most serial killers don't get that way on accident

this is "art" related in the end, but you have to bear with me.


i love reading about serial killers, "spree killers", etc. it's like social etymology. what gets
sdomeone to that point? who knows if there's a way to never make it happen again, but
there certainly is a lot cheaper and easier way to minimize it. by changing philosophy.

instead of looking at the killers as killers and preventing them (which is like that Star Wars
defence idea from the 80's. if it doesn't work 100% of the time, does no good. since missing
1% is enough to be a huge tragedy.


while often by the time they don't even see people as anything but moving targets, obstacles
preventing them from happiness, they are too mentally unstable and incoherent to reason
with. however, in the vast majority of cases, the killer (so often a white male, social outcast,
20-30, in large industrial cities. (which describes most computer geeks, though clearly most
do not end up serial killers.)

the "type" is so prevalent, it appears the serial killer's goal is not ultimately destruction or
hate as much as a plee for someone to give them some respect, publicity. the serial killer
has usually felt ignored or rejected for too long and finally with diminishing options for
someone to listen to them, they figure out how to kill a bunch of folks.

what's peculiar, is that while these generally escalate from cases of misguided paranoia,
where the victims really have no logical link to the killer, but that's what the killer (or
president) perceives.

However, in many cases, the potential psycho killer, can be diffused by actually listening.
The demands may be ridiculous, but allowing these people to feel heard. Often this calms
them enough to look at their ideas more rationally. spiralling back down to Earth, rather
than escalating and building steam. preventing people from becoming serial killers in the
first place, may require an hour of work, rather than 24/7 for years protecting from them.

These cases rarely are documented, but one where a worker went from peeing on their
mainframe, becoming gradually more reclussive, and collecting guns, could have easily
devolved into a spree. All the company did was note his demand for a promotion and
explain, there was nothing they could do for him until the job opened up. not an airtight
reason, but enough to calm him down for a day.

Whereas, the cases that escalate ARE all we hear about. so you have to wonder, if bin Laden
really was ultimately behind the 9/11 thing. Was he being ignored for years before? is that
the REAL source of the problem? there's a tenant not to listen to crazed terrorists/
kidnappers/bank robbers. probably a good idea, since they've lost logic. but what about
listening to people before they get to that point.


Mixing up where the profile leaves off and the concrete proof begins, is actually just
objective projection, not unlike beleiving horiscopes. in judging and assessing, it's as if
many are subscribing to a fortune cookie. "you'll meet a tall dark stranger", which folks
interpret any way their subconscious sees fit and swear is proof they are right in identifying
what's "good". certainly it is common in art and art criticism. judgement is a ruse.

am i arguing for or against anything? not really. (i'd love if people were wiser, but it'd be
silly to say who's wise enough or what to do if somebody does or doesn't meet my standard.
some people just aren't gonna be very wise.) but these judgemental types aren't making
their choices much differently than those they judge.


in a culture that emphasizes dictating and defending our dictates, over listening and revising
opinions, maybe art itself has become skewed. this culture is proving impractical. our lack
of listening skills is coming back in face. i don't know. i don't want to spend all day being a
therapist. but maybe if instead of a military, we had a hierarchy of 1/4 as many people and
far cheaper equipment, preventing probably several times as much dammage.

anybody got any opinions?


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Comments

, Jim Andrews

The Joker in Batman tells the beautiful photo-journalist, in an effort to
impress her, that he is "the world's first practicing homicidal artist."
And wants to enlist her in the "new avant garde".

Conferences of practicing homicidal artists. Symposia. In rat holes. On
luxury liners. In Afghanistan. The White House. Slideshows. Long slide
show. Knocks em dead. The discussion periods get a little out of hand.

A movie just isn't a movie these days without a good psycho. My favorite
is "American Psycho". It doesn't cop out by assuming the 'one rotten
apple' philosophy.

Now he's Batman.

Immaculate realities. Yeesh.

The book "Lustmord: The Writings and Artifacts of Murderers" (
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/096503240X/104-5619644-5198341
) is mostly pretty boring because all but one of them can't write worth a
damn. Sick puppies with rabies. But it contains the writings of Carl
Panzram. Writing was the only thing that kept him remotely human. Too bad
he didn't start it earlier, when he was a kid. His voice reminds me of the
writing of William S. Burroughs. Who also was a killer.

That people become serial killers for attention says less about them than
it does a society that does indeed pay fascinated attention to them.
Murder and mayhem has been a staple of drama for eons. Medea. Oedipus. The
Orestiea. Macbeth. Hamlet. But those are all tragedies. The onus is not on
violent spectacle but on what it means to be human. And tragedy has also
been called "an affair with the gods", ie, these works have strong human
and cosmic significance. The moral and human issues are not glossed over
in spectacle but are dealt with centrally.

"American Psycho" is not a tragedy but a satire. A satire on USAmerica in
the Reagan era. It's brilliant. It could as well be set in Canada or
Britain etc in many ways, ie, the psychosis is not truly peculiar to the
USA, though it may be most dramatically pronounced there. The 'American
dream' is metonymic of 'the capitalist dream'.

Yes, that people should be permitted their dignity and listened to is much
to be desired, I agree.

Also, art *can* be humanizing. Metaphor of 'me and you'. There's more than
one person who has been on the edge of violence who found their balance in
metaphor, in the possibility of the multi-perspectival view of 'me and
you'. I had a daydream once of Cain and Abel. The knife was coming down.
But there it stayed. Metaphor was there to save the day. He stopped not
out of fear of punishment but identification with the other.

ja
http://vispo.com