Another fucking spree shooting. Great.

Eh, maybe I'm misreading him, TWU. But when he precedes "We were the Columbine kids" with

We were the kids who girls never talked to. We were the kids the popular kids looked down on. We got made fun of. We got laughed at. I remember once entering the locker room of my high school’s gym, where a kid a year older than me named Rick walked up to me and backhand slapped me across the face. I looked up at him and he shrugged and said, “What can you do?” sympathetically. As if even he knew what he did reflecteda way of things that wasn’t fair, even though he was also choosing to do it.

it gets my hackles up.

He follows it with "on many, many levels we were". And then analyzes the similarity and differences in a very sensitive way, I think, with the specific goal of getting young white dudes not to feel like victims owed by an unjust world.

I'm with DJP. Also the statement "the world doesn't owe you anything" -- sans context -- is kind of awful. People aren't owed love or affection or sex but they are all should be treated fairly and decently. The author of the article was owed not being backhanded in the face by that high school bully. Women are owed the right to not be harassed or made to feel unsafe. Humans are owed all sorts of things by virtue of being human. Maybe this is nitpicky because what the author was taking aim at was a particular, odious form of male entitlement but in that case he shouldn't make sloppy, general statements.

yeah, that guy's statement seems a bit off

treesh otm

Actually the statement "the world doesn't owe you anything" is 100% correct and should be internalized so that people stop taking the good things in their lives for granted.

debt is kind of a weird/wrong concept to apply to human relations imo

or maybe not debt, but entitlement

Like, if 25% of the people out there who aren't thinking this way realize "the world doesn't owe me the things in my life that are awesome and I am really fucking lucky", think of the overall empathy increase; the ability to get out of seeing your situation as the default and what is "owed" to any person is instrumental in making people empathic to those who are worse off than them.

I think it's hard to crystallize in words what a healthy attitude towards life/others/ourselves consists of. It's something you kind of have to absorb my osmosis, if you're lucky, by being around good role models. One sad irony is this guy thought all he needed was sex to be happy, whereas what he really needed was a friend.

this kid needed friends or maybe better support years ago, he strikes me as someone who fell through the cracks bc outwardly he appeared to have everything and yet meanwhile he was quiet and solitary and having a running unreliable narration on his own life and perceptions that no one contradicted IRL and people online only reinforced. also I read this weird aside in one piece that mentioned him periodically splashing drinks on couples?

One thing that sticks out about the Gerhard post is that for all his alienated loserdom, he obviously had some good friends. It's "we" this and "we" that - not just "me".

this is a point where the pedant and the 13-year-old converge and point out that dude's name is Gethard

iirc, "the world" is somewhat larger than human society.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjgyznFc18M

true. a herzog nature doc for every child.

Actually the statement "the world doesn't owe you anything" is 100% correct and should be internalized so that people stop taking the good things in their lives for granted.

― On-the-spot Dicespin (DJP), Wednesday, May 28, 2014 6:07 PM (22 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Very true

Meh, the idea that 'the world doesn't owe you anything' is egotistical drivel, the kind of thinking that leads to dangerous situations. We owe fair treatment to others. Basic dignity is something everyone should have.

How does it lead to a dangerous situation

I think it's important not just to not take good things for granted, but to remember that other people should also have these good things. It's the right wing that has such an aversion to the word "entitlements".

No one is talking about entitlements

When the right wing talks about entitlements, they are talking about Social Security, which is not, in fact, an entitlement

Meh, the idea that 'the world doesn't owe you anything' is egotistical drivel, the kind of thinking that leads to dangerous situations. We owe fair treatment to others. Basic dignity is something everyone should have.

Actually, I think the idea that the world doesn't owe you anything is pure egolessness. It's an acknowledgement of your total insignificance.

yeah I didn't mean entitlement in the sense of policy/American politics

xposts: all that phrase means to my mind is a kind of anti-narcissistic gesture (the world does not exist to please you), maybe a more metaphysical notion that universe takes no notice of you (and therefore no one else). it's a healthy mindset in that context rather than a Trojan horse for free market individualism etc. (which seems predicated on some underlying notion of "just rewards.")

