(1) Mass shootings of this type account for far less than 1% of US homicides. As such it is pointless and bizarre to try to make some kind of anti-guns point with them.
(2) They are a relatively new phenomenon; even the term “postal killings“, describing mass shootings at postal offices, was first coined in 1993. This suggests that other factors are at work. In particular, these shooters almost always tend to be whites or Asians with no girlfriend and frequently specializing in STEM fields; a remarkable fact given that most homicides in the US are committed by low-class Blacks or Hispanics. They are also loners: James Holmes himself, as well as Seung-Hui Cho (Virginia Tech), George Sodini (who was so desperate at never getting laid that he attended seduction workshops), Marc Lépine, etc. In short what ties most of them together is that these mass shootings are driven by beta male rage.
Here is how James Holmes was described by a female classmate. Note that “weird” coming from a chick is the kiss of death to any romantic prospect:
“I always thought that he was a little strange. I could never put my finger on it, but something told me to not get to close to him, female instincts I guess,” the female student told NBC News. “I had tons of classes with him and lived across from him in the Honors dorms. He was a very smart guy though. He was a little bit of a weird guy, but we were honors students, so weird people were kind of common.”
(3) Why now? I assume that from the 1980’s on society passed some critical tipping point. Before it was possibly to get a good girlfriend just by being a “nice guy”; today it is necessary to skilfully game women to get laid with any frequency. Today the combination of obesity (especially among lower class women) and unleashed female hypergamy (especially among higher class women) which enabled alpha male soft polygamy has made half of femdom practically inaccessible to your average beta. Your typical shooter isn’t just a beta but a raging omega; condemned to a life of celibacy by a social ineptitude that society no longer caters for because of the aforementioned factors. Some of them marry their cats or become homosexuals; a few go on killing sprees driven by sexless rage.
(4) That said, it’s important to keep in mind that these mass shootings are in the end a mere cultural curiosity, more than anything. They dominate the airwaves but the chances of getting killed in one is probably no more than the chances of dying in a terrorist attack on US soil, or getting struck dead by lightning. Only a fool or paranoiac would spend his days worrying about it. The vast majority of homicides in the US are accounted for by inner city areas, where homicide rates can go as high as 40/100,000 (e.g. Baltimore, Detroit, New Orleans, St. Louis, Washington DC). As is well known all these places have in common a racial composition of a certain character. Meanwhile there are quite a few states with West European-level homicide rates of below 2/100,000: New Hampshire, Vermont, Iowa, Idaho, Wyoming, North Dakota, Minnesota, Hawaii, Maine, Utah. What’s immediately striking is that these are the states with the most, erm, European-like populations.
(6) The main liberal-collectivist argument against gun rights is that they increase homicide rates. However these is no real statistical evidence for this. At least in a reasonably high-IQ population, there is no reason to think that sprinkling firearms all over makes homicide rates any worse. The liberal-collectivists hate this because they deny HBD theory and reality and affirm human equality, and would rather law-abiding citizens go defenseless against criminals than admit they are wrong. Indeed, they are like radical Communists or fascists, putting ideology ahead of people.
(7) Feminism (with its attendant obesity apologism and female hypergamy) is for the most part responsible for mass shootings. NAM’s (Non-Asian Minorities) – especially Blacks, who account for about 50% of homicides on 13% of the total population [statistics linkie] – are responsible for the US homicide rate being more than twice as high as Europe’s. Guns are faultless; to the contrary, they tend to incentivize the very middle-class civility that is typical of low-violence societies. That is why the liberal-collectivists and cultural Marxists and Guardianistas oh so predictably hate them and want to take them away from us.
From our cold dead hands they will!
EDIT 7/25: And I was completely, 100% correct as always surprise surprise.
“whites or Asians with no girlfriend and frequently specializing in STEM fields”
Any thoughts on the STEM aspect of this? They tell kids to study science as the path to a secure high-paying job, and maybe they’re right, but on the other hand… Scientists, from what I’ve heard, have it tough: outsourcing and competition from abroad (driving down wages and eliminating jobs), horrible academic job market, social near-invisibility (and “nerd” caricature)…there are lots of possible factors at work. I suspect you’ve only scratched the surface.
