Murderers are not crazy people

Great Debates
21

But ‘crazy’, that’s just cut-and-dried?

I guess I figured, let’s say there’s a woman who kills her husband – and, when asked why, she replies that he was beating her, again; and she killed him because she was worried that, this time, he was going to kill her.

And let’s say another woman poisons her husband – but only because she (a) wanted the insurance money, and because she (b) gave it a lot of thought, and concluded that she could totally get away with making it look like a suicide.

And let’s say a third woman stabs her husband to death as he sleeps – because she honestly believed he was going to turn into Godzilla when he woke up; and that, if she didn’t kill him first, he’d have stomped a bunch of buildings in Tokyo.

For the sake of argument, let’s say all of that is true; how would we, here in the real world, respond? Because I thought the answer was, we’d maybe consider giving one of them a pass while explaining that she seems like a sensible person who did the right thing; and we’d maybe consider getting the crazy one some medical treatment before we let her out of the mental hospital; and we’d maybe consider making sure the one in the middle never breathes air as a free woman again.

That’s what we’d actually do, right? We would, in fact, declare that one in the middle to be something – and that “something” wouldn’t be “magic”. It’d be some mundane term we’d use to mean “you’re not crazy, but you’re someone who we as a community have officially decided to incapacitate before you consciously choose to strike again; because what you did was bad/wrong/immoral/unethical, and that’s the sort of thing up with which we will not put.”

You don’t want to use “evil” as that word? Fine; but a real-world concept – one that’s not as nebulous as “magic” – is right there, crying out for this or that word to serve as useful shorthand for “we’re not letting you walk free, but we also don’t think you need to see a doctor”. That’s not a far-out hypothetical; that’s an in-between case we deal with every day. What do you call them?

22

You have a problem with killing someone in self-defense? :dubious: Or war? (Granted not all wars are just, but soldiers are generally NOT murderers)

23

read the post again

mc

24

I did. And I still didn’t see an answer to my question. If someone has a knife at my throat, and is attempting to rape me, are you saying that if I managed to take said knife and use it on him, it would be murder?

Or for someone else to shoot him to save me? What about WWII, was it wrong to kill the Nazis to save the Holocaust victims? There’s thinking killing is wrong, and there’s down right laying down and allowing innocent people to get hurt, when you can prevent it.

25

Some murderers are Crazy Like A Fox.

26

Most garden variety interpersonal murders are emotional killings, crimes of passion so to speak, the person lets their emotions get the best of them during an irrational altercation. People who are psychopaths tend to commit murder in an instrumental fashion, more rational from their personal perspective. “I just robbed a bank and the cops will be here soon, I need a get away car but this old lady won’t give it up without a fight so I’ll shoot her and take it cause time is a wasting” it’s not emotionally based, serves a purpose, and it’s not personal.

Mass Killers it seems to me have a shit-ton of anger inside them and especially the ones that plan on killing themselves afterwords and don’t plan on escaping. I hear people always ask why they didn’t just kill themselves and leave the innocent bystanders out of it. But I can sort of understand why they kill so many and not just themselves. This person is not just sad and depressed they are filled with rage, it’s gotten to the point their existence has lost all value but they are still angry and they want to spread their misery around to the other people in this world that did them wrong and ignored their pain. It isn’t fair but to them the world isn’t a fair place, and certainly wasn’t to them.

27

I’d also wager that even if it isn’t readily apparent to others and they are huge losers at the game of life, I would think most mass killers are huge narcissists if you look deep enough.

28

I’d argue it is about as well defined as the word “crazy”

29

But that’s the entire point of the separation. If we create that separation, then we can’t just become one of them with the “right” justification.

You’ve just described why I keep saying that Good and Evil actually exist, even though they aren’t tangible things. They are an emergent property of consciousness and our millennia of experience.

If we acknowledge good and evil, and hold ourselves up to moral standards, we can’t be made to do these evil things. Even when we’re angry, and maybe cross the line a little bit due to the reduced mental capacity of the angry brain, we stay far enough away from the worst of the worst.

Sure, there are gray areas. But, other than a few outliers, we do all agree with the extremes. We know that evil exists.