The reason they are ideologically opposed to it is that they don't believe people should get stuff simply by being people. To the contrary, there are fundamental human rights and one of them should be healthcare and another one should a decent living standard.

xp to wf

There is a difference between "the world doesn't owe you anything" and "the world doesn't owe me anything" that I did not properly delineate in my previous posts. Context also matters; someone who has been denied housing based on their race is in a very different context from someone who can't get that one cheerleader to notice him during lunch period.

The problem with "everyone is owed basic dignity" is that no one agrees on what "basic dignity" is.

The reason they are ideologically opposed to it is that they don't believe people should get stuff simply by being people.

They do think this though! Think of the zero interest loans all the banks recieved

Are banks not people.

Anyway, you are confused.

I like the idea of taking nothing for granted

Also,

farts.

and yeah it's a different discussion if we're talking housing discrimination vs, like, the Book of Job.

To wit, Treeship is saying "healthcare is a basic right" whereas there is a significant portion of the population, across several class levels, who would say "being able to eat is a basic right". I believe healthcare is a privilege that we, as a nation, should grant to all of our citizens/residents but I don't believe it is a basic right. Believing everyone should have something does not de facto make it a right.

could be taken as a part of "right to life" tho

is it the right not to be deprived of life, or the right to be assisted in living

rights only exist insofar as they are agreed upon by groups of people, they aren't some outgrowth of natural phenomenon (I know this runs contrary to the whole God-given rights thing but take God out of the equation imo)

even putting God aside, there are certain rhetorical benefits to pretending that some rights are intrinsic + self-evident

Not to digress too much but we're never going to get rid of the gun problem, are we.

get hard's 'hot girl' allegory was kinda m4rç l0i-esque imo

Not to digress too much but we're never going to get rid of the gun problem, are we.

nope

feels like guns aren't even part of the discussion this time around, like its become passé and naive, almost quaint, to mention gontrol after a mass killing

have heard 10 x more about seth rogen than guns

gontrol = gun control

get hard

Just noticed that. Heh. Maybe that's why the guy was teased so much.

no doubt

I've just gotten sent home from school (Community College of Philadelphia) after reports of a gunman on campus. I arrived after the lockdown had started, so I was turned away, but from what I can tell online, even though the police are "99% sure" any potential threat has passed, students on campus are still in a guarded shelter and SWAT teams are in the halls. Kind of freaking out a little

yikes

http://www.cnn.com/2014/05/27/justice/california-elliot-rodger-wealth/index.html?c=us

The 107,000-word "story" that Rodger sent to his parents, therapists and several others just before the killings suggested that he was angry that his parents were not wealthy.

"Where's the justice? I thought. Why couldn't I have been born into that life?" Rodger wrote. His father's family in Britain "was once part of the wealthy upper classes before they lost all of their fortune during the Great Depression," he wrote.

Rodger's mother and father had rich friends in Los Angeles, which allowed him to sometimes enjoy the benefits of money, such as tickets to a private Katy Perry concert in 2012.

"I tried to pretend as if I was part of a wealthy family," he wrote about that night. "I should be. That was the life I was meant to live. I WOULD BE!"

He blamed his parents for his lack of wealth.

"If only my damnable mother had married into wealth instead of being selfish," he wrote. She dated wealthy men after her divorce, giving her son hope and prompting him to "pester" her to marry one, he said. "I will always resent my mother for refusing to do this. If not for her sake, she should have done it for mine. Joining a family of great wealth would have truly saved my life. I would have a high enough status to attract beautiful girlfriends and live above all of my enemies."

...

It was his working mother's generosity to her adult son, including paying his rent and the gift of a used BMW 328i, that allowed Rodger to live in the college community of Isla Vista. He bought his three handguns with money saved from gifts from grandparents and the $500 a month his father sent him, according to Rodger's writing.

"damnable mother"

dear god

I feel like I am making the correct decision in actively avoiding this dude's manifesto

yeah

I think it's impt to separate this kid from your average sad and lonely and angry kid who would never rise to the level of such thoughts and behavior, i.e. I don't think a pep talk or more friends would have necessarily helped him. There was a lot much more deeply wrong w him.