How To Create A Dangerous Person: The Bureaucrats Field Manual

Dick Gariepy | Big Thinky Ouchey

People act on reasons, and reasons are shaped by others. Tread carefully, lest you give me more cause to harm than I have to refrain

How To Create A Dangerous Person: Introduction

It’s the question that always follows violence. After the press conferences. After the photographs. After the blood has been cleaned from the walls and the state has filed its notes.

How could this happen? What made him do it? He was a good man.

People say these things as though goodness were armour. As though violence arrives without warning. As though we hadn’t watched it unfold in slow motion, through official channels, with all the proper paperwork.

In 2017, Lionel Desmond killed his wife, his daughter, his mother, and then himself. He was a veteran with PTSD, known to multiple agencies, flagged repeatedly for urgent care. He went to hospitals, clinics, support workers. He told them he was slipping. Still, the care never came. Not because no one knew, but because no one was tasked with knowing all of it at once. No one held the whole picture.

The inquiry called the deaths “predictable and preventable”, which is the government’s way of saying: yes, we let it happen, but politely.

This post isn’t about Lionel Desmond. It’s about how he was made. And how you too, can create a dangerous person by following five simple steps.

This is the official bureaucrat’s manual for creating a dangerous person. It has been tested, refined, and implemented across multiple ministries, in multiple provinces, with chilling consistency. I’ve seen it firsthand. I’ve lived its logic.

This guide is grounded in the philosophical framework of Philippa Foot, particularly her 1972 paper "Morality as a System of Hypothetical Imperatives." In that work, Foot challenges the Kantian notion that moral obligations are categorical—universal, inescapable, and binding regardless of an agent's desires. She questions whether moral prescriptions truly persist in force even after it becomes clear that the person to whom they are directed does not care to follow them.

Take, for example, a rule of etiquette: we might tell a rude dinner guest, “One should begin with the outermost fork.” If the guest responds, “No, I don’t want to,” the imperative often still lingers—its force seems independent of their preferences. That, Foot argues, is precisely what distinguishes a categorical imperative.

However, she contends that much of our moral language—especially the sort deployed by institutions—is more plausibly understood as hypothetical. A hypothetical imperative binds only if the agent endorses the underlying aim. It is a “should” that recedes when the rationale behind it no longer applies. For example, I might tell a friend who lives outside the city, “You should catch the last train.” If they reply, “No, I’m staying over at a friend’s place tonight,” the obligation dissolves. The “should” no longer applies, because its reason for being has vanished.

Foot’s point is that many moral demands function in just this way: their authority is conditional, not absolute.

This distinction is crucial, not just for understanding institutions, but for understanding the people they produce.

When a government office says “we had no choice,” it speaks in the language of duty. But what it really means is: “Given our priorities, we chose this.” The moral claim is binding only so long as it aligns with institutional interest. If you fall outside that interest, your need is not a moral question. It is a nuisance.

The same logic applies to those the institution fails.

We are taught from childhood that violence is wrong. That one must not steal, must not strike, must not kill. These are presented as absolutes. But they are only absolute so long as they serve the ends of the person obeying them. When life becomes senseless, when suffering is unexplained, uncorrected, unacknowledged, the weight of moral prohibition begins to slip. If nothing binds the institution to you, then nothing binds you to its morality. There is no longer a must. There is only: why would I not?

This is how danger is made. Not from ideology, but from emptiness. Not from belief, but from the collapse of belief.

I say this not as a theorist, but as someone who has tested the procedure.

Over several months, I engaged with the Alberta Ministry of Seniors, Community and Social Services in an attempt to access basic income support during a period of acute need. I followed their rules. Submitted their documents. Asked for legal clarification when instructions contradicted policy.

What followed was a sequence so precise in its escalation, so predictable in its logic, it mirrored a script. Not a system built to support the vulnerable, but one designed to convert lucidity into escalation, escalation into pathology, and pathology into justification.

I was temporarily made dangerous, because I was given fewer and fewer reasons not to be.

