Is being "wrong" a psychiatric disorder?

When someone commits a horrific crime or crimes we want to know what's the matter with them?  And having decided that something is in fact the matter with them we then want to know why.  Is what they did an "illness"?  Do they need treatment or incarceration?  Is it their "fault"?  How should we treat the perpetrators?

It is tempting to consider such people as "mentally ill".  In that way we don't have to think about what they are trying to accomplish or if they are trying to accomplish any goal in the real world.  A moment's thought, however, is (or should be) enough to recognize that all of the mass murders are goal-directed, not simply an errant momentary impulse.   For instance,  the recent Bakersfield killings were carefully planned over a long period of time and carried out by people whose public behavior had been "normal" even to their closest associates.  So what was their goal?

They were clearly  not motivated by personal gain.  They didn't expect to survive their actions.  Their goals were ideological and based on fervent religious beliefs.  Sanity was not the issue; their belief system was.  To decide they were somehow psychiatrically ill and in need of treatment is to trivialize their behavior.  It also dumps the responsibility for managing them and people like them on the mental health system, which is totally unequipped to deal with them.  These people are not mentally ill.  Giving them a "diagnosis" is to escape from the reality that sane people can actually want to kill us.  We don't want to believe that. To kill people for religious differences seems mad.  But of course many religions, including Christianity, have done exactly that in the past.

Some of the mass shootings fall in other categories.  Mentally ill people can also commit crimes, and the reasons for their behavior will never make sense to the "sane" among us.  A recent example is the multiple shootings in the Denver movie theater.  Such people may believe that others are plotting to kill or damage them, or they may believe they are given orders by supernatural beings.  Their behavior makes sense to them.  It is not difficult to detect the bizarre thinking patterns that characterize such disorders. The only real question is what to do with them.

By the way, the only difference between in psychotic beliefs in supernatural directives and those whose beliefs gave rise to a religious movement is an arbitrary one.  If Jesus lived today we would probably hospitalize him involuntarily and treat him with medication until he no longer heard "voices" and no longer believed in his own supernatural power.  However, he was able to convince others that he was sane.  Other people with similar delusions have not been so convincing and ended up medicated and relatively mannerly.  

School shootings by adolescents might have as a goal some form of revenge on their treatment at the school.  The desire for revenge is not a mental illness.  What they did was criminal and not the result of mental illness. It might be helpful, however, to inquire as to what happened to them to prompt such a desperate desire for revenge?

When sane people commit horrific crimes we need to understand why they feel it necessary to do so.  We can't begin to consider ways of stopping it when we do not understand what they are trying to accomplish.  To dismiss their acts as "mentally ill" is to trivialize them and attempt to ignore them.

A Modest Proposal for Texters

I can see clearly that the following proposals have little likelihood of being implemented.  Unless, of course, I am elected Emperor by acclamation.  Laugh, if you will, but it could happen.
     The intent of these proposals is to stop texting while driving.  Not slow it down or punish the texters, stop it. As with any other activity in which it is possible to kill others as well as one's self, decreasing the frequency is not really a good solution.  Stop it is what we must do.  Texters kill others.  I can tolerate their killing themselves, and preferably early in their lives, if possible prior to breeding.
     First:  Anyone convicted of texting while driving or caught while texting has the following sanctions:
Driver's licence suspended for 6 months for a first offense; Driver's license forfeited for life for a second offense.  But wait.  There's more.
     Second:  A "texter" will have his smartphone confiscated and impounded permanently.  Of course, there is nothing to stop a texter from buying another phone, and thus
     Third:  Their phone account is suspended for 3 months.  For a second offense they are prohibited from having a phone at all for 6 months;  for a third offense it is prohibited for life.
     For additional offenses the texter is placed under "house arrest", which means he or she wears an ankle bracelet with GPS and is limited to his/her home and employment for 1 year.  I believe that for these compulsively socially-addicted people this punishment would be very effective.
     Another suggestion I received was to require convicted texters to have their car marked in some appropriate way, such as a flashing red light on the roof, so that the rest of us can be aware of them and take appropriate precautions.

As Emperor I will be open to suggestions, and the more ingenious ones will be rewarded appropriately.

The dangers of absolute rightness

The art of politics is compromise.  Compromise makes adjustments so that the maximum amount of benefit accrues to the maximum number of people.  At least, that is the ideal use of compromise.

Religion does not value nor even tolerate compromise.  When someone or some group believes they have been given instructions from some form of divinity, how can they even consider compromising?  For that reason all religions have splintered into smaller groups from time to time, as various members get a different set of instructions which cannot be reconciled with the previous ones.  There is no “sort of” in “revealed truth”.

Obviously religions, as a general domain, do not value compromise;  in fact, they see it as sinful because it finds changes in the inerrant word of God(s).

When political compromise is useful, religion can block it.  When the political leaders value religion strongly, they become less and less willing to compromise.  Instead of compromise, one side must win, and that side, by definition, will have been the “correct” side.  According to the winners, at least.  

The mixture of religious thinking with political pragmatism results in wars and terrible tragedies, all in the name of unprovable beliefs.

 

Religious thinking is not restricted to deism or theology.  It is based on the quality of absolute rightness.  History teaches us that there are political beliefs that are identical in structure to religious beliefs with the exception that deism is not a necessary quality for absolute rightness.  The early days of fascism come to mind, as does the Soviet regime in the middle of the last century.  Many other examples come to mind.  No state based on absolute values can be a healthy nor happy state, and the people in it will have neither. 

The problem is not religion, per se, though that is a prime and clear example of absolutist thinking.  It is the absolutist thinking itself that is the disorder.  Unless the absolute value includes human life and the quality of that life we could expect to be trampled and crushed between absolute "rights" that do not value us as human beings.

When several states are absolutist, conflicts become inevitable, and since the absolute values do not include human life or happiness, they war with each other, and their people suffer and suffer terribly.

But how can there be compromise with absolute rightness?  We know the answer and we know the cost.  But we tolerate such thinking, because, of course, it is right.