Addiction in Society

Many people feel lonely and yearn for connection. This is normal and it can be helpful for us as humans to reach out and connect with others and community. It doesn't feel good but it is an indicator that we need relationships to enhance the quality of our lives.

When I read your blog, I perceived that you might be suggesting these men were "lonely" and while not the only reason for their killing that it was a factor precipitating their heinous actions. I think that these men might have been "loners" for a reason. Mainly being that they didn't possess the interpersonal skills or ability to connect with others. These lack of skills are probably a combination of genetics and experience. These men probably made people feel intuitively uncomfortable for a long time. We live in groups and we are constantly assessing the behavior of others.

I guess after I read your article, and I currently live in Cleveland, I tried to picture poor lonely Sowell living on the second floor above and amongst the 10 rotting corpses of females he murdered. I just could not extend my very good creative imagination to have any empathy at all for this creature, who while from the human species, does not deserve to live among us. People break the social contract and there are consequences.

Thanks for reading. Becky

The two aren't the same.

Loneliness is being alone but desiring a relationship. Many people experiences lonliness, but the vast majority don't go out and kill people. Clearly the loneliness here was much more extreme, and mixed with other factors.

Being alone merely means...being alone. And many people find that sort of solitude enjoyable. It's certainly not going to drive these people to commit murder.

America is a society that has a bias towards extroverts, so people who are seen as quiet are viewed with suspicion. One has to clearly differentiate between those whose solitude is merely a part of their personality, and those whose solitude is a part of their pathology.

We simply can't control people's psychology - we will always have among us psychopaths, loners, people pushed over the edge. The question totally missing in this article and others like it is the insanity of distributing GUNS throughout our society, so that living among other human beings means risking our lives daily. We are all hostage to this craziness, and simply have to hope that no one near us has cracked up today, because we casually give people the ability to inflict maximal damage if they feel like it.

We could be at risk of stereotyping lonely men with this article by pointing out that they are all mass murderers, when the truth is only a small handful of people in the same circumstances ever turn to violence. (Most of those who do can never express their real motives).

This stereotype has the potential to alienate millions of people who never will turn to violence. Many people who share the same personality types as shooters will suffer the long term effects of their life experience, which often includes such delights as mental torture and physical cruelty, rather than rail against it by taking a life.

The availability of guns and the inability to control that leaves society wide open. The right to bear arms is a factor that simply provides a means to an end.

Being stereotyped and disallowed from a place in society by people with no right to challenge their mental health mark a person for life and is dis-empowering (read helplessness). Careers are destroyed etc. This is a very powerful tool used by many people to put others in "their place". Once this has happened to a lonely man, having the means to exercise the ultimate punishment can redress the balance of power - an eye for an eye.

I suggest that rejection and stereotyping already plays a key part in motivating shooters. Without fail all shooters are demonised by the authorities and communities. They seldom have the privilege of expressing their own reasoning or what caused their anger.

I fear this robs society of the knowledge and opportunity to identify correctly those who might turn to violence before they do. I think we are all too busy in a cycle of living in fear of lonely people, making more of them and living with the consequences of the minority, to admit the real cause and find a solution.

Looking at just these three men, yes being lonely seems to be correlated with mass murderers (although I think Sowell would be considered a serial killer as the bodies were found in various stages of decomposition indicating he had "cooling off" periods between killings). I can think of a few killers who weren't alone at the time they committed some or all of their murders. Mason had quite a few followers around him, Bundy and Gacy had wives and a various points in their lives held fairly respectable positions in their communities (before the whole serial killing thing become known of course), some serial killers even worked in pairs ( Hillside stranglers) so they obviously weren't alone either. I also agree with Becky that the apparent loneliness is probably a result of poor social skills (haven't many killers been found to be narcissistic and lack empathy? Not someone who I'd want to hang around that long even if they weren't a killer). I think it is unfair to simple state "lonely men commit mass murders".

it's over-simplistic to state that lonely men commit mass murders. i'm sure there are other correlating causes that pushes someone to mass murder; some are mentioned between the lines from the article itself (the article being great except the conclusion). And following what Becky said about people who "didn't possess the interpersonal skills or ability to connect with others", i strongly think it's a natural predisposition rather than a choice for many of us.
thanks