I mostly agree. The only “hip” parts of STEM are finance and IT (the glitzy kind: apps, etc). That or setting up one’s own business specializing in niche areas like developing accounting software. It’s crazy how many of my friends who studied Engineering or Math are flowing into those areas.
The situation there isn’t as optimal as it once was, thanks in part as you say to outsourcing and nerd caricatures. Still they have it better than social science let alone humanities grads. $50k+ starting salary even if it involves life in a box is still better than $20k/$25k jobs in… I dunno, HR… social marketing… unemployment. One can only shudder at the fate of Womyns Studies majors and the like but then again they have only themselves to blame.
The real problem these STEM nerdy types have is with sex lives. Imagine yourself as an acned, bespectacled beta code monkey in the Bay Area; girls are gonna be gunning for the managerial bigshots, the new Internet entrepreneurs, those (rare as fuck) “brogrammers“, or the high-flying financiers from SF. Those alphas are going to have harems and you will be left with such leftovers as remain. I’m not making this shit up: Google is onto the same thing. When I visited their HQ I noticed their secretaries where all hot young chicks presumably to give their beta employees a fighting chance at least via proximity. Obviously they don’t do much “equal impact” there…
STEM is left-brain. Picking up is right-brain. Being logical with a chick is – at best – instant and irrevocable friendzoning.
James Holmes was doing a PhD in neuroscience and as part of his studies had to carry out lab work. Is it possible he was abusing chemicals? Later he dropped out of his course – might he have been depressed and been prescribed anti-depressants? One side effect of taking anti-depressants is violent and suicidal behaviour.
Also had a look at that link re those US states with low homicide rates. First thing I notice is that from 1996 on, homicide rates fell in ALL states. Second thing is that Mississippi which has more black Americans as a proportion of its population (about 37% in the 2010 US Census) than everywhere else had a steeper fall in homicide rates over a 14-year period than Missouri (nearly 81% non-Hispanic white, 11.6% black, 3.5% Latino/Hispanic in 2010 according to Wikipedia) and both states had a murder rate of 7 per 100,000 in 2010. Yeah Louisiana (32% black in the 2010 US Census) is the worst but even there the homicide rate has been falling. It fell most in 2005. Maybe there should be more hurricanes hitting New Orleans! 😉
I’m inclined to think that the high murder rates in those US cities AK mentions in his post have much to do with the combined effect of poverty, single-parent families, gang culture and the prevalence of drugs like ice in poor neighbourhoods where Latino and black people live. There was an influx of crack into several US cities during the 1980s and it’s rumoured that the CIA deliberately introduced crack into poor black areas as a way of raising funds to buy weapons for the Contras in Nicaragua at the time.
It’d be interesting to know what percentage of homicides in the US is actually carried out with guns and assault weapons rather than knives, baseball bats and other things at hand. Not so long ago (about 2009 or 2010), a man was bashed to death by four guys at Sydney Airport who used metal bollards or poles used to separate queues in public places.
The dropout/disappearance and the fact that San Diego/California in general where this kid was from was a hotbed of MK Ultra research back in the 1960s-70s has fueled the ‘Manchurian shooter’ theories.
@jennifer: You made lots of good points, as usual. For starters, anybody familiar with African-American history and culture is aware that southern rural blacks (even very poor ones) are peaceful, non-violent people on the whole. It’s the urban blacks who are the violent ones. People who lump all blacks together and tag as genetically violent are being … erm… racist.
Individually violence is without a doubt genetic. It is just overwhelmed by culture when you look at groups. But the claim that rural Southerns are peace loving is not build on facts.
Well, every person is potentially violent, some more than others. Naturally there would be a genetic component to whether an individual person decides to engage in violence or pursue a criminal lifestyle. But to say that Europeans are genetically less prone to criminal violence than Africans is ludicrous. Unless somebody can prove this claim statistically in a way that eliminates cultural/historical variables? Dubious….
