Saturday, March 28, 2015

Going Out in a Blaze of Glory

Dr. James Gilligan, a retired psychiatrist out of Harvard, spent his life studying murderers and why they did what they did. Sometimes they engaged in mutilations of their victims - like flying planes into mountains, the way this German pilot did.

What Gilligan found, in every case, was that the perpetrators suffered from unbearable feelings of humiliation, which they attempted to erase by killing people. He found many of them had fantasies of going out in what they considered "a blaze of glory," taking as many people with them as they could.

He said if you wanted to understand why people murdered, then look at the story of Cain and Abel. Feelings of humiliation followed by revenge. Murder.

As for trying to shove these people in boxes of "Beta rage" and "Omega rage," go right ahead. You're wasting your time, and you'll never understand why this guy did what he did.

You're better off understanding what Hubris is (the Greeks considered it a form of grandiose insanity, in which the sufferer cannot tell the difference between right and wrong). The Bible calls it Pride. And what follows them? Nemesis...destruction.




19 comments:

Anonymous said...

Why do they target innocent people as well?

Why don't they just target the specific person (or people) that is the cause of their humiliation?

Unknown said...

Because it's a form of grandiose insanity in which people aren't quite real and instead are puppets in their play.

Unknown said...

Cain and Abel makes more sense than any other theory.

Anonymous said...

Great post. Glad to see someone else feels this way.

If you noticed my comments over at Heartiste, I said that the manosphere's attempts to shoehorn this into "Beta rage" (etc.) reminded me of the way feminists make damaged women's failings about "patriarchy" or some such thing.

There is such a thing as mental illness that exists outside all structures of society. You can have the perfect life, but if your brain is malfunctioning you do insane things. It's like a bad liver, except it's your brain. Both the manosphere and feminists don't seem to get that.

If social context were the sole determining factor in mental well-being, there would be no explanation as to why stars with great lives and lots of money blow their brains out (Cobain, Freddie Prinze) or descend into madness (Brian Wilson, Nick Drake).

Speaking of descending, the manosphere itself it descending into anti-intellectualism as it ages. I'm now something of an objector to most of what's being written. Good to see someone else taking a contrary point of view.

-- Days of Broken Arrows

Black Poison Soul said...

Helluva lot more sense. Beta/Omega rage, meh, bullshit. Whacked people gonna do whacked things.

Nice to seeya still around, Days of Broken Arrows.

Unknown said...

Antidepressants found in his home. Another commonality with people who do these things.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/28/europe/france-germanwings-plane-crash-main/

Roy said...

@Earl Thomas
"Antidepressants found in his home. Another commonality with people who do these things."
Exactly, think of Joseph Wesbecker.

@ Bob

Spot on again Bob. This mass killing has nothing to do with "Beta Rage". I love how all these Manospherians consider themselves "Alphas"

Mindstorm said...

Wasn't he in danger of losing his job because of worsening eyesight? That might be enough to push him over the edge, if he was too invested in his career to consider that to be less than a total disaster.

Robert What? said...

Maybe it is easier to anonymously kill a large number of people because it is so impersonal. No looking into the eyes of your intended victim risking the chance that you might see their humanity.

Sherman said...

"Maybe it is easier to anonymously kill a large number of people because it is so impersonal." Yes, that is basically what bombs do.

Anonymous said...

I spent some time during my mid teens browsing a forum that had many young teenaagers to late adult "Beta/Omega" males. Cain and Abel makes a hell of a lot of sense. A lot of them expressed that they wanted to kill "normal people" and women for treating them like crap throughout their lives. Scary stuff.

Stanley said...

Well said Bob, a lot of us are waking up to the circular reasoning in the manosphere. I have spent too much time following links to dubious sites who's authors try to fit everything to their one theory.

Unknown said...

Bob likes to talk a lot about envy when it comes to women...and I think anger/murder is what happens when a man becomes very envious.

Now the man had relations with his wife Eve, and she conceived and gave birth to Cain, and she said, “I have gotten a manchild with the help of the Lord.” Again, she gave birth to his brother Abel. And Abel was a keeper of flocks, but Cain was a tiller of the ground. 3 So it came about in the course of time that Cain brought an offering to the Lord of the fruit of the ground. Abel, on his part also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of their fat portions. And the Lord had regard for Abel and for his offering; but for Cain and for his offering He had no regard. So Cain became very angry and his countenance fell. Then the Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry? And why has your countenance fallen? If you do well, will not your countenance be lifted up? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door; and its desire is for you, but you must master it.” Cain told Abel his brother. And it came about when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother and killed him.

Unknown said...

Cain was envious of his brother and it led to murder.

Anonymous said...

It's possible that the copilot is not responsible for the crash. There may be more going on here, perhaps a coverup:

Hundreds of supporters of pilot Andreas Lubitz have taken to Facebook to make outlandish claims that he is being framed for murder by Lufthansa to hide mechanical faults with the plane

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3020310/Mobile-phone-video-showing-moments-Germanwings-flight-passengers-cries-oh-god-discovered-wreckage-plane-investigators.html#ixzz3W4QT5wOG
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3020310/Mobile-phone-video-showing-moments-Germanwings-flight-passengers-cries-oh-god-discovered-wreckage-plane-investigators.html

Anonymous said...

Yeah, because our society is so sane, humiliation (especially by women) never leads to retaliation, freedom is slavery and all that After he was just a lone madman wasn´t he?

Manosphere's sin is often-times circular logic, but Bob seems to old (and stubborn) to understand that the old man-woman dynamic is currently broken, not all men are created equal (hence hierarchies do exist) and that the ancients in the Christian West at least, understood perfectly that monogamy was a much better option than polygamy and all it entails (need eternal war, frequent unrest partly due to a bulge of young, angry men with no hope for a family or emotional fulfilment in family life).

Whether you like it or not, our society is sick, individuals who might have been just eccentric a few centuries ago now can become madmen, aided by social pressures and psychotropics so dangerous that violence and suicidal tendencies are listed as possible side effects in the labels!!!!

It´s a miracle most people just off themselves in peace, so no one notices huh.

Rusty Shackleford said...

The man had a history of mental illness and was on all sorts of medications. If the simplest explanation is the best, he had a physiological disorder/ brain malfunction which terminated catastrophically. People hate to hear that though, because it makes them think that the same might be the case with the dozens of people every day who they trust their lives with (doctors, pharmacists, the person driving the car coming toward you as you walk across the street, etc.) So of course there are rumors and rationalizations that he was a latent homo, muslim, beta, an entitled male and so on depending on the particular monomania of the site writing about it. And if we can just deal with those people this will never, ever happen again.. Right.

I don't even think you need to invoke hubris, although it undoubtedly was involved to explain the situation because I doubt the man was functioning on a logical level even internally. This is a lot different from Soldini of Rodgers. None of the victims were personal and it's tough to see who he'd be getting even with. Flying a plane into a mountain is one of the more impersonal ways to become a mass murderer. I think it was a cointoss whether he went this way or just walked out the cockpit like he planned.

If hubris is the greatest sin, acedia/despair is the unforgivable one. What brings someone to the point where they'd rather off themselves in a shed like Cobain instead of turning their shotgun on their real or imagined tormentors? The poster above is right about it being an amazing thing that acedia tends to beat hubris.

Unknown said...

Of course the man/woman dyamic is broken. I said it many times.

Anonymous said...

Robert What: "Maybe it is easier to anonymously kill a large number of people because it is so impersonal."

Wasn't it Stalin who reputedly said; "A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths a statistic."?