There are some issues in there. Yes, having an inflated sense of self-worth is obviously bad, but so is being overly humble. It is far more healthy to have a realistic assessment of one's strengths and weaknesses and to work with what one has. Dealing with people who constantly under-evaluate their own skills and contributions is exhausting and tiresome, just as it is dealing with people who overestimate.

If "low self-esteem" actually = a normal, humble sense of self then we have truly set the bar way too high. So much for 'everyone gets a gold star'.

Being humble in your successes is fine, being afraid to promote your own works, or to defend your position in the face of adversity, is not. I don't think Canada had the same shift in education standards to the "Me" Generation, I have a number of nieces and nephews in their mid-teens through college and they seem to combat the same issues I did at their age, relating to physical beauty, popularity, disposable income, appealing to the gender that aligns with their serial preference, etc etc. It could well be a microcosm of the income level and family bonds that they were never "allowed" to develop the sense of entitlement as they were the children of immigrants that took huge risks to allow the or family to be born "in a better place".

I have family in the US that would fall into the age group as well and based on their achievements they don't fall into this trap either. But I strongly believe that it is a result of parenting that balances the opinions of society in this regard, so if you let the schools be the only education for your children, I guess you can't be surprised at the result.

I vouch for a +10 "Unworthy Self" link.

I'd help, but I'd probably just screw it up.

You could just vote...?

Glad you made it back

Interesting, but probably not a main effect. The largest factors in determining "generational characteristics", a phrase I use with a grain of salt, are population's age distribution and economic distribution.

Happyman, welcome back - did you google your way here, or some other path?

woops

I looked for a facebook community for the orphans of SE, which brought me here!

I read this and cannot help but draw conclusions relating to the murder spree recently in California (?) involving some up jumped asshole that felt society "owed" him the experience of college life he had watched in the frat house comedies he grew up watching, as well that women should be made to "pay" for the act of not allowing him to lose his virginity at the ripe old age of 22!

The mix of entitlement combined with my so gene is quite scary, to think that one can come to this conclusion and that his parents would have fostered that idea. I have read though that actually his parents had called the authorities over some of his online writing, but they did not (or could not) act on it at the time. Instead we now have a dozen dead college kids.

In Canada,there is the "Fourteen not forgotten" which is a tale of a man who decided to sit in a bell tower at L'Ecolle Polytechnique and shot 14 women who had done the horrible act of trying to secure post-secondary education. That was in the mid-80's, and yet we don't seem to have made as much progress looking at the surge of "Men's Rights" literature now on campuses.

That kid was not the result of a generation of entitlement or some horseshit like that.

Autism was possibly a correct diagnosis for him, but not a complete one. Likely he did have trouble picking up on social cues, which would give an appearance of lacking empathy. But I suspect he also actually lacked empathy and always had the appearance of performing (hence being undateable). It's that odd, careful diction combined with the arrogance. It sets me on edge. I associate it with sociopathy and delusion in combination, someone who wants to have a very high opinion of themselves but who needs external validation, hence the very controlled image.


I've been meaning to slog through his manifesto, but the youtube videos were hard enough. I predict what we'll see is a strong pattern of having this delusional, high opinion of himself, which then does not bear out in social interactions due to his inability to read cues or be considerate of others. This then lowers his self esteem and drives those feelings of wanting revenge (which allows him to further dehumanize people whose emotions he already doesn't care about).

He doesn't care if they feel love for him, he cares if they perform the act, if they show him what he thinks signifies love. It's not about them or what they feel, but about what they do for him, what purpose they serve.

I'll let you guys know what I actually find in there.

In short, he was a fucking asshole.

Good, 'cause I sure as fuck don't want to read it.

I haven't watched the videos for myself, but from the descriptions it appears to be moderate Asperger's/ASD combined with psychopathy as well as negative life experiences.

I refuse to watch it or to read his "Manifesto" for the same reasons I refuse to read that asswipe in Norway's or Mein Kampf. I don't need a deeper understanding of "fucking crazy" to recognize it.

What I am sad about though it the scope of effort going in to trying to figure out exactly what was it that caused this particular nutjob to "go off", and the focus on whether or not the local community / government / etc was doing a good enough job at identifying "Mental Illness". Contrast this to any of the recent shooting sprees of Islam-inclined folks at Ft. Hood or school campuses or elsewhere, and it just seems very odd to me that he's not simply being labeled as a terrorist like the rest are. :/

I don't buy the argument. It's not about entitlement, it's about the guy being a fucking nutcase. The entitlement thing (as I see it) is a horrible side effect of him being nuts, not the cause for him going on a killing spree.

