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Dirty-South Blues Harp forum: wail on! >
semi-OT: Elliott Rodger's bluesy manifesto
semi-OT: Elliott Rodger's bluesy manifesto
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kudzurunner
4714 posts
May 26, 2014
1:02 PM
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Speaking for the men on the forum, which is pretty much all of us, I suspect that we've all had moments, or extended periods, where we've been terribly lonely and resented the fact that lots of our peers were having hot, passionate sex, and perhaps even experiencing love and romance, while our cup was empty. One might even say that the blues is centered in that primal sort of loneliness: I ain't got nobody...baby, you don't even know my name....etc.
The music is one way to express that primal condition, externalize and share it, voice the pain, and, with the help of the community, get past it and live to fight (and hopefully love) another day.
All that being said, the 141-page manifesto of the Santa Barbara mass murderer, Elliott Rodger, is remarkable reading. It begins with his birth and tracks the growth of his soul (so to speak) and his corruscating loneliness right up through the revenge fantasies that he ultimately convinces himself are the best and only way of dealing with the world in which he finds himself.
It's clear that Rodger could have used a discipline like blues harmonica to help him tame his demons and. He needed the music, badly.
Here's a link for the manifesto:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/226068735/Manifesto-of-Elliot-Rodger
And here's where his revenge fantasies finally ended up. Let's this be a lesson to all: there's always another, and better way. But you have to let go of Ego in order to begin to find your way towards it.
"After going through every single fantasy I had about how I would punish my enemies, I started to detail all of my exact plans for how the Day of Retribution will play out. On the day before the Day of Retribution, I will start the First Phase of my vengeance: Silently killing as many people as I can around Isla Vista by luring them into my apartment through some form of trickery. The first people I would have to kill are my two housemates, to secure the entire apartment for myself as my personal torture and killing chamber. After that, I will start luring people into my apartment, knock them out with a hammer, and slit their throats. I will torture some of the good looking people before I kill them, assuming that the good looking ones had the best sex lives. All of that pleasure they had in life, I will punish by bringing them pain and suffering. I have lived a life of pain and suffering, and it was time to bring that pain to people who actually deserve it. I will cut them, flay them, strip all the skin off their flesh, and pour boiling water all over them while they are still alive, as well as any other form of torture I could possibly think of. When they are dead, I will behead them and keep their heads in a bag, for their heads will play a major role in the final phase. This First Phase will represent my
vengeance against all of the men who have had pleasurable sex lives while I’ve had to suffer. Things will
be fair once I make them suffer as I did. I will finally even the score. The Second Phase will take place on the Day of Retribution itself, just before the climactic massacre. The Second Phase will represent my War on Women. I will punish all females for the crime of depriving me of sex. They have starved me of sex for my entire youth, and gave that pleasure to other men. In doing so, they took many years of my life away. I cannot kill every single female on earth, but I can deliver a devastating blow that will shake all of them to the core of their wicked hearts. I will attack the very girls who represent everything I hate in the female gender: The hottest sorority of UCSB. After doing a lot of extensive research within the last year, I found out that the sorority with the most beautiful girls is Alpha Phi Sorority. I know exactly where their h
ouse is, and I’ve sat outside it in my car to stalk them many times. Alpha Phi sorority is full of hot, beautiful blonde girls; the kind of girls I’ve...
Last Edited by kudzurunner on May 26, 2014 1:03 PM
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kudzurunner
4715 posts
May 26, 2014
1:03 PM
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...
always desired but was never able to have because they all look down on me. They are all spoiled, heartless, wicked bitches. They think they are superior to me, and if I ever tried to ask one on a date, they would reject me cruelly. I will sneak into their house at around 9:00 p.m. on the Day of Retribution, just before all of the partying starts, and slaughter every single one of them with my guns and knives. If I have time, I will set their whole house on fire. Then we shall see who the superior one really is! The Final Phase of the Day of Retribution will be my ultimate showdown in the streets of Isla Vista.
On the morning before, I will drive down to my father’s house to kill my
little brother, denying him of the chance to grow up to surpass me, along with my stepmother Soumaya, as she will be in the way. My father will be away
on one of his business trips, so thankfully I won’t have to deal with him. If he didn’t
go away on that trip, I might even have to postpone the whole plan because of my fear that I might
hesitate if I have to kill him. Once I’ve taken care of my brother a
nd stepmother, I will switch over to the Mercedes SUV, and drive it back up to Isla Vista. I will use it as one of my killing machines against my enemies. An SUV will cause a lot more damage than my BMW coupe. After I have killed all of the sorority girls at the Alpha Phi House, I will quickly get into the the SUV before the police arrive, assuming they would arrive within 3 minutes. I will then make my way to Del Playa, splattering as many of my enemies as I can with the SUV, and shooting anyone I do
n’t splatter.
I can only imagine how sweet it will be to ram the SUV into all of those groups of popular young people
who I’ve always witnessed walking right in the middle of the road as if they are better than everyone
else. When they are writhing in pain, their bodies broken and dying after I splatter them, they will fully realize their crimes."
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1847
1819 posts
May 26, 2014
1:46 PM
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i just spent the weekend
With one of my closest friends,
Who lives in chino hills, it has to be one of the most crime free, peaceful places to raise a family.
One of the victims is from there.
She, while no relation to me, shared the same last name.
I was quite bothered by this tragedy,
As I was having my morning coffee
And reading about this,
I thought to myself, not something I could share with modern blues harmonica forum members.
Some very somber moments
On this memorial day.
So thank you for your post
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i get a lot of request when i play my harmonica
"but i play it anyway"
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Frank
4362 posts
May 26, 2014
3:11 PM
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Elliott Rodger's "Mentally Sick" manifesto
Iv'e work in the mental health field for the past 10 years and this isn't a case of a young man experiencing the blues...
