turtle-island.com/customs.html
Here is an interesting site regarding Ojibway customs.
Here are a couple of photos in traditional dress.
snow dragon, that’s very interesting.
[quote=“sername1”][quote=“Mother Theresa”]Easy access to guns is not just a factor, it is clearly half of the cause of these mass school slayings in the US. Wacko students are the other half.
Maybe there have been a few cases in Japan and China (where guns are hard to come by) of mass knife slayings, but I challenge you to find a single example of a deranged student in the US coming to school and stabbing a half dozen persons or more . . . or using any other weapon in a mass school killing for that matter.
As I said above, a big part of the issue is that TV, movies and video games glamorize guns and shooting people, so these screwed up kids choose to commit their heinous acts specifically with guns, not incidentally.[/quote]
I think you missed his point, availability of guns is a little more convenient, however,lack of guns is no deterrent as exemplified by stabbings, intentional driving of cars into crowds, poisonings etc.[/quote]
I think you missed my point. Not only does availability of guns make it easier for troubled US teens to go on school killing rampages, but if guns were not available they would not go on killing sprees at all. Maybe such kids would kill themselves by other means, but your examples of mass student stabbings, poisonings, etc is all hypothetical – those events don’t happen in the US. A large factor underlying these mass school killings is the fact that guns are glorified in our culture as macho. Rappers not only rap about guns and shooting people, but they are regularly getting shot in stupid rivalries. Sports stars and other celebrities get in trouble for their guns. And of course, TV, movies and video games all romanticize the image of tough guys shooting countless victims and the tragic effects of shootings are rarely portrayed. So, for these screwed up, depressed, lonely, frustrated kids who are tired of their struggles, going out in a blaze of gunfire seems heroic, bold, brave and manly. They can go out like Scarface or PuffDaddy or IceCube or whomever. The ultimate way to end it all. Poisoning or stabbing their classmates lacks the same machismo, so they’re not tempted by that option. Guns are not just more convenient for killing they are far more enticing psychologically to troubled teens.
[quote=“Mother Theresa”][quote=“sername1”][quote=“Mother Theresa”]Easy access to guns is not just a factor, it is clearly half of the cause of these mass school slayings in the US. Wacko students are the other half.
Maybe there have been a few cases in Japan and China (where guns are hard to come by) of mass knife slayings, but I challenge you to find a single example of a deranged student in the US coming to school and stabbing a half dozen persons or more . . . or using any other weapon in a mass school killing for that matter.
As I said above, a big part of the issue is that TV, movies and video games glamorize guns and shooting people, so these screwed up kids choose to commit their heinous acts specifically with guns, not incidentally.[/quote]
I think you missed his point, availability of guns is a little more convenient, however,lack of guns is no deterrent as exemplified by stabbings, intentional driving of cars into crowds, poisonings etc.[/quote]
I think you missed my point. Not only does availability of guns make it easier for troubled US teens to go on school killing rampages, but if guns were not available they would not go on killing sprees at all. Maybe such kids would kill themselves by other means, but your examples of mass student stabbings, poisonings, etc is all hypothetical – those events don’t happen in the US. A large factor underlying these mass school killings is the fact that guns are glorified in our culture as macho. Rappers not only rap about guns and shooting people, but they are regularly getting shot in stupid rivalries. Sports stars and other celebrities get in trouble for their guns. And of course, TV, movies and video games all romanticize the image of tough guys shooting countless victims and the tragic effects of shootings are rarely portrayed. So, for these screwed up, depressed, lonely, frustrated kids who are tired of their struggles, going out in a blaze of gunfire seems heroic, bold, brave and manly. They can go out like Scarface or PuffDaddy or IceCube or whomever. The ultimate way to end it all. Poisoning or stabbing their classmates lacks the same machismo, so they’re not tempted by that option. Guns are not just more convenient for killing they are far more enticing psychologically to troubled teens.[/quote]
yep i missed it as it’s really based on a premise that lacking A someone will not use B.They haven’t happened in the us because the convenience of guns made it easier. (as far as “school killings by children” in the us are concerned, and as far as i know. but they have happeneed in mass murders, including those on schoolchildren)
your other points are noteworthy
however movies don’t explain it all
oops
Even the government and mainstream media glamorize guns so they can get poor, ignorant kids who don’t know better, or lack other options, to sign up to fight in wars, despite the fact that the politicians who initiate the wars lacked the cajones to do the same themselves and the kids inevitably relate afterwards that it was not at all what they anticipated, it was far more horrible. Our culture widely portrays guns as sexy and macho. Lots of mass gun killers are seen as heros. A mass poisoner on the other hand would be seen as sick, depraved and perhaps on a par with a child molester – not exactly the way a troubled kid (or wacko suicidal adult) would like to be seen. On that final parenthetical note, one shouldn’t overlook all the incidents of a crazed adult blowing away his (usually his not hers) family and/or coworkers with a gun before turning it on himself. Rarely will such incidents involve some other implement of death. It’s not just easier with a gun, but these people want to go out with a whimper but a bang.
