In Montgomery Alabama
Goleta Postal Shooting
Copyright
2003
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Red Lake School Shooting, Culture Bound Syndromes Children and Violence
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A site outline which traces the phenomenon may help you understand this problem.
It is at the Bottom of This Page.
Although the outline included Dissociative Fugue the history for sudden violence is the same.
The "conflict of physiology" has always been present in any human population.
The phenomenon that causes student disappearances and suicides also causes violence like Amok, Malaysia, iich'aa among the Navajo, and Going Postal in the United States.
Intro and site links
This site is about a conflict of human physiology that shaped history but was undetected until the 1960's.
In the entire history of man on the planet Earth this phenomenon was discovered only once.
It caused mental breaks for office workers.
You will find this material hard to believe.
This phenomenon is explained in first semester psychology lectures where students don't believe it either.
For that reason I wrote a demonstration that will allow you to experience the phenomenon.
The Everquest Connection page has the explanation and assumes you have not taken basic psychology.
The solution for this problem was the office Cubicle.
This site argues that the this phenomenon causes College Suicides and Missing Students.
The phenomenon causes mental events around the world, Chaco Canyon.
If you use computers in unprotected workspace such as homes, dorms, student apartments, and small business offices read ...Prevention... at the bottom of most pages.
Long term exposure can cause severely altered mental states. Qi Gong Kundalini Yoga
If you are visiting the site as part of a school project send the person responsible for controlling violence at your school to this site.
Goleta Post Office Shooting
The Associated Press has the first information on the shooting. The shooter was a former employee of the facility, on medical leave, who was removed from the site two years ago because she exhibited bizarre behavior. She got access to the building by taking another employee's ID at gun point.
What ever delusions or psychotic mental state caused the shooting it is unlikely that authorities will find a motive. Unless Sanmarco had contacts that she discussed the issues with there will be little available. She had been arrested for nudity at a gas station in New Mexico which indicates an ongoing mental problem. Today, Wednesday, Fox News is reporting that a woman was found shot dead near Sanmarco's Santa Barbara apartment. CNN reports that the dead woman was a "former neighbor."
The AP article makes mention that the last Post Office shooter, 1998, was found not guilty by reason of insanity. Why do postal employees return and commit mass shootings? This site argues it is a world wide problem. Sudden berserk violence began to be noticed in literature in the 1830's. But a source for the violence was not discovered until the 1960's. No connection was realized at that time. Workers using the first prototypes of moveable close-spaced office workstations began to have mental breaks.
There was no reason for anyone in the 1960's to make that connection. They did not understand what they had found.
Herman Miller Inc introduced the Action Office 1 in 1964 but modified it into the Action Office System in 1968 creating the first cubicle. The cubicle is the answer to those sudden mental breaks.
But the problem is one of human physiology and the mental breaks will happen anywhere the same "special circumstances" are created and maintained for long enough to cause a critical level of exposure to Subliminal Distraction. Those circumstances are so simple that they can be created almost anywhere, even primitive societies. There is a template for exposure. It requires a stationary position (there are exceptions), an activity that requires full mental investment, and a source of repeating detectable movement in peripheral vision. That movement will cause a startle when it is detected. We all have the ability to ignore distracting movement once we identify it as safe. But that does not turn the subliminal detection system off.
The activity might be basket weaving, operating a loom to weave wool or linen, making arrow heads or knives from flint or obsidian, or operating a mail sorter in the Post Office.
Subliminal Distraction is a term from psychology that describes the effect of a normal feature of human physiology when sensor cells of the eyes and ears continue to send neural impulses to the brain even though the person is concentrating on some activity to the point of dissociation for events happening around them.
The phenomenon was included in psychology courses as late as 1990. The explanation given then was, " as the subject continues to ignore repeating attempts to create a peripheral vision reflex a conflict arises in the mind and builds to a mental break." That simple explanation is not the full reason but it is close.
Your brain must grow connections between neurons to create memory. It then reads the connections to recall events. The brain understands stimulus from sense organs as part of normal brain anatomy. But the sudden subliminal signals happen so rarely that they are not included in that normal process.
This site theorizes that as the brain attempts to correctly source then use the unusual repeating input, incorrect associations and connections are made. When enough of those associations exist the brain cannot function. A dissociative mental break happens. If the stimulation is intense for short periods the incorrect connections will dissolve from disuse if the exposure stops. The person will recover with no harm. (There are other possible explanations for the source of mental breaks from this phenomenon.)
