School shooting in Finland. 7 dead...

[Elok]

...as far as you know.

[b etor]

no, for realz. it's really bad.

[Slade Wilson]

From his info and manifesto he seems perfectly coherent and reasonable to me. Holding agreeable and popular views of society are hardly the grounds for sanity and logic, anyway. His motives are quite clear in his manifesto, but of course its hard to reason them out when you assume he is unreasonable.

[BeBMan]

There is no basis for reasoning with him, since he basically said he's the one who can decide who's unfit for life and therefore can be killed by him. I don't care if that manifesto is in itself coherent or not, he pretty much left the ground on which you can reason with someone here.

There's quite some irony in the fact that he didn't survive (and given that he shot himself probably didn't even want to survive), because - by his logic - one could argue his views made him kind of unfit for social life in modern society (or the "system" as he wants to put it).

[Meticulous Man]

I think he contradicts himself when he states that the only laws are the laws of physics and nature, and yet claims to have killed these people in the name of "justice"... if he'd said "I'll kill these people because they get on my nerves and I'll derive satisfaction from doing so", his thought would be more coherent...

As to why he killed himself if he was supposed to be super-human: given that the guy didn't define his reference group all too exactly, you could always retort that if a super-human kills a dozen average goofs then he has done enough for the betterment of the super-human race and can kill himself too.

That said, I think the guy actually seems to have been pretty intelligent (remember he was only 18 years of age) and it's a shame that he was driven into this. I hear that he had been unsuccessfully treated for depression with SSRIs. And he says he had studied evolutionary psychology... Maybe he was driven mad because he couldn't cope with awareness of the unjustness of the world.

[Pekka]

Now the joke started already. "It was the Internet!". Sure.. the rep for NRA actually said he'd ban the Internet, and that FPS's are dangerous. It's just everyone, who knows they'll get the blame, strengthening the logic of idiocy by blaming THE OTHERS, who also had nothing to do with it.

Metal detectors, security personnel, bad interenet. What's the problem? Was the problem, that there was no metal detectors? NO. Was the problem that the guy had played BF2? NO. People need to realize what happened and what the problem is. NONE of these are the problem, music, movies, games, internet. Why don't we just ban freedom of speech as a dangerous tool for spreading "information" that "can be dangerous".

I think for the rest of us it's obvious the guy had some serious mental problems. THAT was the problem. Not lacking metal detectors or the internet.

[Meticulous Man]

Yes, the response by the media and officials has thus far been very conventional and followed the pattern familiar from the USA and Germany.

[Pekka]

Yeah.. people want to know why and the obvious is out of the question, that he had problems, that could be a combination of many things, and he planned and killed people cold blood. What seems so irrational, yet done with a very rational approach, detailed plans, no hesitation... seems like something we can't understand, so we want to know why.

Well let's look at the problem. I knwo we can outrule lots of things, like most everything that is now targeted. The kid went nuts. That's it. The best we can do is to help people with mental problems. Other than that, we can't stop crime, even horrendous ones from happening every now and then. It's just a case of bad luck and randomness.

[Riesstiu IV]

Has there been anything in the news that suggests he was a social outcast or bullied?

[Aeson]

This guy had 2 YouTube accounts and quite a few videos. (Some of his gun.) The accounts have been suspended and all the videos removed. The accounts were NaturalSelector89 and STURMGEIST89.

Basically, he was a social darwinist who unabashedly supported his right to do this sort of thing. He was cleaning up the genetically "defective".

[b etor]

i have two youtube accounts with quite a few videos, but non with any guns.

i never saw any of his vids or heard of him on youtube.

[Aeson]

I never watched any of his videos either, just some video responses to him.

[Dr Strangelove]

Originally posted by Aeson
This guy had 2 YouTube accounts and quite a few videos. (Some of his gun.) The accounts have been suspended and all the videos removed. The accounts were NaturalSelector89 and STURMGEIST89.

Basically, he was a social darwinist who unabashedly supported his right to do this sort of thing. He was cleaning up the genetically "defective".

Which just happened to include himself.

[Pekka]

Riesstiu, no, there's mostly messages that he was not bullied. That he was an introvert, didn't have lots of friends, but that he did have friends and he wasn't bullied, at least not to the extent that we'd call it traditionally bullied. Of course people can take things personally and consider things bullying that others wouldn't, and you can hurt people deeply and make them feel like **** or afraid of you and not even realize it. It happens. Some people deal with things so differently.

