HELLOOOO PEOPLE!!! Timeout...
LadyZ was not asking for another pro-death/anti-death debate, if I'm not mistaken. If you would like to have another of those, maybe someone could start a new thread?
I think what she was asking is how we all think people end up like this. It's perfectly possible to state how you think this guy became that way without having to make comments about whether you believe in capital punishment, isn't it? That horse is so dead it's not even funny anymore.
Anyway, ON TOPIC. I really don't know Wendy... Since I personally cannot begin to fathom how another human being like me can be so completely perverted, cruel and devoid of morality, I usually feel that there is probably something wrong with them mentally. I mean, if they had normal faculties of thought, choice, etc... well, I cannot believe that a normal person like me could choose to enjoy hurting and killing people. Simply because I could never do that either. So I think they have a big mental deficiency - for example psychopaths have been shown to miss a sense of ethics: they have no sense of what is "right" and "wrong". Some 'normal' people may WANT to act on purely egoistical impulses, but have been conditioned not to. And most others realise that always choosing the egoistical option is not in fact the most beneficial to themselves. We work better as a society if we cooperate at least to some extent.
Plus, thankfully, most people simply don't have it in them to lust for blood and enjoy slaughter... although I have my doubts with a few... [img]graemlins/idontagreeatall.gif[/img]
Err what I'm saying is, most of us simply couldn't enjoy what this psycho enjoyed because we're not "built" for that mentally. So again, there must be something in their brains that's different in ours. I don't know if that can be caused in pregnancy by things like alcohol, but I'm sure it's possible. A bad childhood is a much lamer excuse IMO - it's undeniable that if you have a truly horrible time as a child, it will have a huge impact on your adult life, but I doubt it makes you a psychopath. I doubt it's something that cannot be fought and overcome. IMO, if you become a serial killer, there was already something wrong with you to begin with. I have nothing but sympathy for someone who's had a lousy childhood, but if they start killing people, I have none.
And I realise this poses a big problem. Look, we don't tell a schizophrenic person to "snap out of it" and stop being so paranoid. We know they cannot help being that way and we know they need medication. Same thing with someone who has Down's syndrome. We know it's a mental disorder that cannot be helped. But if it's true that psychopathic killers are that way because of a mental disorder, then we would have to accept it's not something they could change or overcome. And that would entail accepting that they were not completely responsible for what they did. However, I think that in the light of the nature of their mental disorder, it *would* be perfectly acceptable to lock them away for the rest of their lives. They may not be able to help how they are (maybe, like I said, if the mother took drugs during pregnancy something went wrong in the child's brain which triggered this) but considering how dangerous their problem is to other human beings, I'd say that for the greater good, and because most of our countries have laws to keep killers out of society, no matter what kind of killers, they should be locked up anyway.
[ 07-07-2003, 04:51 AM: Message edited by: Melusine ]