When exposure is low level but persistent such as in Qi Gong and Kundalini Yoga, permanent psychotic altered mental states are produced. Some long term users of the exercises begin to believe they have superhuman or supernatural powers. Yoga users believe they can levitate, become invisible, walk through solid objects and that they can communicate and control your actions through mental telepathy. The two exercises provide the eyes-open concentration and detectable movement in peripheral that are the special circumstances for exposure.
There is evidence that Subliminal Distraction alone is capable of causing depression and mental illness in the story of the Belgian Polar Expedition of 1898. There have been mental breaks on space missions and one astronaut, Buzz Aldrin, had problems after his space missions. It isn't the isolation aboard space capsules or on polar expeditions. It's that the small living and working spaces almost guarantee that the occupants will create the special circumstances and have exposure to SD.
Astronauts & Insanity a VPN site page.
It is difficult to see the connection between the barn like buildings used by the Post Office and the tiny mission capsules of Salut 5 or today's International Space Station. It is easier to see the similarity between the single-room huts, or hogans, traditional ethnic housing, and the small pressure capsule of space stations.
The sudden violence of Going Postal is considered a Culture Bound Syndrome of the United States. These world wide bizarre episodes, CBS's, have been included in the DSM for the first time. Amok, as in running amok, is a sudden violent attack believed to be triggered by an insult. It happens in Malaysia, where entire villages live in a longhouse. That living situation copies the large room workplace the Post Office uses. That alone would not make the argument.
Sudden violent attacks happen among Native American groups too. Among the Navajo it is called iich'aa. There has been no research to find an association between the living arrangements and activities that would create exposure to SD. It does not take much imagination to see the connection though.
This pattern can be seen using another Culture Bound Syndrome. There are events called startle-matching-behaviors that are so strange they cannot be mistaken for anything else.
The first notice of them was in 1880. Charles Beard a neurologist from New York heard of strange activities in French Canadian Lumberjacks in Mooselake Maine. The problem became known as Jumping Frenchmen of Maine Disease. Upon being startled the person will match behavior displayed to them. If they are commanded to perform any action they will instantly do it even if it is dangerous or harmful to them. They often repeat their last spoken words or they repeat the last words spoken to them. Those two behaviors are usually only seen in catatonic schizophrenia.
After that first notice in 1880 the behaviors began to appear around the world. The groups had vastly different cultures and beliefs. It's amazing to me that no one caught on.
See Culture Bound Syndromes for the full discussion.
The Shooting that created the term Going Postal
On August 20, 1986 postman Patrick Sherrill entered the Post Office in Edmund Oklahoma with three guns and killed fourteen people, wounding seven in about fifteen minutes. He then committed suicide. One of his complaints was that the air conditioning had been off in the mail sorting room. The Post Office said he had exhibited bizarre behavior, peeking in windows for instance.
to be continued ....
The Post Office is unaware of a problem of human physiology and does not provide Cubicle Level Protection unless someone has a private office.
There have been sudden mass shootings in Post Offices for many years. Most shooters commit suicide.
The Redlake school shooter left a message in a journal entry describing what he did to cause exposure to Subliminal Distraction.
RedLake School Shooting is a VPN site page.
Scroll Down.....
______________________
This site outline, with a cover letter, was mailed to both ABC and CBS News when they announced plans for programs about missing students. I don't know that any changes were made in the stories but the first story was delayed for a month from the original air date.
Wednesday, December 21, 2005
ABC News
7 WEST 66th Street
New York, NY 10023
Re: Maura Murray subject of January 6th 20/20 program.
This document outlines the material on my site. You would not be able to put this together quickly from a first reading of the material on the site. The site has links to articles and papers used to gather data. None of those sources mention the conflict of physiology or Subliminal Distraction.
The only source to verify this phenomenon is to talk to designers working for Herman Miller, Steelcase, Knoll or other manufacturer. Only the designer will have the information and they will not be willing to talk if they think you are about to write a tell-all article. They seem to believe the phenomenon causes a harmless temporary episode.
My brother owns a business that refurbishes cubicles and he did not know why they are designed with corner computer workstations and privacy screens.
I suggest finding a retired designer of Systems Furniture, Cubicles.
______________________
In the 1950’s and 1960’s office furniture manufacturers began a program to modernize the business office. Haworth introduced the first room partition walls in 1953. Herman Miller introduced the "Action Office 1" in 1964 but by 1968 had modified it by adding moveable panels creating the Action Office System or Cubicle. A biography of Robert Propst on the Herman Miller site claims the invention of the Cubicle in 1968.
