This hostility to people being open to criminal or deviant people possibly being mentally ill is becoming an obsession with some people around here. People have to be held accountable for what they do, but I've made posts just speculating that someone who did some crazy fucking thing might be mentally ill and got jumped on for it by like ten posters. I understand the perception that this, in some people's mind 'charitable' reaction, is something that bigots only afford to their chosen kinds of people, but that is not what I do and I don't think it advances the conversation about why criminals do what they do or what we should be doing about them.
There is no short hand for 'brought up in a chaotic environment, received poor education, has been signalled at all their lives that the wrongs things matter and does not have either the agency or mental capability to understand why they felt the need to do (whatever it is).'
It is easy to just wipe your hands of people and call them pieces of shit, it's easy because it's the end of the conversation and it feels simple, but it doesn't do anything. I don't blame anybody for not wanting to understand certain groups of people, but I am getting a bit sick of this attitude that anybody who does try to understand is somehow dismissing their crimes/attitudes and somehow normalising it.
It isn't even about sitting down with a rapist or white nationalist and having a nice long talk about how they feel, it's about looking at their lives and figuring out how they ended up where they did and what we are doing or not doing as a society that continues to produce these kinds of people. I'm sorry I'm ranting on a bit here but this flippant 'lol they were mentally ill right?' thing is becoming an irritating refrain that too many people are too satisfied with.
As for whether people are ever beyond some form of redemption, no, I don't think that's ever beyond a person, but it doesn't erase what they did before either. Depending on the extremity of what they did, it might be too late for their victims or society to ever be interested in forgiving them, but if somebody wants to change, that's good. It can be a pretty thankless proposition on the side of the criminal and the rehabilitator. Digging your heels in is a lot more attractive.
It's kind of a huge question.
This is my thinking as well. None of these people came out of their moms pussy going; "Adolf, had some swell ideas!"
People who fall prey to this- There is always a reason. And that reason is often that their lives suck. They are ill outfitted to navigate life itself, and to cope they gravitate towards grouping structures of disenfranchised subgroups where they feel they have purpose as the real world is not for them. It seems to be similar regardless if we're talking Scientology, Suicide Cults, Biker Gangs, Insane Clown possee or whatever.
There is something wrong with many of these people. It's not normal or well adjusted to need to seek out other misfits who are shunned by society to accept a dogma, because they don't have personal soverignity, or a self abillity to internalize their own pain, analyze the situation or avoid the pitfalls of obvious (to rest of society) falsehoods and ignorance.
This reddit thread from a few years ago, has a lot of anecdotes about people who've moved on from hate, and how they did it; What is common in many of the stories, is that there is a lack of interaction with the people they used to hate, as well as a blueprint for hate and racism passed down from their surroundings.
I was raised as a racist. We lived in Southern California near a lot of minorities. My father was a union leader and I think his hatred of minorities came from his job, because the union was mostly white guys and they saw the minorities as trying to take their jobs. Whenever we would drive around and see them in the street, my dad would always point them out and talk shit about them.
I grew up and had kids of my own. I was doing the same thing to them without realizing it. One day I came home and caught my 14 year old daughter screwing around with a black kid. I threw him out of my house and beat him in my driveway. The cops were called and I went to prison for assault. In prison, I saw how ethnically divided everything was, but my counselor was the one who basically shook me out of it. She helped me realize that continuing this hatred would really only hurt my own life. I tried to avoid the racial groups in my prison. I stayed on my own and earned my GED. In my classes I met a lot of minorities who had also never graduated high school. I listened to my counselor and got to know them and realized what a hard life they had. Before, I thought that they were just lazy and sold drugs for easy money. We went through a lot of the same struggles in our education.
When I got out, I started a construction company. I make an effort to hire both former cons and also minorities. I am trying to make up for the kind of things I have done in the past.
In my Primary school years I was nearly suspended due to racist comments towards a black kid. I was a bastard as a kid. Probably down to coming from a rich family that became a broken, welfare needing home in the matter of months. Acting out you know.
As I got older I got drawn into the whole racist view because of my grandparents. Farm folk from a village in Kent, England with about 15 inhabitants. Nice people seriously, just hated blacks, Jews, Chinese, Arabs etc. Ironically my Grandfather was born in Guernsey, the Channel Islands so wasn't actually English.
Anyway I'm not saying I was a full blown skin head (I kept my hair) but the Neo-Nazi idea I could relate to. I used to walk around with military boots and trousers, biker jacket and bandanna. I'd listen to really abusive racial music, have a general disgust for the 'cancer' on this Earth as I used to see it as. I admired how the Nazis had become such a powerful government through racist policies. This somewhat supported my ideals.
