'Might makes right', right? When times are hard, and for most people times have been much harder since 2008 when Wall St destroyed the economy with the aid of the republicans, things become tougher, not only financially but socially for those with less power. Poverty and hopelessness play a key role in violence. But the violence isn't limited to physical violence, it can also be verbal violence especially on social media like twitter or facebook where people (especially when they themselves see themselves as outsiders) will attack people in their out-group or others with less power than them.
The main reason people aren't bullied seems to be whether there are consequences if they are bullied, this is why women tend to be bullied most by society, the taking of rights from them, not paying them as much as males performing the same job, making women responsible for the bad things that happen to women, like rape and domestic violence...
Women are taught, conditioned, never to confront men because although we know not all men are violent we all definitely know men are far more likely to snap and once they do who knows what the fuck they'll do. So society has been taught to respect anonymous men because who knows when they will get out a gun and take out you or a school. And when they do, we make apologies for them like, he was mentally ill, indeed, it is pretty much assumed if a man gets violent, he is mentally unwell.
Part of this dynamic seems to be that men are taught not to express fear, frustration, anger; they are taught to suppress these feelings and then when they can no longer cope with the emotions they explode into a violent dangerous rage.
Whereas women don't, or rather seldom do, for instance of the people who go on shooting spree, and if they do no one make apologies for them, most shootings are done by male and when a female does she is often with a male. So there is seldom any consequences for abusing a woman. If a woman is abused she will often walk away and rationalize it, tell her friends and family but seldom seek any kind of revenge. Hence there are few consequences. But then women are permitted by society to express emotions, to be afraid or seek help. Although if a woman does retaliate, she is quick to receive the full benefit of the law telling her that what she did was wrong. Women are getting increasingly nasty jail terms. Again there are no consequences for giving those women harsher sentences, because women are being conditioned into believing women are bad.
But for both genders, it's a normal distribution curve, most men won't fly into a violent dangerous rage if they are abused, as is the case with most women, but eventually some women will be pushed to the point where they become violent. This article gives a good run down as to the gender and race of mass shooters in the US.
For many when they see violence they side with those who are being violent, perhaps to placate the person being violent so they won't turn on them as well. I am not sure whether this is the same mechanism witnessed in the Milgram experiment, where I have hypothesized that people are pressing the button because they want to and with the approval of the person representing of authority or are trying to appease authority by proving they are prepared to kill because they fear the authority will turn on them, or merely because they would like to press that button.
I wonder if it's a case of "I want to be on the side of those with the power" and demonstrate this by proving to go along with authority, but there has been much research done on what makes people not press the button, little seems to be done on why they do press the button. (Is this a case of denial about what human beings are really like?) It seems that humans are keenly attuned to obeying what they deem authority, as people will obey robots even when they are told by a person the robot is faulty.
Or whether it is a result of the Stockholm syndrome.
Stockholm Syndrome may manifest as the victim identifying with the person harassing or abusing the victim. And perhaps that is the case when we feel badly for the person who attacks those weaker themselves as they are likely victims of bullying at home, by society or else where.
But I suspect this may also apply to those witnessing violence as well, not merely the victims of violence. Witnessing violence can be quite traumatizing, for adults and children alike, even when the violent event is an accident.
But there is one other troubling thing that keeps reemerging, women's passionate hatred of women especially after they've had a bad experience. One woman I talked to hated 'feminists' with a passion because she'd been violently raped and her mother called her a 'slut' because she didn't report the rape to the police. Another told me she'd been abused by women, but all I can assume is that this is Stockholm Syndrome. A man does something awful to you so you blame women?
Women abusing other women is a possible sad reality when the women have probably been abused themselves and then turn around and abuse those with less power than them.
What is clear is that there is a clear pecking order in society, mothers are at the bottom of that pecking order. Rich white good looking men/rich old white men/famous good looking rich white men are all hovering around the top of that pecking order. Younger men are not unless they are individually rich and/or famous and/or good looking. Violent, bigger, nastier men are also higher. Individual women can also chose where they sit in smaller hierarchies but as a class they fall below men. The bigger the group, the more power the group has. The more unity/organization a group has the more power it has.
There are ways to manipulate power between individuals - but we aren't going to get anywhere until we treat each other as equals - we all need each other - and when we realize how much this will we be about to undo much of the damage the pecking-order has done to individuals and families.