As a Chinese person, I’ve noticed these incidents becoming more frequent in recent years. Despite gun control, there have been more knife attacks and vehicle rammings. Many innocent lives have been lost and families shattered, which is deeply distressing and frightening. I often remind my family and friends to be cautious when going out.
Discussing these topics is often restricted or prohibited within China. I’m curious to understand why people who want to ‘take revenge on society’ harm strangers who are defenseless and unknown to them. Logically, this behavior is hard to comprehend. There’s an old Chinese saying that roughly translates to ‘revenge should be directed at the source of the grievance.’ If someone has been wronged and feels desperate, shouldn’t they confront those who harmed them directly? By attacking random strangers, only innocent people suffer while those responsible remain unaffected.
I’m deeply saddened by this situation and am seeking insights. This is my first post on Lemmy, and I hope people can explain this issue or recommend books or videos that address the reasons behind such behaviors. Thank you very much.
Welcome to Lemmy!
Unfortunately, I think most of the users here have no insight into every day Chinese life - myself included… in fact if not from your post, I would have had no idea this is a thing.
Anyhow, this is disgusting behavior, and I can’t really rationalize it.
Though for a lot of people, the source of grievance is pretty abstract. They could be victims of the system, and taking it revenge in that is difficult.
Sadly extreme behavior seems to be an effect everywhere as this global late stage capitalism is causing people to lose agency and become more and more disturbed
China has an incredible spin on late-stage capitalism, it’s like they skipped all the decent stages and went straight for the dystopia bits.
Desperation - China’s infinite boom years are over and working conditions in lucrative jobs are fucking miserable. A lot of the youths are just refusing to participate in the economy at this point.
It’s a common problem, no matter the country. And a simple answer would be that the innocent are within reach.
A more complex answer would be that it’s complicated. If the aggressors believe the ones to blame for their mishaps cannot be harmed in return or they feel ignored by the general populace, through creating more victims, people will have no choice but to pay attention.
Maybe someone will think “What caused the aggressor to act like this?”, search through their history to figure it out and realize that they were driven to desperation by someone else. This might redirect the ire of the victims and their families to those responsible and so, a little revenge will be achieved.
The solution is relatively simple: Pay attention to the disgruntlement of the people and instead of suppressing it by force, strive to solve it.
I’m in the USA, so all of my answers would be colored by my culture. My knowledge of the culture in China is limited.
There’s an old Chinese saying that roughly translates to ‘revenge should be directed at the source of the grievance.’ If someone has been wronged and feels desperate, shouldn’t they confront those who harmed them directly?
If I had to make a guess I’d say it may be a recognition of the collectivist view of society in China. As in “I am wronged by society, so any member of society is a valid target for my anger/revenge.”
For someone that becomes an attacker, it is likely the result of many events, not one. How many times have they tried to move to a Tier 1 city and been rejected? How many times have they been passed over for better education or job opportunities? When they raise their objections how many times are they met by others with “没精打采｡” (“nothing can be done about it”)?
As someone living in Chinese culture, you’re probably better equipped to answer this than most of us. I appreciate you sharing your question and your answers as you have here. I’m interested in understanding this from your perspective.
To my knowledge, the reasons that lead them to commit these acts are mostly: poverty to the point of being unable to live, bankruptcy due to failed investments, divorce, and other family upheavals. In official announcements of such events in China, the motives and details of the incidents are not mentioned. For example, an indiscriminate attack on students and parents outside a school would be described in official announcements as if it were a simple traffic accident.
Due to China’s severe censorship of negative news, official media outlets do not report on these stories, and self-media posts about similar news are either restricted or deleted, so pictures and videos are extremely rare. Therefore, except for those who have been long-term internet users, most people have little understanding of the severity of these incidents.
Generally, only locals are more aware of the details of the events. They share this information, including on-site photos and videos, in chat groups with friends and family on messaging apps (content in group chats is usually not censored). And due to the nature of Chinese society, there are always some locals who have connections with the perpetrator’s family and know and share relatively private information about their situation. But as I said at the beginning, the vast majority of their motives are related to property, love, and family issues. And I can be certain that the victims have no relation to them.
I can only provide the above information. In Chinese culture, people also resent and reject those who expand their own misfortunes to affect innocent people. My view is that a victim only represents himself and his family, not any particular group. The victims include school children, parents, farmers, and people working hard to support their families. They are just ordinary members of society who have to suffer this undeserved disaster. The idea that one’s own suffering should implicate more people to suffer, or that if one doesn’t want to live, they should drag others to die with them - I find this thinking painful, and at the same time, I really don’t understand the deeper reasons and logic behind such behavior.
Full disclosure:
- I am not a psychologist, psychology is merely a hobby.
- I am from the US, but I will try to stick to my understanding of human emotions as a whole.
