Reply to Topic II
madmaggie has been posting discussion topics of late. Five pages later, here's my contribution:
As a society, where do we draw the lines of what is considered moral depravity? Should we draw the line on lesser offenses, or remain shocked when truly horrible things are done?
I’ve been giving this a lot of thought. Probably, too much thought. But that’s why it’s taken me so long to respond. I’ve deliberately not read anyone else’s response yet, because I do not wish for my answers to be effected by those of others. So, if anything I write repeats what anyone else has already written, just consider it “What they said.”
This is difficult to answer, because common sense leans toward stopping things before they get truly bad-the problem with that being, at that points, no one has yet done anything truly horrible, and so it makes a hard argument.
Let’s take graffiti for example (excluding gang-tagging, since this is part of a bigger, darker problem). This is, on the face of it, one of the most harmless crimes we have. So they got spray paint on a wall-nothing a bottle of paint thinner won’t fix, and no one was harmed, so why make a fuss? Here’s the thing: Graffiti, and all vandalism, is messing up someone else’s property. Lord knows, if you want to use spray paint to recreate a Monet on the side of your house, the homeowner’s association (bastards!) may have something to say about it, but no real crime was committed. But, paint that Monet on someone else’s house without their permission, and it becomes vandalism. Beautiful vandalism, but still a crime.
Again, you may say, fine, they messed up someone’s stuff, big deal! But here’s where it becomes offensive enough to become a crime. When you vandalize someone else’s property, you are essentially disrespecting that person’s rights to their own land/ house/ wall/ whatever. Although graffiti is generally no huge deal, it reveals a potentially dangerous mindset in the perpetrator. From this mindset, once you can mess with someone else’s things, it’s no large step to simply take them as your own. Graffiti becomes theft. And once people can steal things with impunity, there are certain types who will go farther, continually pushing until they are finally punished or killed.
I remember in college there was a case of some students at the University next door who were found to have a nasty habit of torturing and roasting small kittens. This is, in itself, horrifying and disturbing, and you’d think the crap would have hit the fan. But it didn’t-the boys got a slap on the wrist, because technically, they hadn’t harmed any person. But once doesn’t need to be a cat lover to see the error in this thought. Everyone who was horrified at the nothing-punishment had the same thought-it’s not too far from torturing kittens to death to moving on to other things physically weaker than yourself, like human children, or women, or the handicapped, or the sick, or . . .you get the idea.
Very few killers wake up one day, suddenly psychotic. Jeffery Dahmer didn’t go to bed a normal, functioning human and wake up with an overwhelming hankering for human flesh. There’s a build up, always starting with small, innocuous things. Then bigger things that people find disturbing, but don’t want to judge. Greater and greater, and everyone around still in denial, until bam! The kids at Virginia Tech see one of their classmates crack and start killing their friends.
But not all people who perpetrate the thoroughly depraved are psychotic in the sense that most of us think the term. Most members of the SS were probably normal, regular, maybe a little rich, guys who ended up in a very bad crowd. The thing is that evil, and acts thereof, are not the exclusive realm of the lunatics. Rather, the potential exists in every person, and the social environment has a lot to do with what is brought out.
For instance, it’s a sad fact that, at the current time, the Religion of Islam has a tendency to produce a lot of really bad actions. This is not to say that at other times, other beliefs systems have not played this role, or that this religion always will. Just, at the moment, pretty much every area of conflict in the world, most instances of terrorism, and all suicide bombings, are perpetrated by people shouting “Allahu Ackbar!” What this implies, then, is that there is something in current “Islamic culture” that seems to encourage this worst aspect of humanity, from suicide bombings, to rape rooms, to debating whether homosexuals should be hanged, stoned, or thrown from the top of a tall roof.
[Seriously, if you don’t find those last two utterly horrifying and depraved, there’s no hope for you.]