Did i say that one group is more violent then another group? The rate of violence between groups is completely dominated by culture. With within a group it is dominated by genetics.
I think we are in agreement, charly.
I will give you that homicide and especially crime rates are modulated by culture to a far greater extent than IQ. Also traditions of alcohol consumption also play a huge role; also, the overall level of development, especially when it is very low. Medieval Europe for instance had very high homicide rates. Tribal societies have extremely high homicide rates; living within them can in some cases be as dangerous as being a German or Russian man born in 1900 or 1920.
Possibly the differences in the US are due to cultural (rarely defined) or historical factors (even though organized anti-Black discrimination has now been absent for two generations, and indeed in some spheres Blacks enjoy preferential treatment). But how then to explain Lynn’s finding (The Global Bell Curve) that throughout the world, consistently, in every country for which said data exists, that Blacks and mulattoes have remarkably higher homicide rates than whites? And that whites in turn typically (though not always) have higher homicide rates than Asians*? Why do these patterns reproduce themselves everywhere in time and space? Is it because almost all Blacks and Whites and Asians subscribe to the same specific culture throughout the world (incredible)? Or is it because “institutional racism” against Blacks manifests itself in any human society even in majority-Black places like Africa (again, rather incredible)? Or do we use Occam’s Razor and come to rather obvious if unsavory conclusions?
* These differences too can be substantial. In the US, Asian homicide rates are a mere 25% of the white rate. That said one can be fairly confident that nobody is going to pull the racism card for mentioning this particular factoid.
Several of the most violent states in the US are in the so-called US Deep South and the others are close by (Arizona, New Mexico, Texas – overflow of Mexican drug wars, I’d say). These states had a history of plantation-based economies which originally depended on white convict or indentured labour from Ireland and poorer regions of England and later on slaves from Africa (and some white people may have been slaves). After the Civil War ended in 1865, there was the Reconstruction period during which the former Confederate states became a mostly backward and impoverished region dominated by poverty, fundamentalist religion and third-rate politicians suspicious of education and science and eager to play on people’s fears about uppity blacks and resentment towards outsiders like Yankees and immigrants. I believe lynching was quite common.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynching_in_the_United_States
Jennifer: I am not sure if lynching of blacks was common or not in the deep South (from a statistical point of view). I am not as knowledgeable in this part of American history as I should be (given my interest in, and sympathy to, African-American culture); however, I will look around and see if there were any substantial books on the topic. I do remember reading somewhere that a lynching was often considered a “social event” in the white community. Preposterous as this sounds, rather than being done in the dead of night, some lynchings in deep South were actually done in broad daylight, with the entire white community (men, women, children) turning out in their best Sunday clothes, and made sure to have themselves photographed in front of the hanging corpse, as a memento. This would seem to imply that lynchings were maybe not common, they were special events. It probably only took one, and that would be enough to keep the local blacks in line for years to come.
And even if true (I doubt it – any evidence whatsoever?), what percentage of US Blacks are rural? 10%? (I don’t know, but it is surely low).
And what’s more… urban Blacks living in middle-class neighborhoods aren’t statistically that much more prone to homicide than whites living in middle-class neighborhoods. (Only problem – far fewer of them as a percentage of the whole population live in middle-class areas in the first place. That in turn is an expected result of low average IQ’s, seeing as to afford a home in a middle-class area one has to make money and hence be reasonably intelligent). So who is lumping them all together?
In any case, I’m getting tired of reading racism accusations. If you’ve got concrete data that disproves some thesis I’m making, bring it out and we can discuss it civilly. If not then it’s really a form of trolling. Henceforth, any accusing or implying racism on my part will be deleted.
Anatoly if you’re getting that aggressively trolled by a liberast trendy you must be doing something right. Without getting too deep into the Twitter woods, this week I’ve observed Joshua Trevino troll RT’s D.C. staff.
