Thursday, May 29, 2008
Minds of killers
I'm interested in what happens in the minds of killers, especially those who you can't explain away as psychotics, like people who actively participate in genocides like the holocaust or Rwanda 1994. If we overlook those who merely participate out of fear of becoming victims themselves, it still leaves way too many people who one would never expect to be murderers, but yet takes machettes or guns to neighbors who they know are innocent. What is happening in their minds? What do they think? How do they experience it? Is it a rush of bloodlust? Does it feel like they are possessed? Do they feel taken over by mob emotion? Do they feel rage against another ethnic group? Do they not think at all? What?
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I'd say mob mentality can account for a lot of it. Many people in countries conquered by the Nazis were more than happy to round up their neighbours and friends and execute them. On their own steam, too, and not with a gun to their head. Remove the rule of law and you reveal man as the beast he is. (Worse, really, because other animals don't treat each other that way.)
Take a look at the work of Dr. Robert Hare, too, and you'll see that there are a lot of psychopaths among us. Few of them become killers so we don't recognize them for what they are.
"The hour shall produce the man" - maybe certain situations bring out those people.
How to explain the ringleaders? These aren't the guys who are just swept up by mod mentality, but coldly plan these things. How are they able to live with themselves?
-Brian H.
Man is no beast. Man is no saint, either. There's no human nature, only human behavior. There's vast potential for good and ill in every soul.
I'd wager part of it is that many of us don't deal with our dark sides. Then there are those who are psychologically wounded, and those are deeply fearful or angry, or those who hold irrational prejudices toward another group... I think it has little do with morality but rather these nasty little things we don't address when things are peaceful. The sane, good-hearted folk barely know how to deal with themselves. How, then, can we effectively deal with the ticking time bombs in our midst? How can we teach them self control?
Cynicism isn't baseless, but it provides no hope even though change is possible. Something to remember is that the largest group doesn't always have the biggest impact. History can't record the thoughts and feelings of the numerous individuals that live through such horrible times. Though such tragedies couldn't occur without their consent, there are numerous factors which would make these frenzies easier to understand if we lived them.
It's all in our heads. It's what we won't deal with and it's what we project onto others. We can only be misled into attacking others when we're convinced they are a threat to our wellness and happiness. The key thing is responsibility. We don't take responsibility for our own emotions, for our own wellness and happiness. It doesn't mean that conflict would come to an end if we did take responsibility, but you'd have fewer klan members and I doubt people would have been so willing to accept the notion that killing Jews would purify the gene pool.
Of course, there are also people who are fascinated with violence. They remind me of Alex, the main character from "A Clockwork Orange". The interesting thing about that book, at least the full version with the 21st chapter, is that we learn he's not really such a bad guy but, at least up to the end, he's not a very deep thinker. (An interesting note: if you study nadsat, the slang the author invented for the book, you'll notice it's impossible to express abstract thoughts without resorting to more conventional language. It reveals a lot about the people who speak it.) He did what he did entirely for cheap thrills. He was smart but he never planned ahead. He was consumed by a pure animalistic fascination with violence. Yet even this young man, apparently beyond redemption, eventually matured and realized that he couldn't keep living like that.
No, man is not a beast. Man is a child trapped in a body teeming with hormones and desires he doesn't understand. He is driven to madness and he blames the world, or he numbs himself and lets his baser instincts remove his reason from the equation. The solution, o my brothers, is to grow up. Face the shadow within, take responsibility and understand that no one is here to keep us well or make us happy, and that lamenting what has gone wrong isn't nearly as important as learning from it.
You must get tired of being wrong. Take your head out of your ass once in a while.
Hobbes was right.
And now a humorous take on psychopathic behavior: http://youtube.com/watch?v=fcbazH6aE2g
"You must get tired of being wrong. Take your head out of your ass once in a while."
Good to see you're living up to your name, Joe.
(Previous comment deleted since I didn't think to alter my display name.)
I thought being blunt might have an effect where reason failed. Obviously I was wrong. There's no point in my saying anything more about this.
Humans do awfully funny things when the situation is changed. That prison experiment at the college in California in the 60s or 70s, for example ... can't recall the name, there's a good Wikipedia article and all of the experiment's materials are available pretty reliably on the internet.
I'd recommend folks look into Jared Diamond, who convinces me that mostly we're simply hominids. So I take it all with that context.
I'd also recommend "Among the Thugs" by Buford -- it's the story of a man who successfully "infiltrates" the sub-culture of football (soccer) fanatics. The story is more one of how mob-behavior evolves, and how it causes you to think and act differently from what you might expect of yourself. He doesn't go into the international cartels of organized crime, or the people behind the deliberate mobs, very much. More, he tells his OWN personal story of slowly becoming convinced to personally rush against the police line and get battered with sticks as though it MATTERED to him to get there first.
Basically, I'd say that if in adequate circumstances of anarchy you are likely tu turn into a fierce, merciless killer, then you have it in you. Alcohol and anarchy merely lift one's inhibitions, sometimes personal, sometimes purely social ones. When you're free, you're free, period.
"Possessed by Satan"? "The Devil made me do it"? How convenient that you can blame it on the Boogey, I mean, the Devil!
Remember which animal is the Devil's very symbol? The billy-goat. As in, scapegoat...
