Ok.... My crazy idiot theory

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Blackjack, Dec 11, 2007.


  1. Blackjack

    Blackjack Monkey+++

    Since we're discussing crazy people going on shooting sprees in another thread, I wanted to run this theory by everyone.

    Now when I say crazy or idiot in this, I'm not talking about the legitimately psychotic person who really does "hear voices", I'm talking about the borderline nut-job/eccentrics that are the ones that usually end up going on the shooting sprees.

    Hypothesis - There are far more crazy people (idiots), per capita, in cities and large towns than in small towns and the country because they are "allowed" and even "encouraged" to endulge their abnormalities.

    Now of course there are crazy people in small towns too, every town has that one crazy guy who rides around on either a moped or a lawnmower, usually wears a cowboy hat, and claims to be either a ninja, a cop, a secret agent of some sort or a combination of the above. He's usually the town narc.

    But there are far more crazy people in the cities (even adjusted for % of pop). Here's why I think this is.

    Did you know that there are large numbers of people, that live in cities, that believe they are vampires? It's true, there are thousands of them. They have group meetings and parties and sample each others blood, and yes, they're nuts. I have met a couple over the years. I've even met 2 people who thought they were werewolves (but I'll stick to vampires for now).

    But I've never met a vampire in a small town or rural community. When you are raised in a small place, you can't get away from criticism and ridicule. You learn at a very young age that eccentricities will not be tolerated. If you start telling people your a vampire, your friends tell you to "knock it off, your being stupid", and others outright ridicule you. So you learn that you can't get away with crazy crap like that.

    But in the cities, you can fade into the crowd and not be singled out as a nut-job. Taking it a step farther, you can find other nut-jobs who want to be a vampire too, and will play along with you. You can take your little fantasy world and run with, until it ends in some nightmarish incursion of reality, usually by the judicial system.

    So I guess, in a nutshell, the problems stem from over population.

    I guess?
     
  2. Seawolf1090

    Seawolf1090 Retired Curmudgeonly IT Monkey Founding Member

    I'm afraid I must respectfully agree with you! Our permissive society, so mindful of 'tolerance' of the weirdest extremes of behavior, is making us breed ourselves into stupidity. Here in old Tallytown, we have a 'goth' club . . . I was shocked to find my 'small city' had such nonsense!
    In a recent thread, I expressed disbelief in my town's high position in a national "Worst Crime" listing in a book. Well, I've been more mindful of such things - we are indeed getting to be quite bad in violent crime!
    Add to all this, that the medical community is so quick to prescribe mind-altering drugs to 'control' the youthful exuberance of the kids - instead of making the parents face reality and RAISE their kids. So, as their hormones are going wild, the drugs exacerbate the problem.
    THEN . . . the current craze in first-person shoot'em up video games, that are perhaps a bit too realistic.

    Ah well . . . the Good Ol' USA was nice while it lasted . . .
     
  3. Tango3

    Tango3 Aimless wanderer

    We have a vampire:lol:! Some deluded teenagerboy wears a top hat and carries a black laquered walking stick with a chrome tip He strolls around town,hangs at the mall, and is seen alot strolling out in "rest lawn" the city cemetary. Asked my daughter and "oh yeah thats so and so he thinks he's a vampire....wheres my cricket bat?...and the schizophrenic "Kicker" who rides all over town on an old 10speed , belting out obscenities and ocasionally kicking car doors as he rides by..(town of 40k)
    Wasn't there a study of over populasted rats in a cage who predictably turned on each other ata certain population level?
     
  4. ozarkgoatman

    ozarkgoatman Resident goat herder


    Yes there was. I was thinking about it as I was reading this thread.

    Heres how it went. They put a number of rats in a closed envourment. They gave them plenty of fresh water and food. More that what they would need. They did what rats do when they have plenty of food, they breed like crazy. Soon they were getting over crowded and gangs started to form. Then the gangs started attacking not only other gangs but also started doing gang rapings. Animals of the same type rarely in nature kill each other, but they started doing that as well. Granted it has been a number of years since I saw that study so the details might be a bit fuzzy but I think that is pretty close to how it went.

    OGM
     
  5. ozarkgoatman

    ozarkgoatman Resident goat herder

    I had seen another study one time that they took all the data they could on how to control the population of the world. The cunclsion was to have a world war every 50 years or so.

