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Ed Ziomek
Joined: 07 Jun 2005
Posts: 482
Location: Stamford, Connecticut
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 Posted: Tue Apr 17, 2007 11:03 pm Post subject: Perpetuating Massacres: Blueprinting More |
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The Virginia Tech massacre. Only one tragic event, so similar to previous tragic events, there will be a thousand more, I fear.
I am asking for your help, "What are the problems happening in America (and maybe other locations), that will insure this tragedy will repeat in all our communities?
#1. High tech media focuses on the depraved events... mass murders, terrorist events, insure instant worldwide media coverage...all a psychotic person needs is a method and a moment and a congregation of persons...he/she becomes a "Natural Born Killer" celebrity. This latest blowup will become the blueprint for the next, and the next, and the next. I am sure if the killer lived, he would have been proud of himself for all the carnage he created..."Good, I paid them back".
#2. Governments, organizations, school systems shoot the messengers. There were so many warning signals about this troubled invidividual, so many persons knew he was a massive risk, but nothing was done. Careers depend on blemish-free work activities...our society rewards the "problem-reactors", not the "problem-avoiders". We shoot the whistle-blower, we don't want persons "rocking the boat", negatively or positively. One person told me..."I spent my career fixing problems, and one person then told me...'Your job must be easy, you don't have any problems.' Another co-worker was constantly jumping from crisis to crisis and was viewed as an excellent problem solver, for problems that person in fact created in the first place. God forbid if I should go to the boss and tell him who was the problem worker, who had the disastrous life-threatening issues, I would be out of a job."
#3. There are too many lawsuits and lawyers involved today, or the threat of lawsuits. You come across a disatrous threat issue, you have to be very careful how you address everyone involved about the problem, and take steps to remedy the problem, and God forbid...if you have to get Police involved where negative, adverse events may take place against that individual.
#4. Politics becomes an issue. What are the political consequences of corrective actions? Whose boat do I sink if I try to communicate the problem? Who is married to whom? Who is sleeping with whom? Who is "in", who is "out"? Who gets away with murder? What words can I use? What is the written procedure, and what is the office procedure?
#5. Publicity: the most feared word in the American universe. No news is good news. Murder happens at 7:15, emails didn't go out for another ??? two hours. It sounds like the incident was kept under wraps. Nobody wants to be an alarmist? Colleges are businesses. Publicity kills business?
#6 The modern day, "isolationist" irony...we are massively growing as a world society, and conversely isolating and marginalizing those that "don't fit in" to prescribed "attitudes". Take away the family structure, diminish the extended family cohesiveness, or legal structure, or social structure that gives sanity to withdrawn individuals, and place this individual in large group communities of un-friendly strangers, and the chance for emotional explosions are guaranteed.
Where does one go when you are suddenly all "alone"? Is our society prepared to handle the "odd kid, isolated, alone, afraid, rejected"? Or do we say..."Kill somebody, then we pay attention!"
#7 Was the killer an abused child, as he claims? Young sexual victims are scarred for life, and often act out their rage in later periods of reciprocal sexual abuse against young victims. Was the killer chemically unbalanced, or even adult autistic?
#8 We are Bombarded by the media with violence scenes, and bullying scenes, and killing scenes, and verbal abuse examples...as if these activities are "normal". I remember the Marine who was questioned about his role in Iraqi killings of civilians..."It was the way I was trained, it was what I was taught to do." (Have we, as a world society become numb to the loss of life, with 3 times more killed in Iraq, every day, for the last 3 years.)
#9. Over-medication. I have heard of children as young as 5 being sedated with pharmaceutical drugs on a regular basis...why? "Because they were crying."
# 10. Self-Fulfilling Adrenaline Rush of Disasters. Remember the stories that 5% of all fires are caused by firefighters? Ever heard of a Police Officer who provokes a citizen, just to beat-down and arrest that citizen? Or the power company who staged its own power outage to increase rates? Or the manufacturer who deliberately used weak parts to insure a "churn" of regular sales? Is there more profit in "problems", and less profit in "solutions", especially if someone else is paying?
Have we become a society where we crave the problem, as if we gain in prestige for having survived the experience? Do we profit more from the problem rather than the solution?
Your opinions, criticisms, additions, subtractions are appreciated.