What happened? Knowledge workers using the first production models of newly designed workstations began to have mental breaks. Subliminal Sight and Peripheral Vision Reflexes had operated in the "special circumstances" the new workstations created to cause mental events.
Those designers, engineers, and psychologists thought they had created this problem for the first time. They failed to understand it is a problem of human physiology not office workspace. It will appear anywhere the "special conditions" are created and maintained long enough to cause a critical level of exposure to Subliminal Distraction.
Sudden Violence
In the 1830’s mountain men, fur trappers, would rather over-winter alone than risk that their cabin-mate would go berserk and try to kill them. It was called Cabin Fever. The Navajo called it iich’aa. In Malaysia it is called Amok, as in running amok. Here in the United States it is called Going Postal and is a Culture Bound Syndrome of the US. The Redlake school shooter left a journal entry describing an activity to cause exposure to Subliminal Distraction for him. The Conyers Georgia shooter, in prison, has serious psychiatric symptoms, hearing voices, to indicate he had a mental break to cause the shooting. The act of using a computer in unprotected workspace with movement in peripheral vision copies the "special circumstances."
Blinking lights, incorrectly positioned, can be mistaken for threat movement if a turn of your head brings them into peripheral vision from behind.
Video Games
In 2001 and 2002 there was an uproar that accused Sony of putting script in Everquest to make it addictive. No one examined the workstations of those who were effected. I have an email from actor Ben Stein that there was a single large fish in the aquarium beside Tommy Stein when Tommy had a problem with Everquest.
Tommy could subliminally detect movement of the fish while he played Everquest. That would have caused exposure to Subliminal Distraction. Tommy recovered when he was sent to an outward-bound camp. Shawn Woolley, an adult living alone, committed suicide.
If the content of games were a problem every one would have a similar experience. The warning on video games and other software should be that Cubicle Level Protection may be required for computer workstations located where there is movement in peripheral vision. Most computer manufacturers have removed bright blinking lights from their CPU cases.
Disappearances
Artisans, clerks, and small shop owners began to disappear during the 1880’s in France. The problem spread to Germany, France, and Russia. Today it is called Dissociative Fugue. ("Mad Travelers," Hacking.) Those occupations involve knowledge work. Students are knowledge workers. One person walked from France to Moscow before regaining his senses. Dr. Hacking blamed ecological niches and running away from self.
When I spoke with the cold case officer about the Mary Shotwell Little disappearance, 1965, he remembered that the Atlanta Police Department had a problem with the phenomenon and switched to cubicles. They had never connected the business office problem with the strange disappearance. If Little is still alive she would be about sixty-five,
Bizarre Behavior
A New York neurologist heard of strange behaviors in French Canadian lumberjacks at Mooselake Maine. He visited the area in 1880 and the disorder became known as Jumping Frenchmen of Maine Disease. Later it appeared in other lumber camps in Canada. It is known as Latah in Malaysia and by other names around the world. In all cases the victims live in single-room huts, hogans, or other structures. In Mooselake lumberjacks lived in bunkhouses and in Malaysia entire villages lived in a single-room longhouse.
When many people live in close quarters they can accidentally create the "special circumstances" that allow exposure to Subliminal Distraction when one person performs work requiring concentration, to a level of slight dissociation, while the others move in the worker’s peripheral vision.
Psychiatric Outcomes
The most revealing incident happened on the Belgian Polar Expedition of 1898. Eighteen otherwise normal sailors and scientists began to go insane when the Belgica, a converted whaler, was trapped in polar ice for almost a year. The ship had been renovated using a single-room living and working space. ("Through the First Antarctic Night," Cook) There was one death from fright, one man became a deaf mute, another hid in small spaces to sleep believing the others were plotting to kill him. They began to return to normal when the ship was blasted out of the ice and began the return trip home. No one has solved the mystery of what happened aboard the Belgica.
Today
One in three patients who spend more than five days in a hospital intensive care unit has a mental break. They tear out needles and tubes, fight with attendants, but most completely recover when they leave the ICU. No one knows why.
The CDC in Atlanta refused communication stating that they only take information from government sources. Of the many researchers I emailed only Vanderbilt replied and expressed interest.
Although the victim is in bed, daydreaming while in the ICU copies the mental concentration necessary, and movement of nurses and attendants copies the movement of office staff around an unprotected knowledge worker.
