Read Elliot Rodger's elaborate attack plan

[Mr.Samsa]

Yeah, I meant it more in a colloquial (is that the right word?) sense. But it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if he had a mental illness. Well, actually, it's an interesting discussion. Are murderers mentally ill? You could surely make an argument for that. Mental illness is always going to have a subjective part to it. Why is me trusting no one, and when I do trust someone I become an emotional nutjob, considered mentally ill, but someone who kills another person without a somewhat rational reason considered sane? Pragmatically, I expect that's because we wouldn't be able to punish anyone properly if we considered all gross anti-social crimes as mental illness. But it is still an interesting question, nonetheless. If only Metatron was here to edumecate us...

I am unsure if you are serious or not? I laughed at the last bit though!

[pErvinalia]

I am serious in raising the question. Killing someone without what could be considered a "rational" reason must raise some alarm bells as to sanity (at least at that point in time), I would have thought.

[laklak]

I don't know the correct diagnostic term, but I'd say he was fucking nuts.

[cronus]

I don't know the correct diagnostic term, but I'd say he was fucking nuts.

So many are a little short of the full dollar, that is not the reason. Sometimes it is inescapable that evil exists in the world.

[Mr.Samsa]

To answer your previous post more seriously then Rev:

Yeah, I meant it more in a colloquial (is that the right word?) sense. But it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if he had a mental illness.

I actually would be a little surprised as there is currently no evidence to think that he did.

Well, actually, it's an interesting discussion. Are murderers mentally ill? You could surely make an argument for that.

Not really.. Mental disorders are prolonged behavioral or cognitive patterns that significantly affect the individual's ability to perform daily tasks. Generally for something to be a mental disorder it needs to, at a minimum, satisfy some of the criteria of "the 4 d's" which in themselves are necessary but not sufficient for a diagnosis (for example, you also need to meet the criteria for a specific disorder). Murder would arguably meet "deviance" and "danger" but without dysfunction or distress then you're simply moralising and not actually trying to help people. In another way, things like suicide would be considered a mental disorder under that model, even though sometimes suicide can be entirely rational.

Mental illness is always going to have a subjective part to it.

Eh, sort of. But generally people misunderstand where that subjectiveness is. If someone can function in their everyday life and can rationally plot to kill someone they hate, then that's objectively not a mental disorder, no matter how we look at it.

Why is me trusting no one, and when I do trust someone I become an emotional nutjob, considered mentally ill, but someone who kills another person without a somewhat rational reason considered sane?

Firstly, you're confusing different terms here. "Sane" and "mental illness" are not interchangeable and arguably have nothing in common. You can be sane but mentally ill, and mentally healthy but insane. "Sanity" is a legal term that simply refers to your ability to control your actions.

Secondly, the latter can be a mental disorder especially when it's done without a rational reason but often these people do have rational reasons. Rodger there had a rational reason - the women rejected him so he wanted them to die. Of course, the actual meaning of "rational" doesn't mean "a perfectly considered and accurate conclusion", it just means that there are reasons behind why someone performed the action they did.

The reason why the lack of trust would be considered a mental disorder whereas murder generally is not, is because not trusting someone would affect your life significantly in terms of personal distress, your ability to function, it's a prolonged pattern, etc, and it's not something that you are rationally deciding to do. Murderers on the other hand are often just shitty people doing shitty things.

Pragmatically, I expect that's because we wouldn't be able to punish anyone properly if we considered all gross anti-social crimes as mental illness. But it is still an interesting question, nonetheless.

Well that wouldn't really be a problem if we assume the prison system shouldn't be about punishment. If we want a rehabilitative system, as most psych resources argue in favour for and are organised around, then any hint or possibility of "murder" being a mental disorder would become a valid line of inquiry. The problem of course is that if we start defining psychology in terms of behavior which isn't "normal" and things we don't agree with or find inconvenient, then the whole thing becomes meaningless and unhelpful. If we start trying to force treatment on the guy who's happy believing that he's the King of Mars then most mental health professionals will agree that we've gone too far.