Anytime a fellow with an “alleged” history of lobbying on behalf of Malaysian or other foreign interests who used to work for Gov. Perry goes that hard against a news outlet lotsa folks in D.C. don’t like, I tend to assume there’s money involved. Or maybe it’s just a thing about red-bearded pro-war Texans hating anyone who rains on their parade…
Looks very much like a first break for a schizophrenic (and yes, most schizophrenics aren’t violent).
@AP: Also an excellent point. Shooter was around the right age when adult-onset schizophrenia starts. Schizophrenia begins in utero when stem cells to-be neurons don’t get lined up properly in the grid. Causes include genetic defects or even viral infection of the pregnant mom (for example, measles), which distorts the developing fetal brain. Symptoms of schizophrenia typically appears by the age of 12, but sometimes much later, post-adolescence, early 20’s. There is one diagnostic rule of thumb: if you reach out your hand to shake hands with someone, and that person reaches back with palm held flat (instead of curved), that is a symptom that person might be schizophrenic. And yes, most schizophrenics are completely non-violent and disorganized, would not have been able to organize such an elaborate plan. But schizophrenia is definitely a possibility. In any case, I have no doubt the shrinks are all over this guy trying to figure him out.
As for girls rejecting him, mentally ill people emit an invisible “smell” (pheromone?) that makes people sense they are different. Not just girls, but boys too, typically don’t want to be around someone who they sense is just off. It’s not fair, but that’s how life is. No point in blaming feminists for not wanting to date a “weirdo”.
(3) If what you say is right then isn’t it an argument for not letting these beta males anywhere near guns?
(6) People who carry weapons are more likely to use them – it’s just basic psychology. You say weapons incentivise middle class civility… what about working class – do you mean widespread gun ownership is a good idea only in predominantly middle class societies?
Re-3. Yes, let’s ban a thing (guns and shooting) millions enjoy just to increase the chances of thwarting a couple of psychos a year. Makes total sense!
Re-6. To an extent yes. Certainly it would make sense that having easy gun accessibility will barely make a dent in homicide rates in middle-class areas, which typically have IQ’s on the right hand side of the bell curve. I will give you that among the proles, who tend to be less bright and more crucially have shorter-term horizons and less emotional control than their social betters, a big increase in gun ownership may lead to a substantial increase in homicide rates. However, this will surely be balanced out by lower levels of property crime.
Nobody has mentioned what seems to have been the real problem in this particular case, which is not the guns themselves, but the amount of ammo this schizo was stockpiling. Not to mention that he had his flat wired up with bombs and chemical weapons. Surely in any nation, regardless of gun-control laws, such activities would be in the legitimate purview of law enforcement agencies? Or do Americans believe their second-amendment rights also give them the right to put entire neighborhoods in peril with stockpiles of explosives?
For the record, I support gun rights and own a Glock for self-protection. I also accept (in theory) the basic NRA argument that if everybody knew how to own and operate a gun, then this would actually LESSEN the number of fatalities in these occasional mass killings. (Because, for example, once the shooter opened fire in the movie theater, everybody else could have jumped up, pulled their own weapons, and gunned him down before he had time to do much damage.)
Sounds great, in theory: have ALL people (including women and children) carry openly and know how to use. Since good people outnumber bad people, the baddies lose in any battle.
Realistically, however, I see flaws in above theory. Realistically, you are simply not going to be able to get all people (especially children) to want to learn how to shoot, or agree to the burdens of gun ownership. Unless universal gun ownership was mandated by law, like it is in Switzerland. Maybe that is the real solution, I don’t know… In any case, even if everybody carried automatic pistols, then the baddies would just start bringing rocket launchers onto the battlefield.
In summary, I have no solutions to offer…
He wore body armour. If the other moviegoers had shot him he would not have been hurt. There is also the issue of the fog of war. During such an altercation you don’t know what is happening . Maybe he wasn’t a deranged mass shooter but a swat team that was getting to a terrorist
In Swiss it is not a handgun that is mandated but a big automatic riffle. Something which isn’t really concealable.