This might lend one to the belief that morality (and the line of depravity) is relative to one’s culture and society. After all, infanticide was considered a holy act by the devotees of Moloch, the same with a lot of ritual murder across the globe. But, as civilization grew and progressed, these behaviors were seen as anti-civilization, and so were denied. In fact, the spread of Christianity can take a lot of credit for this, Christianity’s other sins aside. Wiccans might protest about the “Burning Times”, but people were being burned for religious reasons in Europe long before the first missionaries (And besides, witches were hung, not burned. Burning was used for “heretics”, like St. Joan of Arc, or Jacques DeMolay). That such occurrences are noted with dismay is a product of Judeo-Christian philosophy, and the civilization built upon these ideals. [I will grant that this philosophy was heavily influenced by Greek Philosophy and Roman Lawà But no one got rid of the gladiatorial “games” permanently until the Christians came along.]
Anyway, back to topic. Functional civilizations generally to tend to pick out the same behaviors as morally wrong-think the last seven of the Ten Commandments. But, any society that survives long enough realizes, as I stated above, that murderers don’t just wake up one day and decide to go murder some people, that thieves don’t just suddenly decide to become Marxists and forcefully redistribute the wealth of others. There are behaviors that lead to this, so most societies tend to look with disfavor upon those behaviors.
When such things as MadMaggie highlights happens, it is usually because those lesser standards were not enforced (yes, there are exceptions. I’m talking generalities). No, boys should not be tossed in jail for hitting their sister-but they should be spanked, or grounded, or sent to their room with no dessert, because one of the hallmarks of a civilized human male is that violence toward women is abhorrent to them-they used to call this “being a gentleman.” [This is why I have some unease with the prospect of co-ed wresting and boxing in schools, because it seems to teach boys that it’s okay to hit girls, to punch them and throw them to the ground.] But if a boy is never punished for hitting his sister, then the message is “Hey, go ahead and hit the women you love, it’s okay.” And so then maybe they hit their girlfriend, their wife, their daughters. . . And if she won’t give you sex when you’re horny, then just take it from her. . . or your daughter. . .or the neighbors wife or daughter. . .
So yes, we should draw a line at lesser offences, because not doing so allows a greater chance for the truly horrible to happen.
As for being shocked when something like this happens. . . I cannot say, anymore, that I am shocked by such things. Horrified, disgusted, yes, but not shocked-because I know that this vicious, disgusting potential resides within me as well. We all have the potential to do this, but part of being a human is keeping a tight rein on those more destructive impulses, channeling aggression toward creative, positive ends like chopping wood for winter fires, rocking out with a garage band, or kneading dough for bread. Unfortunately, too many children these days are not taught how to channel their aggression-to one extreme, children are given a free rein (sadly, often by the lack of a father figure in their lives) or to the other extreme, their aggression is so repressed by peacenik parents that they are forced to deny their aggression even exists, until they end up like a raving, paranoid nutcase Cindy Sheehan or Michael Moore. Or the guy who just shot an Airman point blank out side his (the Airman’s) home because he wanted to kill a member of the US Military (Media reports say that the motive is unknown, or that the guy was simply angry at the government, but emails from the family of the airman to several prominent blogs reveal that he was very clear about wanting to kill a member of the Armed Forces). Repressing our native violence is just as bad as encouraging it-the ideal is a balance, of channeling it toward healthy ends, to protect and nurture one’s self, one’s loved ones, and one’s society. Police and Military are (again, with a few exceptions) the best at this. Usually, they are the more naturally aggressive members of society but, instead of using that aggression and strength to dominate others, they use it to protect others-they are the sheep dogs of the flock.
I must say, there was one passage in the third post on this topic by MadMaggie that really did get to me:
"So a lady was raped. Big deal," resident Paticiea Matlock said with disgust. "There's too much other crime happening here."
Here, in many ways, is the essence of what is so wrong here. When you can shrug and say “Big deal,” about a woman being raped, there is seriously something wrong with both you and your environment. This attitude allows such crimes to happen. [What crime is worse than rape? It used to be called “The Fate Worse Than Death.” Honestly, if I had a choice, I’d rather be murdered.] Part of the problem is that too many people are relying on the police to save them-but the police can only be counted on to come gather the evidence. Police can only be effective in completely preventing crime in a police state, which would ruffle other feathers-look at Rudy Giuliani. That man cleaned up New York City by being very harsh and prosecuting even the most minor offenses. It worked, New York City is now a very safe city compared to most others-but you hear a lot of bitching and whining about how harsh he was. Well, you wanted crime to go down, didn’t you? And you wanted the government to “do something about it”, didn’t you?
