re: #150 NJDhockeyfan

Well, we have many more people in the country now than a few decades ago. We also do hear about more of this because of the internet and improvements in communication. There’s also way more high powered weaponry available than ever before. And for being such a well off country, there are alot of very unhappy people among us. Way more than there should be really.

Now, this is just my theory and I’m no expert by a long shot, so YMMV:

I do think we’re meaner as a culture now than we were even a couple of decades ago. Hell, we don’t even build new neighborhoods with sidewalks anymore. People don’t know their neighbors, families are divided up because of all sorts of things, from religion, to politics, to divorce, to domestic violence. More and more young people find themselves either the bully or the bullied. Something is wrong and IMHO it has much to do with losing touch and not being part of something productive that’s larger than ourselves. Now, this is not the reason for mental illness, that is an organic thing in the brain. But, there are many people we could be reaching but aren’t because there are some really fucked up notions about what’s normal and perfect and beautiful and acceptable in this culture and that does drive a lot of anger and depression. We’re also not doing well as a nation overall with coping with all this and we’re sure as hell not equipping our young people to handle things either.

Just my few cents, I’m missing a lot, but there’s much we’re missing and these incidents are clues we’re ignoring. We’re not devoting enough resources to any of this mess, and this won’t slow down til we do and stop fighting to arm people to the teeth with stuff that only the military used to have access to.