I was just trying to be specific. Sorry if I came off as being pretentious. I'm not defending the status quo at all. I'm saying that just because there has been a change in attitude we should not just expect things to get instantly better. This whole debate started when I questioned the type of sentence I find pretty meaningless, to the effect of '*insert here* should not happen in this day and age, we should know better!' maybe we should, I don't think our evolution has really prepared us for the amazingly quick advance of society that we call civilization, and that there will for a long time coming still be problems with our more primitive past. I'm optimistic humanity can overcome these primal needs, fears and wants (like for revenge), but I strongly reject the implication that it can happen in a short period of time. Think about how long life has been on the planet, compared to how long humanity has been around, and then how long human civilization has been around. We are not that old of a species by any stretch of the imagination. That's why I said humanity is still a young, poorly evolved race of creatures - to quote Christopher Hitchens again - 'our prefrontal lopes are too small, and our adrenaline glands are too big, and our thumb/finger opposition isn’t all it might be; and we are afraid of the dark, and afraid to die'.
Not sure how we're "poorly evolved." If we were poorly evolved, wouldn't we have died out? We are not on a pedestal but we are different. And accepting our limitations? What exactly are our limitations? I wasn't aware I had any; ergo, you must be lying.
I see your point regarding realistic expectations for progress. I suppose we know we live max 90 years on average and hope to see change while we're still around. That said, It doesn't mean it won't happen some day.
Poorly evolved - well. Maybe I'm being a bit nasty about our genus. But accepting our limitations I feel is important. And our limitations as a species are many: stupidity, ignorance, arrogance, aggression, desire for vengeance, lack of foresight, lack of empathy, lack of judgement, lack of consideration for others. The list is endless. Please note, I'm not talking about anyone, but a general view of humanity as we can see from history.
You need to balance the negatives with some positives. Maybe you don't see them, but what about: intelligence, humility, peace-loving, ability to forgive, empathy, foresight, consideration for others - as you say, the list is endless. Maybe you're not mixing with the right people!
So we have reprobates and miscreants amongst our ranks? Color me shocked. Perhaps I'm just an incurable optimist but I see nothing wrong with our species. We are what we are and I feel no shame for what failings we may have. I've always been more an individualist than a collectivist anyways and I have my own struggles, independent of whatever brimstone-tinged vitriol pessimists might brew up regarding humanity as a whole. Where they see ignorance, arrogance, aggression and all those lovely polysyllabic descriptors, I see the lives and loves and lucky moments that have occurred even in the scant few years I've been alive. It's all a matter of perspective, my dear Watson
I guess it is. I don't see myself as a pessimist. But hell, I don't think most people would want to think so.
that's not true. some people feel better with revenge. that's not nothing. dismissing how some people feel just because that's not how you (and people like you) feel is arrogant and presumptuous. many criminals are psychopaths and thrive on the gullibility of people who insist that "everyone's good at heart." these people seem nice and normal and can even be charming, and the only reason they didn't caught right away is because they seemed nice, normal, and even charming. among the most notorious psychopaths is jeffrey dahmer. since i've read extensively on his story, let me tell you a bit about it. jeffrey dahmer had been fascinated with dead things since he was four, and as a preteen/teen his hobby involved collecting dead animals and dissecting them. he was shy and withdrawn, but at the age of eighteen he managed to get a boy he had a crush on to come over and watch some sort of porn with him. the boy had a girlfriend and had to see her later that day, but dahmer didn't want him to go and killed him on the spur of the moment. he buried the body in the backyard, and for some reason or other no one ever found out about this until he was caught. ten years later, as a twenty-eight-year-old man better-acquainted with societal rules, he began visiting gay bars and luring in his victims to his apartment, where he would dismember them, kept the skull as a trophy, and ate some of their body parts. the first person he killed was white, but then he began switching to black people, presumably because they wouldn't be missed and it made him less likely to get caught (it worked--the police were more focused on finding missing white people). in the midst of his killing spree, he made the mistake of drugging a thirteen-year-old boy and having anal sex with him. the boy came home so disoriented that his parents had to take him to the emergency room and the police quickly arrested him. it is said that he was so charming during the trial and seemed so repentant that he got off fairly easily--he was on probation for five years, and he was even released early from the work camp he was assigned to. yet less than one year after he was released, he invited a fourteen-year-old boy (by mere coincident the younger brother of the boy who'd gotten him registered as a sex offender in the first place) to his place, drugged him, and anal-raped him. (he also drilled holes into the boy's head and killed him, but that's not relevant to the point of the story: psychopaths LIE and are very good at it.) despite a long list of known victims and the nauseating things he did to them, dahmer didn't get the ax. he was sentenced to life imprisonment, where he claimed to be a born-again christian, blamed atheism for everything he did, and became a model citizen. if he weren't killed by a fellow inmate, i wouldn't be surprised if he'd actually be released and start killing again, at which point we would all feel pretty ****ing stupid. psychologists have tried to figure out the reason someone became "evil" and it's usually the mother who gets the blame, but if someone has been fascinated by dead things since he's four, is it really? just like i firmly believe that a small percentage of people are "born gay," i firmly believe that a small percentage of people are "born that way." we don't want to get rid of people like this when they're only little kids who may still change, but if they're adults (as in age 25 or older), they will never change and there's just no practical reason to keep them around. evolutionary psychology is an attempt to explain human behavior using evolution as the reason for everything. it's accurate on some level and i do think there's an evolutionary reason we eat, sleep, and have sex, but other behaviors are simply products of human interactions that are rather arbitrary. evolutionary psychology is most commonly used to explain why males and females behave differently, and personally i was never really impressed with it. maybe it's because i didn't grow up in a "western" society where the expectations from men and women are a bit different, but every time i read one of those male/female things, i remember always thinking, "wait a minute, that's not how we do it there." the only time i will accept evolution-related reasons for human behavior is when they're actually universal and not true only in certain types of societies. of course, globalization will eventually turn this into a useless criterion. edit: oh, er, lots of grammatical errors and misuse of words here. i'd fix 'em, but i don't care enough to.
