I have just read this story, and as I sit here still reeling from what I’ve read, I find it difficult to organize my thoughts. I don’t know where to start with a story like this. It's not a pleasant story.
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/21/20090709/tuk-shaquille-killers-jailed-for-life-6323e80.html
I genuinely don’t understand how things like this can happen. How can a group of young people suddenly become ‘a wild pack of dogs’ as the judge called them?? What on earth happens to these young people that they should suddenly and viciously attack and kill another young person? To me this is alien behavior. Blaming ‘soft’ sentencing or lack of parental guidance, or any of the other ‘reasons’ so often trotted out by politicians or the press go no way toward explaining why any one would want to do such a thing in the first place. Why would we need harder sentencing as a deterrent? Why would any one need deterring from this behaviour? why would they want to do it in the first place? To observe this behavior and then consider why it happens and what goes on in their heads is as big a mystery to me as quantum physics! It’s too easy to talk about the attackers as animals, sub human, evil, etc etc, or to rant about them deserving death by every horrible means imaginable. Expressing hatred and extremes of anger and outrage at these attackers goes no way toward understanding why they behave the way they do or how to prevent similar attacks in the future. And I can’t help thinking the last thing a situation like this needs is more volatile outbursts, anger on top of anger is like oil on fire, it feeds the flames rather than allowing us, as a society to rationally consider how and where it all went so horribly wrong, and then do something about it. The venom and vigilante attitudes so often whipped up by the tabloids have more to do with selling and profit than it does with any serious attempt to understand and prevent this aberration of ‘normal’ behaviour. As far as I can see no one is making any rational attempt to understand why the mentality of mindless violence is spreading like a plague through our society. Every one seems more interested in raging against the perpetrators of this type of crime than in dealing with it. At least that’s the way it seems to me.
I think we are as a society becoming in some cases less in touch with our humanity. I see and hear about this stuff all the time and like you, it shocks me because I just don't understand the mentality behind the individuals that do this. To be honest, I don't think they understand it either. Not that that is any sort of consolation to their victims.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunatly some people are just evil -no rhym or reason sad and true and for us who are not like this it is very very hard to deal with.
ReplyDeleteI think people are trying to make an attempt to understand this sort of behavior; I have been reading about it in professional journals for years. The difficulty is that these sorts of problems are multi-causal, which is that there are a variety of factors, interacting with each other. Generally social scientists look at one factor at a time, which gives a uni-dimensional answer to a multi-dimensional problem.
ReplyDeletePeople have looked at violence in the home, violence on TV, infants and toddlers with too little bonding, pack mentality in young males and so forth. But none of these explanations by itself is satisfactory. The cause is non-linear like the straw that broke the camel's back. Was it the straw, the sacks of wheat, the other cargo - what broke his back? It was the combination of all these factors that broke the back of the camel and thus a combination of factors that caused the inexcusable killing of this young man.
Humans have a difficult time accurately studying other humans. But continuing to delve into the matter is important and come up with some sort of answer, some sort of solution.
I guess I'm too old to understand today's youth. So many have been raised with the "it's not my fault" mentality. Brutality is running rampant in our society.
ReplyDeleteYou've brought up a lot of whys that I'm sure many of us would like to know the answers to. Maybe stiffer sentences aren't the answer but neither are some of the sentences which are meted out by courts in Spain. I don't know if any information can be found in English on this case but in the year 2003, a young mentally deficient girl was raped, run over by the attackers' car, and because she was still alive they poured petrol on her and burned her body. One of the attackers who was a minor at the time was living in a luxury apartment in Málaga ( provided for him with the taxpayers' money) at least until recently anyway when he decided to rob a neighbour's flat. He was supposedly under vigilance. The only forward that I've ever sent was when this individual was released. Poor Sandra's parents will never find peace in this life anyway.
ReplyDeleteThis is beyond awful and no, I don't recall this being reported in the press over here. I fully empathise with you when you say the girls parents will never get over it, I would not expect them too. I don't actually understand why the attacker was living in a luxury apartment?? or why he was released if he remained a danger. But this is exactly the sort of crime I completely fail to understand. Maybe Heidi is right and maybe some people are just palin evil although that doesn't explain why this mentality or this sort of crime is on the increase. It is this sort of crime that just makes me realise how very, very different the minds are of these people are, this type of crime seems to be more and more frequent and more and more vicious,I wish someone could work out why.
ReplyDeleteI think we either grow up believing that the struggle is ours to overcome, or blaming the world and acquiring a sense of false entitlement. Maybe all of us are inclined to weave across that line on occasion, but most of us maintain some code of ethics to guide us away from blatant criminal behavior. It is shocking when we encounter someone who doesn't possess that integrity and it takes a long time to understand that they are filling the void with evil.
ReplyDeleteI don't know if that even makes sense . . . I've been through a lot over the past seven years and this is just something I've struggled to learn.
thanks for commenting, actually none of it makes sense to me, guess the struggle to learn is still with me.
ReplyDeleteI find your comment about the code of ethics that guide us away from criminal behaviour interesting. This is part of the reasoning I have a problem with, its akin to the reasoning that we need deterrents to stop us behaving in a criminal way.............I find that concept a bit hard to grasp. To believe those things seems to say we are naturally inclined to be bad and must strive not to be. It makes more sense to me to believe we are naturally inclined to be good and sometimes something goes wrong and we do bad things. But like i said.............I'm just struggling in the dark here, I can't even begin to understand why these people do the things they do.