Murder is a special crime. You wont find many caught bank robbers who would have done the deed if they known they would be caught. But there are plenty of murders that are in prison and with hindsight would do the exact same thing.
“He wore body armour.”
Excellent point.
The guy came during a special midnight screening so there’d have been quite a few audience members who turned up in costume. He also had gas canisters with him and released gas during the show. I’ve seen TDKR myself and there are periods during the movie where the screen goes quite dark so trying to shoot him would have been risky. Isn’t there also the risk of bullets ricocheting around a closed space?
The murder fired many many rounds into the crowd trying to kill people, and ended up killing only 12 and injuring 60. It sems that people are not as easy to kill in real life as in videogames. Someone in the crowd shooting back at the murderer, and not at innocent bystanders, would probably not kill lots of innocent bystanders.
It seems that hitting somebody isn’t as easy as in a videogame which is not only true for the killer but also for the bystanders with guns. I doubt he would have been hit a few times even if they had guns.
Ps. That reminds me of a 3 hour gun battle in a Brazilian shanty town in which nobody was injured.
@ AP, charly: Found this story about a police officer in South Australia who was shot 14 times in 5 seconds by a Mafia guy with a semi-automatic rifle and forced to wait 3 hours for help. The hitman and the police engaged in a 42-hour gunfight during which 2,000 rounds of bullets were fired. The hitman was wounded but no deaths were mentioned.
http://mafiatoday.com/tag/gunfight/
And of course we all know the Old Wild West wasn’t really wild at all. Cormac MacCarthy novels notwithstanding, gunfights in bar saloons were extremely rare and most of the violence that did occur in the late 1800s was between the US government (through its army) and native Americans over land.
http://www.unpopulartruth.com/2009/04/myths-of-old-west.html
http://www.independent.org/publications/tir/article.asp?a=803
Body armor prevents bullet penetration and therefore saves lives, but being hit while wearing body armor can still knock someone to the ground, break a rib, etc. The bullet’s energy is dispersed but it astill hits the person hard. If there were even a handful of armed people in the theater he would have been hit a few times, and immobilized, even if not killed.
@anatoly: To test your stereotypes about “cultural Marxists”, whom you lump together with feminists, liberasts and other unpleasant types, you probably assume I hate guns and am all in favor of stringent gun control laws. Am I right?
Cultural Marxists *are* liberals. Real Marxists are quite respectable even if deluded in many areas especially economic.
I basically agree. “Real” Marxists often have a rigor in their analysis that makes them worth reading even if you don’t accept their premises. Whereas liberals (at least the Anglo-American kind I’m familiar with) tend to suffer from vagueness, appeal to emotion, and poor factual knowledge.
Well, some people lump “anthrogenic global warming” believers along with Marxists too, and you will see some ultra-conservatives blasting “liberals and Marxists” for their “alarmist” views on climate change. Even though Marx himself had no opinions on climate (being an economist and not a climate scientist). Plus, in Marx’s time, the Co2 levels were not as high as they are now.
Anyhow, just making a point that it is necessary to be extremely precise in defining one’s enemies when one is being polemical.
Marxist is here used as a four letter word. Has nothing to do with Marxist ideology.
In an ideal world, every male and female should have the right for sexual satisfaction. Besides all the negative psychological effects the sexual frustration can have (causing violence, rape, etc.) the fact that our modern world gives especially to men much more sexual stimulation (porn, ads, sex in literature, movies…) than gratification, is quite probably a cause of the rise of frequency of prostatitis and prostate cancer. Possibly feminist Anatoly mentions has something to do with it, has a cancerogenic effect.
Feminists cause cancer? Medical researchers — take note!
Seriously, folks, it seems to me the best chance an ordinary guy has to get laid is to find a sexually liberated feminist who likes to play around and experiment. Good luck trying to get a traditional “Christian” (or Muslim) girl to sleep with you — they are saving it for marriage.