poptarts "that's not true. some people feel better with revenge. that's not nothing. dismissing how some people feel just because you say so is arrogant and presumptuous" The fact that some people feel better with revenge doesn't make it right. Some people might feel better taking a rapist and slowly cutting his penis into one-inch sections. It doesn't mean that a civilized society should allow them to do just that. We have a judicial system that exists partly to ensure that criminals receive a suitable punishment. The day we give that up and allow victims to decide what we do with criminals will be a very sad, dangerous and retrograde day.
That's just not true. Psychoanalysis states that behavior is based on the unconscious impulses; and that's been a popular theorem since the early 20th century. Again, not true. Evolutionary psychology explains a lot more than that; like why we fear (at least on some level) things that are new and different, and partly why capital punishment was thought up in the first place, and why it has been found in cultures as far away from each other as medieval England and medieval Japan. Well, I'm from the UK, I never thought you could get more 'western' than European culture, and America.
@poptarts I take issue with you saying that a 'small percentage' of people are born gay. The accepted consensus is that the vast majority, if not all, are born gay. As for what 'some people' would like to do to someone they subjectively believe to be a heinous criminal, that's incredibly short sighted. What if 'some people' think Bernie Madhoff should have been tortured and killed for defrauding billions of dollars from people? You could argue that he caused a lot more pain to a wider group of people than a murderer who kills one person? What if 'some people' think petty thieves are the scourge on society and that if you catch one on your property, you have a right to blow them into little pieces with a shotgun? As for the value of 'some people' feeling better that they have exacted revenge on a hated person... I refer you back to my post in which academic studied showed that the people who carried out revenge felt worse than those who hadn't. Enshrining individual rights is the only way to set a universal standard for everyone, that trumps any subjective opinion any individual or group might have about how someone else ought to be treated. Universal human rights, although always framed as being based on individuality, are actually the most utilitarian of all principles. They are universal - for all. The is simply the bottom line. It's not presumptious or arrogant. I don't want to come across as a snob but it is pretty much unanimously accepted among academic circles that this is the case.
Whose consensus? I've never once heard anyone say that before now. And I for one can refute that all people are born gay, since I consider men in general to be more than a little repulsive... Not really relevant.
I would write to a death row inmate to learn more about his/her psychology. For example, Ted Bundy was interviewed on a radio show before his execution and he revealed an important influence on his killings: pornography. His addiction led to de-sensitization of anything mild, sending him into a spiral searching for more and more extreme highs. Eventually, just pornography wasn't enough, and he had to find the means for satisfaction himself. To ignore somebody who's brain has been so horribly twisted means ignoring the factors that got them there.
Exactly - whose consensus decided that I was born gay? And what about my husband and my three kids. Were they born gay - oh my God! What about my mother? And I swear my next door neighbour's got the the hots for me. I've seen it in her eyes when they meet mine over the hedge as we're pegging out our smalls.
I take issue with you misinterpreting his words. He meant that a small percentage of the population is born gay, not that a small population of gays are born gay. So eager to find issue with others, eh?
This 'gay' issue is rather a battleground, and I'm not just talking about this thread: Check this out everyone. http://borngay.procon.org/view.answers.php?questionID=001335 I'm quoting this because it was very well put, and that it might be ignored.
Lol. I outdid myself there. Not only did I misinterpret him (albeit accidentally, obviously), I misrepresented myself. Quite amused that someone thought I was serious rather than making a mistake. What I meant was "a vast majority, if not all, of people who are gay, are born that way"
Emma, did all those years of Law School teach you nothing? Make sure that your statements are watertight and immune to any potential ambiguity, girl!