What your reading - is a chilling story from someone with severe, chronic mental illness that went untreated and was left to fester and turn into full blown hatred spurred on by delusional thoughts directing him to murder.
Without medications and monitoring from professionals - People with certain severe mental illness can often be so tormented by their altered reality that these individuals will commit violent acts on Family, friends and society at large :(
With medications and help from professionals these same people can live non-violent lives and participate in society to the best of their ability.
It could also be this kid had a profound murderous heart pounding with in him and no amount of medication or therapy would of stopped him from killing the innocent.
Last Edited by Frank on May 26, 2014 3:21 PM
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kudzurunner
4716 posts
May 26, 2014
3:22 PM
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There's a very good blues novel by Albert Murray entitled TRAIN WHISTLE GUITAR. One of the key scenes involves a woman named Red Ella and a lady-killer (so to speak: sweet man who lets women support him) named Beau Beau Weaver. One day, Ella has had enough of his philandering. She meets him in the street and, in full view of the community, uses a single edge razor to disembowel him. She slices across his abdomen three or four times like Zorro.
The men of the community sit around later and talk about her. They end up calling her Red Ella--adding the prefix "Red" to her name--because, they argue, she had the blues but failed to give them a useable shape. She felt blue but acted red, so to speak. And they see this as a failure of character.
It's an intriguing scene. The way the men see it, she lost her cool--and that's never a good thing. No matter what she felt, she should have found a socially-constructive way of containing and expressing her rage. Or at least that's how the men see it. Her mistake was in surrendering to her rage. Everybody gets rageful. The point of the blues--again, as these men see it--isn't to give up your own life (as she does; off to prison) just because somebody has double-timed you in a way that makes you feel like sh-t. Why give somebody like that so much power over your life? They think she should have thrown him out the door, then locked it and thrown away the key. Find herself another man.
In other words, everybody feels the blues, and painfully, at some point, and maybe repeatedly. But only a fool imagines that no future transformation is possible. Blues people are tough, but they're also pragmatic. It's little children like my son Shaun who, when faced with disappointments, reify and universalize their gloom: "I'll NEVER be able to do that." Or--in Rodger's case--"I'm a 22-year-old virgin and I'll never get a date." Come on. Grow up.
Last Edited by kudzurunner on May 26, 2014 3:23 PM
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Goldbrick
455 posts
May 26, 2014
3:55 PM
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. Another reason for legalized prostitution ? Who knows if it would have helped, as from his writings he seemed to be a self pitying fool.
There could be those in a similar plight thst might benefit from the option.
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Frank
4363 posts
May 26, 2014
4:07 PM
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It would be nice if a discipline like blues harmonica could help tame demons once and for-all, but demons don't give up easily and in the end, music can only do so much too...
Look at all the great harmonica players that weren't saved by it's charm or the music they so loved playing. They were grown-up, weren't they?
This kid was also suffering from Narcissism and certainly has the traits of a Psycho Path...
Last Edited by Frank on May 26, 2014 4:08 PM
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Frank
4364 posts
May 26, 2014
5:10 PM
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Well lets pray more normal brain healthy kids like him don't go down the same path of becoming a mass murderer of the innocent :(
Last Edited by Frank on May 26, 2014 5:13 PM
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REM
265 posts
May 26, 2014
5:26 PM
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Goldbrick,
I really don't buy the idea that if this young man could have simply purchased the sex that he felt he was owed, that somehow this all could have been avoided. He had developed some pretty deep disdain for women, and a deep sense of entitlement. Here's a quote from his manifesto:
"Women have control over which men get sex and which men don’t, thus having control over which men breed and which men don’t. Feminism gave women the power over the future of the human species. Feminism is evil."
This type of thinking doesn't just disappear once they get the sex that they think they have a right to.
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BronzeWailer
1286 posts
May 26, 2014
5:56 PM
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I don't like giving guys like this oxygen (in terms of discussing them). I am concerned that the post mortem fame may be a motivating factor for future copy cats. I realize this is an impossible dream (the media would never countenance it), but what if we all agreed never to mention such guys' names?
BronzeWailer's YouTube
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Frank
4365 posts
May 26, 2014
6:17 PM
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No one here mentioned they kill at higher rates - you failed to mention they are more likely to hurt themselves then others too :(
And It's obvious that he basically wrote a book so they can make a movie about him, which I'm sure has already begun.
Last Edited by Frank on May 26, 2014 6:28 PM
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REM
267 posts
May 26, 2014
6:33 PM
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I didn't mean to imply you were saying people with mental illness kill at higher rates. But I think when we automatically start labeling people who commit horrible acts as mentally ill, we are basically sending a message that you have to be mentally ill to do these types of things and that mental illness makes you more likely to be violent, which is simply not true.
It wasn't really my intent to call you out, I guess I've just gotten tired of all the "crazy blaming" I've been seeing in the media, so I kind of went off on a rant.
Last Edited by REM on May 26, 2014 6:37 PM
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Frank
4367 posts
May 26, 2014
6:47 PM
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I don't feel called out at all brother, your not "paranoid" are you...( just kidding)- peace and enjoy the rest of this blessed day :)
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JustFuya
203 posts
May 26, 2014
7:32 PM
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I believe antisocial behavior is the result of an empty cup. The necessary contents vary as much as the intensity of the desire to fill it.
I don't see the relation to blues. A couple of my heroes were victims of other people's mental illness. Their cup was full and that was their undoing.