Yo, anal-lyzers! When you shit, admit it, don't blame the Saint-Bernard for leaving the toilet seat up!
I realize this is being very un-PC and stating that people who do such things are basically savages (no matter of what country, color of ethny they are, "everybody does/did it" ain't no excuse but it's a fact). Well, the truth is stinks, but it's the truth, so I'll say it regardless. No go do a Pilates before you touch me with your filthy scarlet hands.
I've already lived a situation of total impunity and choice-making. "Very oddly", I made the decent choice, alienating myself several very friendly people in the process. But I can look at my face in the mirror any day, and smile thinking: "I like being you". I used my freedom to NOT MAKE myself guilty. And as a fringe benefit, I don't need to lie to myself about moi. My "room-mate" IS somebody I can live with.
Is that such a complicated principle to live by? I think not.
As for mob mentality, which undoubtedly exists in itself and is sometimes (often!) present in mass murders, I'll say only this: if you're willing to give up all human dignity out of fear of doing your own thinking, hiding in the cowardness of the mass, then you're the kind of person I'd be ashamed to be. It's too easy to say "It's everybody's fault, therefore it's nobody's fault".
I've stated this once before: lapidation is a most cowardly lynching, because no one stone kills, but it is all the stones coming together that kill. And knowingly entering, taking part, in that killing gesture, is by no means spinnable as "non-guilty of doing the deed".
Not that I'm necessarily casting stern judgement. I'm a very forgiving person, and with those alienated people I mentioned above, things have gotten so much better that you'd need to be Sherlock Holmes to suspect it was ever less relaxed.
But to myself, I have much less leniency. I consider that if I'm capable of rising to a higher level, then I have no excuses not to. Others may very well have such excuses. I know nobody's perfect, and my own belief system is based around a person who loved us with no limit, IN SPITE of knowing perfectly well how pathetic we usually are. Now, that's superhuman compassion right there.
When I think of how low one's mind must stoop to do such things as in Rwanda or WW2 Europe, honestly, I don't know how it makes me feel exactly. And I'd rather not try to find out. What would a witnessing angel think and feel? I know not.
Yet I do think that in self-defense of innocents, "right here and now", I'd probably be capable of killing killers, be they nazi or Hutu or taliban or whatever, to save innocents. The least bad of two choices in a no-win situation, act now and make philosophy later, everything in due time.
But mabe Somebody decided I would never find myself in such a situation. One can hope. Even legitimate and necessary killing taints the soul. Every testimony I've ever heard said the same: once you've taken a life, you are changed forever.
I noticed a very interesting detail in that Rwandan (Rwandese?) guy's testimony: they had no excuse, BUT they didn't just up and went to do it, "just like that". There were people coordinating the whole thing, telling them they should go kill "the Others", and who gave them arms and targets. There's even a whole probable conspiracy on the national level behing that horrible tragey.
Just pointing out that it wasn't a whole country suddenly struck with an inexplicable fit of dementia, a million people who one morning woke up and said, "hey, I think I'll go slice & dice my neighbors today". Somebody very, very guilty encouraged them into letting out their murdering potential, somebody planned and initiated the "human stampede". And an international court of justice for those string-pullers is vastly justified at any rate.
Eric said...
"Man is no beast. Man is no saint, either. There's no human nature, only human behavior. There's vast potential for good and ill in every soul."
That's because, by the very nature of our unique minds, we have unique awareness, and the freedom and responsibility which come with it. The greater the freedom, the graver the possible mistakes when misusing it.
It's amazing, fantastic, when you think about it: we are the only known being that can become at will, either an angel, or a demon. Only we possess such an incredible power on ourselves.
"The key thing is responsibility. We don't take responsibility for our own emotions, for our own wellness and happiness."
And that's mere cowardice. Fear of looking at and knowing one's self.
Some get drunk to forget. Others create a diversion by blaming/hating others.
"What are you doing, the Little Prince asked the Drunk? -I'm drinking, the Drunk said (and he drank another glass). -Why do you drink? -To forget. -To forget what? -My shame. -What are you ashamed of, the Little Prince asked? -I am ashamed, the Drunk said, of being a drunk."
I was a kid when I read that book, and already I knew it was very deep.
..."the notion that killing Jews would purify the gene pool."
Blood may be thicker than water (whatever THAT means!), but how can you purify a pool by spilling blood in it?
):-P
Joe,
Sometimes I have a very hard time knowing when you're being serious. Very hard, Dick.
[Please note the very clever pun. I don't make these for nothing, you know. It takes work, they're meant to be appreciated by connoissors.]
Final Identity said...
"Humans do awfully funny things when the situation is changed."
Well, if picking glass shards from underneath your fingernails is your idea of fun, that is...
"That prison experiment at the college in California in the 60s or 70s"...
It's been mentioned before, either on this blog or mine, I forget. At any rate, I believe there was an internet link in the comments.
"mostly we're simply hominids"
"I beg to differ, my good Tarzan."
We are, sure. But we're much more. For better and for worse, there is something in us which is far beyond ordinary primates, and beyond many of our more simple-minded ancestor species.
Otherwise, you hominid wouldn't be capable of making such a statement! The very fact that you say it disproves it. (Okay, time now to get down from my high horse and acknowledge that you used the nuance word "mostly". ;-)
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