When I think about the growing number of murderers and rapists, and generally bad people, that there are in the world today, I can’t help but wonder if we can soully blame the environment that they were brought up in? Are the parents always to blame?
What if some of these people were just born evil? So evil that not even a decent upbringing would have made the foggiest bit of difference to them?
What makes a pedophile, a pedophile? A rapist, a rapist? A murderer, a murderer? Were they all abused and neglected at some point in their lives? Must we always assume that people who commit these kinds of heinous acts had to have been a victim themselves?
Isn’t it just possible that they were always going to be evil, no matter what happened in their lives?
What do you guys think?
Jessica
December 2
11:37 am
There are definitely a lot of bad people out there, and this is not mean to derail an important discussion about why people do bad things to other people, but I thought it worth pointing out that violent crime has been on the decline in the US for several years:
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/gvc.htm#Violence
As for the general question, I think the answer is: it’s complicated, and there’s no general answer. New brain research is telling us some interesting things about sociopaths’ lack of empathy (to use just one example), but there are so many factors. Other research suggests the question of who will commit violence is largely situational: anyone, in the right circumstances, will commit violence. Then there’s environment, culture, subculture, personal history of abuse, etc.
Needless to say, regardless of the cause, it sucks.
Shiloh Walker
December 2
12:33 pm
I truly believe that some people choose to be evil, and some people are just born that way.
Yes, family, environment, childhood, abuse, etc can and will make an impact. But just because a person experienced bad things growing up doesn’t mean that individual will be bad-they make the choice.
Wasn’t it Jeffrey Dahmer who grew up in a normal household, decent parents, no abuse in history, etc?
He came into the world with bad wiring. Although I don’t believe that absolves him. He knew the evil of his actions, and he did it anyway.
JulieLeto
December 2
12:38 pm
It’s so easy to blame parents and in 99% of the cases, I’m sure they contributed in some way. But I’ve also seen really good parents (loving, not indulgent, grounded) end up with a kid from hell. Sometimes, personalities are just SET.
And really, in a lot of cases, parents TRY and deal with these odd behaviors, but have no support system. I’ve read tons of articles about parents having to abandon their children or give them up to the state simply to get the professional support they need. Parents who have done EVERYTHING within their power, mortgaging their houses to the hilt, selling their cars and quitting their jobs so they can provide constant supervision and still the kid gets arrested for killing a neighborhood cat, etc.
There are no easy answers.
But I have to say…I find it hard to believe that pedophiles are born and not made. I think a VERY high percentage of them were abused themselves. No excuse, but I do think that’s a huge contributing factor. The cycle of abuse has to stop.
Angelia Sparrow
December 2
1:10 pm
It’s not so much that there are more of these things happening (although as population grows, instance will too) but that we’re HEARING more about them.
We have 24 hour news that has to fill the time. What would have once been a local or state-wide item (the DeAunte Williams Shooting here in West Memphis) gets national attention.
In my mother’s day, if someone molested you, you kept it quiet for the sake of the family. If a man raped you, you brought it on yourself by putting yourself into a bad situation. You didn’t report either one to the police.
My generation said “Forget that nonsense” when molestors and rapists tried those things on us and our mothers tried telling us to be quiet.
Even today only 20% of rapes make it to trial. You can’t even get a conviction if there’s five men and they videotape it!
And if we’ve learned ANYTHING from Bosnia, it should be that *any* man will commit rape and pedophilia and murder, given enough of an excuse. Read the histories. Rape used as a weapon by both sides, but especially against Muslim women to whom it carried greater shame. Mass butchery of neighbor by neighbor. American businessmen there to rebuild, buying preteen girls and competing to see whose was youngest and most sexually submissive.
Crime is not a matter of even born evil. It’s simply a matter of opportunity and excuse.
Shreela
December 2
2:04 pm
In addition to past abuse and societal influences — including constant exposure to violence in movies, as well as news — I wonder how much poor diets might factor in.