If I knew the person in question awaiting his or her death sentence, and if I didn't know the person but I believed he or she was innocent, yes I would write them. Excluding both the above mentioned reasons, I would feel inclined to write a random stranger I think, but only if they were for a "boring crime" like w176 mentioned. If I did write a serial killer for some strange reason it would not be to get inside their head though. I'm not going for psychology therefore I would not like to understand why they did what they did and I would not want to learn their sick motivations for doing vile things.
Your reason for wanting to write may not agree with his. If a webpage has been set up for "compassion" he may not want any more of his past printed on paper. Remember also that in all evil dwells goodness and he may be trying to dive within himself to find that in an attempt of redemption. He also may not have been "born" evil. If you really want to know how a serial killer's mind works, go visit one. (Remember Clarice?) My bet is you will not able to understand it as you will be trying to make sense out of something that is foreign to you. Or, go to the social section of your nearby bookstore and read some non-fiction. If you can actually get through it, you may change your mind about writing to him.
Yes, it was a source of personal pain, but at the same time, I think that capital punishment could quite possibly reduce the number of murderers out there. Maybe they would think that if they do go out an murder a few people, there is a chance that instead of getting a slap on the wrist and getting a free place to live and a free feed and education, they may very well be killed themselves. Isn't it good to give incentive NOT to commit sins or crimes? I just feel that if someone is going to do the crime, they should be punished for the crime, not be rewarded. Yes, releasing the criminal may at some point benefit society, but then at the same time, are we just giving them the opportunity to do it again? Joe Blog is released after 30 years from his crime of brutally murdering 25 women and children for sheer fun, he works at a volunteer shelter for the less fortunate who can't feed themselves due to the way the economy has gone, without this shelter, their children will surely die through malnutrition. So Joe Blog works there for 6 years without any offenses. He has become a model citizen and paid his dues. But then 2 years later, Joe Blog goes for a walk in the park and sees a single mum with her disabled child and there is no one around for miles. Joe Blog contemplates the scenario, and thinks hard, and decides, "NO, I'll leave them be." But then continues to go back to the park for the next year stalking this woman and her child who harm no one. After that year, he kidnaps them, takes them to a remote area and brutally tortures them both. Where's the justice in that? Also, some people upon release go out and hunt down the people who gave evidence against them and make their lives a living hell. I just feel that there needs to be harsher punishment for people who commit crimes. The legal system is flawed. In today's society, there are so many criminals getting away with the crimes they have committed and more needs to be done about that. The world we live in is filled with so many wrong doings, there are more and more and more serial killings, rapists, pedophiles, thieves, etc. When will people wake up and see that something needs to be done? We should be more concerned about protecting ourselves, than these criminals. Criminals 'choose' to break the law, so they also 'choose' to accept that they are going to be punished for their crime. It is THEIR choice to be punished and they should be. They make their own decisions, we don't tell them we want to be raped and killed and robbed and stalked, we want to live long and happy lives and know our family and friends can do the same. These people don't give us that choice, they choose to make sure we can't. We deserve better than that. We deserve to be able to make that decision for ourselves. Why give it to them? Because ultimately, that is what we have done. I teach my children that if they do something inappropriate, they also choose to be punished for that behaviour. If a 5 and 6 year old can accept that, why can't the rest of society accept that criminals choose to be punished when they commit a crime? It's that simple.
We've been imprisoning people and employing capital punishment for thousands of years, yet people still commit crimes. Admittedly, the crime rate has fallen dramatically over time, though that (and I doubt it's possible to empirically prove this one way or the other, so take it as an opinion) is probably the result of developments in education, a rise in general standard of living and social welfare, rather than the dubious deterrent of the prison system. Clearly, incarcerating and executing criminals is not a solution to the problem. I'm not suggesting they don't need to be punished, because they certainly do, but prison and capital punishments are not viable long-term solutions to the problem of crime. The majority of criminals are not psychopaths or sociopaths, they're people who've made bad decisions, mistakes, or have been irresponsible and are remorseful about it. Putting these people away is not productive, especially if the environment you're putting them into is one that fosters and encourages criminal behaviour (as many prisons seem to do). Besides those with legitimate psychological problems, permanently separating one-time criminals from the rest of society is immoral and unproductive. Yes, they should be held accountable for their actions, but they should be given the opportunity to learn from their mistakes and to better themselves. As satisfying as it may be for some people to exact revenge through the legal system, it is not a solution that is in the best interest of society. The prison systems are universally massive burdens on public funds (the death penalty particularly) with little actual benefit to society, to the victims of crime or to the criminals themselves. These are, after all, human beings. One act does not change that fact, no matter how abhorrent an act it is, and as such, they have the right to be treated in a certain way. People tend to think of morality as something arbitrary, something that might change in 20 or 50 years for the worse. I'd argue that this is not the case. The Western world has evolved to become more and more moral as time goes by; quality of life for virtually everyone has improved, prejudicial institutions and beliefs have been quashed and justice is more effective than ever, despite the rare stories that are blown up by the media and individuals. Capital punishment, and eventually the prison system as a whole, I believe, will become the next victims of the march of moral evolution in the decades ahead.