The flight engineer aboard Soyuz 21 had a mental break and the mission had to be halted. Toxic gases were blamed but the close confinement of a space capsule creates the situation for exposure to Subliminal Distraction.
Mental breaks have happened on scientific expeditions and aboard US Navy submarines. There it is called ‘Screaming Seaman." ("Bold Endeavors," Stuster) Many things have been blamed but duty stations on submarines do not have Cubicle Level Protection. One man at an Antarctic station became so psychotically paranoid he had to be sedated until spring.
Altered Mental States
For over 3000 years users of Qi Gong and Kundalini Yoga believed that the exercises allowed them to transcend normal reality.
Qi Gong masters believe that if they perform slow motion martial arts katas in-groups while maintaining an eyes-open meditating state they can manipulate powerful universal life energy. They have mental breaks too. Qi Gong Psychotic Reaction or Deviation is listed as a Culture Bound Syndrome of China. It takes imagination to see it but their activity copies the business office "special circumstances."
Think about that again. If you stand in a group and perform martial arts movements in unison you transcend physics, gravity, and normal reality. Harvard Med is studying Qi Gong. I get frequent site hits from Harvard.
When too many exercise sessions are done in a compact time frame a temporary psychotic episode happens. But when the exposure is low and persistent the exercise creates fixed altered mental states. Qi Gong masters begin to believe they have superhuman or supernatural powers. They believe they can cast Qi (chee) energy from their fingertips to strike others. The leader of the Falun Gong movement has performed Qi Gong since he was six. He recently declared that he is God. In a Time Asia interview he said the most serious problem facing the world today is that extraterrestrial aliens are cloning humans to take over the Earth.
When Kundalini Yoga users begin to hear voices, feel strange sensations they believe they are experiencing an Awakening of Kundalini. Long term users believe they can levitate, dematerialize at will, walk through solid objects, read your thoughts and control your actions through mental telepathy. This is not considered mental illness because within their groups of common belief set and culture they are revered as enlightened.
Both exercises create the circumstances to allow exposure to Subliminal Distraction.
I believe some missing students are victims of Dissociative Fugue caused by exposure from Subliminal Distraction. It is not possible to determine which ones are victims without searching their rooms and activities for sources of exposure.
It is just random chance that a news reporter will mention something like Maura Murray’s mental event.
Missing Students
There was an outbreak at Miami of Ohio in 1953. Several students disappeared, recovered, then returned with amnesia of the events during the episode. When Ron Tammen disappeared they thought he would return too.
When they began searching for him a woman said he walked up to her porch and asked directions to a nonexistent bus stop. He was too lightly dressed for the cold night. There was snow on the ground. He was confused and didn’t know his own name.
You can link to the site sponsored by the Library at Miami University from my Missing Students page and see his unprotected study desk in a tiny room for two people. Fisher Hall was donated to the University. It was an insane asylum. The room had been sized, intended, for a single patient.
Of the list of missing students only Ahmad Arain recovered and returned to UCLA. A non-English speaking family found him wandering in Mexico in an altered mental state. He was a computer sciences major and recently moved back home to save money. (He would have changed the design of his computer workstation when he returned home.)
Tara Grinstead, Ocilla Georgia seems to be the latest victim.
Conflict of Physiology
The detection of threat movement from behind to cause a startle or peripheral vision reflex happens at a level in the brain that is below thought, reason, or consciousness. There is no memory associated with the subliminal detection of movement and only movement and position are involved.
This means you can have exposure from more than one source every day. Your brain can’t tell that there is more than one source. When a threshold of exposure is reached the mental break happens.
The conflict of physiology is that while you can learn to ignore the reflexes that break your concentration, you can’t "stop seeing" anything in your vision field and you can’t tell your brain to stop detecting that movement then attempting to force a reflex. Our physiology is not adapted to sitting in unprotected space with movement in peripheral vision. We developed as hunter gathers and there was no activity to shape our evolution to the modern business situation.
Just telling schools and students of the problem requiring Cubicle Level Protection should stop both suicides and disappearances.
The problem sounds so fantastic that no one believes it the first time they hear it.
Links
Nightwalking
"In The Book of Five Rings, Miyamoto Musashi, the legendary swordsman of 16th century Japan, implies that he fought his greatest duels with his eyes crossed, and goes into considerable detail about developing and using this strange abitlity."
The method suggested to engage peripheral vision is to suspend an object from the bill of a baseball cap and practice staring at it rather than looking straight ahead as we all normally do.