We have ended up discussing the best way for a whacked out kid to go on a killing spree at school. The weapon that was used is not important. Why the child decided he needed to use that weapon on his classmates is.
And I agree, movies don’t explain it all.
Even the government and mainstream media glamorize guns so they can get poor, ignorant kids who don’t know better, or lack other options, to sign up to fight in wars 
i think the main problem is schools don’t take bullying seriously. i’ve noticed that particularly in taiwan. when my class kids called one kid fatty, i stopped them and asked them to say sorry. when they verbally gang bang another student, i stop them. the taiwanese teachers let this stuff slide.
you know in japan, one student getting verbally abused by a whole group of mindless tease robots happens a lot. they don’t think for themselves.
point is kids need to be taught not to act like monkeys. we’re only 30,000 years or so away from the tree so to speak. we still have that tendency in us. i sometime wonder when Jesus said us free from “the flesh” He really means setting us free from our “primal nature”. then we can be what the Greek philosophers talked about- man as a glorious creature not a base one.
anyway, all this rap and gangsta culture is debasing Man as a creature. when you look at Michealangelo’s painting on the ceiling you see Adam reaching to God and God reaching to Man. if only Man could aspire to higher things and not base things, we’d have less to worry about. but base things are held high and noble things are thrown away.
I wonder what you find incredible about MT’s assertion above (misquoted to you)? Maybe you haven’t recently seen U.S. military recruiting commercials or you haven’t paid careful attention to them. Some are even designed to look like the more popular and violent video games to provide a natural springboard for recruitment. That is one example. There are more. I agree that the media glamorize or maybe highlight guns, but for a different purpose - money.
[quote=“Durins Bane”]We have ended up discussing the best way for a whacked out kid to go on a killing spree at school. The weapon that was used is not important. Why the child decided he needed to use that weapon on his classmates is.
And I agree, movies don’t explain it all.[/quote]
No, movies don’t explain it all, and neither does easy access to guns. So often when we talk to each other, in these forums, at work, or at home, we end up in argumentative polar opposite positions. A is right. No, B is right. Binary thinking. You don’t have to sign up for some transcendental weekend seminar to realize that normally the answer is a hybrid, a mixture of A and B (and likely a C that you haven’t even thought of yet). You just have to live long enough, be observant, and be willing to admit it.
There is much inherently about that type of “conversation” that prevents consensus, that makes us feel we have to defend our own positions at all costs. I have to wonder if some of the kid shooters end up that way because as adults we have failed to set a better example of how to disagree and resolve problems peacefully with respect maintained all around; in other words, how to truly win.
Seeker4
P.S. - No, my first name is not Mahatma. I have to rewrite things often to convert my “You stoopid idiot!” comments into something more worthy.
[quote=“Durins Bane”]We have ended up discussing the best way for a whacked out kid to go on a killing spree at school. The weapon that was used is not important. Why the child decided he needed to use that weapon on his classmates is.
And I agree, movies don’t explain it all.[/quote]
I also agree that movies don’t explain it all and I also agree that such killing sprees aren’t solely attributable to the glorification of and easy access to guns in the US, although those are definitely factors.
Obviously the most important factor is that any person who would seriously contemplate randomly killing a bunch of innocent people then committing suicide has deep emotional problems. Therefore, one of the most important things that can be done to decrease the frequency and severity of such incidents is for family members, school authorities, coworkers, fellow churchgoers, neighbors, or anyone with any connection at all to a person who seems seriously depressed or deranged and possibly entertaining thoughts of violence to try to help that person by being a friend, listening, trying to offer hope, help, counsel and support, encouraging positive feelings and acts and discouraging negative ones, and trying to get the person some professional counseling or medication if possible or appropriate. In this case, the kid’s parents were gone, apparently the rest of the family was not there for him and maybe no one tried sufficiently to pull him out of his downward spiral.
