Mass Shootings Are System Exhaust
A few thoughts on social pathologies
The “radicalized” or “black pill” individual isn’t born hating the world. They are reacting to a profound deficit of belonging and validation. The hostility and grievance are the distorted, secondary shape of unrequited human longing that has nowhere else to go.
The person trapped in addiction didn’t just decide to be someone who wants to self-destruct. They landed on a chemical substitute that simulates the warmth, status, optionality, and relief they cannot reach in their social reality.
The depressed person lying in bed didn’t choose to stop caring. Their brain simply stopped releasing dopamine because sufficient attempts to reach out for connection or reward were met with a brick wall.
The hunger for reciprocity is still there but the mechanism for chasing it has starved.
Such individuals are the predictable result of the zero sum status gradient. They are not a byproduct. They are an inevitable structural requirement of the thermodynamics of human society.
Some proportion of us — by physical, mathematical necessity — must structurally remain fundamentally starved for belonging.