“Omega-3, junk food and the link between violence and what we eat
Research with British and US offenders suggests nutritional deficiencies may play a key role in aggressive bevaviour”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2006/oct/17/prisonsandprobation.ukcrime
“Omega-3 fatty acid deficiencies in neurodevelopment, aggression and autonomic dysregulation: opportunities for intervention.”
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16777665?dopt=AbstractPlus
Imagine someone growing up in a violent neighborhood; being abused and not having nurturing parent/s; and watching constant news reports of violence; playing video games and/or watching serial murder movies; then eating a diet low in omega 3 fats (assuming the theory proves true in the long run).
Then imagine that person seeing others with more education and opportunity making more money to buy fancier homes or toys, and getting the prettier girls (or boys).
Sam
December 2
3:08 pm
I believe some people, relatively few though, are born bad/evil. Many others become that way through neglect or abuse. I have a friend that spent her kids entire college savings (and a large trust fund from a great aunt?) etc. just trying to get him through school. She sent him to private, then military then extremely structured WITH psych counselors etc. schools and still he is now in jail.
I would also blame the instant gratification and entitlement atmosphere. I want, so I deserve, therefore I’ll have…even if I have to take it by force.
Sam
West
December 2
3:19 pm
I think it’s some of both. Environment can’t be blamed for everything. The man who raped me came from a good, loving home, with attentive parents, who as far as anyone knows, never abused him. He still became a rapist. And obviously environmental can’t be the only factor, as there are those who are abused and grow up to be perfectly wonderful people.
And I personally doubt it’s because of bad diets. People raped, murdered and molested children back in the days where we didn’t have junk food, and most people ate pretty balanced diets, because it was all they had. Violent behavior goes back throughout the history of mankind.
Yeah, some people are just born evil.
Shiloh Walker
December 2
3:59 pm
I don’t believe that. I believe that put in bad situations, many people will do bad things. Many-not all.
Nor do I believe it’s only men. There are as many twisted women in the world as there are men, but sadly, I think women either hide it better or are more capable of getting off a little bit easier.
M E 2
December 2
4:36 pm
” ” ” It’s not so much that there are more of these things happening (although as population grows, instance will too) but that we’re HEARING more about them. ” ” ”
I totally agree with this. A *few* years back, the local newspaper took to reprinting historic replicas of its paper in honor of its (100th, I believe) anniversary. The one I recall best (which isn’t saying much) was the day Al Capone was captured/killed. Most of the other stories on the front page that day involved missing children and/or murders that had been committed.
I was honestly shocked by how many there were.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Alisha Rai
December 2
5:13 pm
I think the easy answer is, yes and no.
I actually spent some time at prisons (lol, on the right side of the bars), interviewing violent criminals, mostly rapists, as part of a psych study.
What I took away from it was that in general there was something essentially wrong with the offenders we classified as compulsive serial rapists. These were the really scary guys who, when you look at their history, you often see clear warning signs from childhood onward (torture of smaller animals, marked lack of empathy, sociopathic tendancies, etc. etc.). From birth, it seemed as though something was just hardwired wrong in their brains.
Some gave me cold willies all the way down to my bones. Others, generally the one or two time “opportunity” rapists disgusted me, but I didn’t quite get that soulless vibe from them. And when I started having nightmares from all of them, I decided to get out of that line of work :).
Raine
December 2
5:27 pm
I think environment plays a major factor, yes.
And it’s been proven that the abused often grow up to be abusers.
But yes, I do believe some people are born with sociopathic tendencies, without the ability to relate to the pain or suffering of others, and without conscience.
Dahmer, Bundy, etc., all fascinating but frightening examples.
And imagining how many probably go undetected is even scarier.
Anne Brighton
December 2
6:03 pm
There was a family who lived next door to us. They were really wonderful people and their children were polite, seemingly well-adjusted kids. There was no foul language, no getting into trouble at school, no sign at all that any of those five boys and three girls were anything but All-American kids.