I agree that helping the troubled individual is crucial, but that doesn’t mean that’s the only thing that can or should be done to stop mass slayings. When I was kid schools didn’t have armed security guards and metal detectors as they do today; that’s another thing that can help prevent such occurences (though it obviously didn’t help in this case). Surely other measures can also be taken, such as encouraging gun owners to lock up their guns and/or use trigger locks. Other measures regarding guns in real life, and their depiction in media, might also help.
I don’t want to argue with the right to bear arms crowd, but it can’t be denied that guns are clearly the weapon of choice for mass slayings of innocent people by adults and children. Maybe one should consider ways of reducing that problem.
Well, I have followed this with a lot of interest and there surely are a lot of different viewpoints as for the cause of this tragedy. But I still think we are ignoring the main issue here. So let’s see what we have so far:
- Location? Surely not an issue here, those kind of shooting have happened within different social strata.
- Bullying? Don’t think so, although it is an issue on its own it isn’t the issue at hand in this case.
- The kid own famillial enviroment and past? Surely an issue but not THE cause.
- Guns? Hmm…one could argue that without access to guns those kids couldn’t go on a rampage and kill so many, but we still ain’t barely touching the core of this problem.
- Psychiatric drugs and there effects on you children? Voila! Bingo! Now we are talking serious issues and cause.
A lot of kids have issues, specially at this age, rebellious, angry, wants to be different, misunderstood and what not, a lot of these kids have or could have access to guns, but they ain’t killing nobody. Now you add to this the special ingredient that’s really gonna mess up your mind (Psych drugs) and you have a bomb ready to explode anytime. True, not all kids with a) issues b) guns c) psych drugs kill other in school rampage, most of them just kill themselves and the rest have a miserable life but all school killing are cause at the very bottom by psych treatment.
In this particulary case, this you kid was hospitalize few times for suicidal tendency and was under prozac, as I thought when I started this thread.
[quote]In its Thursday editions, The Washington Post reported that a bus driver for a health center said he drove Weise to Thief River Falls in June, where the boy was going voluntarily to a psychiatric ward.
The newspaper also cited a cultural coordinator at Red Lake Middle School who said Weise had been hospitalized at least once for suicidal tendencies and was taking the anti-depressant Prozac.[/quote]
But of course the cover up of giant pharmaciteucals and the FDA is so good that this little “detail” is barely mentioned, since in the adults world taking prozac or any of the like is barely a fad nowdays.
[quote=“igorveni (modified for effect)”]Well, I have followed this with a lot of interest and there surely are a lot of different viewpoints as for the cause of this tragedy. But I still think we are ignoring the main issue here. So let’s see what we have so far:
- His opinion? Surely not an issue here
- Other guy’s opinion? Don’t think so
- Her opinion? not THE cause.
-
My own original opinion? Voila! Bingo!
[/quote]
Thanks for the comic relief … I’m still laughing!
[quote]So, here’s my question: Why is it that knowing the effect of these drugs kids are still being fed Ritalin, Prozac etc…?
Haven’t we had enough warnings with previous school shootings? [/quote]
If a kid (or anyone for that matter) walks in and shoots someone/s. I think there is a very loud bell and flashing light that says “PROBLEM”
Maybe the common factor isn’t so much the fact that (as claimed) they are all on anti-depressants, but the fact that they are all depressed or similar.
I feel the better question is why are all these kids so depressed!!!
What’s the home life like? Abusive? violent? How do mom and dad solve their problems? What music are they listening to? What movies are they watching? What video games are they playing? Maybe they do need to amend the gun laws in America.
Sure, not every kid in these situations is going around shooting people, but then neither is every kid on antidepressants.
Life is drastically different than it was 50 years ago.
When did mom’s start going out to work?
When did vulgar and anti-social behaviour type music become so popular?
when did violent video games become popular?
When did violence in movies become so graphic?
when did problems with depressed youths start becoming a major problem?
When did shootings of this nature start happening?
PS I am not saying that anti-depressants are good, just looking at other options.
