Watch your ass around some people:
A Florida man killed his fellow neo-Nazi roommates after he converted to Islam and they did not respect his new faith, police said.
Devon Arthurs led cops to the bodies of his former friends on Friday, but not before he also allegedly held two customers and an employee of Tampa’s Green Planet Smoke Shop hostage with a pistol before he surrendered.
Jeremy Himmelman, 22, and Andrew Oneschuk, 18, were discovered dead of gunshot wounds to the upper body and head, police said.
Arthurs said that he and the pair had “shared a common neo-Nazi belief,” but that he recently converted to Islam.
It would seem like the neo-Nazi beliefs would have inoculated him against Islam, but that won’t always be the case.
Ideologies may all be ways to quiet amygdala irritation. This is because ideologies are, in their best incarnations, designed to facilitate smooth movement through a specific environment by introducing a behavioral programming that helps one navigate to an environment with less amygdala-irritation. So if there is shortage, the K-selected ideology of conservatism is the best means of alleviating the stresses produced by the shortage. You compete, you get food, and your amygdala calms down.
Of course, if you are a 60lb weakling, afflicted with cowardice and likely to be killed in free, open competition, then the K-selected ideology may not be the best way to diminish your amygdala-agitation, especially as resources grow. In that case, you will tend to adopt an ideology that says everyone should have to be given free stuff, and you should never have to compete for it.
In the case of what I would call “we-are-superior ideologies,” this will be especially true as these ideologies tend to be about establishing one’s innate superiority, rather than focusing one on external ideas like morals, or freedom, or methods of self improvement and attainment of success.
A lot of early adopters of we-are-superior ideologies, especially in times of peace and ease, will tend to be adopting them to quiet overly excitable amygdalae that are angsty despite the ease, often due to personal insecurities. If in these times your amygdala is more worried about establishing that your superiority is unarguable, than it is concerned with other day to day concerns, there is a good chance you are focusing on your superiority to distract your amygdala from other things which it cannot tolerate.
Since I see Islam as a “we-are-superior” amygdala-relaxing ideology similar to neo-Nazi-ism and liberalism, I don’t see it as surprising that people can migrate between them, nor do I find it surprising that such individuals would end up periodically freaking out and killing each other over trifles.
There will come a time when the conflicts of K-selection will in-group people along racial, religious, and nationalistic lines, and there will be an air of preference for one’s own. But my suspicion is those who feel a need to establish that their superiority is unarguable early, and do so to a degree where they are engaging in violence in times of r, will tend to be those whose amygdalae are having trouble coping.
Watch your ass around them.