This manual documents that process. Each step is grounded in institutional behaviour, philosophical theory, and lived experience. There is nothing metaphorical about it.

It is procedural.

It is bureaucratic.

It is elegant in its cruelty.

Step 1: Identify Those Who Threaten Power

“The man who rejects morality because he sees no reason to obey its rules can be convicted of villainy but not of inconsistency.” ,  Philippa Foot, p. 309

To begin, look for the signs. Not of violence, not yet. Not of volatility. Not of risk. Look instead for coherence. Lucidity. A person who reads policy, follows instructions. You are looking for the kind of person when harmed, dares to ask why.

These are the most dangerous subjects. The ones who don’t collapse on contact. The ones who still believe the system is rational, and assume that when it fails, someone will be accountable. They don’t shout. They inquire. They cite legislation. They keep records. What they fail to understand is that while individual actors within an institution may be committed to service, the institution itself is not.

Institutions are non-summative epistemic structures: their knowledge, priorities, and behaviours are not reducible to the sum of their parts (Hiller & Wolfe 2023). What the caseworker intends is irrelevant. What the helpline volunteer believes is immaterial. The institution moves as a system, shaped by protocols, defaults, and risk calculus. It does not see suffering. It sees disruption.

Exploring Non-Summative Knowledge: A network of interconnected groups symbolizes the collaboration within Alberta's Ministry of Seniors, Community and Social Services.

The Institutions unspoken objective is not to provide care, but to preserve authority. To prevent liability. To protect its own internal coherence. The institution does not ask, Is this true? or Is this just? It asks, Is this manageable?

I know this because I made the mistake of expecting answers.

I had just relocated provinces under financial and psychological duress and handed in my application for income support to the ministry. I submitted every required document: bank statements, a letter from Ontario Works confirming my file was closed, proof that I was not receiving duplicate benefits. My file was clean, complete, and compliant.

Still, I was told the application was incomplete. The letter from Ontario Works wasn’t enough. They wanted to verify it themselves. I was told to sign a “Consent to Release” form.

The request immediately raised alarms. I knew the law. I knew that the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act did not permit excessive collection of personal information without clear, direct necessity. I assumed there must be a valid reason. They wouldn’t just violate PIPA. There had to be a legal basis.

So I asked for one.

Not aggressively. Not presumptively. Just, legally. I cited Section 33(c) of FOIPPA, which requires any public body to demonstrate that the information it collects is directly related to and necessary for an operating program. I pointed out that I had already submitted the relevant documents. I asked what specific authority required me to sign this form, especially when no such form was listed in regulation.

They didn’t answer. They repeated the demand.When I asked again, they closed my file altogether. My only options were to appeal the decision or wait thirty days to reapply, either way, it would be five to seven weeks before I could hope to receive the financial support I urgently needed.

I was flagged early. Not as ineligible, but as insubordinate. A disruptor to their authority. I had dared to say no. That refusal, the quiet assertion of legal boundaries, was all it took.

They would later try to frame it as a breakdown in communication. A misunderstanding. But from the beginning, it was that same fire, the insistence on being treated as a subject of rights, that they would attempt to extinguish. Or failing that, provoke into something they could punish.

Lionel Desmond was flagged early, too. His persistent pleas for mental health support, clear, documented, repeated, were met with silence. That silence did not mark him as a patient. It marked him as a problem.

This is the first step in the cycle: reclassify inquiry as defiance. A request for clarity becomes noncompliance. A legal question becomes hostility. Soon, the file is no longer about eligibility. It is about demeanor.

Philippa Foot’s line applies here with a cruel kind of symmetry. If I reject the institution’s rules because they make no sense, I may be labeled difficult, but I am not inconsistent. The inconsistency lies with those who claim to act according to law, yet refuse to name it. Who say “we must follow process,” but collapses the moment that process is interrogated.

At this stage, no obvious harm has occurred. Only an inversion. The applicant is no longer a person seeking assistance. They are a disruption to be managed.

And now that they’ve been flagged, quietly, unofficially, but unmistakably, it’s time to move on to Step 2.