If only Metatron was here to edumecate us...

I'll fill in for him: "Mental illness isn't real. Back in my day people just decided not to behave in maladaptive ways. You say you're depressed? Then just be happier. No need for that science bullshit when we have old wive's tales!".

[Robert_S]

I didn't read or listen to anything he wrote.

Can someone who has please tell me if he thought he was entitled to sex or sex with a really hot woman that everyone else would envy him for.

[Hermit]

I am just saying that his reason for doing what he did is not universal because if it was then I would have done the same also.

My view is quite different. Rodger's reason is in principle extremely common. The way he went about acting on it is fortunately uncommonly extreme. Everybody wants to in one way or another get rid of a problem. How we go about it ranges enormously. Sometimes we pretty much do nothing other than just wishing it would go away. Or we might tell someone to go away. The smarter / more optimistic among us might try to resolve a problem through a discussion with the person we think constitutes a problem. Then we might actually campaign against that problem. Murdering people because we think of them as problems is at the extreme end of the range of methods we might employ to be rid of them. The reason behind the murders is as common as muck. Choosing to murder fortunately is not.

I actually agree with Scumple now, at least somewhat. None but the last of Rodger’s 21 Youtube uploads were all that different from the thousands of bitter, angry, self-pitying, navel gazing rants infesting not just Youtube but forums, particularly of the men’s rights variety. You can also encounter them at work, in pubs, with more or less random acquaintances – well, anywhere, really. I am no exception in that regard. When I was 19, I got into a rage during an argument with my father I actually yelled at him: "I will murder you." It sounded sufficiently convincing to him to kick me out of home. We don’t expect these verbal vents to develop into action, even when they include explicit threats on the quite reasonable grounds that they hardly ever do. Unfortunately we don’t have a good metric by which ones are the exception. People who point to the "obvious warning signs" argue with the wisdom of hindsight, and their conviction that they are right involves a good deal of confirmation bias. There are shitloads of warnings with predictions of vile actions. The best we have for determining the probability of something terrible happening are some very vague criteria. They are so inadequate as to be close to useless for that task.

[pErvinalia]

To answer your previous post more seriously then Rev:

Yeah, I meant it more in a colloquial (is that the right word?) sense. But it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if he had a mental illness.

I actually would be a little surprised as there is currently no evidence to think that he did.

Well, actually, it's an interesting discussion. Are murderers mentally ill? You could surely make an argument for that.

Not really.. Mental disorders are prolonged behavioral or cognitive patterns that significantly affect the individual's ability to perform daily tasks. Generally for something to be a mental disorder it needs to, at a minimum, satisfy some of the criteria of "the 4 d's" which in themselves are necessary but not sufficient for a diagnosis (for example, you also need to meet the criteria for a specific disorder). Murder would arguably meet "deviance" and "danger" but without dysfunction or distress then you're simply moralising and not actually trying to help people. In another way, things like suicide would be considered a mental disorder under that model, even though sometimes suicide can be entirely rational.

Mental illness is always going to have a subjective part to it.

Eh, sort of. But generally people misunderstand where that subjectiveness is. If someone can function in their everyday life and can rationally plot to kill someone they hate, then that's objectively not a mental disorder, no matter how we look at it.

Why is me trusting no one, and when I do trust someone I become an emotional nutjob, considered mentally ill, but someone who kills another person without a somewhat rational reason considered sane?

Firstly, you're confusing different terms here. "Sane" and "mental illness" are not interchangeable and arguably have nothing in common. You can be sane but mentally ill, and mentally healthy but insane. "Sanity" is a legal term that simply refers to your ability to control your actions.

Secondly, the latter can be a mental disorder especially when it's done without a rational reason but often these people do have rational reasons. Rodger there had a rational reason - the women rejected him so he wanted them to die. Of course, the actual meaning of "rational" doesn't mean "a perfectly considered and accurate conclusion", it just means that there are reasons behind why someone performed the action they did.