Ed Z
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Richard Haut
millennium club
Joined: 18 Apr 2004
Posts: 1129
Location: Nice, France
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| Posted: Thu Apr 19, 2007 11:03 am Post subject: |
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Ed
by chance I came across a link to the bombing of a school in Bath, Michigan in 1927 in which 45 died: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_School_disaster
does that tell us that the problem has always been there ?
the bombing was based on a twisted form of resentment, an act of seemingly lunatic desperation.
however I agree that we seem more concerned with relishing the problem, rather than concentrating on the solution. The leering delight of the gun lobby saying that there was a gun ban on the campus and presuming that if students had got their guns, it would have caused less casualties. Maybe it would. Maybe the reverse.
how long was the deranged Cho inside the building killing people ? A long time, if what I have so far heard is correct.
it is easy to see this as a peculiarly American problem, but I do not believe that it is. It happens elsewhere (such as Dunblane in the UK).
the conduct of the police, the university authorities and the media are, I believe, still open to question.
however my total sympathy is with the students because we - all of us, Americans and non-Americans - failed them, just as we failed the Iraqi academics being assassinated by the Salvador Option killing squads.
doubtless we will be hearing endless nonsense from the psychiatry profession - but while we listen to them, just think of the word "biscuit" - it stands for Behavioral Science Consultation Team, and the American psychiatrists and others on the biscuit team advised those whose hands ‘actually held the pliers’, to use the old-fashioned phrase, in Abu Ghraib and similar places.
you see, behind the tragedy lurks the unavoidable. Many will assume, and others will be outraged that this could have been precisely what was planned under the MK-Ultra programme. I have no idea whether Cho was crazy, or was driven crazy. For the students in Virginia, it makes no difference.
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Richard Haut has worked with the architectural profession for over 25 years and produces the weekly Richard Haut's Competitions, which has given architects details of many thousands of projects for which they can apply across Britain and Europe. |
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Ed Ziomek
Joined: 07 Jun 2005
Posts: 482
Location: Stamford, Connecticut
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| Posted: Fri Apr 20, 2007 10:48 am Post subject: Preventing future tragedies: "socializing city planning |
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Rich and all,
Overall Question: Can Architectural Design, and City Planning help prevent these crimes?
Shame on me for not mentioning my 11th theory..."Does modernism-city-planning and architecture, cause depression among the young?"
I guess the net-net of my thread is that today's society in America, and probably all over the world trains itself to be "reactive" to problems, rather than "proactive" in preventing those problems from occurring.
Your valid quotes...we should all be discussing these issues...
(1927 incident) "...the bombing was based on a twisted form of resentment, an act of seemingly lunatic desperation."
(2007 V-Tech...) "I have no idea whether Cho was crazy, or was driven crazy."
I could write a doctoral thesis on the architectural and city planning differences between 1927 and 2007. The good news is that society is starting to recognize the social and emotional value of the cohesiveness of previous "neighborhoods".
In 1927, persons "belonged" to a neighborhood, a church, a spirited school, even the neighborhood soda fountain where persons used to hang out.
Today, kids are chased out of malls, they are dispersed from playgrounds after 9PM, but in most cases, the architecture of the townhouse complex, or city planning structure has eliminated the meeting places. Too many neighborhoods don't have even a park bench that kids can go to congregate. Is it any surprise that I read where two of the most affluent neighborhoods, with no meeting place for teenagers, have the highest teen suicide rates? How many towns in "suburbia" have a 4-lane highway slice through town, and no basketball court or park bench to congregate at?
Finally, like so many others I have read about, of families with pot-smoking and drug-abusive family members, let me confess that myself and my family are living the "issues" of a mental health care "relative". I have made prior comments about my own mental status, and the question is a good one..."Are you born with mental illness, or is it induced by circumstance and environment and poor decision making...or by living under the influence of a mentally ill person?" The answer is probably "all of the above".
And there is no such thing as a harmless drug. Pot is not harmless. Alcohol is not harmless. Depression is not harmless. Cocaine is not harmless. But this much I do know...socializing can cure many of these problems.
The question becomes...does our modern society promote socializing, or do we promote isolation? Do we promote understanding, or do we promote a segregated "fortress" environment of "white neighborhoods", and "brown neighborhoods". Cho had been taunted at school, "Go back to China" (and he is Korean, of course)
Contacting the Social Service agencies, and the Police, and the Church representatives, and the Outreach programs...as we have done, the danger to my family is 'mildly, every day concern', and government agencies consistently fail at this crucial step...Intervention when all the warning signs are there.
V-Tech is just one tragedy, one symptom of a nationwide problem, and the "isolationist" city planning and architecture plays a minor role, I fear.