Step 2: Deny Reasoning, Obscure Causality

“It seems, then, that insofar as [the categorical imperative] is backed up by statements to the effect that the moral is inescapable… it is uncertain whether the doctrine even makes sense.” ,  Philippa Foot, p. 311

Once a person has been identified as a threat to institutional order, persistent, articulate, unyielding to nonsense, the next step is to deny them any logic by which to navigate their denial. Refuse cause and effect. Replace reasoning with rhythm. When they ask why, offer process. When they ask by what authority, offer policy. Never the name. Never the statute.

This is how clarity is turned into perceived madness.

This manual proceeds from a claim that may appear controversial but is, in fact, self-evident: people are rational. Not always correct. Not always calm. But fundamentally oriented toward sense-making. When provided with information, and when the relationships between causes and consequences are intelligible, people are capable of understanding and accepting outcomes, even painful ones.

What is often dismissed as “irrational behaviour” is usually a response to incoherence. People do not become volatile simply because they are denied what they want. They become volatile when they are denied an explanation. When harm is inflicted without acknowledgment. When rules contradict each other and no one will say why.

Coherence is not a moral preference, it is a condition of safety. When the world is coherent, it becomes predictable. And when outcomes are predictable, people can make decisions, assess risk, and orient themselves toward a future.

Navigating a Chaotic System: As the coherent path breaks down into disarray, individuals face unpredictability and danger without the guidance of a reliable system.

But when systems behave arbitrarily, when nothing links effort to outcome, need to response, harm to remedy, then the future disappears. What remains is danger.

People do not unravel in the absence of kindness. They unravel in the absence of intelligibility.

When I requested procedural justification for the collection of my private information, Marta Kowalewska responded like this:

“It is up to you 100% whether you submit this information or not. If you choose not to submit it, that is your right as well. This is what we are requiring and the process that we're obligated to follow at this point in time.”

When I pressed for clarification, she replied:

“I can't really provide much more explanation than that. Hopefully that makes sense.”

It didn’t.

Not because I failed to understand, but because there was nothing there to understand. The reasoning had been hollowed out and replaced with performance, a ritual incantation of obligation, with no reference to what, precisely, they were obligated to do, or why.

Lionel Desmond’s requests for coordinated mental health care were met with the same fog. Clear, repeated pleas were passed from agency to agency. No explanation. No accountability. No reason why a veteran diagnosed with PTSD received no coherent treatment plan. His clarity was buried under the weight of bureaucratic refusal. What, exactly, had he done to deserve what followed?

Philippa Foot’s insight is precise: institutions speak in the voice of necessity. They perform as though their actions are governed by moral law, by categorical imperatives. You must do what we say, simply because we say it. But when those claims are interrogated, the content collapses. It’s our process is not a reason. It is a shield. And when someone tries to look behind it, the institution simply states that no further explanation is available.

This tactic is not passive. It is corrosive. It turns persistence into disorientation. You are told you have the right to refuse, but the cost is immediate and absolute: your file is closed. You are told you have the right to appeal, but your appeal is premised on accepting a decision that was never explained.

Navigating Kafkaesque Bureaucracy: A satirical depiction of the absurdity and complexity within institutional processes, highlighting a struggle for reason and justice.

This is how institutions break moral belief. Not by announcing cruelty, but by withholding cause. And when the system refuses to recognize suffering as a reason to respond, it becomes reasonable to ask whether reason itself has any power at all.

Which brings us to Step 3.

Step 3: Punish Emotion

“Perhaps what we take for a puzzling thought [categorical obligation] were really no thought at all, but only the reflection of our feelings…” ,  Philippa Foot, p. 311

By Step 3, the groundwork is already laid. The person has been flagged, not for aggression, but for asking questions. For refusing to waive their rights without cause. For expecting answers. Their legal arguments have been ignored, their logic reframed as hostility. Now, predictably, they begin to show signs of strain. This is when the institution adopts its ethical posture, not to repair the damage, but to reclassify the person as unstable.