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Goldbrick
456 posts
May 26, 2014
8:57 PM
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double damn sure he fits some clinical definition of mentally ill. Sorry if some feel that it stigmatizes the mentally ill
His parents were just too preoccupied with their own importance to address the fact the kid had major problems
He hated his stepmother and I ma sure that led to part of his extreme hatred for women
Last Edited by Goldbrick on May 26, 2014 8:58 PM
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TheoBurke
647 posts
May 26, 2014
9:16 PM
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Musicians, poets, painters , novelists and playwrights are all able to take the pain of their lives and transform it into powerful art that an audience can empathize with and gain knowledge of the world through the experience of another person; I do not think, however, that the playing of music, however intensely,however emotionally, however deeply and introspectively can, in all cases, make the agony bearable. Some of us are so damaged that there really is no chance of turning a relentless stream of psychological disorder into a manageable font of creativity; from what I've read and from what I've been able to bear from the YouTube, it seems to me that Rodgers' had an unshakeable perception that virtually everything that happened in his world gave further proof that other people, women especially, were set to taunt him, humiliate him, make him feel less than. Would that it were true that he might have turned out differently had he latched on to music and found a way to turn his grief into something beautiful and powerful. He was, likely, mentally ill; what he needed was consuling and care and stricter gun regulation that would have made it well nigh impossible for him to get his weapons. It's easier in many states to get guns than it is a driver's license, however, and what we have in Santa Barbara are six people murdered by a probable psychopath who was able to act out his revenge fantasy with all the fire power he needed. It's a tragedy no amount of exposure to blues could have allayed.
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Ted Burke
http://www.youtube.com/user/TheoBurke?feature=mhee
http://ted-burke.com
tburke4@san.rr.coM
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REM
268 posts
May 26, 2014
9:32 PM
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Goldbrick,
Thank you for your expert psychological analysis of someone you've had zero interaction with. Also thanks for implying a causal link between any mental illness he may have and the violent acts he committed. Your expert assertions are very compelling.
It's almost as compelling as the hack psychologist Fox News had on claiming he committed these acts because he was gay and a schizophrenic (another amazing diagnoses of someone she has never had any clinical interaction with, very responsible of her)
He may very well have been diagnosed with a mental illness. The problem is the assumption that a mental illness is what caused this. Even if we assume he had a mental illness, that is not enough for us to attribute his actions to his mental illness.
Last Edited by REM on May 26, 2014 9:36 PM
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1847
1822 posts
May 26, 2014
9:51 PM
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the newspaper article said he had asperger's
it should be noted that newspapers more times than not,
contains fact's that have not been substantiated
asperger syndrome
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i get a lot of request when i play my harmonica
"but i play it anyway"
Last Edited by 1847 on May 26, 2014 9:54 PM
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Goldbrick
457 posts
May 26, 2014
9:53 PM
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"Dont need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows"
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Chris L
44 posts
May 26, 2014
9:56 PM
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I find Adam's original premise thought provoking: Is the music healing? Do the blues work therapeutically? What does it mean that Sonny Boy or Little Walter could publicly perform to mixed audiences lyrics clearly expressing misogynistic rage and murderous intent: "Your funeral and my trial", "Boom, boom, out go the lights", "Just your fool" etc. etc. What do people think? Were these lyrics understood as hyperbolic expressions of grief and anger that were acceptable in the culture? Or were they a genuine expression of male entitlement and misogyny?
Personally, I believe music allows us to express our (often dysfunctional) thoughts and feelings, acknowledging to the world that we are all a little messed up inside with grief, anger, insecurity, etc. and in that sense it is therapeutic. How does the blues (or rap or rock or pop) work for others?
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1847
1823 posts
May 26, 2014
10:06 PM
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people with AS often have a limited range of intonation:
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i get a lot of request when i play my harmonica
"but i play it anyway"
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REM
269 posts
May 26, 2014
10:09 PM
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I'd heard he may have been diagnosed with with a high functioning form of aspergers. I don't know if it's been confirmed or not, but I find it irrelevant, and the fact that media sources are reporting this like it is somehow relevant to the crime is seriously screwed up. Anyone familiar with aspergers should realize that the idea that this illness is somehow the cause of his violent acts, is totally unfounded. But the fact is that most people who hear this information will not realize that, and it will only further stigmatize the illness.
There are of course certain forms of mental illness that can predispose an individual to violence, but it is harmful and counterproductive to automatically assume that when someone commits a horrific act of violence it must be due to mental illness
Last Edited by REM on May 26, 2014 10:22 PM
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nacoran
7777 posts
May 26, 2014
11:12 PM
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I watched his final video. Normally I avoid that kind of thing, but the article I was reading suggested I should watch it. He seemed to have a strange sense of detachment from the emotions of others and some pretty perverse ideas of entitlement. I've know several people with Aspergers, and a couple of them had similar issues with believing that their idea of what is right absolutely had to be the right way. I've also known people with Aspergers who go out of their way to avoid causing offense because they know they have trouble sometimes reading people's emotions.
Many people with mental illness are victimized and an inordinate number of people in our prisons have mental illnesses- but, that's just a fraction of the people out there with mental illness. Most people with mental illness live ordinary lives, often more vulnerable to being taken advantage of than the general public.
REM, you're right, that his mental illness shouldn't be the focus. I'd focus more on the fact that if he did have a mental illness, it certainly wasn't being dealt with well. It seems he was frequenting sites that objectified women, and wasn't getting particularly good guidance. I think, if you are already having a hard time figuring out how to fit in you are more likely to buy into ideologies that say, 'hey, it's them with the problem, not you.'
We need a better mental health system. I knew someone who went looking for mental health care and was turned down who later went on to do horrible things. That doesn't excuse what he did, but it doesn't excuse that we could maybe have prevented those horrible things.
I've got an aunt, who I love dearly, who is a hoarder. I have friends who are nuts when they are off their meds and I've got more crazy running around in my own attic than I can deal with sometimes.
