Are the only alternatives “acting rationally” and “delusional thinking”? In
retrospect we can see that he may have misjudged the strength of the Soviet
Union and the amount of aid that the USSR would get from America; but here was
a man whose armies had conquered most of Europe and defeated everyone they had
fought. In retrospect, we can see what we might call lack of due diligence or
being carried away by early success. But “delusional”?
John
Sent from my iPad
On Apr 9, 2019, at 11:02, Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
So, you would argue that Hitler was acting rationally in starting a war
against the Soviet Union, for example ? It would not have anything to do with
delusional thinking ?
On Mon, Apr 8, 2019 at 11:41 AM adriano paolo shaul gershom palma
<palmaadriano@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
no, i see nothing psychologically strange in hitler.
he was a political leader, in many respects a murderer, while it almost
impossible to understand whether he hurt 'facetoface' any peson. there is a
story in Austria about a niece, noone establiushed anything.
It is true that I had and have a low opinion of politicians, & Hitler was
one, with almost catastrphic results for germany (division of the country,
status of almost paryah among the nations etc.)
but a psychopath? I see nothing but a form of medicalized insult in the term
equally if one see salafis or talibs as psychopaths there is no insight into
anything.
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palma, a paolo shaul םֹשׁ ְרֵגּ
Er selbst bevorzugte undurchdringlich Klarheit
On Sun, Apr 7, 2019 at 11:09 AM Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hitler was, or seemed lucid for the most part, at least when he was not on
drugs. Would you say that something must have been wrong with him
psychologically ? I am not going to go into diagnoses or anything like
that, neither of us is a psychiatrist.
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On Sun, Apr 7, 2019 at 6:38 PM adriano paolo shaul gershom palma
<palmaadriano@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
well, maybe, maybe, I give you a maybe,
since I have no idea what is opposed to "literally insane", possibly
"metaphorically insane"? or what?
if the dude is a psychopath there are elaborate testing methods to watch
out for the pathology.
what I fear is that the term psychopath becomes a way of insult, rather
than attempt to capture the reality of the criminal, or of the crime.
If someone is a psychopath there are symptoms, (e.g. schizoid delirium,
perceptual delusions, and many others)
from what I read of the Breivik interrogations, none was found, he was
lucid and clear. One may despise his opinions or political views, but a
psychopath, no....
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palma, a paolo shaul םֹשׁ ְרֵגּ
Er selbst bevorzugte undurchdringlich Klarheit
On Sun, Apr 7, 2019 at 8:32 AM Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hm... the acts these persons committed would themselves seem to be
evidence of psychopathology. I do not see how these acts could be
rational, even given their extremist political goals. It is not clear how
these goals are even furthered by the actions they took, and might even
be offset by them. Also, their self-descriptions attempting to
rationalize it should not be taken at face value - we should not be
inclined to believe Breivik when he claims that he is Hitler more
automatically then we would believe him if he claimed that he was
Napoleon. Certainly, the extremist ideology they were exposed to played a
role, and given the magnitude of the crimes it is difficult to believe
that there was no organization and planning. But of course nobody is
claiming that Breivik is literally insane - if he were he would be in a
mental hospital and not in prison.
O.K.
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On Sun, Apr 7, 2019 at 4:48 PM adriano paolo shaul gershom palma
<palmaadriano@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
for the record, Breivik on Utoya killed some5 scores of people who were
members of teh youth league of the labour organizations.
that Breivik is far more cretinous than 'unabomber' I have seldom any
doubt. his killing was a political act,in standard terminology the usual
nazi thug killing people of the left. I fail to see why that is
psychopathological, unless one thinks that any political fight is
psychopathology which defeates the argument's bones. Albeit for some
difficult to swallow, this is the form of political combat in europe
now, from Donbass to oslo
(Breivik also killed many by bombing the government wing in Oslo, quite
like McVeigh who bombed the federal building of Oklahoma city)
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palma, a paolo shaul םֹשׁ ְרֵגּ
Er selbst bevorzugte undurchdringlich Klarheit
On Sun, Apr 7, 2019 at 6:12 AM Lawrence Helm
<lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
In regard to Anders Breivik, he said a lot of things about his motives,
but what he did was kill a bunch of people, most of whom, if looking at
their photos means anything, were Norwegian, or at least Northern
Europeans. He didn’t seek out just the people whose ethnicity or
immigration status he was opposed to. He killed people
indiscriminately in order to publicize his manifesto . . . which is
what Ted Kaczynski did as well although Kaczynski killed or tried to
kill people involved in the technology he was opposed to.