At this point, the individual is not simply upset that they haven’t received what they asked for. They are confronting a deeper threat: the collapse of meaning. Coherence, once a source of safety, has been replaced by contradiction, delay, and silence. When the world no longer makes sense, people don’t just feel endangered. They begin to feel defective.

Reason and logic are mind-independent. Their validity doesn’t depend on being believed, they remain true even if no one observes them. To reason, then, is not merely to feel confident. It is to participate in something beyond the self. But when harm has no explanation, and the system refuses to respond to contradiction, that external structure of reason becomes inaccessible. Eventually, the person stops asking what’s wrong with the process and begins asking what’s wrong with me.

A humorously dressed man, in a tuxedo with snorkel gear, flotation devices, and a toy lightsaber, insists he's reasonable and well-mannered—in his mind.

This is how epistemic breakdown becomes emotional crisis. The outburst isn’t disproportionate. It’s delayed. It arrives only after every attempt at rational engagement has been denied. It is not the loss of reason. It is the final act of trying to restore it.

This is the moment emotion becomes evidence.

In my case, I tried to hold the line. I kept my tone composed. My citations precise. But after weeks of silence, denials, and procedural non-answers, I said plainly what was happening: their refusal to acknowledge the legal content of my emails, let alone address it, felt dehumanizing.

“Not responding to the content of my emails… is a form of epistemic and social invisibility. It’s a refusal to take up a second-person perspective that recognizes the other as a human being and not just a procedural inconvenience… It is a deformation of the natural response to other people’s suffering.”

Marta’s reply was immediate. Practiced. Surgically deflective:

“I apologize for your experience with our application process. It was absolutely not our intention. We always conduct reviews internally to make sure we are following appropriate policies and procedures with respect…”

She called my pain an experience. She called my reasoning a concern. She apologized not for what had been done, but for how I felt. There was no recognition of injury. Only a bureaucratic spell designed to neutralize its appearance.

Lionel Desmond’s visible distress was handled in the same way. His documented anguish was observed but not addressed. It was recorded as volatility. His calls for help became indicators of risk. As explored in last week's post, risk in these systems is not mitigated through care. It is neutralized through containment. They saw the bomb. They chose not to disarm it. They simply moved it out of sight.

A skeleton in a suit sits at a desk, diligently working amidst stacks of paperwork, with a "Memento Mori" sign on its head, reminding us of the transient nature of life even in the mundane routine.

This is what Philippa Foot meant when she questioned whether moral obligations are ever truly reasoned. What sounds like duty, “we’re following procedure,” “we’re sorry you feel that way”, is often nothing more than the performance of duty. A reflex of institutional discomfort. A shield against the burden of accountability.

The strategy is brutally effective. The more precisely harm is described, the more unstable the person appears. When the facts are on your side, the only way to discredit you is through tone. Through affect. Through the suggestion that your distress is not a response to injustice, but a symptom of dysfunction.

Even Marta’s farewell carried the signature of paternalistic threat:

“Okay. You have yourself a wonderful day… and stay safe.”

Stay safe. A phrase so casually spoken, it nearly escapes scrutiny. But in this context, it functions as a warning. A bureaucratic memento mori. It says: we’ve decided you’re the kind of person who must be reminded to behave. From this point forward, your safety is your responsibility. Your compliance will determine your fate.

This is the violence of Step 3. The system has failed, refused to explain why, and now uses your reaction as justification. The problem was never the denial. The problem was your response to it.

Which brings us to Step 4: Weaponize Ignorance as Help.

Step 4: Weaponize Ignorance as Help

“People may indeed follow either morality or etiquette without asking why they should do so, but equally well, they may not.” ,  Philippa Foot, p. 315

By now, the person has been flagged, denied reason, and had their distress reclassified as dysfunction. Their credibility has been eroded. The cause of their suffering is no longer understood as systemic, it is framed as internal. The groundwork is complete. You have the beginnings of a dangerous person.

But your work isn’t done. Not yet.