Crazy is a loaded word. I like to use this example- some anthropologists did a study where they showed people flash-cards of different colors and asked them to remember how many they saw. One of the colors was pink, so you got a breakdown something like '5 blue, 2 brown, 1 yellow, 3 pink, 5 red', only the people they were talking to didn't speak English, and their language didn't have a word for pink, so they broke it down, '5 blue, 2 brown, 1 yellow, 8 red'. If you showed them the two cards they could tell one was lighter than the other, but they didn't have a word for it, so they didn't categorize it. (English apparently has it's own cognitive weaknesses- we rely on left/right for directions, but cultures that rely on north/south can find their way better). With mental illness we have a problem. We have a few words for it, but all the common ones lump murderers in with people who have to check their locks 100 times before they go to sleep. I have two 'crazy' aunts. When I'm talking about them to friends who forget which one is which, I refer to them as 'good crazy' and 'bad crazy'. One is a sweet, brilliant woman who doesn't function very well, and the other is also brilliant, but who is mean and controlling. Both crazy, one lovable.
The fact that this guy killed people, well, we could just say, well, he's evil, but even that is only useful to an extent. It doesn't tell us what we could do to stop the next evil person. We look for explanations when things are beyond our frame of reference, and sometimes the words we have are too general. If he had a mental illness that made it so he couldn't stay in touch with reality, it's sad for his sake, but even so many times more for the sake of the people that he killed, that no one was able to reel him back in in time.
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Nate
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First Post- May 8, 2009
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tmf714
2542 posts
May 27, 2014
8:20 AM
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I could not agree more Joe-I applaud you!
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Dog Face
259 posts
May 27, 2014
8:37 AM
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Maybe he just had the mad man blues.
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Brad
Last Edited by Dog Face on May 27, 2014 9:08 AM
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kudzurunner
4722 posts
May 27, 2014
8:41 AM
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@killerjoe: This thread isn't about me--or you, I hope. Nor is it about blues harmonica. (That's why I included "semi-OT" in the title.) It's about blues as a central aspect of the human condition. You're quite wrong if you think that Rodger's complaint--about being unloved, about being ignored by women, about hungering for vengeance--has nothing to do with the blues. When I wrote that Rodger "could have used a discipline like blues harmonica," my point was simply that when people are filled with that sort of pain and aggression, it (usually) helps to have a way of doing something constructive with them, rather than dwelling in negativity and then exploding into mass murder. Perhaps you're happier and more sane than I am, but at various low points in my own life, the harmonica has helped me keep it together. I know that blues guitar, rock drums, and tae kwan do have helped other people do the same thing. That's all I was saying.
As for my claim "there's always another, and better way. But you have to let go of Ego in order to begin to find your way towards it," I certainly can't claim that as my own original thought. It's the foundation of Buddhism and most of the world's religions. I recycled it here because Rodger's autobiography is quivering with pained, outraged ego--a sense that the world revolves around him, or should--and I found myself wanting to point him towards Pema Chodron, Jack Kornfield, and others who would have told him to take a deep breath, just sit, and practice a little forgiveness and self-acceptance.
I don't mind if you disagree with my take on Rodger's autobiography, but this forum does have a couple of rules and one of them is that stuff like "You sound like a fool" and "Why promote yourself as pretentious" doesn't fly here. Those are personal insults. If you'd like to remain a member here, please edit your post and tone down your language in the future.
Last Edited by kudzurunner on May 27, 2014 9:05 AM
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TheoBurke
648 posts
May 27, 2014
10:34 AM
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It's a mistake to consider our bad moments with those of Rodgers. While reasonable people, those with an innate and/or instilled sense of right and wrong, have boundaries we do not cross and have the option to turn to creativity--playing music, writing, drawing--to channel our pain and convert it to something that is life-affirm, Rodgers was too far gone. In his own words, he was manically self-obsessed with the idea that he'd been done gross and continuous indignities and had become equally obsessed with committing violent acts against his enemies, which was the world at large. Bad as we've had it, most of us , I wager, do not have amind near that of Rodgers. Art, blues music can help a normal person find their way back to a functioning, mentally healthy middle ground where they can learn to persevere and live creatively, with purpose. Rodgers personality wouldn't allow that. He was mentally ill and an interest in music wouldn't have helped him. As his, he had planned to commit suicide and kill people in the process. That he accomplished, and I doubt no amount of blues lyrics or cool harmonica riffs would have calmed his mind. He was an aberration. Thinking art could have saved him and the people he killed in Santa Barbara is wishful thinking.
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Ted Burke
http://www.youtube.com/user/TheoBurke?feature=mhee
http://ted-burke.com
tburke4@san.rr.coM
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kudzurunner
4723 posts
May 27, 2014
11:01 AM
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I'm going to encourage folks here who haven't yet taken a look at Rodger's autobiography--since that's what it is; it's a detailed autobiography--to do so. Start, for example, with "16 years old," which starts on p. 51. (The URL for the manuscript is in my original post, above.) What I found surprising is how normal he sounds. He sounds like a smart, lonely kid who plays video games for far too many hours a day. His worldview at age 16 is of course being narrated retrospectively by a guy much closer in age to the person who just murdered 6 people after writing the horrendous things I posted earlier--and that just makes his relative normality at age 16 that much more surprising.
My younger brother has Asperger's syndrome. Neither Rodger's autobio nor his videos immediately suggest that he is an Aspy. Temple Grandin is an Aspy. But who knows? It's a sad thing. He started off by killing three Chinese guys--his two roomates and a friend of theirs, I believe. He'd have to be insane to conclude that Chinese guys were his problem.
We probably need to distinguish between mental illness as a legal strategy (i.e., an insanity plea: I didn't know the difference between right and wrong) and mental illness as a medical diagnosis. The key thing to observe about both constructs is precisely that: they're historically contingent constructs. The boundaries are constantly shifting. The boundaries are constantly being negotiated. The DSM-IV (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) is what it suggests: the fourth update. Homosexuality, for example, used to "be" a mental illness. Now it's not.