Then one day, the middle girl stripped off all her clothes, pulled the living room curtains aside and perched on the window seat playing with her privates. She sat there waving merrily at passersby until one of her brothers rushed into the room to cover her with a blanket. Her family took her to the hospital where they admitted her for observation. Apparently she had had a complete mental breakdown. A year later, her eldest brother and a friend went to a local animal shelter and bludgeoned to death 10 cats and crippled another 20 just for the sheer hell of it. These same boys were later caught burying cats up to their necks in the dirt then running over them with the lawnmower.
Nice, normal kids from a nice, normal family? I don’t think so. Something was vitally wrong inside that house.
Julia Sullivan
December 2
7:25 pm
I highly recommend Richard Rhodes’s book about the work of the criminologist Lonnie Athens, WHY THEY KILL. Athens is a groundbreaking researcher on this topic.
Karen Scott
December 2
8:08 pm
Then one day, the middle girl stripped off all her clothes, pulled the living room curtains aside and perched on the window seat playing with her privates. She sat there waving merrily at passersby until one of her brothers rushed into the room to cover her with a blanket. Her family took her to the hospital where they admitted her for observation. Apparently she had had a complete mental breakdown. A year later, her eldest brother and a friend went to a local animal shelter and bludgeoned to death 10 cats and crippled another 20 just for the sheer hell of it. These same boys were later caught burying cats up to their necks in the dirt then running over them with the lawnmower.
Jesus. That’s beyond fucked up. I’d say that family were nowhere near normal.
Emmy
December 2
8:17 pm
Oh, most people have evil thoughts. The question is what tips the pointer from thinking to acting.
For example, I’d love to run over my ex husband. Repeatedly. Hit reverse and have another go. But it’s not going to happen. However, some women have done exactly that.
I’m silently cheering for them.
Emmy
December 2
8:22 pm
Also, what makes killing evil? Any killing at all? The intent of the killer? Permission to kill? How they kill…shooting, stabbing, chopping with a buzz saw?
Are members of the military murderers? They’re out shooting anything that moves, if reports can be believed. Is it wrong? Is government sanctioned killing more acceptable than someone just arbitrarily picking people off?
The Humane Society kills animals all the time, but they have a fancy word for it: euthanize. Does that make it better, using a fancy word? They kill thousands of unclaimed homeless animals every year. Are they evil?
kirsten saell
December 2
9:45 pm
In his youth, my ex-husband worked briefly at a facility that embalmed animals for dissection. He used to go around to the animal shelters and pick up the euthanized cats, and said there were a couple of guys who did that job who gave him the creeps–no empathy at all, and a sick enthusiasm for their work. So some of them, I think, could be classified as evil.
I find it interesting that some of the most successful people in our society (CEOs, heads of state, etc) are likely sociopathic. The lack of empathy helps them succeed, lets them focus on their goals and disregard any other considerations (like crushing the little guy) on their way to the top. It only seems to be when that lack of empathy is paired with homicidal or violent impulses that we go from tacit approval, rewarding behavior and even admiration, to revulsion, horror and punishment.
” ” ” It’s not so much that there are more of these things happening (although as population grows, instance will too) but that we’re HEARING more about them. ” ” ”
I agree. And I also think that in the past, forms of violence that are unaccptable today were firmly entrenched in societal norms. Black slaves were beaten, sometimes to death, and no one batted an eyelash because that violence was acceptable. Lower class women and children were used and abused by the upper class, but their suffering was not seen as important, because they were barely considered people–if they were at all. Men with hyper-violent tendencies, as often as not, ended up on the law-abiding side of the bars, working in prisons where their cruelty found an outlet that was entirely condoned, even encouraged.
Things like this still occur all the time in parts of the world that haven’t caught up with us–places where women and children, and some men, are not legally entitled to the rights of human beings. We recoil in horror, but to those privileged few who live in these places it’s just a way of life.
I keep thinking of the scandal years ago in an ethnic market in Vancouver. A Chinese vendor was selling turtle meat. He’d removed the shells from the turtles and was taking slices off the animals while they were still alive. The poor turtles lived for days as they were sold, bit by bit, until finally the SPCA got wind of it a put a stop to the practice. The Chinese vendor had no idea there was anything wrong with what he was doing. He was honestly perplexed that people might be upset. It’s just a turtle. Just food.
