Interview with Adam Lanza's father

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Justin

This interview was pretty illuminating. Anonymous Conservative's essay on Sandy Hook makes for an interesting and possibly insightful companion piece.

http://www.anonymousconservative.com...hool-shooting/

---

I think i am truly dumber after reading that link. I have a family member that deals with special needs people and in turn i have helped out over the the years with people that fall within the autism spectrum and there is nothing to fear from them. The author of that link is giving grossly out date and false information to support his hypothesis. The only defective i see in that article is the author himself. He says this is a large problem and we need to control it, well we have 1 in 88 baby's born with asperger's syndrome alone even more with autism and according to him much more with "inferior amygdalae". Lets say its double that at 1 out of 44 then, we have 7,362 members here when are you going to start bulling the 1 out of 44 to make sure they end up normal? They are going to kill someone it only make sense you do not dilly dally and start now.

Quote:

---

not sure of the premises that bullying would make them behave... the bullying that occurs today is different than we had when I grew up and you too

---

That part I don't necessarily agree with. No kid, no matter how weird our outlandish, deserves to be bullied. That said, the basic fact of the matter is that kids who are bullied are usually bullied because they are different. Not saying it's right, or fair, but that's the way it is.

I think the most relevant part in AC's blog entry (which, btw, was published in 2012) is his claim that people who lash out violently like this do so because reality fails to live up to their expectations. They're fundamentally incapable of facing reality.

That inability to cope with reality is the thing that stuck out most obviously to me while reading the interview with Peter Lanza. One of the themes throughout the interview was that there was a constant theme of Adam Lanza being completely incapable of dealing with reality; after all, here was a kid that thought he was either going to take a massive college course load or join special forces, despite the fact that he could barely leave his bedroom or tie his shoes.

The major thing that I see reinforcing his delusions were the actions of his mother, who evidently went to great lengths to shelter her son from any situation whatsoever that might cause him mental distress. While the fact that she sheltered him probably made him slightly more tolerable on a day-to-day basis, I have little doubt that it would only cause him to have angry and explosive reactions when faced with situations where his outsized self-image proved to be no actual match for reality. Is it possible that after some time he'd gotten such an over-inflated sense of self esteem that the slightest ding against it would cause him massive amounts of internal grief? Possibly. It certainly strikes me as being a more reasonable explanation than just about any other.

Quote:

---

maybe this kid was not bullied through email maybe the whole bullying thing was not an issue here, but it cetainly was blamed for events like columbine, certain teen suicides.

---

The claim that bullying caused Columbine is a straight up fabrication on the part of the mass media, especially in the case of Eric Harris. Harris wasn't bullied. He was actually a highly charismatic example of a textbook psychopath. After all, do you honestly think that some nerdy high school loser would have been able to talk his way into sex with a college-aged woman, and then get her to buy a gun via a straw purchase?

Regarding Columbine, I strongly recommend reading Dave Cullen's book on the incident. He spent the better part of a decade researching it, and there's a lot of information in the book that is illuminating.

http://www.amazon.com/Columbine-Dave.../dp/0446546925

Quote:

---

I have a family member that deals with special needs people and in turn i have helped out over the the years with people that fall within the autism spectrum and there is nothing to fear from them.

---

Nothing in the blog post says that we should fear people with autism, so perhaps you shouldn't read so much into the article, but rather actually read what he says.

The bits that I find particularly worthy of attention are where he points out that a culture of that over inflates the self-esteem of people results in people who are incapable of dealing with reality when it turns out that they're not nearly as awesome in real life as they are in their head.

The fact that Lanza's mother evidently coddled him to the point of walking through a room in the manner he demanded, tying his shoes, and enabling his social isolation in order to preserve his self-image would seem to reinforce the central thesis presented in the blog post that I linked to.

Wow, fascinating article/interview. Thanks for posting it up.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Rabid

I think i am truly dumber after reading that link. I have a family member that deals with special needs people and in turn i have helped out over the the years with people that fall within the autism spectrum and there is nothing to fear from them. The author of that link is giving grossly out date and false information to support his hypothesis. The only defective i see in that article is the author himself. He says this is a large problem and we need to control it, well we have 1 in 88 baby's born with asperger's syndrome alone even more with autism and according to him much more with "inferior amygdalae". Lets say its double that at 1 out of 44 then, we have 7,362 members here when are you going to start bulling the 1 out of 44 to make sure they end up normal? They are going to kill someone it only make sense you do not dilly dally and start now.

---

Come on Rabid, you're better than that ... drop the PC driven overly emotional indignation and go back and read the rest of Anonymous Conservative's site so you can understand the real context of what he's saying (especially about the "inferior amygdala"). Don't shut your mind down just because the author isn't tripping all over himself to claim that "all special needs children are precious little saints that have a lot to teach us so-called normal people."

The simple truth is that Adam Lanza suffered from several mental illnesses and that one or more of these illnesses lead him to murder innocent children. I agree that we must tread lightly when it comes to blaming which specific illness lead him down this path, and we need to be careful not to stigmatize every Asperger's or Autistic child and paint them with the "potential mass murderer" brush. But we do need to honestly look at Lanza and see if there isn't something in his life and condition that we can learn from to prevent this type of thing in the future (or we could just ban guns and violent video games instead).

I'd like to read what Anonymous Conservative thinks about what Lanza's father said.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by rockhound

not sure of the premises that bullying would make them behave...i do not aggree that bullying this kid to keep him check would have been a good idea.

---

My concern about the current wave of "Anti-Bullying" programs is that bullies and bullying are part of the human developmental experience and are much more valuable than we realize.

Its part of the same problem as over use of antibiotics and antibacterial soap. In this well intentioned but misguided effort to protect our children from every slight discomfort we end up stunting the development of their immune systems making them much more susceptible to disease later in life (or causing their bored immune systems to turn against their own body which is where all these damn food allergies come from).

Well bullies are like psychological germs, dealing with them in youth strengthens our minds making us stronger and better able to deal with truly evil adults later in life.

Beating up Scut Farcus will make Ralphie better able to deal with Vladimir Putin.