As for whether they are “crazy”: I define that term to mean “can they be treated?” Is there some sort of therapy or medicine that would fix the issue? If so, then it’s a mental illness, and we need to do that. And maybe all evil turns out to be a mental illness in disguise. That would be awesome!

But, for now, there are actions that we can’t cure people from, and they deserve punishment and need to be removed from the population to avoid hurting others.

So some murderers are crazy. They can get therapy and be put on medication and no longer murder. Others are not crazy. They are all, however, doing evil.

And not drawing that line, not creating that separation, only means there will be more murderers. Murder is evil. That is what keeps us from crossing that line.

30

Personal behaviour standards are likely to be a range of attributes, we can’t even really say that it is a bipolar axis where saintly lies at one end of a line and evil lies toward the end of the other - its way more complex than that.

We have the evil that good men do, and we also have its opposite - allegedly serious criminals may indeed love their dogs, or their families - it can be extremely difficult to square the detrimental actions of a person with their acts of kindness.

I personally think its likely that we all have an ability to choose, and mostly we tend toward relative harmlessness even in the most testing circumstances.

So the question must surely be, what sort of person moves away from societal norms, and what sort of provocations are most likely to make such a person move away from socially acceptable behaviour.

As for evil, well its hard to dispute when you come across some individuals, they may not even be killers but that still does not stop them from fitting the bill as being evil - imagine mass financial fraudsters who take vulnerable people for every bit of money they have.

Most of these evil individuals will have a long path of learned behaviour, so example take a look at this little beauty

I can also think of a few others who kill merely for entertainment

Then you have those who kill because it is the norm for a particular culture - add in the Thugees, ISIS, Nazis - their societies probably would consider these killers as normal.

What I am saying is that when we look at what we call murderers, we are doing so through our own cultural and societal lens.

We might find some commonalities in some killers, but instead of comparing a killer to other killers and coming up with a set of criteria - we need to control for our own biases, and we need to compare these individuals against the whole set of people in our society who may have similar characteristics, we know that not all abused children murder their parents, we know not all social outcasts pick up an AK47 and commit a mass shooting.

Despite everything I have already said though - every murderer I have come across in prison IS different, a clever person might be able to state what is different about them - except that pretty much every murderer is also different to all the others, there is just something there even when you don’t know their history and you meet them for the first time, you get a feeling about them, not exactly scientific.

31

But, just exactly where is that line? Why is some killing acceptable and some is not? who gets to decide? You? Me? God? The govt?
It’s OK, in war, to kill enemy combatants, but it is no OK to kill innocent civilians. Unless they happen to be collateral damage while you are killing enemy combatants, then it’s OK.
It’s OK to kill someone who presents a clear and present danger to yourself, and it’s ok to kill someone who you reasonably believe threatens your life, even if it turns out that threat was not real. But it’s not ok to kill someone who threatened your life yesterday, or threatened to kill you sometime in the future.
It’s ok to kill someone who comes into your home for some nefarious reason even if that reason does not threaten your life.

Is it ok to hunt down and kill the man who just shot up a church, and may or may not continue his killing later? Is it ok to hunt down and kill the man who has killed hundreds of unborn babies, and may or may not continue his killing later?

then we get into the area where many people think it’s worth breaking the law to right a wrong.
If I kill the man who raped and tortured my daughter, I have murdered him, but many would not consider that evil, they might even call me a hero. If I kill the man who raped and tortured your daughter, is that murder? is that evil? Am i still a hero?

Some murderers are killed by the govt, some aren’t. Some states allow self murder some don’t. Are there different levels of evil?

You may think there is some bright line between killing and murder, but I do not share that belief. And that line gets less bright when someone is raised differently than you and does not share your values, or has had to endure things you cannot even imagine.

To attribute to evil or psychosis that which any person is capable of is not beneficial to understanding the issue. People kill each other all the time. Sometimes mental illness (or maybe even evilness) is involved. Mostly it’s sane people who have convinced themselves it’s the right thing to do at the time.

mc

32

So what do you propose we do, when you have someone like a Hitler, or a Stalin, trying to take over the world? What about the Imperial Japanese? Should people just roll over and let them commit attrocities, because any amount of civilian casualties would be murder?

