Disruption and Disconnection Amplify Post Traumatic Stress
(First let's truncate the now overused acronym so common it's starting to sound dull, from "PTSD" to "PTS" meaning "post traumatic stress." PTS without the trailing 'D' is not a permanent-sounding disorder. PTS is temporary, curable, something we can recover from through post-traumatic growth.)
Two shooters in the last month were not only alerted to authorities by others - they'd called authorities on themselves months before firing on and killing innocent targets. Four stories worth looking at as a group:
1. The 19-year-old Florida shooter from February had no parents and one younger sibling at the time he committed his crimes. No excuse for what he did, but. He called authorities just after Thanksgiving, saying his mother had just died and he was struggling to control his temper.
2. The 36-year-old shooter at Yountville's Pathway House, a Northern California mental health treatment facility, had lost his only parent the previous spring and had no siblings or spouse. He'd recently returned from serving in Afghanistan and was planning to go back to school to study computer science. Again no excuse, but. The facility had expelled him for threatening behavior. He'd voluntarily refrained from re-registering his guns when he returned from overseas. Then suddenly he snapped illegally purchased an illegal weapon and used it.
3. Students rallied in Oakland last week not about gun control laws but the dangers of social isolation. Students who had once shunned classmates for wearing cheap clothes told reporters at the rally they speak out against such behavior.
4. PTSD is a crisis of connection and disruption. Facebook can be both a salve to isolation and an amplifier to social isolation. There is tremendous opportunity to harness the best of this social media platform. And minimize the most harmful aspects, beyond fake news. People grow immune to fake news pretty quickly. As this Vanity Fair article on PTSD reported:
Students all over the country are planning a walkout tomorrow for better gun control laws. But California has the most strict gun control laws in the country and experienced a terrible shooting costing lives at a PTSD treatment facility last week. Yes laws cut back on shooting tragedies.
But media stories of businesses replacing human workers with robots is scaring a lot of people. Robots are not taking over to the degree some think they are. And we need to dispel those myths and also celebrate businesses that bypass robots to employ people.
Robots and advancements around them are also tremendous fun and some deserve to be celebrated like Starman ascending into orbit. But we need a vocabulary to sift through this and steer how it affects us.
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Further reading: before we rush to replace ourselves, remind business decision makers the overlooked intelligence of various canines in Dogs Open Doors on Youtube.
Two shooters in the last month were not only alerted to authorities by others - they'd called authorities on themselves months before firing on and killing innocent targets. Four stories worth looking at as a group:
1. The 19-year-old Florida shooter from February had no parents and one younger sibling at the time he committed his crimes. No excuse for what he did, but. He called authorities just after Thanksgiving, saying his mother had just died and he was struggling to control his temper.
2. The 36-year-old shooter at Yountville's Pathway House, a Northern California mental health treatment facility, had lost his only parent the previous spring and had no siblings or spouse. He'd recently returned from serving in Afghanistan and was planning to go back to school to study computer science. Again no excuse, but. The facility had expelled him for threatening behavior. He'd voluntarily refrained from re-registering his guns when he returned from overseas. Then suddenly he snapped illegally purchased an illegal weapon and used it.
3. Students rallied in Oakland last week not about gun control laws but the dangers of social isolation. Students who had once shunned classmates for wearing cheap clothes told reporters at the rally they speak out against such behavior.
4. PTSD is a crisis of connection and disruption. Facebook can be both a salve to isolation and an amplifier to social isolation. There is tremendous opportunity to harness the best of this social media platform. And minimize the most harmful aspects, beyond fake news. People grow immune to fake news pretty quickly. As this Vanity Fair article on PTSD reported:
“Our whole approach to mental health has been hijacked by pharmaceutical logic,” I was told by Gary Barker, an anthropologist whose group, Promundo, is dedicated to understanding and preventing violence. “PTSD is a crisis of connection and disruption, not an illness that you carry within you.”
Students all over the country are planning a walkout tomorrow for better gun control laws. But California has the most strict gun control laws in the country and experienced a terrible shooting costing lives at a PTSD treatment facility last week. Yes laws cut back on shooting tragedies.
But media stories of businesses replacing human workers with robots is scaring a lot of people. Robots are not taking over to the degree some think they are. And we need to dispel those myths and also celebrate businesses that bypass robots to employ people.
Robots and advancements around them are also tremendous fun and some deserve to be celebrated like Starman ascending into orbit. But we need a vocabulary to sift through this and steer how it affects us.
---------
Further reading: before we rush to replace ourselves, remind business decision makers the overlooked intelligence of various canines in Dogs Open Doors on Youtube.