Exercise--long walks--is apparently good for the mental illness that is depression. Walking! So I wouldn't be surprised if music therapy were occasionally used to help profoundly depressed and antisocial people reorient themselves in the general direction of psychic health. Some people are probably too far gone for that.
Theo is much more certain than I am that he knows what mental illness is. Ted Bundy wasn't mentally ill, in a legal sense: he knew the difference between right and wrong. Yet most of us would call him a very sick man.
Last Edited by kudzurunner on May 27, 2014 11:43 AM
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REM
270 posts
May 27, 2014
11:21 AM
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"He'd have to be insane to conclude that Chinese guys were his problem."
Actually, not only did he spend quite a bit of time on creepy misogynistic Men's Rights Activism and Pick Up Artist related forums, but he also spent quite a bit of time on some very racist forums, where he expressed some incredibly racist views. You don't have to be mentally ill to get caught up in in some really horrible ideologies, or to commit very violent crimes. Look at religious fanatics for example.
"While reasonable people, those with an innate and/or instilled sense of right and wrong, have boundaries we do not cross"
Under the right circumstances even reasonable people can do some pretty horrible things. I think the Milgram experiment (among others) demonstrated that.
Last Edited by REM on May 27, 2014 11:23 AM
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nacoran
7778 posts
May 27, 2014
11:23 AM
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I know I've told this story before, but I have a friend who was going through a bad bout of depression. A group of us were supposed to hang out later in the day, but at the last minute he had to cancel. His sister took a fall down some stairs and he had to take her to the hospital. (Ultimately, she was alright, just bruised up a bit). When he finally did show up he was complaining about what a horrible day he's had sitting in the waiting room with a sister that drives him crazy. He asked if there is any way his day could have been worse. I told him he could have fallen down the stairs.
There is always someone who has it worse, but that's one of the insidious things about depression- it's ability to narrow your world view. We wallow. We catastrophize. We stop seeing things in their broader context. That's how the mental illness of depression works. In his video, he complains that these women turned him down, but in the same video he talks about how women would turn him down if he had the guts to talk to him. His rejection is a self-fulfilling prophecy. You don't get women to say yes if you don't talk to them. He talks about what a perfect gentleman he is as he plots to kill people.
I don't think harmonica could have saved him, but maybe something more productive than pickup artist websites might have steered him towards the mental health help he needed. The problem with disorders that isolate you is we need feedback on our thought process as part of being a healthy human being. The farther out you get, the harder it is to relate to other human beings.
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Nate
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Frank
4377 posts
May 27, 2014
11:32 AM
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That is the insidiousness of mental illness...It often suddenly manifests itself while the person is in their teens thru the 20's...One minute they are so-called normal - and without warning cruelly thrust into the world of mental illness...It is no respecter of persons...Many peoples mental illness surfaces while in college etc.
Last Edited by Frank on May 27, 2014 11:32 AM
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Sedandelivery
22 posts
May 27, 2014
1:56 PM
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This is obviously a loaded issue, involving guns, sex, youth, gender dynamics, social media, etc, so there will be lots of different takes on it. I normally stay out of this stuff. However, from my understanding, he did quite the opposite of hang out on "creepy misogynistic Men's Rights Activism and Pick Up Artist related forums." He was involved in a forum called PUAHate. Hate being the operative word here. In fact, some contextualized, well explained MRA wisdom would have done this guy a lot of good. It would have been extremely beneficial for someone to explain to him that everything hollywood tells him about how to get girls is wrong, and that posting youtube videos of yourself worshiping young blonde women as gifts from God, begging them to see that you are "worthy" of them is the best way to make women recoil in disgust. It's quite obvious that nobody taught this guy how to be confident around women and derive his self worth from within rather than from female acceptance. I feel that many young men are completely lost in this regard, and there is a lot of good to be found when it comes to MRA sites and information. Labeling it as "creepy and misogynistic" does it a grave disservice, in my opinion.
I was also struck by how much this consumed him during his college years. I understand that college is when your sexual desires are at peak strength, but it should also be when you are immersed in a field or study that you are truly passionate about. This is where the harmonica could have come in. I went to art school, and yeah, I got lonely at times, but I was so passionate about what I was studying that I never had the time or desire to write manifestos or follow my darkest feelings all the way to their absolute worst case conclusion. If he had some type of pursuit that he was passionate about, he would have worried much less about women, and ironically, they would have found him much more attractive.
The prospect of mental illness adds a whole other terrible layer to this situation. I'm obviously not a mental health professional, but I would think that anyone who wants to look into a camera, call themselves "magnificent" and then post it online for the world to see might have some personal issues.
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IndianaHarpKid
36 posts
May 27, 2014
11:00 PM
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REM-
Where are you finding this quote on feminism from? I see nothing in the manifesto mentioning a hatred of feminism specifically, nor are any of his Youtube subscriptions to actual people who call themselves MRAs. In fact, the only vaguely political/social related channel he subscribed to is The Young Turks, a progressive, pro-feminist news channel. What are present are channels of pick up artists, which are usually quite opposed to people in the men's rights movement, and the same is true of most MRAs.
In fact, one of the largest men's rights sites on the planet, A Voice for Men, has an article specifically talking about how the whole "Alpha Male" concept needs to be destroyed. They also just so happen to openly condemn violence, and their mission statement says as much. To imply that MRAs have anything to do with this is completely and utterly off base. His manifesto also happens to neglect mentioning the phrases "men's rights","MRM", "MHRM", "MRA", "MHRA","feminism", or "Feminists". Is it possible he disliked some aspects of certain types of feminism? Absolutely. Does this inherently make his actions solely about the hatred of women? I dunno, I don't feel like you stab 3 other men to death over your hatred of women.
