. Soon after arriving in America he was diagnosed with autism. “He was very quiet and only followed his mother and father around but never showed any feelings or emotions,” his great-aunt said. His parents were too poor and busy trying to scrape a new life together to get specialist help for Cho.

But no its not Cho’s fault its girls that like sex according to Paglia,

“Young women now seem to want to behave like men and have sex without commitment. The signals they are giving are very confusing, and rage and humiliation build up in boys who are spurned again and again.”

The sex, Paglia argues, “is everywhere but it is not erotic”, as can be seen by the sad spectacle of Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears flashing their lack of underwear during a night on the town. “It’s not even titillating. It’s banal and debasing.”

At the risk of being obvious, if this is such a widespread sociological phenomenon then why don’t we have a phycho massacre every week. Paglia is famous for this. Correlations that are never quantified by data spill forth like verbal diarrhea and there is never ever any proof offered of cause and effect. Dr James Gilligan seems a little closer though still in the realm of speculation and obviously never having had a session with Cho,

Dr James Gilligan, a former prison psychiatrist who teaches at New York University, believes that misogyny and homophobia are a central component of the make-up of violent criminals, who often fear they have homosexual tendencies.

“An underlying factor that is virtually always present is a feeling that one has to prove one’s manhood and the way to do that, to gain respect, is to commit a violent act,” he says. “It is tremendously tempting to use violence as a means of trying to shore up one’s sense of masculine self-esteem.”

Francis Fukuyama, a paleo-neocon meshes together speculation with some known sociological facts,

Political scientist Francis Fukuyama believes the common denominator between the terrorist suicide bomber and the suicidal mass murderer is their sexual frustration and gender. “It really is young men between 15 and 30 who are responsible the vast majority of crimes, although it is politically incorrect to say this too loudly,” he says.

Suicide bombers and the Virginia Tech killer, Fukuyama suggests, “fall into the same demographic of young males, a lot of whom are unemployed, without a clear place in the social hierarchy. These guys have the most to gain and the least to lose by martyrdom”. And often, he adds, they are upset about girls “whose attention they can’t get”.

Obviously the guy had issues with women that was tied to his social inhibitions and it is true, though far from politically prohibited to speak about, that young men commit most violent crime. Still Fukuyama among a host of other commentators miss the point. Men didn’t commit this singular act, one man did. Cho is responsible, not women, not video games, not guns, not TV, not movies or a dozen other pop culture and political culprits. One guy that went psycho. That is what seems to be politically incorrect. To lay the blame where it belongs.

country crossing wallpaper

Well that was longer and a little heavier then I planned so I’ll end with an Earth Day themed link, Acting Now To Save Life On Earth

All these default solutions are fatuous dreams. This is the time not for science fiction but for common sense. The only way to save Earth’s biodiversity is by preserving natural environments in reserves large enough to maintain wild populations sustainably.

The bottleneck of overpopulation can open out by the end of the century, when the global population is expected to peak at around 9 billion — 50 percent more than what it was in 2000 — then commence to recede.

During the remainder of the bottleneck period, per capita consumption will also rise, increasing pressure on the environment. But it too can be brought under control, in large part by already existing technology that raises production while recycling materials and converts to alternative energy sources.