That man wasn’t evil. His disregard for the turtle’s suffering was about perspective, upbringing, the things he was taught about the places humans and animals hold in the world, as much as it is about evil inborn.
MD
December 2
10:58 pm
I think it’s all environment.
A newborn baby is a clean slate. Sure, there may be tendencies toward temper and maybe chemical problems that hint at future troubles with depression, dependency, etc.
There may be physical stuff that impacts the mental. But I don’t believe anyone is *born* “evil”. Things happen along the way, in your upbringing, to turn a person into a sociopath.
It’s easy for us to look at the surface upbringing of someone like Jeffery Dahmer and conclude he had a normal childhood with nice parents. Ha! You NEVER know what goes on in someone else’s family. Not truly. Some families put on the best show ever, when it comes to their public faces, and some pretty awful dark secrets lie buried underneath. I don’t believe for an instant that Dahmer was born “that way” to do the things he did as an adult.
Somewhere along the line, something happened to that little boy Dahmer was. Something unspeakable.
Plenty of stories bear this out. I saw a documentary on Saddam Hussein’s childhood and it was crystal clear why he turned out the way he did.
We create our monsters. We can’t blame it on anyone but ourselves.
Anne Brighton
December 2
11:32 pm
I shudder to think that somewhere in this world, at this very moment someone is teaching their kids to torture and mutilate animals, telling them it is just their heritage at work so go at it. I know it happens but that still doesn’t make it right. As a thinking, rational human being you must know if someone slices off a piece of *you*, it will damned well hurt! I don’t buy the ‘I didn’t know anything was wrong with slicing off a few inches of live turtle flesh’ excuse. That bastard KNEW he was hurting that animal. He just didn’t give a rat’s arse. All he had to do was plead his culture.
As far as the military goes: isn’t it in Peru or somewhere in South America that each recruit class for an elite Green Beret-type unit take in a pet dog, love it, care for it and then on graduation day tie it spreadeagled to a clothesline then torture it to death in the most gruesome of ways? If you can’t do it, you get washed out. All that in the name of hardening the warrior so he will not hesitate to kill during a mission. That’s the sick kind of bastards you want defending you? God help you if they ever turn rogue!
AztecLady
December 3
12:11 am
Up there, Angelia Sparrow said,
and I completely agree.
Human nature, as much as we want to think differently, hasn’t changed all that much since we started walking upright. There is a terrible capability for cruelty and abuse in all of us, what stops us is the ability to empathize with others. To imagine ourselves in the skin of the other.
But first we have to accept the other as equal to us–as kirsten saell said, not too long ago black people in the US were not considered equal to white people, and therefore violence and abuse against them wasn’t considered a crime.
In many places in the world today, women and children are not considered fully human–either because of gender or because of the social/economic class to which they are born. The people who exploit them cannot empathize with them–to them, their victims are not people in the same way.
Does that make them evil? Yes, but in this case I would say it’s fostered by the culture and environment.
Now let’s think about the soldiers or prison guards who abuse the people they guard. Many, if not most, of these soldiers and guards may be people who, in the normal course of things, would have never even dreamed of doing anything like the abuse in Abu Graib. Yet, there they were.
The system encourages them to mistreat the prisoners–either because they are criminals or because they are terrorists or because they are whatever-evil-label-their-superiors-give-them. The relative isolation of the environment means that they egg each other on, to go further in the abuse of the power they hold over the prisoners.
Does that make them evil? Yes, and in this case again, I would say the environment plays a huge role.
But there are also people who are born without the usual controls; people who, no matter where or how they were raised, would go on to torturing and killing. As Shiloh said way up thread, there are people born with faulty wiring. True psychopaths are born without the ability to empathize with anyone–that is true evil.
Marianne McA
December 3
12:30 am
My cousin’s a paedophile – not, as far as I know, that he ever tried to sleep with a child – but he was imprisoned for having explicit photographs.
And there’s a family in our church whose son was investigated for the same thing.