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Richard Haut
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Joined: 18 Apr 2004
Posts: 1129
Location: Nice, France
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| Posted: Fri Apr 20, 2007 7:58 pm Post subject: |
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Ed
I do not remember you mentioning your mental state - I only know you from this forum, and what you write (whether I agree with individual points or not) is rational.
mental illness is an endless and complex subject - in which the world of "Modernism" has played an indolent and wilful part.
the best architects in Britain are beginning to express a doubt, a regret - that they want to return to doing something with purpose, with social purpose. Architecture without urban conscience is trash - fit only for the bulldozer.
in his last years Jeanneret (Corbusier) lived in his little cabin at Cap Martin, leering resentfully over the fence at Eileen Grey's villa.
eventually, when she had moved away, he broke in and scrawled huge and offensive murals over the walls. I will be writing about this in the next month or so because I believe it to be significant in showing the paucity, the meaningless self-indulgence of the phrase that a house is a machine for living.
Jeanneret drowned off the coast of Cap Martin, apparently having suffered a heart attack. Was he mentally ill, depressed ?
have you seen the film "Crocodile Dundee" ? See how Mick Dundee from the Australian Outback gets on with New York, the first city that he has ever seen. "New York must be the friendliest place in the world - imagine seven million people all wanting to live together."
when told that everybody sees an analyst (but of course without actually being ill), he is asked what they do in Walkabout Creek (where he comes from) when they have a problem. "Oh," he says, " if you've got a problem you tell Wally. Wally then tells everybody in town about it and it's out in the open. No more problem."
the problem with Virginia Tech is not that we find Cho so hard to understand, but that we do understand. We just do not liking admitting it.
it is fear - fear that the thin veneer of our smug civilization will be breached.
east of San Diego in California, the evil Blackwater mercenary organisation are planning a vast encampment. A terrorist training ground no different to bin Laden's Afghan camps. The Cho's that come out of that will have better weapons than the tragic young Korean who had kept on and on and on giving warnings and threats which were - as we all know - desperate appeals for help, which all ignored.
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Richard Haut has worked with the architectural profession for over 25 years and produces the weekly Richard Haut's Competitions, which has given architects details of many thousands of projects for which they can apply across Britain and Europe. |
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Ed Ziomek
Joined: 07 Jun 2005
Posts: 482
Location: Stamford, Connecticut
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| Posted: Sun Apr 22, 2007 7:12 pm Post subject: Optimism among the ashes... |
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Two items...
Mayor Bloomberg announced today the proposal to plant 1 million trees in New York City to help with air cleansing, shade, and the greening of New York. Excellent idea.
On the Cho situation,
I just heard on CNN that Cho's own family in Korea had been told that their son was autistic, and was non-communicative to them. He was almost completely silent for all his life.
Everyone is asking the same question, "How do we as a society find the mentally impaired of the world, and then de-fuse the bullying, the isolation, and the damage that is being done? How do we promote socializing, and interaction, and understanding?"
Can better design play a role?
As Rich referred to it...Urban Conciousness, I would like to frame his wonderful, optimistic words!
"The best architects in Britain are beginning to express a doubt, a regret - that they want to return to doing something with purpose, with social purpose. Architecture without urban conscience is trash - fit only for the bulldozer."
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Ed Ziomek
Joined: 07 Jun 2005
Posts: 482
Location: Stamford, Connecticut
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| Posted: Wed Aug 08, 2007 9:37 pm Post subject: Level of Violence, Increasing? |
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I didn't want to come back to this topic. I felt it was my worst contribution on this wonderful site, even though I feel so strongly about how America is imploding on the social scale, dis-integrating the family units, displacing and marginalizing our youth, and even architecting the isolation of our citizens.
Beach Community in Florida... square miles of criss crossing highways, so many retirment developments...seemingly so isolationist, yet I did see a very active softball field. Is our city planners and zoning people across America building in social and activity centers for our families, and especially our teenagers?
It seems that the classic shopping malls have truckloads of buying opportunites for the 13-20 year olds, but maybe not one park bench or social green area for that same group to congregate. Socially, it seems like the teenagers are extincted from social planning, in my opinion.
Why am I saying this, in a topic that pains me? Two massacres happened within 60 miles of my house in the last two weeks. Not just your average multiple murder scene, but almost a Masonesque slaughter in both cases. Is this the Iraq war savagry spilling into our local neighborhoods?
And then a comment this weekend from a Wall Street financial advisor, from the heartland America...white on white on white..."I know of ten people I can name, right now...from my suburbia town, who overdosed on heroin...between Meth and Heroin...it is an epidemic."
Say prayers for America, the Freedom and Democracy "great pretender".
Time to stand up, make changes, certainly vote good guys in, bad guys out.
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Tedtard9
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