Thanks Bennett, you have come up with all sorts of plausible reasoning's for this awful behaviour. I think maybe I should try to find out a bit more about what you describe as ''pack mentality of young males'', because a lot of these crimes do seem to be committed by 'packs of young males''. I know it is absolutely no comfort at all for the victims or their families to know there are all these 'theories'; but at least it is a little reassuring to know maybe one day someone will come up with a realistic way of preventing these crimes. I appreciate your answer, very informative and lots of stuff to read up on, thanks.
ReplyDeleteI don't know Heidi, maybe you are right although just plain evil doesn't explain why it is on the increase, I think I prefer to believe that some people do evil things rather than believe the people themselves are evil.
ReplyDeleteThere are things I don't do because something inside of me won't allow it. I believe they are wrong. Not everyone has that built-in compass ... I've been through something over the past years that has colored my views. Some people are very mixed up.
ReplyDeleteI used the term "pack mentality of young males" - there is some evidence that this phenomenon is also being seen in young females. It seems relatively recent and has not been widely studied. My experience and the literature suggests that gangs of females are less structured, less stable, and differently motivated.
ReplyDeleteThe murder rate in my country (USA) is 5 times what it is in England and Wales (I could not find Scotland). Some of this might be the different ways "murder" is defined and counted. (For example whether "manslaughter" is counted.) But the murder rate in South American countries is as much as 20 times what it is in England. Canada has a higher rate than the UK. (2003).
ReplyDeleteMy point is that, as terrible as this is, at least it is news here in the Western world. We see it as an aberration and try to deal with it. In much of the world it is business as usual. Perhaps a way to stop it is by the outcry that happens, that we recognize this as horrible behavior. But I also have to wonder about the tabloids and rags that take a relatively uncommon occurrence and blow it into something that is "spreading like a plague through our society", when, in fact, we are doing better than much of the world in containing violence. Maybe we need to ask what we are doing right and try to apply that to the countries that have murder rates far far higher than ours.
I was unsuccessful in finding whether the rates are rising in UK, US - perhaps someone else can.
Sad, and such a waste. It seems to be happening so much. Locally, just last week they had the funeral for a 10 year old killed by classmates after school. Tragic.
ReplyDeletePoint taken, you are right of course it is much worse in other parts of the world. But while it remains much lower in the Western world than in other countries, it is on the increase, or at least it appears to be because what was very, very uncommon and reported only rarely 30 years ago, is now being reported on an almost weekly basis. I have had a very quick look for some UK figures and found nothing but I will try to do a thorougher search tomorrow. I'm not sure what the rate in Scotland is compared to the rest of the UK but I don't think it is significantly different. I'm surprised the gap between UK rates and US rates is as much as that (5 times as great in US !!!) that is a huge difference!! I can't imagine why the difference should be so great. But the US is so big compared to the UK maybe there are big regional differences and in some states the rate would be less or the same and in other states it would be more. I don't know I just guessing here. Maybe you are right and we should be looking at what we are doing right compared to other countries, but maybe we should also be looking at what the social/political/economic situations are in these other countries where violent crime is so high and see if that gives us any better idea about the causes of violent crime.
ReplyDeleteunbeleivable!!v a 10 year old killed by children!! it's things like this that are so very very hard to understand.
ReplyDeleteGuns are ever so much more efficient at killing people.
ReplyDeleteQuite so! Many of these countries have high rates of poverty, repressive governments, and little regard for law. Again, none of these factors by themselves produce killers, but, as you said, we should be looking.
ReplyDeleteguess they are, and I am so very glad guns are not as common here as they are there, but the sort of crime we see here is very often a physical beating by gangs directed at one person, not usually gun crime at all, although guns are becoming more common here too unfortunately. I think gun crime is a very different thing to these crimes by gangs who kill people by beating and /or other horrendous group activities...........I know the victim is just as dead however they are killed , but it does seem to be vicious beatings that are so rife here and that sort of killing seems so much more personal than a shooting, which can be quite detached and clinical. A different sort of crime.
ReplyDeleteevil walks among us is the only explanation i have. you can do your best as a parent and you still have to hope that your kids live the lessons you tried to teach them: of value for life, dignity as a human to another and responsibility for their actions. my heart goes to all the families who have lost a loved one thru senseless acts of violence, no matter what excuse was trotted out as the 'reason' it happened. i personally can see only ONE reason to take a life: if there is an immediate threat to MY children or grandkids or to myself. there is NOTHING i cant live without as a possession, that i would not give up in a heartbeat rather than be killed over. however, touch my kids or my grandkids....we may both end up dead, but they will be spared whatever deed was in the attackers mind. as for myself, well i wont go down easy to be sure. pray, its all we can do anymore. for respect to make a comeback...respect for LIFE.
ReplyDeleteYes, indeed. Even mainstream press is becoming more 'tabloid'. Anything that inspires the emotions in the general media-feeding public is good for sales, any hype, all to fuel the fire.
ReplyDeleteThis behaviour 'does' need understanding, getting to the crux of why such behaviour exists, and why it has any potential to grow, take on momentum in time to come. I have had a thought that there are some factions of communities that have hatred attitudes towards immigrants - because of the lack of jobs available for those already finding work. This is something for public discussion and, without apathy, for governments to work on. No excuse for violence. None.
thanks Donna, guess you realised i have a few 'issues' with the press myself, i think they can be very destructive and downright dangerous at times.
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