HealthyGamerGG - On School Shootings

Episode Date: January 3, 2022

Dr. K Discusses School Shootings Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/healthygamergg/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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and even boxing everything you need on and off. The Peloton Tread. Experience it all for yourself with a 30-day home trial. Learn more at OnePeloton.com. So was this person mentally ill? We have no idea. Even if the answer is yes, I don't think that that's an excuse. And I think that we as a society need to start calling out evil where we see it. So let's just talk about the school shooting. So the first thing is that I don't know what we can do about this. So this happens periodically. I think one year ago, we had, there was a school shooting about a year ago and like a bunch of media outlets and stuff reached out to me. On Monday, I'm actually going to be. speaking on a panel at the United Nations Counterterrorism Division about violent extremism and like online communities. So it's just bizarre that like literally on Monday like there's going to be a UN thing where we're going to be talking about this stuff. But I think that

first of all like my heart goes out to the community member who had to live through this. my heart goes out to like everyone else who had to live through this, especially those that didn't get to live through it, and the parents and family members of those that didn't get to live through it. I'm going to need a second. I think I'm out of tissues. G, G, G. So, you know, I don't know what we do about this.

Because I think there are sometimes there are problems in the world that we don't know what to do with. Right. So like there are a lot of problems out there where people say like, I don't know what we can do. And that's just not good enough. Right. So like there are a lot of problems out there where you can't say anymore like I don't know what we can do because there's like literally people dying. Like that's not an exaggeration. And this happens again and again and it keeps happening. And I think that there's a lot that we don't really know how to approach this problem. So what we tend to do at Healthy Gamer, is try to like look at things authentically. Right? So we try to like be non-judgmental towards people. We try to treat them like, you know, give them space to like think and understand and try to figure out what's going on. And do I think that we need to understand the psychology of school shooters? Absolutely.

But I think that there's like a flip side of this coin, which is the more that we propagate this kind of dialogue and like the more that like, for example, there are studies I believe that show that. increased media coverage of particular things like suicide or mass shooting actually propagates like some of those ideas and beliefs and like leads to more events. So there are studies on suicide clusters, for example, where when you like propagate like media coverage of a thing, that it increases the behavior of the thing. So personally at Healthy Gamer, I feel a little bit hamstrung in terms of approaching this in the way that we usually do. I don't know. how to deal with this. Because I think that, you know, really exploring it could actually have the opposite effect.

And so we want to understand the psychology of these people, hopefully for the goal of like altering their course. And my hope is that if you support people who are struggling, then they won't do bad things. But unfortunately, I don't think that that's true. I think what tends to happen in school shootings is we talk about mental illness, right? So we say like, oh, this person was depressed. And so there's like pathology of evil. Like that's what we do as a society now.

Like as awareness of mental illness has grown, we've actually started to pathologize like evil. And as a psychiatrist, that sort of pisses me off because I think every time you label a school shooter is mentally ill, you're giving a bad name to people who start. struggle with mental illness, and to a certain degree, you're providing an excuse for the shooter. So I think this is an issue of Dharma and Adharmah, Dharma being duty and adharma being not being your duty. And I don't know that this is a problem of mental illness. I think it simply could be a problem of evil. And one of the downsides of our society is that as we've stepped away from religion, we've stopped talking about sin. People don't talk about sin anymore, right? Because it's so tied up with

religious concepts and beliefs and gets tangled up with other things, that discussions of good and evil have been reduced to, like, you know, discussions of psychiatry and psychology and like, you know, which in a sense is helpful. But I think that there's a certain point where you have to take responsibility for your actions irrespective of like whether you're mentally ill or not. I also think as a society, the more that we sort of think about, oh, like maybe what the world needs is more therapy. Like that may be true and it's almost certainly is. And that's the way that I would approach the problem. Like, I would try to help the people that are in their infancy of becoming a school shooter and try to alter their course.