The site has a page on the physiology of the eye and sight. It describes the normal field of vision.
http://www.navaching.com/hawkeen/nwalk.html#Anchor-The-59125
Institute for Innovative Blind Navigation
Don't let the site name put you off. This site has several pages which explain sight and how the brain deals with two vision systems.
http://www.wayfinding.net/index.htm
This page has the vision material. http://www.wayfinding.net/vsionsys.htm#four
Speed Reading (peripheral vision)
http://www.ababasoft.com/wider_eye_span/
Vision, is a set of brain level subsystems
This page explains the M & P pathways and vision processing.
http://www.wayfinding.net/visanal.htm
The Red Myth
Color in Vision
http://stlplaces.com/night_vision.html
University of Missouri
The first paragraph on this page refers to psychological factors effecting pupil dilation.
"Interestingly, the pupil/iris combination also changes in response to psychological factors. One sign of activation of the sympathetic nervous system, which is a system important in arousal, fight, and flight, is dilated pupils. For example, sexual interest results in pupil dilation. (This piece of information may come in handy some time.)"
http://web.umr.edu/~psyworld/eye.htm
University of Utah
John Moran Eye Center -- Anatomy
http://webvision.med.utah.edu/
Kimball's Biology Pages
A simple explanation of the eye and sight.
http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/V/Vision.html
Understanding Human Vision
This site deals with color.
http://www.pitir.com/pentile/Human_Vision.html
Vision and the Brain
Block diagrams of vision paths through the brain explain the M and P channels.
http://www.thebrain.mcgill.ca/flash/i/i_02/i_02_cr/i_02_cr_vis/i_02_cr_vis.html#2
Study Notes Vision
http://www.utmed.com/studynotes/neuro/VisualProcessing.pdf
++ Use your [Home] key to return to the top of the page
and site navigation.
Prevention:
This section is now repeated at the bottom of most pages.
The rare occurrence of the
injury establishes that is difficult to create enough exposure to cause an
injury. But when it does happen the consequences are serious, possibly fatal.
Our personal experience
was intermittent human traffic during eight-hour workdays for thirty calendar
days.
If you have a tower CPU mount
it under your desk. That's the way they position it in a cubicle. The hard drive
busy light is about the height of your low peripheral vision if you put the
tower on the desk. Desktop reading of text or writing notes beside the keyboard
on the side of the monitor away from the tower makes the blinking hard drive
busy light appear to approach from behind when you turn to view the screen
again.
If you have a computer work
station/desk in which you turn ninety degrees to write or do other non computer
work, turn off the monitor when you turn aside. Remove screen savers in this
instance. The movement, animation for example, in your screensaver,
two-dimensional movement, might well be detected by your peripheral vision at
close range. Alternately cover the monitor screen.
All home, apartment, or
dorm computer workstations are in unprotected workspace.
To change that put the computer in a quiet room with no possible movement. If
that is not possible in a dorm or apartment position the computer so that your
peripheral vision can see only stationary walls as you use the computer in a
busy room. In Cubicles and 'Systems Furniture' these protective features are
achieved with peripheral vision blocking panels and corner seating positions. It
is called 'Cubicle Level Protection.'
If you use computer or CD-ROM
games for many hours day after day, the game playing position should follow the
same rules as the computer workstation. Battery operated games will not run long
enough on a single rechargeable battery to cause a risk for SPVP.
Although a laptop does not
have a visible blinking light in peripheral vision the same rules apply to your
work position. There should not be human traffic moving to you from
behind. There should be nothing behind you, which could enter your subliminal
peripheral vision field as you turn your head while working at the laptop and be
mistaken for threat movement.
Only movement coming from
behind you into your Subliminal Peripheral Vision can cause a peripheral vision
reflex. If the movement source approaches you from ahead then enters your
Subliminal Peripheral Vision from conscious sight there can be no peripheral
vision reflex.
Repeated for Emphasis:
A single session or rare
sessions will not cause this problem.
It is the same day after day
long hours of play or computer use with detectable movement in ‘Subliminal
Peripheral Vision,’ which would form the basis of a risk for SPVP injury.
The brain’s detection system only evaluates movement. There is little recognition of the nature of the object in peripheral vision. If you have several hours exposure from human traffic at the library, while reading at an open table or seated in a reading room chair, followed by long hours watching TV with a critically misplaced ceiling fan sweeping detectable shadows around the room, the combination of those two behaviors might cause the problem. The suggestion is that either activity alone would not consume enough exposure time even if the critical movement is present.
Copyright 2003
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