    OGM
     
  6. annie

    annie Monkey+++

    BJ some of your thoughts are credible at least to me, albeit frightening. Vampires ?? just way to awful. The nut-jobs do seem to be encouraged. Watch the endgame and it makes even more sense.
     
  7. hartage

    hartage Monkey+++

    I agree with you and it so happens I've been thinking of this for a long time. This is my conclusion.......

    Personal responsibility. We used to take personal responsibility for our actions and also for the actions of our family, neighbors those around us. As you said we used to say "knock it off" to others when they went astray because we knew them therefore have vested in them.

    All of that goes away when you have anonymity, when you most likely will never meet again the last person you met walking down the street. We don't feel like a community because all around us are people we don't know. When one of our own goes astray there is no pressure put on them to go back on track. When we don't know those around us we loose community and we loose ourselves. Responsibility then dissapears and we devolve.
     
  8. Tango3

    Tango3 Aimless wanderer

    Sounds like populations( rats/people) or (societies are naturally self limiting)they grow to the limit of food/water/and resources. So what does that say when our food and resources are sustained at artificially high levels by technology?(fertilizers etc):shock:
     
  9. ozarkgoatman

    ozarkgoatman Resident goat herder

    I think there will be cracks in the system and then like a dam that has cracks in it, it will burst. When it does there will be a masive culling of people.

    OGM
     
  10. BigO01

    BigO01 Monkey+++ Founding Member

    While I think your ideas make sense BlackJack the problem is despite claims otherwise we haven't even begun to understand the human mind .

    The isolation that will bring ridicule in a small town could be just what some kids need as they struggle with growing up in certain conditions , and the Ridicule will be what can send them over the edge .

    The problem is it is kinda like in the first Batman movie when the Joker poisoned a bunch of personal care products to kill people , it isn't just one thing but a certain combination of things that causes the damage .

    Problem is we aren't even close to understanding what the right combinations are and under what circumstances they must take place under to damage a mind on the edge .

    Fact of the matter is some perfectly normal adults were considered weird kids in their teens by someone .
     
  11. Tango3

    Tango3 Aimless wanderer

    Perfect observation; heres some anecdotal evidence:
    My dad always told us stories; as a child of the 40s he grew up in the "city" of Scranton P.A., there was the italian section, the Irish, the polish section( "the flats",)and if kids wandered out of the neighborhood folks were quick to to call them on it."hey you! you're so and so's kid go home! !Now you'd be fortunate to only get finger gesture and not a bullet.or a civilsuit.[booze][beer]
     
  12. Tracy

    Tracy Insatiably Curious Moderator Founding Member

    I think a lot of our societal problems all boil down to one word: Respect.

    [respect]for others
    [respect] for property
    [respect] for possessions
    [respect] for self

    I think smaller towns have a larger "family" to watch over and alert each other to potential problems. I know growing up in a smaller town made me watch my P's and Q's.

    I remember going to the HS football game with a friend (and be allowed to spend the night in town at her house) and getting a call from dad the next morning asking why I wasn't wearing my coat on such a cold night. :eek: No, he wasn't there. He'd seen one of his buddies at the coffee shop... it came up in conversation. :rolleyes: That's the day I realized that I'd never get away with anything.

    I think that larger cities tend to create a "not my problem" mentality. People don't take the time to care about others. Sad.


    I was thinking of the "rats in a cage" experiment while reading this initially, too. However, now the Orient comes to mind. I AM ignorant, never having been there, so my question is just that; Aren't there a lot more people psi there? Don't more persons share dwellings there than is the "norm" here? Isn't the crime rate lower there (per capita)?
     
  13. Blackjack

    Blackjack Monkey+++

    Big001....

    Believe me, I never meant to imply this as an "I've figured it all out" kinda thing. I agree with you that it's far too complicated to boil down into a single or even several things. I'm just sayin that I think this maybe one of those things in many circumstances.

    Agreed, the same thing that brings one person back from the edge can be the very thing that pushes another one over it. I went to school with a kid who killed himself because of constant "small town" ridicule. If he would have had some anonymity, he would maybe have been ok...... or he would've went on a spree.... who knows.

    Of course there is the matter of the ridicule itself. Some is good like "No Bob, your not a vampire, quit being an idiot"....... and then there is the pointless ridicule to just be mean that I'm sure we're all familiar with to a degree. In which case, it's not the "outsider" that needs the adjustment, it's the bullies.
     