At this stage, their anger is directed at you. And unless your goal is to self-immolate like an amateur meth-lab junkie, you must preserve the performance of care. This is where the institution perfects its disguise. It offers help, but not the kind that addresses need. That would disarm the bomb. Instead, it offers referral. Redirection. Suggestions that mimic concern while ensuring that nothing actually changes.

In a tense office setting, three worried individuals frantically pass a flaming document, symbolizing the inefficiency and frustration of bureaucratic processes.

You are not abandoned. You are simply… passed on.

After my application was denied, the email didn’t say, “You were wrong.” It said: “You can reapply in 30 days.” It said: “Here are some community resources.” These included links to Alberta’s Rent Supplement Program, Trellis Society, Horizon Housing, Calgary Housing Company, and a generic mental health helpline.

None of these resources could reverse the denial. None offered immediate financial support. Some required the very documentation I had already submitted. Others were vague lists of organizations, social services as search engines.

This is not help. It is bureaucratic hot potato.

Lionel Desmond was passed around too. Veterans Affairs. Provincial health clinics. Federal programs. Each offering referrals. Each passing responsibility like a live grenade. No one diffused it. Eventually, the hot potato landed in the hands of his family. They couldn’t pass it along. They absorbed the blast.

The logic is simple: if every office can point to another, no one is accountable when nothing happens. And the act of referral itself creates plausible deniability. We told him where to go. He didn’t go.

This isn’t accidental. It is operational. It is an ethics of fog. A design in which every exit leads to another locked door, every lifeline redirects to silence, and every expression of despair is answered with a hyperlink.

Trapped in a maze of uncertainty, the man navigates through fog, finding only locked doors and unanswered cries for help.

Philippa Foot’s insight lands here with full weight. People follow moral rules not because they are compelled by reason, but because the rules appear legitimate, habitual, socially enforced. But when those expectations collapse, when help becomes delay, when ethics become etiquette, the structure of obligation dissolves. The person seeking help no longer questions the system. They question whether moral structure exists at all.

At the time, I wrote this:

“This is not respect. Respect is taking accountability for the consequences of your actions and respecting my rights. When my words have no impact on others, I have the same effect on the world as a stapler.”

That’s what it feels like to receive a list of community housing options in place of food. To be referred to a mental health helpline after clearly stating that the harm is administrative, not psychological. You’re not being helped. You’re being managed. Not heard. Just processed.

There is even a perverse relief embedded in the gesture: If we give him a number to call, maybe he won’t call us back.

And if you do call back, if you escalate, if you name the harm again, louder, they’re ready.

They have one final form of ‘help’ prepared.

Which brings us to Step 5: Initiate Safety Protocol.

Step 5: Initiate Safety Protocol

“It is often felt, even if obscurely, that there is an element of deception in the official line about morality.” ,  Philippa Foot, p. 316

By Step 5, the institution has denied reason, punished emotion, and replaced help with a map to nowhere. The person, now exhausted, has only two options: capitulate or escalate. Either way, the system is ready, not to assist, but to contain.

This is when the language of safety enters. Polite. Clinical. Lethal.

It’s the bureaucratic equivalent of setting the timer on a bomb and walking away.

The person has already been stripped of legal standing, their rights ignored, their reasoning pathologized, their distress reinterpreted as dysfunction. They have been outcast from coherence, denied the epistemic resources necessary to make sense of their experience.

Now, the final move: destroy the last thread of hope, that there might be a future in which their needs are met, or the harm done to them is addressed.

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Justice is inverted. Their current volatility is no longer seen as a response to injury, but as a personal failing. If they are in distress, it is not because they were mistreated, it is because they failed to get help. If they cannot control themselves, the institution must take responsibility for their own good. And this is where the police arrive.

A man being held by two police officers angrily protests, reflecting a tense and confrontational moment.

Sometimes it begins with a question: “Are you safe?”Sometimes a warning: “We’re here to help.”But what it always means is this: You are now legible as a liability.

The mere invocation of safety shifts the frame. The individual is no longer a person with a claim. They are now a situation to be managed. Their testimony is no longer evidence. It is volatility. And volatility, the institution believes, justifies intervention.

This step rarely involves care. It involves containment.

