Maybe the Michigan prosecutor should charge the video game manufacturers with a crime
That’s sarcasm, by the way.
I’m referring to this story;
Police say they have found a horde of graphic journal entries and disturbing videos made by Crumbley.
“I would characterize a lot of the stuff we’ve now seen as dark and as cold-blooded,” Sheriff Michael Bouchard told Inside Edition.
One post from Crumbley says, “Now I Am Become Death, The Destroyer of Worlds. See You Tomorrow Oxford.” The same words can be found in a gory video game.
For normal kids, as Kyle Rittenhouse said on the witness stand during his cross-examination: “It’s just a video game, it’s not real life.” For abnormal kids – and Ethan Crumbley was clearly an abnormal kid, although I still can’t find any behavioral signs of it, prior to those recent posts (which I read somewhere were on Instagram, and of which I bet the parents and school were unaware) and also the drawings on the day of the shooting – but for those very abnormal kids, video games can stir up violent imagery and contribute to aggression. The thing is, most kids fortunately are not capable of that, and people like Ethan Crumbley – whom I now believe is a sociopath – are often very good indeed at hiding the signs of their sociopathy in their interactions with those close to them, and even from schools.
When I read that “I am become death the destroyer of worlds” quote, I had a different reference for it. I’m not a video game aficionado, to say the least. But I remember that Robert Oppenheimer used the quote after first seeing desert tests of the atom bomb at the end of WWII. The quote’s origin is actually the Bhagavad Gita: “[Oppenheimer] later remarked that the [Trinity] explosion brought to mind words from the Bhagavad Gita: ‘Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.'”
I very much doubt Crumbley was aware of that particular reference.
And nobody around him knew that this kid was seriously whack? No teachers, no administrators, counselors, friends, fellow students, etc?
I doubt that. I doubt that very much.
This type of mass murder is a particularly North American and Northern European phenomenon. In those cultures, people are lothe to intervene out of respect for privacy.
In Latin America and Southern Europe, these events are rare to non-existent. There is no such inhibition about prying, snooping, gossiping, and generally intervening in the lives of others. Abnormal kids like Ethan Crumbly are not left alone to allow their dark impulses to fester. It just doesn’t happen.
Roy Nathanson:
I don’t know how the people who compile crime statistics in Latin America define “mass murder,” but Latin America is the murder capital of the world.
I suspect if the Prosecutor could find a way to charge the video game manufacturers, she would. And I agree with Barnes that these criminal charges could lead to other liabilities. Personally, I’ve seen more parents be reckless and negligent in giving their children access to car keys. It also statistical facts that a vehicle accident is more likely to kill a student in the US than a firearm, but nobody would think something nefarious about a parent buying their child a new car as a holiday gift.
YoungHegelian:
If he’s a psychopath or sociopath it often works that way. They are brilliant dissemblers. That’s why the seminal work on the subject is called The Mask of Sanity. They wear a mask of normalcy.
Neo,
I was very specific in saying “This type of mass murder”. Mass shootings by a loner/sociopath trying to make some sort of pathetic statement are actually rather rare. Unfortunately, they receive far more attention than the more ordinary murders. Furthermore, they are invariably exploited by the folks who always want more gun control.
It’s the same phenomenon that makes airplane crashes big news, even though we know that air travel is far safer per passenger-mile than travel by automobile is.
You are absolutely correct about the murder rates in Latin America. But, that has nothing to do with this particular narrow type of murderer.
I knew a sociopath, and she was very good at hiding that from people around her.
There’s been a lot learned in the 80 years since the first publication of The Mask of Sanity, including that the psychoanalytic explanations commonly used by researchers then are not of much scientific value.
I’m not sure that “psychopath”, “sociopath”, “anti-social personality disorder” are anything more than the medicalization of evil. Neither are the terms all that useful for understanding them. Most of our cultural stereotypes of such people are bunk, such as their being disproportionately white, smarter than average, or good at getting away with things, and so what we assume is meant by the label is really not a good fit for reality.
It’s also important to remember that “sanity” is not a medical term or a scientific term, it’s a legal one, having to do with whether one can be held responsible for one’s actions. The kinds of people we are talking about here are usually sane enough to plan, sane enough to try to avoid being caught, sane enough to understand that others strongly object to what it is they do.
I noticed that the article doesn’t identify the “gory video game” in question, doesn’t mention whether the suspect actually played a video game with the quote, or even mention video games aside from the one quote attribution.
Maybe there was supposed to be more to this article that got left on the cutting room floor. But the cite with no further information has me suspicious.
