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Originally Posted by FireFly
But how many people are killed by victims of bullying every year? Just because kids who get bullied don't all go out and shoot 10+ people, doesn't mean there are more bullying related killings in the world. It just means that they aren't of this magnitude. Not to say you're wrong, but if even one person is killed because they bullied someone, isn't that one too many?
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Granted we don't know and well never know, however I keep going back to the fact that I think that blaming this on bullying is over simplifying things. Those of us who went to school in the 70's and 80's know that schools, and hockey teams, and military units were bully institutions. We had hazings, and frosh weeks and initiations. We've all had the instance where we're worried about what the bigger kid is going to do, or why that gang of seniors is always kicking the crap out of me. But that dosen't make us serial killers, except in (and again I'm not trying to minimalize things) the fairly rare based on numbers cases where someone goes ballistics. I think we're doing a dis-service to the victims of these events by giving reason to these killers that this simple. He was bullied, he was backed into the corner so he needed to kill 10 or 20 or 30 people that he didn't even know. Or he was dumped by his girlfriend or he was fired from his job. The concept of thrill killing, and thats what this was, or mass murder followed by suicide is a relatively new concept in the grand scheme of things. Is it societies glorification of violence, is it the competitive spirit that drives someone to break a murder record, is it sexual abuse, is it a person that hasn't been integrated into society. Hell is it the change in the chemicals that we put into food, is it a shift in the chemical composition of our atmosphere that effects 1 out of 10 million people? We don't know, but we're doing a real diservice by nodding out heads thoughtfully and accepting that its simply a factor of bullying?
If you'll remember, up until the Ted Bundy trial, they always talked about the rareity of catching a serial killer alive, it just didn't happen all of that often. But now thier finding commenalities in thier symptom's ie cruelty to animals, a sexual dysfunction, a enormous IQ.
Things will continue to evolve as long as we continue to faill to ask why, and go beyond its video games, or violent movies, or bullying. [/auote]
Quote:
Originally Posted by FireFly
The entire magnitude of society has changed... everything needs to be bigger and better than the last model. Why should killings be any different? (That sounds really callous, and it's not meant to be, I'm just also hypothesizing about why these events are getting larger and larger.)
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Again, I think this is to simple, sure the magnitude of society has changed, but that dosen't truly explain these events, its more then that. Sure society is based around bigger and better, and that goes from how information gets out, to the competitiveness that causes a athlete to use steroids to be a bigger winner. But the permissiveness of society, and the acceptance of violence, and violent crime has also shifted hard since the hippy generation.
Again just spitballing.