[quote=“seeker4”][quote=“igorveni (modified for effect)”]Well, I have followed this with a lot of interest and there surely are a lot of different viewpoints as for the cause of this tragedy. But I still think we are ignoring the main issue here. So let’s see what we have so far:
- His opinion? Surely not an issue here
- Other guy’s opinion? Don’t think so
- Her opinion? not THE cause.
- My own original opinion? Voila! Bingo!
[/quote]
Thanks for the comic relief … I’m still laughing![/quote]
I am glad I entertain you!
OK, let’s define depress then, because trust me, if you go to see a psych now and honestly and truthfully tell him/her how is your life going these days, he’ll find some very good reason to put you on anti depressant.
If you bring your kid and tell the psych about some of his behaviour i.e.
- Sometimes he doesn’t want to do his homework.
- Sometimes he disagrees with me.
- He often has his own opinion and wants to be right.
- He often wants to do what he likes.
etc…etc… Well, your kid is going to be under Ritalin or prozac in no time according to Psychiatry standards.
Becasue in my book 1 to 4 are not consider abnormal behaviors, but it is in their books.
We to easy label someone depress because he has a hard time at some point in his/her life and off we go with AD and his/her own world turns to hell.
Parents need to be educated on how to raise children and deal with their issues properly and sanely and if you are not willing to learn or take the time to educate them why are you having kids in the first place?
Depression is such an easy word now and doesn’t mean much imo. And psychs with their drugs are snidely killing our world.
[quote=“Durins Bane”]
The main problem is how this child slipped into his own personal Hell.[/quote]
I agree with you here… The absolute root cause is what happened in these kid’s (this most recent one and those before) lives that put them over the edge…
But, I think seeker4 put it well in his point below that in issues as complex and stratified as this there are shades of gray…
[quote=“seeker4”]
You don’t have to sign up for some transcendental weekend seminar to realize that normally the answer is a hybrid, a mixture of A and B (and likely a C that you haven’t even thought of yet). [/quote]
my first kneejerk reaction was to agree with you here, since when you’re watching the headlines flash across a CNN screen, seeing pitures of the aftermath, the distraught relatives etc., your innitial reaction is “how this hell did this happen, what made another snap and go on a bloody rampage?” …but… i still don’t think you can look at the big picture of this phenomenonm especially in the US, without including the gun control issue…
[quote=“Durins Bane”]
Of course guns are more dangerous than knives I never said that they weren’t, but the debate of this tragedy is not about guns and gun control and I wanted to make that very clear.[/quote]
I don’t think there’s room to be this unilateral here… whilst I agree that an attacker isn’t strictly limited to fire arms, it is impossible to disregard the issue of gun control, when there are repeated incidents of violent rampage killings, in schools, homes, offices etc. where guns are the primary weapon…
like I said above I agree that reduced to absolute terms, in the most simplistic point of view the issue is pyschological (not that you can call internal and external psychological factors that create a person that carries out and attack like this simple, but…)
The fact remains that even though it’s an undesirable situation, and without downplaying the huge part the psychological factor plays in any assement of why these shootings happen… in any societal group, there always will be people who for whatever reason are going to go postal, just like there are always going to be people who for whatever reason smoke cigarettes… when you have a gun drenched, violence glorifiying society like you do in the US (to levels unrivalled anywhere else in the world) it’s like letting the smokers work in the dynamite factory… sooner or later somethings going to go bang, and whilst the root cause, in absolute terms, will be the fact that the person for whatever reason was a smoker, to push the metaphor, the fact remains that the dynamite factory was a massive factor in the reason for the explosion…
The Christian Science Monitor’s View
March 25, 2005 edition
csmonitor.com/2005/0325/p08s02-comv.html
Red Lake and Emotional Literacy
The Monitor’s View
Nearly two of three Americans say school killings like Monday’s at the Red Lake Indian Reservation will take place regardless of actions taken by government or society. In other words, kids who turn bad and violent can’t be helped or even stopped.
That undue pessimism toward offtrack youth, however, hasn’t stopped public schools from beefing up security since the 1999 Columbine High School killings. But while they’ve put faith in guards, metal detectors, surveillance cameras, zero- tolerance policies, and other safety steps, they’ve made scant progress toward a fundamental prevention tool: Turning schools into better communities of caring, support, and belonging.
