I think this guy isn't far off....
There is a common factor I see in all of these "mass shootings" and it has little to do with political leanings, manifestos, racism, xenophobia, homophobia, mental illness, religion or acidic national rhetoric. It's something that explains ANTIFA, the yearning for socialism, the confusion over sexual identity and gender, and any number of situations we face today.
It's immaturity.
It's arrested development brought about by an societal system that, rather than prepares young people for adulthood, prolongs childhood and retards the maturation process.
For decades, kids have been shielded from responsibility, duty, work, loss in kiddie sport and the disappointment and hurt that comes about as a result - but that's how we learn, how we harden our shells against the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Sparing children from the progress to maturity harms them more than we know - and results in adults who place such a low value on human life that they can somehow rationalize the act of murder.
It creates a culture of self-exoneration, a mental state of rationalized "rightness". Self-exoneration is weaponized in our culture of social media isolation where it is possible for people self-exonerate themselves of infractions committed through concocting armies of strawmen and vast conspiracies that simply don't exist.
If one remembers their own childhood, one can assume that there will be remembered at least one situation where some unfair punishment or major injustice was vested on one’s person. I can vividly remember being punished for a crime I clearly committed (I snuck a piece of my own chocolate birthday cake a little early) and got punished by both parents…on my birthday…on a Saturday…and before my birthday party. Can life get more unfair? I can remember crying on my bed then getting angry and saying under my breath that “Nobody loves me.They all hate me.”
I was five…and guilty as sin.
I got what I deserved. It was all on me.
And yet, my immature mind concocted a scenario where I was guiltless and grossly mistreated.
As we progress, we all do this - we justify our hurt from a breakup with a girlfriend/boyfriend, the loss of a coveted promotion to someone else, and a plethora of life situations.
Most people get over them and learned that what they dreamed up to justify how they fell was simply irrational...and as hard as each of those events are, we grow from them. That's just how we learn to adult.
There's an interesting Facebook meme that is both cute and instructive, and entirely related to my thoughts. It is a collection of pictures of young children getting upset after getting what they asked for when they didn't even understand what they were asking. One I remember is a little girl who asked for "Two Em-e-Em's" (M&M's), after which her mom gave her exactly two M&M's. The cute little girl had an immediate meltdown because she had no concept of how few two M&M's truly was.
Kids today are being forced to play an adult game for which they are in no way prepared to even suit up. There’s a reason we don’t allow children under the age of 18 to view porn – they simply aren't ready for it. At the high school age when physical changes are still at work, everything is first processed emotionally and then logically – but if the kids don’t have the maturity and wisdom blunt the emotions and move into the logical, the result is expressed as impotent rage.
And it is the same for adults who were shielded from hurt during the critical formative stages of youth - they just don't have the tools to deal with the vicissitudes of life and retreat into isolation where the "Nobody loves me" feeling metastasize into hate. These mass murders have fully convinced themselves that some "other" is the cause of their issues and act out accordingly.
These shootings are the adult version of a fit thrown by a two-year old in the toy aisle after being told he can't have the toy he wanted.
It seems impossible that so many of our Founding Fathers were younger than 25 on July 4th, 1776 - but in the 1700's, a 16 year old was considered a man. Probably not surprising in an age when living to 40 was an accomplishment - men and women matured fast - the had to do so to survive. Even through the 1950's, an 18 year-old was mature enough to hold a job, marry and begin a family.
Not so today. I see so many people who are still adolescent of mind even into their mid-30's because they never learned how to take care of themselves. Men today aren't becoming feminized as much as they are remaining boys - children as compared to their parents and especially their grandparents...and any attempt to exhibit traditional maturity is denigrated as "toxic masculinity".
It's nuts.
I hate to assign blame for this because it will sound political and political ideology is only part of it - but in my observations have caused me to form an opinion that there is a direct tie to the erosion of the traditional maturation process and the progressive, post-modernist culture that seeks to replace tradition.
And as long as we surrender to the arrested development brought about through progressivism/postmodernism it won't stop. Problems wont be solved until we address the root cause.
Even if it magically stopped today, it's going to get worse before it gets better.
~Michael Smith~
www.thesun.co.uk
www.nbcnews.com
www.cbsnews.com
www.gatestoneinstitute.org
en.wikipedia.org