In practice, “safety” means calling the police. Not because there has been violence, but because someone asked for help too many times. Because they were persistent. Because they refused to be ignored.

The pattern is well documented. A person seeks income support, a bed, or legal clarity. They are ignored. When they follow up, they are reclassified as “escalated.” When they continue, someone initiates a wellness check. Police arrive. A file is opened. In extreme cases, the person is detained, not for what they’ve done, but for how they’ve been perceived.

This is what “safety” means in institutional practice: not wellbeing, but the removal of liability. So long as the person is alive, the system considers itself absolved.

Navigating a precarious landscape, a wounded individual symbolizes survival amidst bureaucratic measures of safety.

As stated in last week’s post:

“Safety, as they count it, is merely the absence of my obituary.”

That is the moral trick. The institution fails a person repeatedly, then uses the natural consequences of that failure as proof that the person was the problem all along. The act of asking for help becomes the justification for force. The system calls this compassion.

In policy, it’s called a risk assessment.

In practice, it’s called the police.

 

Conclusion: Why This Creates a Dangerous Person

By the time the cycle ends, the system has everything it needs to begin again. The record has been shaped. The harm has been erased. The person has been branded.

They are not just denied help. They are denied coherence.

They entered the system in distress, but with belief. Belief that there were rules, and that those rules had reasons. That if they followed the steps, submitted the forms, asked the right questions, they would be treated with dignity.

Instead, they were met with indifference, obfuscation, procedural gaslighting, and, eventually, force.

What they are left with is not just anger. It is meaninglessness.And meaninglessness corrodes deeper than rage. It dismantles the very structure that makes restraint feel worthwhile.

At the beginning, they may have been desperate, but they still had faith that the system was governed by reason. By the end, that faith is gone. And when reason no longer operates, morality becomes conditional. If institutions follow their own rules only when it serves their interests, why should the individual feel bound by them at all? By the end of this process, the person has not lost their mind. They’ve lost the belief that being good makes sense.

This is what Philippa Foot’s framework reveals with devastating clarity. Moral rules, do not harm, do not lie, do not kill, are not categorical in practice. They are hypothetical. They bind only when there is a reason. When a system withholds every reason a person might have to believe in those rules, the rules dissolve. The ethical structure collapses. What remains is suffering without explanation. Abandonment without recourse.

In a dimly lit office, a cyborg man stands amidst a panel of stern-looking officials, integrating both human and robotic features as red eyes peek from the metallic side of his face.

And once a person is forced to live in a world where harm is routine and unacknowledged, the inhibition against returning that harm begins to fray. Not because they are evil. But because the restraint was built on a contract, and that contract has been shredded.

Lionel Desmond did not simply snap. He was processed. He was referred. He was documented, flagged, routed through the proper channels. And at each step, his clarity was ignored, his urgency reinterpreted, his pain absorbed into the paperwork.

This is how danger is manufactured. Not through ideology. Not through diagnosis. Through institutional non-response. Through moral asymmetry. Through silence where there should have been reason.

Lionel Desmond was not a failure of the system. He was its product.

And if you are reading this thinking, I would never do what he did,

good.

Hold on to that.

Just remember:

He believed that once, too.

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Danger Manufacturing Index Quiz

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This Weeks Thick Thought Thumper ---> 'The Telos Of Our Kind'

Works Cited

Avram Hiller & R. Wolfe Randall (2023) Epistemic Structure in Non-Summative

Social Knowledge, Social Epistemology, 37:1, 30-46, DOI: 10.1080/02691728.2022.2121621

Desmond Fatality Inquiry. Fatality Inquiry Report: Lionel Desmond. Nova Scotia Department of Justice, 2022.https://desmondinquiry.ca/final-report/

Foot, Philippa. “Morality as a System of Hypothetical Imperatives.” The Philosophical Review, vol. 81, no. 3, 1972, pp. 305–316.https://doi.org/10.2307/2184328

Government of Alberta. Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, RSA 2000, c F-25. https://www.qp.alberta.ca/documents/Acts/F25.pdf