Member-only story
Armchair Diagnosis And The Existence of Evil
Not everything is a mental illness
I’ve noticed that claiming people who commit anything from mass shootings to shoplifting did it because of mental illness has grown exponentially in the last year or two, and it’s pissing me the fuck off.
I suppose I can see how one has to find an already vulnerable group of people to blame these things on if one insists on denying the reality of evil. In the scramble to come up with a way for it to make sense for those who don’t believe in evil, it seems they choose the first thing that sounds good to them and blame that.
What this does is put mentally ill people at risk of harm, because people are afraid of us and blame us for things we haven’t done, as if we are all dangerous and capable of slaughtering innocent people with an assault rifle. We could try blaming mass shootings on being a white man rather than mentally ill, at least that would be more honest.
Just because a person refuses to believe in evil, or won’t sit in the discomfort of not having a rational explanation for bad things, does not mean they can cause a problem for an already at risk population. It’s not right to blame mental illness as this causes actual harm to the mentally ill.