This is more complex than any of the individual parts involved, but a very interesting thing to note is that a few weeks prior to this, the police were called about his videos, but he managed to have nothing happen from that. If the police had searched his house, this tragedy might never have happened. The blame on this, is not on any outside group that he might have belonged to, but Elliot Rodger himself.
Also of note: Many of these sites he was on found his rhetoric quite disturbing, rightfully so. His anti-woman, and anti-male rhetoric was too extreme for even the PUAs, which says a lot, as those assholes are pretty damn misogynistic. No, I think it's safe to say that this is not just about any one thing, but a whole host of things that ended up with a terrible tragedy occurring.
Last Edited by IndianaHarpKid on May 27, 2014 11:00 PM
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JustFuya
210 posts
May 27, 2014
11:25 PM
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This was a local headline around here but since I am disconnected from TV and newspaper it took me a couple of days to hear about it. I certainly didn't expect a discussion of this tragedy here.
But it happened and I just spent my day reading the whole manifesto. I'd be more interested in reading his diary than this narrative which emerged from his mind after it snapped. It's an articulate retrospective. I'm sure the 'experts' will argue and never agree about its meaning and a new 'Self Esteem' initiative will be mandated by the State of California, but....
I am left with two questions and I feel qualified to ask them after carefully reading his document:
1 - Did he and his father ever have a discussion about the facts of life and love?
2 - Would he have suffered anything more than normal teenage angst if musical instruments were as handy as violent computer games played with 'cyber' friends?
Last Edited by JustFuya on May 28, 2014 2:35 PM
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Frank
4383 posts
May 28, 2014
4:54 AM
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scojo
484 posts
May 28, 2014
1:33 PM
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One of my roommates in college had the world at his feet. Three sport all-state athlete in Arizona... All-Ivy League defensive back in college... Harvard undergrad, Penn/Wharton MBA... making $650,000 at age 29... three beautiful kids, great wife (also a friend of mine), penthouse apartment on east side of NYC.
Today, he has absolutely nothing (hasn't seen his kids in over three years) and has been in trouble with the law for shoplifting booze, thanks to schizophrenia. As noted above by Frank, mental illness can hit anyone at any time. It's truly horrible, and our society does a terrible job of dealing with it.
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atty1chgo
948 posts
May 28, 2014
1:44 PM
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1. Aspergers is commonly and erroneously portrayed in the media and elsewhere as being some frightfully dangerous condition. It is not always the case.
2. The diagnosis of the mental health condition of a human being, unless one is a professional in the field with real time, in-person contact, is just as good a diagnosis as that of a garbage man who reads about it from a tossed newspaper in the alley IMHO.
3. KillerJoe, your comments really bothered me.
And it wasn't even the "fool" comment. I, for one, understood the connection that kudzurunner was making with the blues almost immediately, and especially after his mention of Train Whistle Guitar. There was nothing foolish about what was written above.
I guess I don't understand the accusation of "self-promot[ion] of "superior thinking and intellect skills". Kudzurunner is promoting his brainpower in this post for personal ego building? What nonsense.
I take your comment to mean that persons, apparently such as yourself, are personally offended and threatened if someone articulates and writes well as a matter of course, as Adam does. Or maybe we should all endeavor to dumb down the way we write and speak on this Forum to accommodate your gentle psyche?
If intelligent discourse intimidates you, KJ, perhaps a better course of action would be - not to read something that does not interest you, or is too frightening, or is something that you just cannot understand.
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Frank
4388 posts
May 28, 2014
2:05 PM
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REM
271 posts
May 28, 2014
2:07 PM
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I was aware that it was a PUAHate forum (which is why I said "PUA related") I had a chance to see some of it from before it was shut down. I wouldn't quote me on it, because I heard it second hand and haven't been able to confirm it yet (because PUAHate has been shut down), but from what I've heard his hatred for PUAs had to with him being taken in by them (and it of course not workng) as well as his general hatred for men that he thought could get women. From what I saw of the PUAHate site, it wasn't really any better than the people they were railing against. Apparently in his autobiography, Rodgers said that PUAHate confirmed his theories about women being wicked and degenerate. Here's an article that talks a little bit about the nature of PUAHate: http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2014/05/24/elliot_rodger_the_pick_up_artist_community_s_predictable_horrible_response.html
IndianaHarpKid - I apologize, you're right the quote I posted wasn't from the manifesto, but was in fact one of his posts on the PUAHate forum. I've been reading through a lot of stuff on this, but I'm not sure how I managed to get that mixed up : / Anyways, you can find a screen shot of the post here:
https://mobile.twitter.com/Felineism/status/470289009340456961/photo/1
**Okay, fair warning, I'm going to explain why I feel that, by and large, most MRA groups/forums are more than deserving of being labeled "creepy and misogynistic". This is kinda getting off topic, but since some people think I was being unfair to MRAs, I guess I should elaborate. Feel free to not read any further.
While in theory, I think it would be a good idea for men to have an outlet to discuss some of the issues that affect them (patriarchal culture is harmful to men and boys as well as women and girls). For example, the affects of gender roles on males, sexual and domestic abuse against men, fathers issues, etc. And while these are issues that feminism actually addresses, it could still be helpful for men to have an outlet to discuss these issues and work on them. However, this is not what one tends to find on MRA forums (or when they do address these issues, the conclusions they usually come to are horrible). I think just visiting some the MRA forums on Reddit, for example, should be enough for most people to understand why I think they're creepy and misogynistic. They are filled with rampant sexism and a complete misunderstanding of feminism. They tend to believe that feminism has somehow resulted in wide spread misandry, and that men are really the ones being oppressed. The last time I visited one of the forums, they had a whole thread of people going on and on about how women have never actually been oppressed, and in fact have always been the unfairly privileged ones. And the way they talk about rape, and often act like its a a big joke, is sickening. The way they try to twist and misrepresent evolutionary psychology, and use it to justify gender roles and oppressing woman is pathetic.