Unfortunately, that’s not true – some mental illnesses are still beyond treatment, or are at least, harder to treat than others. Anti-Social Personality Disorder, for example. (I don’t believe at this time we have any way to help sociopathy). And I also think you can be evil and crazy. (Ted Bundy, for example) It’s not as simple as you think.

33

Standards are so varied and criteria so complex that it is really hard to decide what being a loser at the game of life really is. In my opinion, most ‘losers’ at the game of life do not kill because they cling to the last item in Pandora’s box.

35

reported

36

There are also neurological peculiarities or disorders that can change a person’s affectivity and perception, which will eventually lead to different attitudes and behavior. Different from what we regard ‘normal’ or ‘acceptable’.

37

I like this post. When I first read it I felt as though I had written it myself.

38

There are still slight differences in the number and sequences of genes that allow for variations in the make up of every person.

I’ve watched an episode of Morgan Freeman’s ‘Through the Wormhole’ (I think), where a neuroscientist said there are about 40 genetic traits that almost every killer shows. This scientist had studied the nervous system of a large number of psychopaths, whose brains structure turned out to have the same pattern. It was ironical that he eventually discovered his own brain looked the same as that of a typical psychopath killer. He was 60 at the time and concluded biological elements explain only part of the problem.

39

Hypothetically, what if you were dying from terminal cancer, and you knew that the company you had worked for was responsible for your illness. Asbestos or whatever.

If you are atheist or you have religious beliefs that are ok with this, doesn’t it make a kind of sense to go to the executive floor of the company responsible, perhaps the same ones who hired attorneys to make sure they never had to pay a dime, and mow as many of them as you can down?

You’re getting revenge for your own death. People have done this kind of thing for thousands of years.

Of course, it never seems to happen this way. You never really hear about mass murderers actually killing people remotely culpable. Those people at the concert had no connection to the killer’s possible casino losses, those random people at the gay nightclub had nothing to do with anything bad done to that mass shooter, and so on and so forth.

For the record, I’m in perfect health as far as I know, nor have I worked for any souless companies spewing toxic chemicals on their workers. I’ve just heard this hypothetical many times, and it always made some sense. It’s a form of vigilante justice, basically.

40

Really?

Ive had one person fuck me over in way that was truly unfair and quite harsh. He did it merely because he could and he made some money at it I suppose. And he is still a thorn in my side to this day.

I would murder this guy if I had a good chance of not getting caught. I would be crazy to just drive down to his business and shoot him. But if I was hiking very deep in the woods and he just came strolling by? Id totally murder that guy. He causes a lot of stress in my life and the only way to stop it is if he dies.

This is selfish of me but not crazy? I dont even think its particularly evil. He is probably a sociopath and has a good bit of money. Im pretty much powerless to stop him except by murderous acts.

I would also gain even more if I murdered my ex wife. The amount of work I have to do to pay my ex maintenance is pretty much ruining my life. But… she doesn’t deserve to die. She didnt screw me over. She just got what the ridiculous divorce laws in this state say she deserves. I wish she would die but she doesnt deserve to be murdered.

The guy who fucked me over is going to have a very bad day if I ever get diagnosed with some fatal disease.

And please dont flip out that you think Im some sort of potential murderer. Im trying to be candid here which I dont think a lot of people are about this sort of thing. I dont own any guns. Im not making any plans or any of that stuff. Its more like a fantasy.

Im just saying you dont have to be crazy to think: he fucked me over so he deserves it, he is still fucking me over so that would stop and he will probably fuck over other people in the future and that will stop. Self serving but not crazy.

41

I think this is a perfect example for the thread. The desire for revenge is highly rational and logical. Murdering someone for revenge? Not good, but it is most definitely rational, and not something that requires a crazy brain. It may take someone who is on the more extreme end of behavior or anger on the spectrum to actually do it, but it is totally logical. The desire to get even or take out someone who is a source of tremendous distress, or poses a threat, is entirely natural and not necessarily crazy at all.