Where I lived at that time was surrounded by Indian students, studying for medicine at University.I used to have a go at the groups of them, push them around. Some would cross the road to avoid me. Like a group of 10 avoiding just me. I was 6 foot and 260lbs back then.
Now this is the twist, throughout the neo-nazi esque years I had been into watching a lot of gay porn secretly. But I was homophobic as fuck. When I eventually worked out I was being a dick because I was projecting the hatred of myself outwards. I changed. I came out to my parents and grandparents who all supported me surprisingly, just aslong as I didn't flaunt it.
I had low self esteem, and no friends. The skinheads at my school were nice to me, and treated me as one of their own. I adopted their beliefs as sense of belonging. Well, actually I was never racist, never. I would however go along with it, because I liked them, they were my friends and I did not want to lose them.
Eventually my self esteem improved enough that I no longer felt a need to conform to a group I disagreed with, just to have friends. Ironically it was having these skinhead friends that built up my confidence.
On the plus side when I finally left the group, most of them had abandoned their racism, as if it was just a passing fad.
Bigotry runs deep in my family line. It was something we did; woke up, ate breakfast, hate on everyone that wasn't white and Irish. We specifically hated "Gooks", which funnily enough was anyone Asian. I decided one day to speak with one of these "Gooks" and low and behold the only difference between us was skin color. So I decided that hating someone because of skin or who they fuck was a game I didn't want part of. Bigotry is fucked and I have better things to do with my life to waste time hating; unless you're a cunt, then black, brown, white or yellow I'm hating the shit out of you.
Long story short i was visiting the holocaust museum because hey, might as well see how the great and powerful aryans killed off the rats, I saw a little girls dirty shoes from one of the gas chambers and totally lost it... from then on i was a changed man. my wife is super dark skinned and i could never be happier.
If you're born with shitty parents, you're statistically likely to take on those traits, as deep seated layers of your personality are deeply affected by your early upbringing. We know that there are things in your childhood that are wired shut and almost impossible to undo.
Some do. Pattern breaks, (like these people) and many others do escape their social programming, but it is a very tough fight. And some never do.
The more pissed these people are, the more telling it is, that they are trying to make their entire life be based around their delusions. That is why they seek out the conflict and the bad life. that is why they feel the need to make the rest of society hate them, and make them an enemy. It's a cultural and social self-assisted suicide to keep up the paradigme of falsehoods and lies.
If they tattoo nazi symbols to them, it helps make them believe that the jews are taking over the world because everyone is horrified and hate them; they are trying to make self fulfilling prophecies, so they don't have to face their literal symbolic death; that their foundations and personality and everything they identify with and have been raised with, are lies.
When people say "they are predisposed, fuck em all" it's coming from people who are not really capable of, or interested in engaging with empathy of how it is to grow up with neglect, abuse and shitty parents. Or in a terrible neighborhood. Or just being an impressionable young person who run into terrible people at the wrong time. Or not being properly vetted or outfitted with self reflection, or analytical skills that allows you navigate out of the traps set by toxic abusive people.
My coworker has two orphaned kids from thailand. One is a 7 year old girl, and the other is a 13 year old boy. The boy is violent and severely damaged and exhibits traits of extremism. He is a total product of the abuses he faced as an infant. While he has no recollection of his abuses and neglect, his ability to learn, empathize and behave like a normal person has been severely cut.
We know that infants and young children who've faced traumatic experiences and neglect, very often have significantly lower IQs and learning and social disabilities, which vastly increases their chances of falling into shitty groups. Hateful groups. groups that will prey on their character, exploit them and try to mold them into people who will cause pain on themselves and others.
I'm not saying that someone who causes pain and misery to others get a free pass because what has happened to them. Not at all. A islamist, a gang banger, a KKK, a suicide cult member, a Westborough baptist church member- no matter what hateful or damaged kind of person you are, your actions cause consequences.
But having an interest and empathy for for people who face these kinds of things- people who didn't have a real chance, is not the same thing as giving people an excuse, or a pass.
It's convenient for all of us to not even entertain what it would be like if we had grown up under the worst circumstances, but that is what empathy is. Empathy is putting yourself in the shoes of others, and *living* what lead them to reach that point where they became the toxic shits they ended up being.
To cite a feel-good story of how some fucking guy had a fucked up life and didn't up fucked up, is just deflective hypocritical bootstraps and refusal (or inability) to actually exercise empathy.
A infant, child or teenager is not in control of its programming. They have the understanding, world view and biased view points they've been exposed to. They don't see the world same way, and they don't think the same way, rationalize the same way or come to the same conclusions that you and I. Fighting your own programming is the most difficult thing you, me or anyone else will ever do.
Pattern breaker anecdotes of people who escape their upbringing is not a valid argument on everyone. Just like it's not a valid argument to dismiss all poor people because will smith worked hard with his boostraps in that fucking movie.