This is a simple truth that Hugh Hefner discovered approx. 50 years ago when he invented the sexual revolution in the West.
Yeah LOL. Speaking of prostatitis, I’ve had it a couple of times – but I attribute that to having to sit at a desk most of the day. It’s hard to blame feminism for that.
Another informative post, though after the fourth point, the two arguments (fifth seems to be missing) seemed more far-fetched.
(6) The term ‘liberal-collectivist’ didn’t open to me even after a peek at Wikipedia, and while I’m not a big fan of labeling every (opposing) political view, there’s this to be said on the deliciously controversial issue of gun control: In Europe an interest in guns is not common at all. Very few seem to feel the need to have one to protect themselves. Some do, and have the legal permits for that, which require different sorts of screening for mental stability and so forth depending on the country. In many countries it’s easier to get a rifle than a pistol or any other sort of a gun, since rifles can be used for hunting whereas pistols and automatic guns are most useful when shooting people. Many of those who practice shooting do so with rounds that are not deadly if they hit a person. Airsoft is a common hobby for the more military-minded and not an uncommon bachelor(ette) party number either: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airsoft
I don’t think the society needs guns much more than it needs gladiators or slaves. This might be one of those things where the US is behind many other Western societies. One where the US was ahead was Ultimate Fighting (UFC), which is safer for participants than boxing, kickboxing, or thaiboxing, where one gets hit in the head more. The audience is equally entertained while the competitors stay healthier. More on the topic on Modern Warriors: The Martial Way at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8-7VjMMGOQ
(7) Much as there is to blame on feminism, the connection mentioned in the article doesn’t seem strong. I started to elaborate in this comment box on the connections of feminism to male sexual frustration, but when nearing the 500-word mark, I decided to post them as a separate article to be more accessible for later reference: http://sexandsociety.net/2012/07/are-mass-shootings-caused-by-feminism/
That article links to two previous ones that are worth reading for those curious about the actual effects of feminism and the quagmire it’s dragging our societies into. I have every hope it can be stopped and we can get back on the track of gender equality that we lost circa 100 years ago, but not if the intellectuals don’t stand up and make it happen.
Similar thoughts on feminism and sexual frustration
Seems to me that in western/liberal countries it’s much easier for a guy to get laid. Recently I spoke to Armenian friend of a fiend who after coming to London was amazed how easy it is to take girl home (in his own words: it’s too easy!).
There was trouble in the UK with middle eastern/south asian guys exploiting white teenage girls for sex, beliving that “white girls are fair game” – as opposed to muslim girls.
Besides alsohol helps and I never noticed that ugly people had trouble getting laid in the UK – overweight girls don’t seem to have any trouble either (of course, they can’t be too picky).
It makes me laugh when people think sexual frustration among males is something completely unique and new to the 21st century. This has been going on for a very long time. Long before the invention of Feminism.
Think of all of European literature, starting with Goethe. Think young Wether, who ended up committing suicide because he pinned all his hopes on one girl (who rejected him). Again Goethe: think Faust, who was so horny for Marguerite that he was willing to sell his soul (literally) just to get a crack at her. (Well, she did submit to him, but then he lost his interest in her; and in the end he lost his soul to Mephisopheles.)
Think all of Russian literature too: Tolstoy, Turgenev, Chekhov, etc etc.
By coincidence, last night I saw a new production of Offenbach’s opera “The Tales of Hoffmann”. Once again, this is a saga about a man’s fruitless quest for love. As a young student, Hoffmann falls in love with Olympia, the beautiful and brilliant daughter of Dr. Coppelius. There is only one tiny problem: Olympica is a mechanical doll, who literally has to be wound up in order to function.
Next the disillusioned Hoffmann, in his wanderings around Europe, falls in love with the enticing Venetian courtesan, Giuletta. Giuletta pretends to love him, but all she really wants (well, she is a whore after all), is his Reflection. Which she sells to her pimp, in return for a huge diamond brooch.