And at the same time, there's a part of me that says, like, this is an act of evil, and there should be no excuses given. I do believe firmly as a psychiatrist that it is not your fault if you were mentally ill, but it is absolutely your responsibility. So I have sympathy for someone who struggles with alcohol addiction, but I do not. provide for them a single excuse if they drive drunk and get into an accident and kill someone. This is where if you are struggling with an addiction or a mental health problem, it is your responsibility and is up to you to take care of it. And I think failing in your duty to do that absolutely lays the blame at your feet. So was this person mentally ill, we have no idea. Even if the answer is yes, I don't think that that's an excuse. And I think that we as a society need to start calling out evil

where we see it. The second thing is, you know, like, I know what I'm about to say is going to be perceived as political, and I guess it is. I don't get to determine what is political and what isn't political. But I'm about to talk about gun control. And most of what I base this on is, like, in my opinion, not political beliefs, but you could argue that they are political beliefs. It's like research out of HSPH or Harvard School of Public Health where like there's a lot of research that's been done, there's some contrary research to this as well. So, for example, like, Australia demographically is very similar to the United States, and the number of school shootings they have is like a fraction of what we have because they have strong gun control laws.

There's counter evidence to that as well. So, for example, Massachusetts has stronger gun control laws, and there's some data that suggests that it doesn't actually reduce violent crime. But in my mind, like, in growing up in Texas, I can, like, absolutely understand the love that people have for guns and like I have neighbors and family members that really like guns. And that like that's totally fine. Like I get that the Second Amendment is important to people. Like I have nothing against all that. And I understand that there are people out there that like to hunt. It's a part of their family. It's a part of their tradition. It's part of their rights. Like that's totally fine. Like I understand that you guys like to hunt. But the truth of the matter is

is that every year there are people out there who literally hunt children. Like that's what's going on. That's not an exaggeration. Someone just, shows up with a school with a weapon, and then they start hunting, and they hunt other human beings. And so my question to the people who are like, I'm not trying to make it political, but like, if you are not in favor of gun control, then what I'm curious about is like, what's your plan? Like, that really, that's what I want to understand. And this is where I'm not saying it like as a political belief. I don't say it as an indictment. I say it as like a medical doctor and a public health professional. Like, what's your plan to protect those people?

So it's fine. Like I have nothing against the Second Amendment. I have nothing against, like, you owning a gun, and I have nothing against you going hunting, provided it's not kids. And so what I want to understand is, like, for people who are anti-gun control laws, like literally what's your plan?

And you don't get to say, I don't know, or it shouldn't be this way. Because this is science. This is fact. This happened yesterday. Someone showed up at a school with Michigan and started opening fire. So like, what are you going to do about that?

So it's fine. If you want guns, like, totally fine. But, like, there needs to be a plan in place to literally protect children from dying. And I don't think that that's too much to ask. I think that we've gotten to the point where, like, literally their plan is to, I heard about this recently where they were building a new school. And the architect designed the school with curving hallways. And why did they design the school with curving hallways? to reduce the line of sight for potential school shooters.

Like, this is the plan. Like, we're going to get, you're telling me that schools are now being designed by FPS developers. Like, are we going to have random spawns for, like, armor and double damage and teleporters? Like, that's literally what this has come to. Like, your solution is to design a school. And Costco, by the way, started selling bulletproof backpacks. It's like, are you serious that this is what you're,

solution is that we're going to give kids bulletproof backpacks and design schools so that they don't have line of sight to prevent school shooters? I mean, if that's really your answer, I guess it's a answer, but it feels like a terrible answer to me. And on the one hand, like, you know, like FPS designers should be designing video games, not schools. Like, that's not their job. Their job is to design, you know, hallways. for video games, not for real life where there are like 12-year-olds and 15-year-olds who are like walking down the hallway. This is absurd. Yeah.

So, you know, I recognize once again that what I said was like political in nature because gun control is a political issue. And that too, by the way, like boggles my mind that issues like COVID and, you know, literally children dying in schools have become political issues as opposed to issues of public health or science or medicine. listen. It's like in my mind those things are quite divorced, but that could be like my ignorance. And so I just want to understand like for people who are in favor of gun control, like what's the plan, yo? Like, because this keeps happening. I'm sorry, people who are anti-gun control. You know, like, like, it's cool. Like, you can have whatever beliefs you want to, but then like, what are we going to do about that? Like, what's the practical? Like, what does it look like? And I encourage everyone, you know, I recognize that people may want to bucket me into a political party

or a set of political beliefs based on my statements, but chances are you'll be surprised at how incorrect you are based on my bucketing. And you may try to reverse bucket me based on that statement. You'll be wrong there too. So I think the next thing that I want to talk about is like, you know, what we can do about it.