But, there is another solution. You cannot rely on the government for it-the government can only bring tyranny to the situation, which is why the founding fathers kept it so restricted. If not the government, then who?
You.
Crimes like this happen because ultimately, people let them happen. Cheung could have been stopped in his rampage far earlier if even one or two people had determined that their friends’ lives were more important that their own, and had tried to stop him. No one did-everyone hid, and lay down just like sitting ducks, and so the deaths mounted. Gangs run neighborhoods because the people of the neighborhoods would rather live in fear than confront them. When you shrug at rape, then you are allowing it. How many people live in Dunbar Hills? And how many people are in those gangs?
Yes, it’s hard, it’s difficult, and you’ll probably get hurt and maybe even killed. But (and I apologize for lack of linkage, but I can’t remember where I read this a couple years ago), people have banded together and driven gangs out of their neighborhoods. Things like this happen because they are allowed to, because when things started to go downhill, no one rooted out the source and crushed it then. But too many people have bought into the myth that the government will provide all things. This is the problem with welfare as anything other than a safety net. When people come to rely on the government for welfare, they come to rely on the government for everything else. This is why all those people were stranded in New Orleans-because they had become dependant on the government to care for them, and were unwilling to care for themselves or each other. They cannot imagine doing something for themselves.
Contrast the aftermath of Katrina to something that happened only a few months later in Colorado: A huge blizzard (called by meteorologists, Katrina-on-Ice) blew through Colorado Springs, burying roads and houses in 10+ feet of snow, knocking out power, and threatening the lives of all. But did the residents wait for the government? No-all those with four wheel drives mounted plows on their trucks and went in search of every house and homestead, going door to door in subfreezing temperatures to check that people were okay, that they were able to keep warm, that they had food and water-and if a person answered no to any of this, those who had this all opened up their homes, or organized emergency shelters, for strangers and neighbors alike. There people relied on themselves to take care of each other.
By way of another comparison, most summers, when a heat wave strikes a city, reminders go out over the airwaves to check on your neighbors, especially the elderly who may not have air conditioning-to make sure they’re alright and will continue to be until the weather cools. During the worst heat waves in my memory, places like Chicago have lost maybe 10-15 people, at the very worst. However, in the welfare dependant state of France, 4,000 people died in one summer due to heat, because no one checked up on them. And, the past couple of years, France has also had a problem of massive riots and crime waves that the government is either unable, or unwilling, to control-think Dunbar Hills, only entire cities.
We should draw the line some place before true horror (before we become hardened to it), and moreover, it should be us who draws the line. Abuse of women and children is unacceptable. Vandalism is unacceptable. Stealing is unacceptable. Sitting on your ass watching soaps eating bon-bons off of my tax payer money is unacceptable when you are perfectly capable of working, and there are still help-wanted ads in the local free paper. Especially not when there are others who are physically or psychologically unable to do that work who need the aid more than you-then, you are stealing from them, in addition to stealing from me. Working, even flipping burgers, and earning your paycheck is a hell of a lot more dignified than living on the government dole. Those who earn their income are statistically far, far less likely to commit crime-this is why crime rates dropped after the mid-‘90’s Welfare Reform Act. This is because when you’re earning your way, you have more self-respect, and more invested in your community. So, we need to go back to the society of self-control, self-respect (not the same as self-esteem), and self-reliance, and we need to realize that these are the things that keep the Id locked in the box at the back of our psyches.
Depravity will still happen: so long as humans are human, we’ll have the same potential to make saints or psychos. But we need to remember that just as few saints live in a vacuum, so too with the truly depraved. It is our responsibility as members of a civilization to help shoulder the burden of preventing such things. The way we do this is as varied as we are but, as the saying goes, if you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem. We must not turn a blind eye to the potential for evil either in ourselves or others, because this is how evil is allowed to flourish, and perpetrate the happenings at Dunbar Hills.