It's interesting you bring up A Voice for Men, I would have thought you'd bring up a group that isn't frequently awful (but to be fair, they're not easy to find). The Good Men Foundation, for example, is a group that genuinely does work to promote equal rights. And they work alongside feminists, as opposed to blaming them for any perceived injustice.
I am a little surprised to hear that AVfM has a problem with the "Alpha Male" concept. Perhaps they're maturing. Part of there mission statement use to include this charming quote (it's now been removed):
"AVfM regards feminists, manginas*, white knights**, and other agents of misandry as a social malignancy."
*a derisive term for "weak" men (IMHO, this is not the type of language that helps deal with the problem of the "Alpha Male" concept)
** similar derisive term, for males who identify as feminists
AVfM was created by, and is run by, Paul Elam. In my next post I'll review some of his greatest hits, and if you don't find it creepy and misogynistic, then we're working with different definitions of the terms.
Last Edited by REM on May 28, 2014 10:12 PM
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REM
272 posts
May 28, 2014
2:27 PM
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The founder and president of A Voice For Men:
Paul Elam on Domestic Violence:
"I’d like to make it the objective for the remainder of this month, and all the Octobers that follow, for men who are being attacked and physically abused by women – to beat the living shit out of them. I don’t mean subdue them, or deliver an open handed pop on the face to get them to settle down. I mean literally to grab them by the hair and smack their face against the wall till the smugness of beating on someone because you know they won’t fight back drains from their nose with a few million red corpuscles.
And then make them clean up the mess. …
Now, am I serious about this?
No. Not because it’s wrong. It’s not wrong. Every one should have the right to defend themselves. …
But it isn’t worth the time behind bars or the abuse of anger management training that men must endure if they are uppity enough to defend themselves from female attackers."
This post was accompanied by a picture of a woman with a black eye, captioned “Maybe she DID have it coming.”
[Edit: I realized that the photos are just too inappropriate to have them viewable on the thread, and they may be triggering to some people. So I'll just provide links to the photos if you wanna see the type of sh*t that pops up on MRA forums]
http://i1339.photobucket.com/albums/o714/threeflattires/imagejpg1_zpsab699fca.jpg
Another poster on the AVfM forum posted something quite similar:
http://i1339.photobucket.com/albums/o714/threeflattires/imagejpg1_zps02f92ec0.jpg
Paul Elam on prosecuting rapists:
"Should I be called to sit on a jury for a rape trial, I vow publicly to vote not guilty, even in the face of overwhelming evidence that the charges are true."
Paul Elam on Rape:
"I have ideas about women who spend evenings in bars hustling men for drinks, playing on their sexual desires … And the women who drink and make out, doing everything short of sex with men all evening, and then go to his apartment at 2:00 a.m.. Sometimes both of these women end up being the “victims” of rape.
But are these women asking to get raped?
In the most severe and emphatic terms possible the answer is NO, THEY ARE NOT ASKING TO GET RAPED.
They are freaking begging for it.
Damn near demanding it.
And all the outraged PC demands to get huffy and point out how nothing justifies or excuses rape won’t change the fact that there are a lot of women who get pummeled and pumped because they are stupid (and often arrogant) enough to walk though life with the equivalent of a I’M A STUPID, CONNIVING BITCH – PLEASE RAPE ME neon sign glowing above their empty little narcissistic heads."
Paul Elam Explains How the Thought of Harming His Critics Sexually Arouses Him (tell me this isn't creepy):
"Do you think I am going to stop?
It’s a serious question, because the answer to that question … should inform you of what will work for you or not work for you in dealing with me.
And the answer is, of course, no, I am not going to stop. You see, I find you, as a feminist, to be a loathsome, vile piece of human garbage. I find you so pernicious and repugnant that the idea of fucking your shit up gives me an erection."
Last Edited by REM on May 28, 2014 2:50 PM
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REM
273 posts
May 28, 2014
2:31 PM
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Paul Elam on Mother's Day:
"To all you mothers of the world, please give your Mother’s Day flowers and give them all generously. Most importantly, give them where they will do the most good. Place a bunch of daffodils at a dumpster near you, perhaps one in which one of you, or one of your kind, has tossed an unwanted baby, leaving it there to slowly die alone in a pile of trash.
Perhaps you could lay a single rose at the base of a bridge that has been used by a mother to throw her baby into an icy river. Perhaps you can lay it there with hands that have beaten or shaken a baby to death. …
Inspired? Good. Now perhaps some of you could place large, colorful arrangements at the abortion centers where women go to have children cut out and laid to rest in those colorful and attractive biohazard containers that are all the rage in the clinics.
........
This is not a request for some mothers, or a percentage of them, but all of you. In fact, you don’t even have to be a mother. If you have a vagina, the blood of all those children, who are abused far more at the hands of women than men, has stained your skin and caked around the cuticles of your fingers.
.......
In Daffodils for Dumpsters the gash gets you in, and you don’t really have a choice.
.......
Now, do I really mean all this? Yes."
Here's a wonderful article that appeared on AVfM, that gave some unique dating advice (ie. tell her that her soul is dog shit):
http://www.donotlink.com/framed?12505
Read some of the comments on the article to see how the readers at AVfM feel about the article. Those fedora wearing a-holes found it quite insightful.
I'm tempted to keep going and give more examples of the f*cked up sh*t that regularly appears up on AVfM, but I'll give it a rest for now.
AVfM, comparatively, isn't even as bad as a lot of the MRA groups/forums out there that I've seen. If you're ever looking to throw up in your mouth a little bit, I suggest spending some time on TheRedPill on Reddit.
