The Great Pressure Cooker: Our Tolerance

Some people can maintain their rage and anguish like a pressure cooker; steaming to the point right before the boiling process. They can maintain a level of sanity. But what if something goes wrong and it starts to boil over? This sturdy stainless steel device that was thought to be so strong, so sane, so “normal” literally and figuratively flipped its lid.

My fascination with human behavior always made me dig for the hidden desires and motives of other people. What makes them tick? What makes someone hurt another person? In worse case scenarios: what makes people kill? In my own views and beliefs, it was always thought to be a process of some type of human detachment; a way to separate oneself from emotional and physical well being of another person. I’ve also come to the conclusion that any form of rejection or isolation in younger years, as well as present time can conjure up the messiest types of purges through anger and resentment. For instance, look at all those shootings in schools all over the world. The one major description that fits 99% of the people doing the shootings was that they were all misfits; they just didn’t fit in with the others. They took their rage out on their victims as well as innocent people, including their own lives.
Their pressure cooker steamed over.

Is it genetics or is it a pattern of life’s circumstances that one had to put up with for so long...maybe for too long? Scientific studies can pinpoint the differences between a normal functioning brain against one who is a sociopath. However, there are exceptions to the rule. There’s always a loop hole with even thought to be the most sanest of people. Serial killers are thought to be reprobates and psychos. What if people knew them before their pressure cooker steamed over? You always get the next door neighbor giving their comment to the news reporter on television saying, “Oh he was just the nicest person around! I would never think he would...”

What about terrorists? What genetic code makes them want to go out and kill as well as take their own lives in the process? Suicide bombings are nothing new. They either do it for their God or do it for reasons of an unknown nature.

Nick, a wonderful blogger and friend had said in my previous comment section, “Many years ago, before thoughts about terrorism were as common as they are today, I attended at sociology lecture by a man who had been studying terrorism since the war for independence from France in Algeria. He made a comment that I have not forgotten: “Most terrorists would be terrorists even if they had no cause to die for.”

In my mind I think: there has to be a cause and a reason. There has to be a motive. Unfortunately, there are many people wired differently where they would go about things in a way where normal society would never think possible. Are they more passionate about things than we are? Maybe, we as Americans aren’t exposed to third world country type of situations as well as war and terrorism? Now that terrorism has come onto our soil, {ie: 9/11}, do we have the same mindsets as terrorists: retaliation, an eye for an eye, kill yourself in the name of “God”?

Is America’s pressure cooker coming to a boil? Or have we not seen the worst yet, in order to put our minds and actions to the test?