It would be difficult, of course, to say whether 16-year-old Jeff Weise might not have killed seven people at his rural Minnesota school if the school had somehow helped him from becoming a loner, an object of teasing, and a delinquent sent home to do his studies. His home life had been shattered by his father’s suicide and mother’s incapacitation.
Still, that school and the many thousands of others should reevaluate how to enhance the experience of acceptance for children and pay attention to their social needs in order to help develop their emotional literacy.
Too many schools in these days of high-stakes testing mainly nurture competition and individualism ahead of collaboration and fostering a school’s community. And too many students perceive their schools as uncaring environments where bullies rule and a lack of peer acceptance is considered normal.
While schools are still safer for children than many other public places, fearful reaction to the multiple murders at schools over the past decade has created a tension in classrooms and hallways.
To dispel such fear, many schools teach tolerance and respect for diversity. In 1998, the US Education and Justice Departments sent schools a guideline called “Early Warning, Timely Response: A Guide to Safe Schools” that advises them on providing kids with positive mentoring and better group socializing. One important tip: Keep schools clean, warm, and repaired to help create a respectful community atmosphere.
The Red Lake massacre should refocus efforts toward helping kids feel included from the start as a way to prevent bullies and biases from turning them into armed, vengeful misfits. Just trying to spot errant children in the classroom or blocking them at the school door when they mean harm may be too late.
Schools must be more than knowledge factories.
Please pardon me if my facts are wrong.
As I understand it the kid used his grandfather’s police service revolver to commit the crimes. It wasn’t some gun the kid bought at a swap meet. Stricter gun control would not have prevented this tragedy.
Yes, yes and yes. The care-givers have to take greater responsibilty. In this case, the grand-parents. The two in Colombine were latch-key kids.
But it doesn’t end there. The teachers and counselors have to be better prepared, better trained, to identify and deal with these situations before it gets out of hand. Obviate the situation.
The care-givers I speak of extend right up the totem to the community leaders, in this modern world right up to the president’s office. Books, not bombs. Education of the education system. A complte overhaul.
If my kid is listening to gangsta rap, that’s fine by me. But you can be damn sure I am gonna get into a very deep discussion about the lyrics with my child and make sure he understands the nature and context and how it does/does not affect his own journey through life.
The same discussion will take place with websites, video games, movies and TV. I am going to take the highest of active interests in anything my children do.
As i said earlier in the thread, I was one of the earliest of ritalin babies. From grades 2-7, I took ritalin/melaril cocktail thrice daily. And in my day, we were only about 5/6 years out of the thalidimide insanity. But they stuck me on the shit. I was angry and always getting in schoolyard fights. This thread has made me shudder to think what might have happened if 2 key factors had not been true:
-
Mentors. I had a very caring teacher during the latter years of my ritalin daze. Likewise, I had some excellent male role models thru my teenage years, men who treated me as a friend. They allowed me to discover my sense of self-worth so that I could release the frustration and anxiety calmly, without the fitful redfog haze of inner anger.
-
No access to guns. I am Canadian and I have only seen a real handgun (aside from on cops, etc…) once. I can’t say for sure that if I had such easy access to fire-arms as my southern cousins do, that my fogged out pre-pubescent raging mind might not have tried something cowardly and despicable.
There are plenty of warning signs, but the quick fix solution is so much easier. When teachers are overloaded and underpaid, when parents are stretched so thin as to have to work multiple jobs just to pay the bills, it’s just easier to medicate and sweep the problems under the rug instead of making the quality time necessary to root out and solve these problems before the fog takes over.
Governments can wake up and triple the budget education gets now. Being a kid should be the best time of your life. It is also the time that we can sponge up learning. Invest in the kids. They are the future.
And get rid of the fucking guns. How much more incentive do you need? All your children are at risk, America. Each and everyone. Wake the fuck up!
[quote=“The Gumper”]
And get rid of the f***ing guns. How much more incentive do you need? All your children are at risk, America. Each and everyone. Wake the fuck up![/quote]
Sorry there Gumper,
Gun control is fine the way it is now. I’m no NRA nut and I don’t live in Idaho but I take my right to bear arms very seriously.
Where I am from cops are a long ways away. We do have bears and mountain lions, and citrus thieves. Shaking a finger at them really doesn’t work.