“Two teams of court-appointed forensic psychiatrists examined Breivik
before his trial. The first team diagnosed Breivik with paranoid
schizophrenia[20] but after this initial finding was criticized,[21] a
second evaluation concluded that he was not psychotic during the
attacks but did have narcissistic personality disorder.[2 [from
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anders_Behring_Breivik]
Like Kaczynski, Breivik believed he knew best what his nation needed to
do. Can you believe you are smarter than everyone else and not be
narcissistic? Perhaps you can if you really are. Milton at an early
age believed that he could write an epic that would be the greatest of
his age. In the opinion of critics, he achieved his goal; so was he
narcissistic? Does believing that you are the greatest poet of your
age by definition mean that you must be narcissistic?
I didn’t read Breivik’s manifesto, but I did read Ted Kaczynski’s, and
didn’t think Kaczynski was narcissistic. What he believed didn’t sound
so very different from the arguments of Al Gore. . . but of course Al
Gore may have been . . .
“Since his imprisonment, Breivik has identified himself as a
fascist[29] and a Nazi,[30] who practices Odinism[30][31] and uses
counterjihadist rhetoric to support ethno-nationalists.”[ibid]
Perhaps we could be permitted to say that in these modern times a lot
of people have spent a lot of time putting names to the activities of
people who kill other people indiscriminately in order to get a
population at large to harken to their ideas; which ideas when you read
them seem fairly mundane. I’m sure there are many Norwegians who
object to non-integrating immigrants, but if any of these Norwegians
feel murderous, one might think they would choose as their victims,
these non-integrating immigrants and not an indiscriminate number of
their well-integrated fellow citizens.
General Sherman’s “march to the sea” was innovative when he did it.
While U. S. Grant and Robert E. Lee were killing each other’s forces by
the thousands, Sherman took his army into the south in order to
destroy, not its people, but the resources the South needed to continue
fighting.
Since that time, various nations during wars have attempted to do the
same thing through bombing, e.g., “During World War II, it was believed
by many military strategists of air power that major victories could be
won by attacking industrial and political infrastructure, rather than
purely military targets.[15] Strategic bombing often involved bombing
areas inhabited by civilians and some campaigns were deliberately
designed to target civilian populations in order to terrorize and
disrupt their usual activities. . . The effect of strategic bombing was
highly debated during and after the war.[23][24][25][26] Both the
Luftwaffe and RAF failed to deliver a knockout blow by destroying enemy
morale. However some argued that strategic bombing of non-military
targets could significantly reduce enemy industrial capacity and
production[27][28] and in the opinion of its interwar period
proponents, the surrender of Japan vindicated strategic bombing.[29
[from
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_bombing_during_World_War_II]
With these as examples, can we apply terms to individuals and
applicable national leaders who engage in this sort of killing in such
a way as to exclude it as a pathological social epidemic? Suicide,
when there was a rash of them triggered by such stressors as The
Sorrows of young Werther, has been termed an example of psychiatric
epidemiology. So why not see indiscriminate killing of others as
another form of psychiatric epidemiology?
John Berryman’s father committed suicide and years later John did the
same thing: ‘In "Dream Song #143", he wrote, "That mad drive [to
commit suicide] wiped out my childhood. I put him down/while all the
same on forty years I love him/stashed in Oklahoma/besides his brother
Will". In "Dream Song #145", he also wrote the following lines about
his father:
he only, very early in the morning,
rose with his gun and went outdoors by my window
and did what was needed.
I cannot read that wretched mind, so strong
& so undone. I've always tried. I–I'm
trying to forgive
whose frantic passage, when he could not live
an instant longer, in the summer dawn
left Henry to live on.[2][from
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Berryman]
Might we perhaps conclude that we are a species with very few instincts
and so need to be taught all that we need to know to function in
society. If we are taught as John Berryman, that suicide is an
acceptable way to solve one’s problems, then we are at the very least
influenced by this teaching and some percentage of people so taught
will sometime later on use this method.
Lawrence
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