So I want to share with you guys, I think, a major problem, a major public health nightmare that is, already happening. And I don't think many people are aware of what it is. And that is online drift. So there is an interesting thing happening to our minds and on the internet that I don't think many people are aware of. All of the major content platforms are responsible for this. Oddly enough, I don't blame them because I think that they set out with what I think was the best of intentions and it's just a consequence that no one, it's an emergent property

that no one expected when they put together the pieces. And that's online drift. So basically any content creation platform that you look at or content amalgamation platform will serve you things that you like. And so what tends to happen is that there have been scientific studies written about this where like you start off with some mild piece of content and then over time the content, the platform will serve you more and more extreme pieces of content. So there's literally this, this concept called online drift where you kind of start in the middle and then you start like moving towards extremes. So I think like good examples of this are, you know, there are like many subreddits around loneliness, right? So there's like forever alone. And then

there's also like relationship advice, which is like more in the middle. And then you get to forever alone. And then you maybe get to like FDS or in cell communities or red pill or like, whatever, you get to these like communities that hold very strong beliefs. I'm not necessarily suggesting that any of those beliefs are bad, but this concept is happening. Where the internet, by virtue of the way that online drift happens, it's fracturing us as a society. The second thing about online drift that's really important is that it is emotionally engaging content that people select the most. So what happens is like if you look at Twitter, like why is Twitter such a popular platform? It's because 160 characters is a great way to emotionally engage people.

If you look at the people who are very popular on Twitter, they're not necessarily right. They're the ones who emotionally engage their audience like time and time again. And the people who agree with them think that they're very, very right. And the people who disagree with them think they're so, so idiotic. But that person succeeds because they've actually emotionally engaged. both sides of the argument. So in a weird way, content creation is drifting towards emotionally engaging content instead of like accurate content or helpful content. It's all about like what you're going to click on. And so what people tend to click on is that which is emotionally engaging.

And so you end up with this like combined process of like emotional engagement plus like content being presented to you, which is more and more emotionally charged, less nuanced, less logical, less like, you know, diatic, right? It becomes like very monotheistic in nature. And so over time, what's happening is like we're sort of like creating these echo chambers, right? And that's what the internet is doing. The internet is funneling us into echo chambers. And one of the things that we've seen is if you read like manifestos of school shooters

and things like that, you'll see like a lot of echo chamber mentality in those kinds of things. and so I don't know exactly what to do about this, but I absolutely see this as a problem. So what I'm going to say now is that you have to be really, really careful about the safe space that you gravitate to. And this is another thing that started to happen, which is that safe spaces have started to become

breeding grounds of toxicity. So what happened is like people didn't want contrary opinions, right? So like let's say you've got like, you know, a gender-oriented sub. So you can look at two. X chromosomes or like men's rights or like whatever. So I'm going to talk about subredits because that's what I'm familiar with. But you're going to have a gender oriented community, which understandably the gender has had bad experiences with people of the opposite gender. So we're going to create a

safe space just for us. And I think that has a lot of utility to it, has a lot of value to it. I'm not saying it's a bad thing. Over time, though, what tends to happen is as we knock out contrary opinions, as we knock out discussion, because, let's be fair, a lot of the people who come in pretending to discuss are not actually trying to discuss, they're trying to attack. So I understand why it happens. Over time, what tends to happen is we create this echo chamber that then, like, propagates, like more and more extreme views.

And then you end up with communities like FDS or Redpill, right? Which is kind of ironic because they're sort of the same community. It's just fascinating. And so this is something that's a superiors. serious problem that I think as a society, we need to be super careful about. Like, we need to be aware that content creation platforms, as they chase emotional engagement and dopaminergic clicks, what they're going to be doing is radicalizing us in the process. And this is where you can say, like, oh my God, the content creation platforms are bad. Facebook is evil. Google is evil. Twitch is

evil. I don't think that that's fair. I mean, you can criticize them and they may be evil. I'm not saying, it's not my place to say. What I'm saying is that like my focus tends to be on individuals. And so you are just as complicit is the content out like content platform. Right? Because you're the one who's clicking it. So I don't think it's fair to just blame. And that's another thing that tends to happen in situations like this is everyone loves to blame the things that don't involve them. So we saw this a lot during the pandemic where everyone was like doctors are the heroes, nurses are the heroes. Like, oh my God, these people are so great. Like, they're amazing human beings. And then doctors and nurses started saying, hey, you need to get vaccinated. And then suddenly people were like,

screw you guys. It's the medical establishment. And so it's very easy to applaud something that doesn't cost you anything and even easier to criticize something and tell someone else across the street to change. It's really easy to say like, oh, Facebook is evil, Twitch is evil. YouTube is evil. Reddit is evil. TikTok is evil. I'm trying to be like egalitarian and toss the evilness all over the place. But the truth of the matter is that it's easy to say that because you don't have to change. Right. Oh, it's their fault. I don't have to do anything differently. And this is exactly how we end up with school shooters. Because for far too long, people have refused to take responsibility. So the NRA doesn't take responsibility.