Next Hoffmann falls in love with the sweet, warm-hearted and talented singer, Antonia. Antonia is his true love. She is a wonderful person, as well as physically attractive. He loves her, she loves him back. (He just has to be careful not to stand in front of a mirror, because remember he doesn’t have a reflection.) Unfortunately, it all ends in ashes when Hoffmann’s eternal nemesis, Dr. Miracle, forces Antonia to literally sing her guts out .. until she dies.
Doomed to live out the rest of his life without the love of a woman, Hoffmann learns to sublimate his sexual desires, and devotes himself to the Muse of Poetry who, it turns out, has been with him all along.
The End.
Sexual frustration, especially in males, is nothing new. However, if the feeling is increased in some men, it can contribute to changes toward certain behavior. A famous question in economy exams is “why have the shopping carts gotten bigger during the last few decades”. The question is passed just by answering the right question – most try to explain why they’re big, which is different from why they’re getting bigger.
In the case of shootings, some other differences to the times 50 years ago is the easy and affordable accessibility of means for mass killings and, as mentioned in the blog article, sexual liberation.
The latter has not as much to do with feminism as it had with the e-pill and the invention of household appliances that enabled women to go to work and be at the same income levels, as they now didn’t have to spend all day doing laundry by hand or wiping dust by hand. When the income levels of single-female-person households skyrocketed, their women’s comparable financial benefit from marrying decreased. In other words, the value of sex decreased, and the lost opportunity cost for a woman who enjoyed herself and had more sex than the optimal amount in order to get married, sunk.
More women considered this new, lower cost of sex to be something they can afford. As a result people in Western countries have a lot more sex, but this also increases the getting-laid gap between the men in the first and in the third third of getting laid. Female demand for male sex concentrates on a smaller group of men than before, and while the alphas get more than ever, the guys women consider “not interesting or dominant enough to have sex with” get less than ever, as their only guaranteed way towards sex, marriage, happens at a far later age on average.
Feminism merely makes matters even worse in the ways described in the blog post linked to above.
Furthermore, the fact that the cases get so much publicity can be a contributing factor for their increased number. In regard to suicides a link between publicity and the amount of suicides among people who identify with the first victim (for want of a better word) is strong. A famous case is Marilyn Monroe, whose suicide was followed by a spike of suicides by blondes at or around her age or her depicted age in movies.
@ AK: re your earlier posts dated 25 July 2012 which I tried responding to three times earlier and which WordPress kept losing: I found Robert Lindsay’s June 2009 post about differences in levels of active testosterone in Black, White and Asian men and his explanations as to how and why they came to differ.
http://robertlindsay.wordpress.com/2009/06/06/black-males-and-testosterone-evolution-and-perspectives/
AK: Yes sorry about that, spam filter. Don’t know why as you’re a regular here.
In societies that practise primitive agriculture (and in sub-Saharan Africa, most of which lies in the tropics where heavy rains leach minerals in soil, the main form of agriculture is slash-n-burn root-crop gardening, not the most sophisticated form of farming), women can be self-sufficient and choosy so men compete for their favours. This encourages polygyny and constant gaming and, over generations, societies end up with men with high levels of active testosterone. Women end up with higher levels of testosterone as a result too and pass testosterone to their babies during pregnancy. Result: people with good muscle tone, bone mass and athletic ability but a greater tendency to aggression and, erm, lower average IQ levels.
The peculiar thing Lindsay mentions is that black males have higher levels of active testosterone than white males do at ages 7 – 24. This would make sense if most s-SA societies were organised the way some traditional societies in Ethiopia were organised with boys and men in age groups. At age 7, boys live together in a compound and learn herding. As they get older, they’re taught to watch out for hyenas and lions that might attack cattle and sheep. As teenagers, they do watch-tower duty and scouting. As young men up to age 30, they’re soldiers and defenders of the tribe. Only after the age of 30 are they allowed to marry, have families and be involved in tribal decision-making.