Now, no-one knows what happens within a family, so they could both have been abused, but just knowing the families, it’s hard to believe.
I’ve wondered since if it’s an inborn thing – whether some people just have that sexual orientation. And if they have – must be difficult – it’s such an abhorrent thing that it’d be hard to even admit it, and to seek help. (And, if it is a hard-wired preference, hard to see what help you could be given. I’m not sure any amount of therapy could stop me being attracted to men.)
Makes me very uneasy about the argument you sometimes see: ‘It’s entirely natural to be gay, therefore it’s okay to be gay.’ I always think it gives a real hostage to fortune – if paedophilia was to be shown to be an innate sexual preference, we wouldn’t think that made it okay.
I’d rather argue that it’s okay to be gay, because it’s okay to be gay.
Angelia Sparrow
December 3
2:03 am
Shiloh, I disagree.
The reason I said men was because men do commit most of these crimes.
96% of rapes are committed by men
Of the 4% committed by women, the vast majority are statutory involving boys of 15-17 and women in their 20-30s.
Pedophiles are about 98% male, the vast majority of them heterosexual.
90.1% of murders committed in 2007 were by men.
The “but women do it too” is weak. They are 10% or less of the cases.
I still say *any* man. Not all men. Not every man. But any given man…the odds are likely that if he gets an excuse that will let him sleep at night, he’ll do anything. The Milgram Experiment proved that.
Think about this: Jamie Lee Jones was locked in a shipping container and gang raped by her Halliburton co-workers. She managed to call for help on a cell-phone, after convincing one of her guards she was calling her father. Halliburton’s response was to make sure she’d never find work again…and to ban all employees from carrying cell-phones.
K. Z. Snow
December 3
2:10 am
My SO and I have been debating this issue for years, specifically in relation to his daughter. We’ve come to the conclusion (and we live in the U.S.) that the plague of “character corruption,” for lack of a better term, is a combination of factors: cultural degeneration leading to bad parenting — yeah, I know, that sounds melodramatic . . . but may not be — and lack of consequences.
Over and over again, we’ve seen the “social services” system drop the ball on truly important issues and yet bend over backwards to cut young people way more slack than they deserve. Excuses for reprehensible behavior, along with convenient shortcuts for getting through life, are handed to them on silver platters. Irresponsible behavior, like refusing to use easily accessible birth control, or lazy behavior, like refusing to finish school, is rewarded. If kids aren’t taught the hard reality of actions and decisions having consequences, they’re inevitably going to turn into adults with precious little sense of purpose and even less conscience.
It makes sense. The more that people, regardless of age, get away with, the more they’ll try to get away with. It’s a sad fact of human nature. Soon they become users and abusers who shit down others’ throats without a stitch of compunction, because it somehow gets them what they want. Without consequences, life quickly becomes an exercise in entitlement. (And, OMG, haven’t we Americans seen ample proof of this among corporate CEO’s?)
Granted, sociopathic and psychopathic behaviors are a whole different ballgame, and likely a matter of nature as much as nurture. But I’ve witnessed firsthand how misguided touchy-feeliness can turn young people with potential into reckless and grabby little monsters who think they’re the center of the universe.
Sorry if I’ve offended anybody, but I think it’s time to get tough.
Larissa
December 3
2:32 am
“A year later, her eldest brother and a friend went to a local animal shelter and bludgeoned to death 10 cats and crippled another 20 just for the sheer hell of it. These same boys were later caught burying cats up to their necks in the dirt then running over them with the lawnmower.”
Okay, I tried to stay out of this. I really did. But this kind of thing makes me sick to the point that I’m going to have trouble sleeping for the rest of the week. If those kids had been given proper punishment/treatment after the FIRST incident, the second wouldn’t have happened. But what REALLY gets me?
People who blow off animal abuse because “they are just animals.” Or they blow off people like me who are animal lovers because we should be caring for people more than animals. Don’t people get that animal abuse is the first sign of what will turn into abuse of PEOPLE?
