Is "wanting to kill people" really so far from the norm as to have a gene associated with it? What would the gene be responsible for, "Propensity to give a fuck about other living beings"? Because in my mind, the line between being "sane" and killing everyone in sight is pretty fine.
One's logic could go like this, "Man, everything sucks, and those kids down at the preschool are always so damn happy. Fuck Them. If I'm not happy no ones gets to be happy. Lock and load assholes." Suddenly you've got another tragedy. I would imagine people that are suicidal sometimes feel like this. Maybe it depends on how introverted or extroverted they are. The introverts disappear quietly in the dead of night, and the extroverts start mowing down pedestrians in the town square and then blow their brains out standing on the Mayor's statue.
If a gene could be isolated for "suicidal tendencies" and also for intro/extro we might be able to reduce future events like this. But just because someone is a suicidal extrovert that hates everyone it doesn't necessarily mean they're going to start killing people. Maybe the ones that don't are just pussies and the gene for "guts" or "courage" would also have to be isolated?
I don't know I'm just rambling. I ask myself why I don't kill my neighbors. Is it because I'm "sane"? Well I guess so, if "liking others" and not wanting them to be sad is a characteristic of sane people. But I firmly believe that there's a tiny slice of murderer in all sane people, and I like to think of people like Adam Lanza as having just a bigger slice, because putting them in a different category of "mentally ill" sort of feels like I'm denying a part of my own nature.
Having occasional thought about killing isn't unusual - but the article describes having these thoughts far more often than is normal, and acting on them with much less provocation.
An analogy: Any computer will crash when running buggy software - but a computer with a bad stick of RAM will crash much more often. The symptoms of both those problems will be fairly similar.
Likewise, most humans think about killing from time to time - but some mentally ill people think about it much more often. Unfortunately with humans one can't run memtest86+ or swap the ram out and see if the problem goes away.
I don't think it's so simple as to written off as some genetic issue certainly and, to be honest with no malice intended, the idea there will be no mental illness at some point in this center is the dumbest thing I've heard in awhile, but I also don't think the "line" between being "sane" and "killing everyone in sight" is fine; why would that be the case? It seems if it really were as precarious as you say, we would have a lot more violence. Only a very small percentage of people become these sorts of rampage shooters.
Wasn't there a time not too long ago when tribes of people would go around raping, pillaging, and slaughtering others just for the hell of it? Because it was fun for them? If our world had respawn, I think life would turn into a sort of valhalla-ish existence for a not small percentage of people, and I bet many would learn about a part of themselves they did not know existed, or had supressed.
Maybe rampage shooters are just people born in to the wrong time period, where in another they would fit in perfectly. The line isn't fine, but they aren't as different as we make them out to be.
One's logic could go like this, "Man, everything sucks, and those kids down at the preschool are always so damn happy. Fuck Them. If I'm not happy no ones gets to be happy. Lock and load assholes." Suddenly you've got another tragedy. I would imagine people that are suicidal sometimes feel like this. Maybe it depends on how introverted or extroverted they are. The introverts disappear quietly in the dead of night, and the extroverts start mowing down pedestrians in the town square and then blow their brains out standing on the Mayor's statue.
If a gene could be isolated for "suicidal tendencies" and also for intro/extro we might be able to reduce future events like this. But just because someone is a suicidal extrovert that hates everyone it doesn't necessarily mean they're going to start killing people. Maybe the ones that don't are just pussies and the gene for "guts" or "courage" would also have to be isolated?
I don't know I'm just rambling. I ask myself why I don't kill my neighbors. Is it because I'm "sane"? Well I guess so, if "liking others" and not wanting them to be sad is a characteristic of sane people. But I firmly believe that there's a tiny slice of murderer in all sane people, and I like to think of people like Adam Lanza as having just a bigger slice, because putting them in a different category of "mentally ill" sort of feels like I'm denying a part of my own nature.