Lindsay doesn’t quote any studies to back up what he says but there are studies on the incidence of prostate cancer in black and white males and they do show black men have a higher incidence of the disease which is caused in part by higher levels of testosterone or of other chemicals such as estradiol that might affect testosterone.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3455741
http://jcem.endojournals.org/content/92/7/2519.long
Possible also that if there’s an inverse correlation between social intelligence (being able to read people’s behaviour) and testosterone levels, then a lot of young black men’s behaviour and aggression can be explained by not being able to read others’ emotions and misinterpreting them.
http://gotscience.wordpress.com/2011/02/11/testosterone-lowers-social-intelligence/
Yes those are all very good points. It is also apparently the case that physical differentiation between males and females is higher in the tropics because of the greater relative expendability of males there as opposed to, say, sub-arctic climes.
I remember also the Zulu armies being organized by age group.
In the past these shooters may have been an Isaiah or an Ezekiel. Violence is now the only means of self-expression, especially for a disordered mind. Art and literature is just a different kind of corporate hierarchical industry, complete with hipster uniform. Moreover there aren’t any signifiers left to provide a psychic ground for the work, only the hyper-real noise of popular culture and social media. Look at contemporary art, it is just about who can be the biggest intellectual wank. Even sexual repression once had its place – you could become a monk or nun, I doubt any movies will be made about a sexually repressed celibate superhero anytime soon. A society which refuses to abandon its own dead illusions will rot from the inside and breed more and more of these kinds.
Do you think your beta male rage theory will hold up in the latest Sikh temple massacre?
Not my theory so much as a general concept being floated around by H-S and some others.
And, yes.
Rather random, but how does the mass youth gang phenomena of industrializing Europe fit into HBD’s crime-is-mostly-genetic argument? Feral youth gangs roamed the streets of London and Berlin well before they had black communities. While I think being part of a permanent underclass is a factor, I think the alt-right should acknowledge such things. Europeans have had their share of barbaric urban phenomena.
Its a question that came to mind for me some time ago and as you seem knowledgeable I though I’d pose it here. Feel free to ignore it, too.
I think crime is much less genetic than IQ. Medieval Europe had very high murder rates. So did some White emigrants to the US (e.g. the Irish in New York). Russia and some other East European countries still have very high murder rates.
Basically there’s lots of factors. Testosterone levels are one. They were higher in the past (in recent decades they have declined greatly for whatever reason). The quality of policing. Social inequality and severity/quality of policing. Probably a large part of why Britain was one of the first countries in the West to begin having a very low murder rate was simply because it started hanging everybody for the most triffling of offenses (200 crimes punishable with DP in 18th century). The reason the murder rate in Russia and EE is so high is mostly because of vodka bingeing. On the other hand a few traditional societies in Africa have low murder rates.
Still I do think the genetic factor is not insubstantial. As far back as observations go, China has had very low murder rates. Arthur H Smith more a century ago remarked that it was far safer for a foreigner to walk across China than doing the same in America. When living in more or less socially homogeneous societies, the same pattern of homicide levels almost always reproduces itself: Asians at the bottom, Whites in the middle, Blacks and mulattoes at the top.
I think you misunderstand limitcycle. What you see in Europe is the disappears of “white” gangs in London and Paris (Berlin is to close to East Germany). You can’t explain that with genetics because they were plentiful in recent times but explaining it with the disappearance of the white underclass works great. This works especially well when you look at areas where there are no immigrants, There you still have a white underclass & white gangs. See for example Wales or East Germany.
The low British murder rate is due to their strict anti gun/weapon laws. Making carrying a gun (or other weapon) a crime just makes it hard to kill somebody
what do you mean with Asians. Only people from China,Korea & Japan or also South East Asia or also Philippines, Indonesia or even India and Pakistan. If you even include the Indians then i will laugh at your highly American viewpoint.But this is not true even when you only consider East Asians. In Hong Kong the murder rate for whites was a lot lower than for Asians (probably true for whole East Asia)