Anyone who can beat cats to death for fun can do the same to humans. Why doesn’t our society get that? Why do we not take action at the very first sign instead of saying, oh, well…they’re just animals. Or, “boys will be boys.”
People who get off on pain don’t differentiate between animal pain and human pain. And I do believe there’s a difference (in mentality ) between getting off on pain for fun (the cats) and just being culturally numb (the turtle, or the African tribe that roasts a pig alive.)
One takes pleasure in the act, the other is indifferent. Either way, it’s sick, but the latter might have a shot at being re-educated. Both need to stop.
And we really do need to recognize that people who laugh at pain, an animal’s or a human’s, have issues that can turn into something extremely horrible.
JulieLeto
December 3
3:00 am
Anyone who uses the “boys will be boys” excuse in this day and age is a moron. Right and wrong are not determined by gender. Animal torture in any form is a clear and irrefutable sign of psychopathic behavior–everyone knows it.
Even responsible hunters kill as humanely as possible. (Notice I said responsible hunters.) I’m not pro-hunting, but I accept this. However, there are just too many stupid people in this world. Ignorant, misguided and self-absorbed. All any of us can do is make sure our children or the children in our lives have a clear example for acting morally and ethically.
Telling them is okay, but showing them is key.
West
December 3
4:16 am
MD, I disagree with you. It can’t all be environment. It has to be some of both. A baby is not necessarily a clean slate. They can be born with any problem. Cerebral Palsy, Down Syndrome, Autism, etc. So if they can be born with damage to their bodies, why can’t they be born with damage to their souls? What about schizophrenics, like my uncle? That’s a problem with his wiring. Did my grandparents make him that way? Of course not.
My cousin has an evil son. There is something just wrong with the boy. Most people say he gets it from his father (he murdered his ex-girlfriend when he started dating my cousin). He absolutely was born this way. He attacks people, violently. He can’t be in public school, because in order to keep him from assulting anyone, he has to be so medidated that he’s not functional enough to learn. He attacks animals, other children, and adults, without discrimination. And he has done this since he was old enough to develope motor skills. This is nothing my cousin has done, unless you count the genetics theory, in which case she procreated with a murdering bastard. But this started to early, it’s obvious that it was not environmental. So what else could it be? He was born this way.
And what about people who grow up to break the cycle? If it were completely environmental, and personality and soul and hardwiring has nothing to do with it, how do you account for those who make a different path?
KristieJ
December 3
4:26 am
I’m of the belief that some people are born inherently evil. There’s just something lacking in them from birth. It may not come out in outwardly violent behaviour, but it is there.
GrowlyCub
December 3
6:38 am
I have a bit of a concern about the moral judgment ‘evil’ in this discussion of nature versus nurture, because if some people have something ‘lacking in them from birth’ that means that they are not responsible for their actions and so cannot be ‘evil’, since ‘evil’ implies deliberate purpose and malicious intent while being a fully functional human being, understanding right and wrong and relating to others in the socially acceptable manner. If their genetic makeup is faulty, that’s not their responsibility.
I believe that the vast majority of the ‘evil’ people are criminals of opportunity, lacking the proper ethical education to want to distinguish right from wrong. In those cases nurture aka parents, grandparents, social milieu, is the reason for their not conforming to society’s standards. Nurture in a way also explains how completely ‘normal’ individuals turn into parts of mobs and packs and commit unspeakable crimes against other human beings. When you ask them why they participated, they usually have no answer and are horrified and/or in denial that they did anything.
I also absolutely believe that there are people who are born with ‘faulty brain wiring’ aka DNA damage/mutations, who lack certain necessary pathways and brain chemicals to allow them to feel empathy, pain of others, and who also lack the basic connection to their own humanity and therefore cannot relate to other human beings.
This is were things get tricky for me.
If we look at ‘amoral’, ‘evil’ serial killers and apply the genetics explanation aka nature, then it becomes morally really iffy for us to convict them of their crimes, because a conviction implies that they could have made the choice to not kill/molest/mutilate/torture where we just determined that it was something in the genetic makeup of their brains that made it impossible for them to feel human and relate to other humans the way they ought to.