Same thing happened in Isla Vista a few years ago with the "Angel of Death" running over multiple people in his Saab after he stopped taking his medication.

Point in case, in my personal opinion, this isn't about men's rights and entitlement and expectations killing people, but about mental health issues (with a huge side of misogyny stemming from mental illness) not being identified and the resulting horrible consequences.

I think it's an unfortunate illustration of why society needs mental health screening and services- because it can, especially in a gun culture, have horrible consume se for society given the number of people he killed and lives he disrupted.

This is the second time it's happened in isla vista (I was there the first time during the angle if death thing- I lived two blocks away on that road) so I'm a little irked that it's happened again.

...and then there is also the whole gun culture thing.

I agree. The MRA stuff is disturbing but it was an excuse rather than a cause. Plenty of entitled assholes don't go around killing people.

Here's a pretty active misogyny-related thread on twitter #YesAllWomen:

Well, low self-esteem protected me in similar circumstances. At 22 I had just finished a thoroughly unrewarding and sex-free time time in college, but why would I blame the men and women there for that? I knew the fault stemmed from my own lack of value, a lesson that had been drilled into me throughout my life. Why should I hate other people for my own faults?

So no self-entitled killing spree from me.

But having (and continuing to have) a low self-esteem isn't all that good either.

If only you had a gun.

I have low self esteem and a gun.

I could blame both of those on the fact that I live in a barn, but really, that only explains the gun.

I'd like to raise your self esteem. With my pe- wait, you have a gun? Nevermind. Pen. I meant pen.

If anyone was wondering, I have a simple .22 pistol for big stuff and an air pistol for putting down kitty's mistakes (or more likely her attempts at teaching me to hunt mice).

If you've ever had to crush a mouse's spinal column with a shovel, you'd understand why I needed the air pistol. It shouldn't have to suffer like that.

Hi Snowfox. I had cats and mine were really efficient killers. Never had to pick anything alive or in a recognizable state for that matter. Maybe your cat needs more practice.
And I have a silly question, sorry if I am being too intrusive, but where in the world do you live? I think you said once something along the lines of New Zealand or the like. I guess that would explain living on a barn, because all the great fields they have there. And also the lack of big predators will explain the use of a .22, not very good with bears or big wolves.
My dad had a 38 special and taught me to use it. I am a very good shot by the way, but currently I have no guns. Better that way with kids around the house.

Central Texas, so no wolves or bears (well... black bears and mountain lions might be coming back, but not in great numbers). I have to worry more about large packs of big coyotes (german shepherd size) and feral pigs mostly (you can also load up with rat shot rounds to kill snakes, but I rarely encounter them). Just shooting at the animals at all should be enough of a deterrent, so stopping power isn't an issue.

Coyotes can get nasty down here also. When I was in Chihuahua they would come in packs to check our improvised camping site, but mostly they ran away with a couple of shots to the air. Black bears were another thing altogether, they are and endangered species, so we would calmly walk to the jeep and run away, in a very slow motion, whenever we saw one. Anyway, I was more affraid of thieves and kidnappers than big animals back then.

It sounds like kitty's training is taking hold.

My dad got an air rifle so that when he's in his office and sees a prairie dog who has avoided the poison and such he can lean out the window and shoot it. I have come to accept the fact that my family are rednecks who just never got a chance to express it before.

When I still lived in the Philippines, we preferred using poison than the sticky traps for mice problems.

We couldn't just wrap up the sticky paper around the mouse and throw it in the dump. They would just escape, come back and do more damage in vindictive fashion (chewed up clothes when they didn't before).

I couldn't bring myself to step and crush the mouse inside the rolled up sticky trap. It's still squeaking. So I looked for a flat surfaced rock to place on top of it. Then walked a good distance above ground and chucked larger rocks until it hit the flat rock.

An air gun would have been nice, but I was 12.

They scream in pain. It's not a good feeling.

So where were all the feral cats back then? There's so many I just assumed they'd keep the rodent population down.

Cats are good at killing mice, but not as good as mice are at making more mice.

It would also explain bad table manners.

I thought bad table manners came from being BORN in a barn.

Is that why Jesus was playing around with those fishes and bread loaves?

It's also pretty rude to show off your scars at supper.