One thing I have observed about violence that seems random is that they are often performed by people who have been proverbially “beaten down” by life. When this is the cause, they may feel the need to lash out, but their “beating” was so severe that they become apathetic. They just need some outlet for their pain, rather than a specific individual or group.
Some people will take it out on themselves and it becomes self-harm or suicide. Others will take it out on those who are vulnerable in their immediate vicinity.
Basically, when a person is in a lot of pain, it becomes harder to think about others, because they are already struggling with their own issues. At least from where I stand, random acts of violence is what happens when that idea is taken to an extreme.
As for articles and videos: I’m not sure if you will be able to view the video on this page easily, but there is a transcription on the page: it was shared by a man who claimed he almost became a school shooter. He described what he was going through and feeling leading up to the moment where he almost did it. I think it provides a window into how suffering makes a person volatile:
https://www.ted.com/talks/aaron_stark_i_was_almost_a_school_shooter?subtitle=en
In a similar vein, depression tends to cause a person to focus heavily on their own thoughts and emotions and less on their social connections, not because the person is selfish, but as a means of self-preservation, as described in these articles:
https://neurolaunch.com/is-depression-selfish/
This is just one possible explanation, but it’s the one I am most familiar with personally. I hope this helps.
I’ll take a good look at the videos and articles you provided. Thank you very much!
I think the main reason is feeling disconnected from society.
Desperation breeds crime authoritarianism doesnt fix the problem.
I have no idea because of the reasons you stated. These knife attacks are sometimes reported in Western media but the motif of the attacker is never revealed.
I can make an estimated guess but I don’t feel like that is fair to the victims as it may seem as a justification.
Indiscriminate? Naw, that’d be “for reasons you’re not being told”.
Likely a combination of increased financial stress and mental illness. If they can’t be happy, why should others be?
“As a” right off the bat, no effort to back up the claims being made (instead assuming that people will automatically trust them), coming from an account that has no previous interaction with the platform, from a user who’s clearly used enough to Lemmy to know where to post questions and how to format them…
I’d strongly advise caution towards this post.
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This is my first post on Lemmy.
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I also use Reddit, but this particular post couldn’t get through on Reddit.
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The format of the post was written using ChatGPT. My English is poor, making normal communication difficult, so I can’t enjoy English interactions. That’s why I haven’t responded to or interacted with any replies.
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I swear everything I said is true. If you want to know more, it’s easy to find various news articles that can verify the authenticity of my post, as these situations have been occurring frequently in China over the past two years.
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For general questions, I would ask on platforms I’m familiar with, but this question couldn’t possibly be successfully posted on Chinese forums, which is why I’m asking here.
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I was a bit emotional while editing the post, and I apologize for that.
It’s very close to a US election and people are being bombarded with highly emotionally charged stories and political information all day and everyone is a bit on edge currently. There’s also a pretty large amount of sinophobia on this platform in general too. I don’t have an answer to your question, but please try not to take what others might say too personally.
Alright, thank you for your suggestion. I don’t intend to lead anyone into any politically-related discussions. I’m simply hoping to obtain logical explanations from a psychological or sociological perspective, from the standpoint of ordinary people, regarding these dangerous incidents. I truly don’t have experience communicating in English-language forums. I will learn more and pay closer attention in the future.
You’ve done nothing wrong, however even if your question is not political certain people will try to make it political. Things will calm down a bit in about a month.
A lot of details regarding day to day Chinese life is not available to the Western world. You may have trouble finding an answer that’s based on actual evidence, but people are very similar despite where they live and their motives will be comparable. People here will definitely be able to help you in that regard.
So basically your source is “trust me” = “I expect you all to be gullible”???
Put yourself in the situation of everyone else. From your PoV if you’re being honest or bullshitting is obvious; for us (reading your comment) it is not, all we see is someone on the internet claiming something about a population with almost no Lemmy demographic (so it’s easy to bullshit and get away with it). In those situations caution is advised.
For a loose equivalent, imagine someone claiming in a Chinese language forum “I’m from UK/France/Germany, I can confirm that I see a mass shooting here every day, the king/president/prime minister has been almost shot but they’re silencing news about it”… it feels fishy, right?
If your comment is 1) honest and 2) true then I apologise, but we [people in general] shouldn’t take something as true simply because someone else said.
Okay, I found a news article for you from last month. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c78lk3gxk8mo, please take a look at it. Today in our country, another person set their vehicle on fire and crashed it into a school. You can search for more information; everything I’m saying is true.
Thank you.
And now, in a clearer way: I apologise for the suspicion. As someone else said here, since American elections are going on, there’s a lot of misinformation surrounding China - both the population/the Chinese and the government/PCC.
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Some people think that everyone is complicit in their torments.
Current globalist regime over works people which causes mental problems… If you are not working, you are poor, which causes me tal problems.
If you do this to everyone all the time, there will always be able with mental problems that they can’t control and they will do this.