I really don’t want to go there, because that would in effect mean that there are no ‘evil’ people (as far as the nature side of things is concerned), but only people who didn’t get the right gene set, but in a way I cannot see, how we can not end up there eventually with our ever increasing knowledge how a T instead of an A or a C instead of a G in a specific place in our DNA helix can wreak complete and utter havoc on both physical and mental development.
In a way, our life was much easier when all we had to look at was that X person did not conform to the legal and moral standards of Y society and we removed them from society and potentially from the gene pool (jail, death penalty).
With the advance of genetic science, a lot of the erstwhile clearly black/white dichotomy with regards to crime has been blown to smithereens and we haven’t quite figured out where that puts us.
And can I just say how completely and utterly flabbergasted I am that they are charging an 8-year-old with murder.
Brains and with it moral judgment (and common sense) aren’t fully formed until the late teens, early twenties. There’s no way an 8 year old could truly understand right from wrong. Their brains aren’t developed enough for these complex intellectual concepts.
We live in a scary place and time, not just because an 8 year old would take a shotgun and kill two people, but also because there are people out there who honestly think it would be a good idea to try an 8-year old child as an adult for murder…
Shiloh Walker
December 3
12:53 pm
Unfortunately, Larissa, that’s not really true. If there’s something really wrong upstairs, treatment/punishment won’t necessarily work. I think counseling/meds/whatever will make a difference for some. But not all. I’ve worked with enough (not a lot, but still too many) kids who had something really messed up in their brains to know that treatment/punishment/anything/everything won’t always work.
Larissa
December 3
1:32 pm
“Unfortunately, Larissa, that’s not really true. If there’s something really wrong upstairs, treatment/punishment won’t necessarily work. I think counseling/meds/whatever will make a difference for some. But not all. I’ve worked with enough (not a lot, but still too many) kids who had something really messed up in their brains to know that treatment/punishment/anything/everything won’t always work.”
Well, I’m being pretty general with the “punishment/treatment” thing…because I don’t believe people like that should be out in society. They wouldn’t be abusing people or animals if they were locked up. I realize this attitude is extreme – but as the victim of a horrible crime from a repeat offender (who, by the way, is still out and about and no doubt abusing children,) I have pretty harsh views on things like this.
If my abuser had been locked up years before he got hold of me, well, he wouldn’t have gotten hold of me. He caused a lot of damage to a LOT of people.
I know there’s no easy answer for things like this — some people are all for severe punishment, but what happens when the person is out again and maybe worse than before? Others are for rehabilitation, but what if it doesn’t work…and I truly think there are some things that cannot be “cured.”
I think the best we can do is try to raise awareness for the issues we feel passionately about. It’s a scary world out there sometimes!
Anne Brighton
December 3
3:25 pm
There was one bright spot in the animal shelter attack. Dozens of animals were adopted by loving, caring people who were determined to help the cats. Some that weren’t even touched by the bats were badly traumatized from seeing and hearing the other animals slaughtered. I adopted two of those sweet little babies and one still runs and hides whenever strangers come into the house. He stays hidden for hours after they leave, until he feels safe again. Even then he’ll curl up in my lap trembling and making little mew sounds that will break your heart. We’ve taken to putting him in our bedroom when we have company so he won’t be afraid.
Now you tell me animals don’t have feelings and emotions. I’ve seen mama cats mourning their babies just as a human mother would and I swear my oldest cat laughs every time my husband farts. (There’s a lot of laughter in our house)
Shiloh Walker
December 3
4:20 pm
Okay…I see where you’re coming from, and THAT I can agree with.
Anon76
December 3
9:15 pm
Such a hard question, but in face of knowing a certain child, yes, I say evil can be born into you. I’d never thought it possible before that.
This kid is just…wow, and has been this way since he was a small child. There is, and always has been, this odd glint in his eyes. He’s a very bright kid, but in all the wrong ways.