You know, YouTube doesn't take responsibility. Reddit doesn't take responsibility. The government doesn't take responsibility. Legislators don't take responsibility. Individuals don't take responsibility. Parents don't take responsibility. Friends don't take responsibility. Bullies don't take responsibility.

Oh, yeah. Like, it's always, like, someone else needs to fix this problem because they're the problem. And it is because every human mind thinks that that way that we end up with the situation that we have. So people in our community ask, how do I do my Dharma? What is my Dharma? And they think it's some grand thing, right? They think it's like, oh, like, how do I save the world? How do I like, you know, like become a person who impacts other people?

How do I like live my life with purpose? So this is what I'd say. Why don't you start by being a decent human being on a very small scale? Why don't you start by not bullying someone else? Why don't you start by like not dogpiling? the kid who's like been, you know, bullied, right? Why don't you start by being like decent in chat to people who come on? Why don't you start by being decent to the parent that we had recently? Be decent to the women that come on. Be decent to the people that you disagree with. Like start by

being a decent human being. That's your Dharma. That's the beginning of it and that's the end of it. Start by accepting responsibility for what you can change instead of blaming the world for not fixing things. We see this with our generation too, and I'm complicit with it. When I say, oh, the boomers screwed us. And it's like, I've been able to vote for 21 years. And so for like the first like eight years of my life, like I didn't vote. The boomers didn't screw us.

I screwed us. You screwed us. If any of y'all are not participating in the process, if any of y'all are sitting at home and not doing anything about this problem, then you are complicit. It's the only way it works, man, is if everyone starts taking responsibility for whatever they can do. Right? And this is the kind of thing where like, we even see like oil companies do this. So I saw this hilarious thing. I think that BP or some other oil company was like, what are you going to do like to commit to changing, like, you know, to fixing the climate? What is your climate change pledge? Hashtag climate change pledge.

And someone else was like, I pledge not to dump five billion barrels of oil into the ocean. Right? That's my pledge. And so everyone's talking about like recycling and like using non-reusable straws, which is fine. Like I'm glad people are doing that. So that is like people who are like, you know, not buying plastic straws or like a step in the right direction. But individual corporations need to accept responsibility as well. So this is where like as a human, if you are gravitating towards.

communities participating in communities that are toxic, if you are not exposing yourself to contrary views with a genuine eye for discussion, then you are part of the problem. And Reddit is part of the problem. Google is part of the problem. Twitch is part of the problem. Everyone's a part of the problem. That's the whole thing. Like, it's a worldwide problem. So it's like everyone has some role to play. Even if it is not, this is the other thing. So even if you are not part of the problem, you can absolutely be part of the solution and that is part of your Dharma. So the only way this works is if we all do what we can do, even if it isn't our fault. And so if you want to know what

doing your Dharma is, it's like be a decent human being, which is harder than it sounds. I make it sound simple, but it's very hard. It's be careful what you consume on the internet. Try to be compassionate towards people that you dislike and who may disagree with you and we'll get to that later. And that's your Dharma. The next thing that I want to talk about is like the science of trauma and sort of almost responding to the person who posted who I don't want to show the post just for preservation of privacy and whatnot. So there's some things that, you know, I don't know if people like educate. Like I'm really curious like what that school in Michigan is going to do for their students afterward. Right. So I haven't seen and maybe this is just me.

but like I haven't seen any clear messaging on the science of trauma or how you should respond after a school shooting. Like, what should you do? So once again, this is not like very well research. I mean, it's sort of well researched in the sense that I've looked, I've learned a lot about it. So like I've got a lot of research like in my brain. But it's not exhaustively studied or cited or up to date. So here's what you'll need to understand about trauma. So the first thing is that psychologists discover that,

processing trauma is useful. Okay? So this is like discovery number one. So then what people decided, psychologists were like, oh, there's like genocide going on in Africa. Let's go and therapies them. So a bunch of like mental health professionals showed up and they like process trauma with people immediately after genocide. So you'll have these like survivor camps, right? So refugee camps, asylum seekers, things like that. And we're going to make the world a better place. We're going to go in and process that trauma for them. We're going to fix them. that's what we're going to do. And so what they actually discovered