Frederick:
Actually, we know very little (just about nothing) about the causes of psychopathy or sociopathy then or now. The book describes the phenomenon, however, and that description is still valid. Nor is “psychopath” a medicalization of anything, because it can’t be treated as far as we know. It is a term that describes those who seem to have no conscience and do not care if they hurt others, and yet can pretend to have normal reactions and feelings.
Roy Nathanson:
My point is that some of those murders are probably mass murders and are not classified by authorities as such.
We also have no evidence that Ethan Crumbley was a loner, and in fact a lot of school shooters are not loners.
Frederick:
There is a mistaken impression that mass murderers are disproportionately white, but I think that’s because gang murders are not classified that way.
But it’s not my impression that people in the field think that psychopathy is mostly a white phenomenon. Perhaps the public thinks that, because of some high-profile cases like Ted Bundy?
A couple of links to numbers of mass shootings worldwide.
https://nypost.com/2018/08/30/america-doesnt-actually-lead-the-world-in-mass-shootings/
https://fee.org/articles/the-myth-that-the-us-leads-the-world-in-mass-shootings/
A certain professor seems to be at the heart of this “fact.”
@Neo,
If he’s a psychopath or sociopath it often works that way. They are brilliant dissemblers.
When they’re in their mid teens? That i doubt, too.
Generally, those sort of boys act out in some way, such as bullying, cruelty to animals, or just being so weird and obnoxious that they have no friends at all. It just shows in some way that they don’t have any sort of conscience at all.
In any case, I doubt that this kid was an unknown wolf.
young. “known” But to whom and to what end?
There was a school shooting in, iirc, Paducah many, many years ago. One of the aspects was, according to one story, the fantastic accuracy. The professionals were gobsmacked.
Turns out the kid had a video game involving shooting some kind of fake pistol with a laser beam at a screen, fast-moving targets. Fired a bazillion shots.
Tragically, the actual gun he brought to school had the same “fit” or “hand’ or whatever the pistol guys call it. As a result of his scores of hours of practice, he had only to look at something and it was dead.
It would be odd if he were to have sought out that particular pistol from all that are available–to adults.
The Daily Mail UK quoted or posted an interview with the shooter’s 18 year old half brother (who moved to FL to live with his mother due to issues with his stepmother). He said the shooter basically went to school and played video games at home after school. He didn’t say he was weird or a loner.
On the discussion of whites and psychopaths, mass murders etc. Years ago I spent some time around a white prison parolee. One of his observations about prison life was the difference in the way white and black prisoners retaliated against another inmate. He claimed that blacks would react immediately whereas whites would tend to plan out their revenge. Now we could take that with the proverbial grain of salt, while still accepting that white mass murderers and black mass murderers, might take different approaches. How many of these dozens of shootings every week in Chicago are committed by the same repeat offenders, and “ snitches get stitches “ and bad law enforcement and prosecution allow them to get away with it? How many mass murderers are there running around in Chicago that are not white?
The social media postings and notes were all “Red Flags” to those who are used to seeing them. They might have been artistic “creativity”, but if the school staff saw them, they had an “obligation” to follow through and quarantine the boy. If what they saw was “art”, then no harm done, but obviously, the events made it clear, that they were symptoms of a real mental disorder. Get off concepts like “Sociopath”. I’d be looking for a profound and dangerous psychosis. Some greater disturbance than “misbehavior”. An individual hearing “command hallucinations” is dangerous business. The teen years are when some very troublesome psychiatric disorders become obvious. This isn’t a place for amateurs. An experienced psychiatrist might have been deceived or fail to evoke the disorder, but this young man was definitely worth some investigation by an experienced professional. Not following up on the symptoms was clearly negligent on the part of the school authorities.
Mike SMO:
It’s not clear that the school or the parents saw the social media postings, which may not have been posted under his real name. What they did see were some drawings and notes he left in school.
I completely agree that the school should have done more, however.
I also mentioned the possibility of a sudden schizophrenic break in one of my posts or comments. The problem with that is that, except for the notes and drawings (and social media posts), his behavior appeared normal. He was calm and rational, and gave a seemingly plausible explanation of the notes and drawings. He did homework for 90 minutes while he waited in the office that day, under observation and answering the counselors’ questions.
That doesn’t really add up to a psychotic break, ordinarily, although it certainly is possible for a sociopath. Sociopathy is, by the way, a very very serious thing, both “profound” and “dangerous,” and is almost never amenable to treatment. Not all sociopaths are violent, but violent sociopaths are very difficult to detect prior to their violent acts.