- Paperback: 192 pages
- Publisher: Snowbooks Ltd; UK open market ed edition (2 Jan 2006)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1905005342
- ISBN-13: 978-1905005345
- Product Dimensions: 19.6 x 13 x 2.8 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 398,040 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Synopsis
"Going Postal" examines the phenomenon of rage murder that took America by storm in the early 1980's and has since grown more and more prevalent in body counts and symbolic value. By looking at massacres in schools and offices as post-industrial rebellions, Mark Ames is able to draw a continuum from the historical place of rage in America to the social climate after the greed-is-good '80s began to effect worker's pockets. But why schools? Why post offices? Mark Ames examines the most fascinating and unexpected cases, crafting a convincing argument for workplace massacres as modern day slave rebellions. Like slave rebellions, rage massacres are doomed, gory, sometimes inadvertently comic, and grossly misunderstood. Going Postal seeks to contextualise this violence in a world where working isn't - and doesn't pay - what it used to. Part social critique and part true crime page-turner, "Going Postal" answers the questions asked by the media and films such as Bowling for Columbine.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Where others before him have failed, this author has successfully managed to profile the individuals who commit workplace/school rage related killings/massacres.
Interesting and detailed case studies delve into the process of alienation offered by modern working life. His hypothesis makes perfect sense in a tragic way... read it and see for yourself.
Interesting and detailed case studies delve into the process of alienation offered by modern working life. His hypothesis makes perfect sense in a tragic way... read it and see for yourself.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Ames posits an interesting theory for the large-scale arrival of the workplace and school rage shootings in the US since around 1980 - many many more than we hear about in the UK. The slang term in the title derives from the early incidences of the "genre" in the US Postal Service - not the peaceful Norman Rockwell image of the past, but instead a hotbed of authoritarian management and bullying. Ames sets out his thesis:
1. That people are inclined to do what they're told by those in authority, however nasty the regime from our current standpoint. People are conditioned by their current context, so that things we now regard as inhuman were once perfectly acceptable to most people. He adduces the relative lack of revolt against slavery in history, and especially in the US, as evidence.
2. That revolts have tended to be led by people who reacted badly to the prevailing context, and were regarded then (and sometimes even now) as mentally unbalanced.
3. That the change in US employment and school culture since 1980 - a consequence of Reaganomics, which persists to this day - has led to a vicious downward spiral in the lives and living conditions of most people in the US, and huge polarisation of society into a small number of have-lots and a vast horde of have-nots. The US people have passively accepted the ripoff of their lives by the plutocrats as the new normality, and have forgotten that life was once a lot better - and, in real terms, materially richer and more egalitarian - than it is now. Which is why the dirt-poor still vote Republican (mugs!).
4. The pressures of modern US life have led to (fundamentally doomed) revolts by people who can no longer take it: and, despite the media's "random killer" tag, the revolts are against the company/system, with intent often being to extract revenge on individuals perceived as responsible (e.g. managers, bullying jocks in school). There is often some sympathy for the killers, who may have been let down by the system (brutal management, bullying ignored in schools), but this is largely ignored in media treatments.
This is a very interesting and (to me, anyway) original take on this issue. One could see it being most unwelcome in America, since possession of any leftist/collectivist (in the broadest sense) views marks one out as un-American; with the American Way now apparently defined as enriching oneself regardless of the impact on anyone else. The collapse of trade unions (admittedly, with a helping hand from criminal infiltration) means that the working poor have pretty much no voice, so that the ruling sauve-qui-peut dynamic has few checks. And the outcome of this internally-focused self-serving is that people die.
This may or may not be the complete answer: but it's a compelling argument, and, really, you should buy it and read it.
1. That people are inclined to do what they're told by those in authority, however nasty the regime from our current standpoint. People are conditioned by their current context, so that things we now regard as inhuman were once perfectly acceptable to most people. He adduces the relative lack of revolt against slavery in history, and especially in the US, as evidence.
2. That revolts have tended to be led by people who reacted badly to the prevailing context, and were regarded then (and sometimes even now) as mentally unbalanced.
3. That the change in US employment and school culture since 1980 - a consequence of Reaganomics, which persists to this day - has led to a vicious downward spiral in the lives and living conditions of most people in the US, and huge polarisation of society into a small number of have-lots and a vast horde of have-nots. The US people have passively accepted the ripoff of their lives by the plutocrats as the new normality, and have forgotten that life was once a lot better - and, in real terms, materially richer and more egalitarian - than it is now. Which is why the dirt-poor still vote Republican (mugs!).
4. The pressures of modern US life have led to (fundamentally doomed) revolts by people who can no longer take it: and, despite the media's "random killer" tag, the revolts are against the company/system, with intent often being to extract revenge on individuals perceived as responsible (e.g. managers, bullying jocks in school). There is often some sympathy for the killers, who may have been let down by the system (brutal management, bullying ignored in schools), but this is largely ignored in media treatments.
This is a very interesting and (to me, anyway) original take on this issue. One could see it being most unwelcome in America, since possession of any leftist/collectivist (in the broadest sense) views marks one out as un-American; with the American Way now apparently defined as enriching oneself regardless of the impact on anyone else. The collapse of trade unions (admittedly, with a helping hand from criminal infiltration) means that the working poor have pretty much no voice, so that the ruling sauve-qui-peut dynamic has few checks. And the outcome of this internally-focused self-serving is that people die.
This may or may not be the complete answer: but it's a compelling argument, and, really, you should buy it and read it.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
This is an extraordinary unpicking of the rage shooting the occur in American schools and workplaces. It is at turns fascinating and horrifying. Ames makes the arguement that the political landscape in the US feeds the frustration and rage that fuels the killing sprees, that rather than being committed by deranged loners, these are individuals pushed beyond endurance by the bullying culture endemic in schools and workplaces.
All in all, it does not make for comforting reading, but it does provide an explaination more sophisticated than the platitudes of dismissing them as the actions of the abnormal.
All in all, it does not make for comforting reading, but it does provide an explaination more sophisticated than the platitudes of dismissing them as the actions of the abnormal.
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