  14. annie

    annie Monkey+++

    tracy I wholeheartedly agree on the Respect and add Personal Responsibility (someone else mentioned also) and a positive value of Life. annie
     
  15. monkeyman

    monkeyman Monkey+++ Moderator Emeritus Founding Member

    I figure the big differences are 2. First accountability, in the saller towns and such since there isnt anonymity you know that what you do will follow you and you will reap the rewards, good or bad. The second being that PC is somewhat less dominant in smaller towns in so far as a kid being picked on telling of the other kid/kids tends to be allowed to slide more often rather than the victim being punished for minor retaliation, so the stresses are allowed to leak off basicly as they are created (as it has been in our past) where as in metro areas if you are attacked and defend or retaliate you are punished just as your attacker or even more severly so the stresses are more likely to build untill they release in a more explosive and insane maner.
     
  16. Quigley_Sharps

    Quigley_Sharps The Badministrator Administrator Founding Member

    I got more spankings from my friends parents than my own.
    under 700 population
     
  17. BigO01

    BigO01 Monkey+++ Founding Member


    Sorry I have a real problem with that in todays world .

    I had a few oldschool neighbors who expressed the opinion that they would do this to my kids and I made it clear if they did they would soon be getting a spanking from me .

    I have no problems with disciplining my children but I want to make damn sure they deserve it first , knowing all children's "Or any1's for that matter" habit of lying rather than facing up to their screw ups I don't take things like this at face value especially when I have some1 who is suppose to be an adult completely out of control over a some minor bs kids may or may not have done .

    I once came home and my 3 boys were playing in the front yard with the two girls across the street all under age 9 with the oldest girl being 2 years younger than my oldest son .

    I went in the house and about 5 minutes later I hear the Big mouthed mother of the girls screaming at the top of her lungs at my oldest son , and she looked about ready to hit him until the wife and myself came outside at run and I went straight for her .

    Her darling little angel ran and told her my son had called her a bitch , "which until she told me this my son had no idea what she was screaming about from the obvious look of confusion on his face and the fact that I know him he would have had a smirk if he had done it" not only did my other 2 sons deny it happening but her youngest daughter did also .

    Whatever game they were playing she didn't want to follow the rules and she got mad and stormed home and lied to her mother because my oldest wasn't going to let her have her way . It wasn't until her 2nd child confirmed this that she even bother to question the 1st who finally admitted what she had done "as she obviously thinks her kids are above lying while I know better when it comes to mine" .

    So no I never let neighbors touch my children , as their father thats my responsibility .
     
  18. ozarkgoatman

    ozarkgoatman Resident goat herder

    Agreed!!! If our daughter needs her backside attended to then DW or myself will be the ones taking care of that. If someone else does it then they will need to remove my foot out of their backside shortly.

    OGM
     
  19. monkeyman

    monkeyman Monkey+++ Moderator Emeritus Founding Member

    Just curious, but dose that rule of the other adults straightening out your kids change if (even if your kids 'never' would, IF) say your kids were doing general kids type mischief in that adults yard (sword fighting against the rose bushes or whatever) and when the adult tells them to stop it or even that they are going to tell you about it and the kids cuss out the adult? Also what about the other adults verbaly straightening out your kids in the first place?

    Im just curious because I have seen a LOT of folks who get bent out of shape if an adult even talks cross to their kids (even if the kid was caught screwing with that adults property or some such) and may or may not do anything to the kids if the adult goes to them, assumeing they even know or can find out who the parents are. It also seems most often (NOT claiming this is true of your kids, I have NO idea, just what have seen in the ones Im describeing) to be those kids KNOW thats the case and even if mom and dad WILL straighten them out, tend to know that as long as mom and dad arent there they get away with anything and act accordingly.

    I also know it generaly wouldnt work real well TO allow just anyone to disipline the kids now in most areas especialy since its so rare now days that you even know who the folks in the neighborhood are, just kind of bringing up the other side of the coin and wondering how far the kids go before you would consider the other adults to have grounds if at all.
     
  20. ozarkgoatman

    ozarkgoatman Resident goat herder

    If my daughter needs straightening out then let me know and it will happen. Someone telling her to stop is fine anything above and beyond that I will take care of.

    OGM
     
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