How Are Human Monsters Made?

[Ladyzekke]

I was looking for a totally different news article earlier, and just came across this article, felt like sharing it

What do you do with a guy like this? Is there some way to that he can be cured from his evil? Turned around so to speak. Or is he just a lost cause.

How do you think people become monsters like this guy? Abusive childhood? Spoiled and not given enough attention, so grows up with feelings of doubt and unworthiness? Or just plain born evil, would be evil no matter what his/her upbringings were?

PS-This is just one guy used as an example for the topic. Obviously, and unfortunately, there are many many other examples that are much worse.

http://denver.rockymountainnews.com/hanify/index.shtml

LZ this is a classic example of wasted effort. One bullet, between the eyes, and allow society to move along without this human waste of skin. The only good that could come from him is either as fertilizer or possibly as an organ donor.

[antryg]

I really resent lawyers using such a defense. So many people suffer from the same problems/combination of problems and do not act out in such a horrible manner. The abrogation of personal responsibility should not be allowed. It is so tempting to place the blame on such factors.

Our society seems to reject such concepts as evil or that a person would willingly embrace it. I think that this is just such a case. He is evil and finds that acceptable and normal. We need to protect ourselves from such normalcy.

[Faceman]

on reply to MagiK's post

I care to disagree.
Although I highly doubt that this guy can be brought to reason there may still be a passive possibility for him to serve a good purpose.
He should be kept locked tight for life - this is clear because he poses a threat to society and human life.
Yet he shouldn't be killed because it is not in man's place to judge over life.
For all we know he is a sick psycho - if/as we can't cure him we have to cage him for our own safety but you don't kill somebody just because you had to give up on the cure.

[ 07-06-2003, 10:41 PM: Message edited by: Faceman ]

[khazadman]

You couldn't be more wrong Faceman. I don't buy any of that nonsense about not judging someone. This guy deserves to die. And the more unpleasant the death the better. I'm a firm believer in creative executions.

[Paladin2000]

Gone are the days where a murderer is send to the gas chamber. Nowadays it is all about insanity and bla bla bla... this is plain sick.

Like it or not, I think the best method to handle a murderer (excludes self-defense) is to get the guy to taste his own medicine. Save the jail space for "lighter" criminals.

[Faceman]

What would you accomplish in killing him?
It's clear that he should be out of the picture but that can be done with a real life sentence too.
What other good would his killing do?
Give me one reason other than "satisfaction" what good would be accomplished by executing him.

[Melusine]

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 ]

[B_part]

The man is simply sick: there are brain diseases which don't allow to correctly use plurals, conjugate verbs or understand written words so I guess there are ilnesses which delete the innate need for social interactions typical of our species. IMO this is one of those cases.
It's not his fault, one cannot choose to be born healthy. Oviously he should be kept forever locked up, because he's a threat to other human beings.


But this sad case is not a true case of "Human Monster". Human monsters are more common and have lived (and perhaps still live) among us: I am talking about Nazis and germans who willingly killed millions out of simple racial hate. And they did that in cold blood, calculating and regulating everything. I am talking about those who in the USSR imprisoned, tortured and killed entire families out of a simple suspect. The same things happened and happen in Iraq, Iran, China, Africa, Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and almost everywhere.

The question is, are these monsters as ill as the one in the article, are they sadistic loonies and antisocial paranoics?
The answer is scary: NO, most definitely not. Just as Eichmann was a small bureaucrat trying to fulfill his epuration quotas, the perpetrators of the greatest crimes in history were usually normal people with a purpose to reach no matter the cost.

[Faceman]

Human life is an issue of balance between emotion/instinct and ratio/sensibility. There are people who abort or lose (due to an illness) their ratio and therefore become similar to predators. Even more sad is when a human chooses or is driven to abandon his instincts and act on a pseudo-logical ratio neglecting the value of human life like the common Nazi-citizen did.