How can society keep people from snapping?

Society, is the reason most people probably snap.

We can try to prevent it. More resources should be put into mental health. That’s one issue in the US.

As long as we have people competing for status, the pressure is going to get to some people. The best we can do is to recognize as soon as possible when something is wrong and to provide help. It would help to have programs to eliminate the stigma attached to mental illness.

There are always going to be people who are broken but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do what we can. What is needed is a societal sea change regarding the purpose of life and living. What we see now with western thought, which influences the vast majority of the work, is an emphasis on more; more goods, more money, more power, more prestige, more, more more. Our entire civilization is geared toward consumerism and that requires buyers as well as sellers. We push people to get the newest, the glitziest, don’t fix it, replace it. Your neighbor just got a new car, you should too only bigger and shinier. Your house only 3000 sf, sell it and get a McMansion with a pool, and pool boy. We are constantly being pushed and eventually we reach our limit; all of us
This needs to change. We need a lifestyle which emphasizes happiness and help realizing that it comes from within and cannot be attained by having more stuff.

Possibly.
If you take two rats and put them in a box, feed them, they will procreate and multiply. When the box becomes full of rats, they turn on themselves and kill themselves.
Get the picture??

I would start by not relating to people snapping as something bad to prevent by taking controlling action to stop it, because:

People snapping and doing dysfunctional things, whether it is violence or substance abuse or becoming depressed or becoming a sociopath and/or CEO/corrupt-politician, are natural responses to unhealthy social situations in the family, community, school, workplace, and media.

I think it makes sense instead to address those unhealthy social situations, and to develop our society’s compassion, attention and understanding of people’s experiences, to listen and meet people’s needs without shaming them, and to remove the problematic thinking and situations which lead to them.

All of the above ideas are good.

There are many specific issues to address, including:

molestation
child abuse
rape
racism
shaming people for
__not being outgoing/extroverted/popular
__being “different” from norms
__poverty
__not being beautiful, young and thin
__emotional distress
__struggling with school or work
__anything else someone can think of to target someone about to dump their upset on

drug abuse criminalization
political corruption
shaming competitive controlling schooling
lack of affordable healthcare
lack of affordable urban housing
inadequate mental health care
incompetent/corrupt news media that fires discord, fear and confusion
abandoned urban communities
inadequate police accountability
corporate/government surveillance of everyone
expectation of competition for dwindling corporate jobs or face poverty/abandonment

etc…

No, we can’t stop it, simple as that.

@rojo I agree with not getting onto the hamster wheel of trying to outdo the next guy and trying to amass as many toys as you can. However, when you step back and look at things, that doesn’t seem to play the slightest part in most of the cases we see where someone “snapped”. These aren’t upwardly mobile people. Dylan Roof, Adam Lanza, Nikolas Cruz, Stephen Paddock….these are not people that were on that hamster wheel. Yet they snapped. So while the effort to “win” can cause stress and can lead to people having problems, it doesn’t seem to be the key to why people snap.

Dylan Roof and Nikolas Cruz are losers by any definition of the term. Maybe their lowly status helps to explain what they did.

The best predictor of the homicide rate of a region is income inequality

@seawulf575 I agree, they did not seem to be in the race but I don’t think it is necessary to be on the wheel. I think just the fact that we, as a society, seem to believe that this is the only way to be considered a success is enough if you do not have either the desire or the ability to make a go of it. I think this inability leads to low self-esteem within the individual and this low opinion of ones self is reinforced by those around you who follow your lead which, in turn, leads to resentment, withdrawl from the social group (either self imposed, shunned by the group or more likely a combination of both with each reinforcing the other) and ultimately to violent acts.

For me, it is a chicken or the egg type circumstance. Which came first; removal from the group or withdrawing from the group? Where, why and when did the loner attitude of the individual develop?

Another aspect that I have considered is that we no longer have “the frontier” where individuals that didn’t fit in to the society of the time could, and did, migrate toward and disappear into. I realize this is not a 100% accurate statement, there are still wildernesses out there, but they are no longer readily accessible and as we have “advanced” we are no longer as self-sufficient as we once were. We no longer hunt or gather or farm or ranch providing our own foods and clothing individually as we once did. It is done, in the main part, for us. All we do is go to the store and purchase it.

@KNOWITALL I tend to agree but we do have the ability to try. Will we be completely successful even if we find a way? No, but is that a reason not to even try? Where would we be if we only did those things that have a guaranteed 100% outcome?

@rojo That’s a tall order. Personally that’s why I ran for local office and try to help in my community. We have a food pantry, voted in a few things to create more local jobs, we voted in affordable housing instead of existing slums, we have clothing donation boxes and help for funerals and all kinds of things. I also volunteer for many other things in our extended community.

I do my part, not just a keyboard warrior. Maybe if everyone stepped up, I wouldn’t have such a problem with all this back and forth, which generally doesn’t help anyone in a tangible way.