Anyway, so in the traditional way, no, not that much anyway. And he was 18 already, so it was HS, I don't know about the big picture but I haven't seen bullying in the traditional sense in HS's in here. People are pretty mature in that sense, of course the mental violence can occur, and it can be cruel by leaving someone out of groups and so forth. I, for example, have difficult time of dealing if there's a party and I'm not invited (and it requires an invitation). EVEN if I don't want to go, or wouldn't go anyway, or couldn't go, I still want to be invited or I would feel an outsider, and I don't like to feel like an outsider. If this would happen categorically, it would mean problems for me. I wouldn't say it's bad self esteem, I have quite good one. But I just want to be included in things, regardless of my availability or interest. I'll just rather turn it down then. Fortunately this doesn't happen to me often, plus, I usually can't make it anyway, unless I have time for it... so most of the times I'm not actively associating with groups of people or partying, but I want to know that if I want to, I'm always not only welcome but my company is needed . That way I can stay at work and know that I'm safe. THEN it's a CHOICE, not because I'm not in the group or accepted. Acceptance in that sense is very important to me. Acceptance in other ways, not important at all. I don't care if people disagree with me, I don't care what other people decide to do, I don't care if my work is seen as controversial or "wrong", I don't care if people think I'm not conventional enough. This means nothing to me. BUT I want to belong in social sense to groups. As a group animal, I want to be in groups when the time comes, outside as an individual? Don't care.

SO, this guy for example might have still felt broken inside for reasons that seem small. It doesn't require actual bullying. I think that, considering his personal interests, he was more into different things and would see the world as a corrupt place, much like some religious fundamentalists that would kill others or infidels. They are corrupt, therefore they are filthy and not deserving to live. ANd when a person starts to think they are better, and others are the problem for everything... and when they seriously think they are better, like this guy thought he was an ubermensch.......... well, I think that constitutes as a serious delusion and insanity. I don't throw the word insane easily, you know I don't agree with lots of the labeling, but if you think you are some kind of super human and others are scum, sub species of a kind... man, you're insane. It's not a matter of perspective anymore, that person is having some serious delusions with his own mind. Include that into fascination or possibility of violence... I think if that goes undetected and untreated for too long, **** like this is bound to happen.

[Pekka]

I also think it was partially mental masturbation of "intelligence". That is, he seems to me a fairly smart person, way above average. The things he has read as a hobby when it wasn't necessary acquires more than just your average fiction book, especially at his age. So he has read very young, so he lacked perspective that time gives you and the experience, I think he has fallen into the trap of complete relativism when it comes to the value of humans, as in no value at all.

I read some of his other chats, and he seemed very coherent and actually something between conservative and a liberal. Pro-business, anti-socialism and so forth, however, he had a fascination for authoritarism, both Hitler AND Stalin. I guess he started to respect the dictators because they were strong and showed strength, wanted to shape things and didn't let little things like humanity come in between, social darwinism and so forth.

I mean there's always a short jump from intellectual blabbering and believing in intelligence and madness. The process usually is that you start to challenge everything, not just rules, policies, institutions, but the way they have formed, everything. You see the "virtual" nature of them. You see that most of the things offer nothing to you, as in people believing in religions and Gods that saves them, you don't believe in that anymore, so you become lonely in yourself, even a bit depressed. NOW, rationality becomes a concept to you, as in, you'd think that these dictators and mass murderers are idiots and stupid. Then they turn out to be smart. Not highly intelligent, except maybe few total sociopaths, but not retards either. So what happens is that because you have conventional as it represents mainstream and idiot people, you turn into this thinking that maybe violence, the irrational, is actually intelligent. Maybe it is very intelligent, because only "intelligent" people do it.

I mean this is the danger of mental masturbation IMO, when it comes to intelligence, thinkg you are one, and the link between violence and irrational action. I think it's very possible he wanted to manifest his "intelligence" that no one would understand, and of course they wouldn't because they're stupid. Except for the few super humans like him, then again, in reality it's just a group of few psychos.... so I'd say he lacked perspective, he turned into vicious logic too early. We can see the picture he saw, but he never got pass it because he simply didn't have any basis for the things he believed in, as in he couldn't get away from it or see that it's just one view, only one view and distorted at that.