The reason why the lack of trust would be considered a mental disorder whereas murder generally is not, is because not trusting someone would affect your life significantly in terms of personal distress, your ability to function, it's a prolonged pattern, etc, and it's not something that you are rationally deciding to do. Murderers on the other hand are often just shitty people doing shitty things.

Pragmatically, I expect that's because we wouldn't be able to punish anyone properly if we considered all gross anti-social crimes as mental illness. But it is still an interesting question, nonetheless.

Well that wouldn't really be a problem if we assume the prison system shouldn't be about punishment. If we want a rehabilitative system, as most psych resources argue in favour for and are organised around, then any hint or possibility of "murder" being a mental disorder would become a valid line of inquiry. The problem of course is that if we start defining psychology in terms of behavior which isn't "normal" and things we don't agree with or find inconvenient, then the whole thing becomes meaningless and unhelpful. If we start trying to force treatment on the guy who's happy believing that he's the King of Mars then most mental health professionals will agree that we've gone too far.
.

You've missed the point, slightly. It's not that the single event of murder is the defining feature. I would imagine it's one extreme symptom of whatever mental disorder the person might be suffering from. My hypothetical line of reasoning would be: If a person can come to the conclusion that killing a person (or even worse, multiple unrelated people) is OK with such specious reasoning as this tool employed, then there is probably some form of mental illness distorting their thinking and behaviour. I'm not sure why that couldn't be a reasonable conclusion.

[pErvinalia]

I didn't read or listen to anything he wrote.

Can someone who has please tell me if he thought he was entitled to sex or sex with a really hot woman that everyone else would envy him for.

Pretty much spot on. He even claimed he was a "nice guy" and it was a "crime" that "brutes" got sex of these girls, but he didn't. He was a sick little fuck.

[Robert_S]

I didn't read or listen to anything he wrote.

Can someone who has please tell me if he thought he was entitled to sex or sex with a really hot woman that everyone else would envy him for.

Pretty much spot on. He even claimed he was a "nice guy" and it was a "crime" that "brutes" got sex of these girls, but he didn't. He was a sick little fuck.

Ken gets Barbie. These PUAs and such don't want a woman for companionship, or even pleasure. They want trophy fucks. They don't resent rejection and isolation. They resent that they're playing a shallow game and they're being judged on shallow grounds.

Shit, when I was his age, I stayed as far as I could from sorority girls the same way I avoid Kinkaid paintings today.

[pErvinalia]

Yeah, the interesting thing was that he talked/obsessed about these really beautiful girls (i.e. bimbos). If he was a well adjusted intelligent kind person then he would have no problem finding a similar girl to him, but he wasn't interested in nice girls. He was obsessed with hot girls. Some of that is surely down to culture and it's not even remotely uncommon. But whatever the reason, he was a sick fuck.

I haven't fully followed this event, but it was discussed on a panel show last night here in Oz that I just watched this morning. From that and other pieces i gathered, it seems that this issue has become a battleground about misogyny vs mental illness. I think both issues deserve lots of light shone on them, and I'd hope this whole thing doesn't devolve into a false dichotomy between the two different views. It's entirely possible that this is an issue of both, as opposed to one or the other.

[JimC]

If only all the sorority girls were carrying concealed weapons!

[cronus]

If only all the sorority girls were carrying concealed weapons!

Most pretty women only have to say one line and I'm like one thousand miles from where they stand, and still running. When you never had to try it shows.

[Hermit]

Most pretty women only have to say one line and I'm like one thousand miles from where they stand, and still running. When you never had to try it shows.

"Oh. ohhh, ohhhhh, ohhhhhhh, yessss, put the baby in."

[cronus]

Most pretty women only have to say one line and I'm like one thousand miles from where they stand, and still running. When you never had to try it shows.

"Oh. ohhh, ohhhhh, ohhhhhhh, yessss, put the baby in."

If it sounds too good,or looks too good, to be true the wisdom of years, the kid lacked and will never now know, will say it is.