AVfM has some people who contribute who are relatively reasonable, and will sometimes write articles that read kinda like something you'd read on a feminist website (which I guess would account for the article on the alpha male concept). But they're posted right alongside some pretty horrible stuff. But like I said, AVfM is relatively tame compared to a lot of the MRA groups/forums out there.
Last Edited by REM on May 28, 2014 11:31 PM
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IndianaHarpKid
38 posts
May 28, 2014
11:49 PM
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The article I'm talking about is from 2010, hardly a new post in regards to the anti "alpha male" notion at AvfM and other MRM sites.
That said, I was just pointing out that one of the larger MRA sites has in fact posted many many negative things about PUAs and the crap they spew. I was not defending AvfM as I'd disagree with the vast majority of their tone, but some of the ideas posted about on there are important. TheRedPill is more like a PUA community than a men's rights site, but I could see how they'd be confused for the same thing.
That said, the notion that feminists actually give a shit about male rape victims, or male domestic violence victims is incredibly horribly laughably wrong. In the 11 years since the United Kingdom passed a rape law that made it a requirement to be male to have the crime be considered rape, there has been, as far as I've seen no action on behalf of feminists to change this in the slightest. And in fact, this is not the only gendered rape law that feminists have done nothing about. In fact, in both India and Israel, women's groups both successfully lobbied to keep rape laws so that men, and only men could be charged with rape.
There's also the problem with the way that Mary Koss influenced the CDC in to calling it not rape, but "made to penetrate" when a woman forces a man to have sex with her. Oddly enough, when you classify this as rape, as most people would rightfully do, you find that in the prior 12 months to the CDC's 2010 study, 1.27 million women, and 1.267 million men were raped. This might seem shocking, but this is only one of many studies that have found that despite 99% of the people convicted for rape, it's actually not a horrible thing that only men do to women.
The notion that domestic violence is something men commit against women is also heavily to blame on feminists. The Duluth Model of domestic violence makes it neigh impossible for a man to have his partner arrested for assaulting him. This model of domestic violence is the driving force behind the Violence Against Women Act, which leads to yet another skewed picture of domestic violence. In fact, a 2012 review of 221 empirical studies on domestic violence conducted by Martin Fiebert found that interestingly enough, the rate at which men and women face domestic violence are a far cry from the numbers you get when you look at arrests. Indeed, the prior mentioned CDC study found a similarly shocking thing in that it found that 40% of the people who reported being abused by an intimate partner were men. This again, contradicts the message that is often espoused by feminists on the matter.
That's not to say that violence against women isn't an issue, it's just to say that your contention that feminists care about male victims of either rape or domestic violence is either extremely naive, or willfully ignorant of a wide range of data that contradicts these claims.
Further evidence to contradict such claims lies in the attempts by feminists at the University of Toronto to block a speech being put on by Warren Farrell about the issues men and boys face in school. In the 1970s Dr. Farrell was a feminist, so much so that he was on the board of the National Organization for Women. It's quite odd to me, that feminists would interrupt the talk by a former feminist on the issues that young men face if they really did care about men. This is only one such example of feminists are various Canadian campuses protesting and disrupting talks about men's issues, so again, I don't really see how the argument can reasonably be made that feminists care about the issues effecting men.
I guess my point is that really, neither MRAs or feminists will solve gender issues unless they work together, and that just isn't happening at all. You cannot fix gender issues without involving people of all genders. It's really that simple.
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Frank
4394 posts
May 29, 2014
2:58 AM
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All humans have the capacity to harm others whether male, female, young, old,...
I LOVE WOMAN :)
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SuperBee
2039 posts
May 29, 2014
3:41 AM
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I sure got the blues reading this bluesy thread...set me to thinking about a problematic band mate, when I read all this stuff about mental illness and men's rights and pick up artist hate etc etc...
This cat..,well, he wasn't afraid to pick things apart and send people email about it..,I get the same feeling off that last sequence of call and response posting as I'd get reading his emails sometimes.
And then I thought...this post was really inspired by a mass murderer and that inclined me to recall our local mass killer, a young blonde lad who killed over 30 people one sunny afternoon...over 15 years on, we still don't know why...
Lots of people have the blues about that...
We still don't like to talk about it or say his name. He's in the prison...solitary I think...he wants to die but we won't let him. Lots IV people want to hurt him... But no one seems to want him to die except him. I don't know if anyone loves him. I think there was a dearth of love in his life. Plenty of money though. And access to guns. He managed to stir a willing politician to action about gun laws.
I think they keep him alive because they know he is suffering. And it's the law. I think I find it grotesque. I'm not sure. It's discomforting to think about
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Frank
4401 posts
May 29, 2014
4:47 AM
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BluesJacketman
143 posts
May 29, 2014
6:17 AM
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I am 24 years old. I didn't kiss a girl until I was 20. I didn't lose my virginity until I was 22. I didn't have a relationship(boyfriend/girlfriend) until I was 23. Did I get picked as a kid for being fat, poor and ugly? Yes, I did. Did I blame it on other random innocent people? No. Both my parents were drug addicts and by the time I was 7 or 8 my father was in prison and my mom was unfit to raise kids, so my sister and I were sent to be raised by my grandparents.
This kid didn't give that many people a chance. He was racist and only wanted to have sex with a white, blonde sorority girl. He didn't even care about having a real meaningful relationship. He was so mad that they deprived him of sex. Too bad he didn't realize that almost everyone gets rejected by sorority girls.
The blues taught me hope and that what I was feeling was normal. Even though I was lonely and the girls I had feelings for didn't feel the same way about me, I knew I just needed to wait, and with patience it would come.
It did come.
Last Edited by BluesJacketman on May 29, 2014 6:29 AM
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