is that forcing people to process their trauma makes things worse. So what tends to happen after our traumatic event is that we feel numb. We dissociate. Right? We feel detached from all sorts of things. You don't really like,

you just kind of feel numb. Food doesn't taste great. Food doesn't taste bad. Things don't seem to be fun. You're kind of like in this fog in your head. You're sort of like numb is the best way to describe it. It's sort of like the volume on life is turned down. The brightness on life is turned down. You kind of unplug, you don't feel connected

with yourself. You don't feel connected with your life. There's a dissociative process that goes on. This dissociative process protects you from the negative emotions, right? Because you just went through something that was traumatic. So there's like a very clear physiologic process that goes on. When we feel strong emotions, our hormones go through the roof. our brain starts to activate in all these weird ways, we enter periods of strong, strong neuroplasticity, which means that our brain rewires. So if you look at the limbic circuit of the brain, the limbic circuit is the emotional circuit. It is right next to the hippocampus, which is the learning circuit.

Our emotions and our learning circuitry is very closely tied together, which is why the greatest teacher for human beings is negative emotion. this is why you can be married to someone for 40 years, see them cheating once, and divorce them. Because 40 years of good behavior can be wiped away with one bad lesson. Right? Like, that's just how learning works. You can use a stove every day for 40 years and like one day something happens, a sparklights, your house burns down. And you're like, I ain't never touching a stove again.

Your brain will have like PTSD. from having stoves in the house. That is absolutely the way that we are wired. So forcing re-experiencing of trauma essentially reactivates all of those negative emotions, reactivates the hormonal surges, the physiologic changes that come with the first round of trauma, that wreck your body, by the way. Because remember that when you're undergoing a traumatic experience, it's a survival situation. So your body activates all of these circuits to start.

survive the next 10 minutes no matter what happens tomorrow. So in that moment, what your body and brain do is they go all in on survival and they will wreck the house as a result. The way that I kind of think about it is let's say you're about to leave for the airport and you can't find your passport and your Uber is three minutes away. You don't care about organizing things. You're dumping things off the shelves. You're like looking in here. You're emptying out drawers. It's a frenzy of a mess to find your passport within the next three minutes. And in those three minutes of shooting for looking for that one goal, you will wreck your entire house as a result.

This is what happens physiologically when you go through trauma. Your cortisol level shoots through the roof. Your insulin goes through the roof. It decreases, actually. Your blood sugar shoots through the roof. All of these systems in your body go haywire for the sake of temporary survival. and we'll clean up the mess tomorrow. So when you force people to re-experience trauma before they are ready,

and this is important as well for certain techniques of meditation, that's why I do not do open awareness techniques of meditation with traumatic individuals. Their mind is working really, really hard to pack away those memories. They've worked really, really hard to bury them in the basement and put locks and chains and weights on top so that the trap door can never open. And so when you get clinicians that force people to process their trauma or you get meditation techniques that let the trauma come up, then you actually re-traumatize the person, trigger all of those physiologic disruptions, which result in neuroscience changes.

Those neuroscience changes will in turn affect your behaviors, your patterns of thought, etc. So don't do that. Don't force people to talk about things. So then the question is, what should you do? Play video games. So this is one of the really fascinating things. There was a study that was done where they had trauma survivors play Tetris, I think.

And what they found is that Tetris is actually like really, really beneficial for trauma survivors. Okay? So I know it sounds kind of weird, but like this is where like what do video games do? They cause us to dissociate, right? That's like, that's the problem is they cause us to forget life and push, away all of our cares and worries and problems. And as long as I'm playing Dota or League of Legends or Valerent or whatever, like I'm not worrying about any of my stuff. So like, no big deal. So this is one of the situations in which video games can truly be therapeutic. Because they assist in the

dissociative process. Right? And this is where people ask, are video games healthy or not healthy? No such thing. Every tool has a place. Is a hammer, a good tool or a bad tool? It's a hammer. if you drop it on your foot, it's bad. If you use it improperly, you're going to break a finger. But used in the right way, it can be very helpful. Video games are exactly the same. So, oddly enough, I would encourage people to like follow what your mind tells you to do. If you want to veg out and play a video game, you just want to play Terraria for like eight hours after a traumatic event, I'd say go for it.

Let your mind do what it needs to. It's going to be subconsciously processing stuff. And that's actually okay. So what should you do after our traumatic event? Play a video game. There's actually data to support that.