We’ve pretty much banned his father from bringing him to our property, but when we know he is coming, we lock up everything like a fortress. And hubby and I each take turns at keeping him in sight at all times. Why? He has a violent streak and if he doesn’t get his way he could do just about anything. His list of destruction elsewhere is long and sordid.
He is twelve now, and we see a long jail sentence in his future, which, horrid to say but, we hope it happens before he commits murder or something as equally awful.
Anon76
December 3
9:24 pm
An added thought on the issue of animals not having feelings;
We’ve had a chipmunk living in our yard for the last couple of years and this past summer he/she attracted a mate. They’d scamper about and raid the birdfeeders and what not.
One day our long time chipmunk started making the “chipping” sound like crazy. A constant sound. We finally tracked it to a tree right beside our house (not a normal perch) and then we saw the reason for the chipping. The mate had been smooshed in the road. His/her mourning went on for a few more days. It was sad to hear.
West
December 4
1:31 am
GrowlyCub,
I disagree with part of what you are saying. Whether serial killers are born that way, or made that way doesn’t matter. It’s right to convict them, because one way or another, they need to be off the streets. It doesn’t matter if they were able to make a choice or not. Although, they *are* killing- they plan it, and they are attempting to hide it, which says they know enough to to know they are doing something that would cause them to be punished by law. Therefore, I say lock their asses up, just like any other person who murders (like my cousin’s husband, who although not mentally unstable, did kill his girlfriend). For the safety of society, they have to be stopped.
Persephone Green
December 4
6:55 am
Since we have the option of institutionalizing the mentally unstable and studying them in what are effectively hospital/jail hybrids, I would say yes, there *is* a difference between someone who has severe untreated schizophrenia and a serial killer or rapist who chooses to hide the evidence of his crimes — which not all of them do, by the way.
There are some crimes like paedophilia or cases of severe sociopathy and/or psychopathy where no amount of medication will make a person stable enough to be fit for general society. Sociopaths and paedophiles and serial rapists are all hardwired to be repeat offenders 95 percent of the time.
However, I’m extremely uncomfortable with calling people mentally ill from birth ‘evil.’
West
December 4
11:40 am
I said *serial killers* should be locked up. They attempt to hide their crimes, which shows intent. I never said everyone should be.
My uncle is a paraniod schizophrenic. He’s tried to kill me twice. But he’s not in prison, he’s in an institution, because of his mental illness, and that’s fine. He’s not evil. He genuinely thought I was a threat to him, and to his mind he was protecting himself (the voices in his head don’t like me very much when he stops taking his meds).
And I never called the mentally ill evil. But not everyone who does horrible things is mentally ill. In fact, look at rapists, murderers, and child abusers. Most of the time, they are not mentally ill. And yeah, like I freely admit, I’m a rape survivor, and I absolutely believe the man who raped me was evil. My parents are not mentally ill, but it didn’t stop them from beating the shit out of us growing up. It didn’t stop my dad from molesting my sister.
My cousin’s son is not mentally ill. He attacks people because he’s angry and he can. He’s attacked virtually everyone around him, including my counsin when she was pregnant, because he was angry about the new baby. He was trying to cause a miscarriage. And he has been this way since he would walk, so yeah, I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say he was born that way. But I never said that the mentally ill were born evil. There is a big difference.
Perhaps you should go back and read my first post again. I wasn’t arguing about whether people are evil or mentally ill, I was arguing about why they are the way they are- were they born this way or were they made this way. I stated very clearly that I believe there are cases of both, and in no way was it an attack on the mentally ill.
AztecLady
December 4
5:24 pm
Lack of empathy is an inborn trait not a mental illness–different things entirely. Yes, many mentally ill people are born with said illness, even in cases when the outbreak of the symptoms is in the mid-twenties or even later.
The main difference is that evil, psychopathic people know that they are harming others–they understand it intellectually–and not only they don’t care, but enjoy the idea of other people’s suffering, and more when it’s at their hands.
Making a connection from there to sexuality, simply because homosexuals are also born, bemuses me. Heterosexuals are also born, and as long as they don’t rape, abuse, torture, mutilate others, I have no problem with their inborn sexuality.