--- On Thu, 3/12/09, Dennis Claxton <ddclaxton at earthlink.net> wrote:
>
>
> But we're not talking about Al Pacino in the Godfather
> here. A lot of what's happening is "collateral
> damage" from turf wars not tightly controlled.
>
[WS:] Ok, then, it looks more like the US Army or USAF :)
>
>
> The guy they caught recently in Mexico who dumped a few
> hundred people in vats of lye was trying to be taken
> seriously.
>
[WS:] I am not quite what your point here is. Are you saying that it is the same as "collateral damage" or what?
To reiterate, my point was not about violence in general but about irrational violence to boost one's ego. It is different, imho, from other kinds of violence, such as "rational" or collateral violence committed in the course of criminal activity, or mob violence. It seems to me that this kind of violence is acting out certain cultural scripts by unstable individuals. It differs from "ordinary" criminal violence by the absence of rational motive, and it differs from mob violence (e.g. pogroms, riots, etc.) by the absence of collective interaction spiraling out of control. It is violence committed by loners who are neither rational nor insane, but hyper-individualistic and self centered. Their actions seem to be re-enactments of culturally sanctioned scripts to affirm their individualistic ego against the perceived encroachments from the collective. In that sense, they seem to very capitalistic or perhaps neo-liberal in their essence - frantic
affirmation of the individual ego against the other.
I do not know if the Mexican cases to which you refer fit this patterns, but I see a connection between this egoistic violence and general egoism of the capitalist and neo-liberal mindset. The former is merely a more extreme form of the latter.
Wojtek