[quote XDownwiththissortofthingX]@Packingsoapandwater
I concur to an extent. I spent a lot of time researching early mental health care provision, so sanitoriums, asylums, workhouses, and yes, the tales of the crimes of the inmates and patients are both hair-raising, and just as violent and sickening as anything we read about today. It's nothing new.
Where I disagree is with the entire notion of 'evil'. It's a concept entirely invented by mankind and doesn't exist as any sort of entity that can influence the actions of human beings. In every instance of a horrific crime, there's a sociological, environmental, or pathological factor involved, even in those carried out by the well-to-do middle and upper classes with seemingly nothing to want for.
I particularly dislike threads like these which invariably bring out the rants about 'evil', because all it does is provide a handy cop-out, and it is just a cop-out, that helps us deflect from our failings as a society, and enables us to avoid asking difficult questions. Also, normal, healthy people do not go around killing small children, so it also acts as a panacea for the 'hanging is too good' types.
Unfortunately any attempt to point out that an 18 year old mother who kills her child by neglect perhaps has pretty significant underlying reasons for her lack of responsibility, gets shouted down as 'excusing' or 'exhonorating'. Evidently some people don't understand the basic difference between an 'excuse' and an 'explanation'. Thankfully the law doesn't pander to reactionary vindictiveness, because the only way we are ever going to progress to a point whereby these things no longer happen is by accepting that they happen because we fail, not because of 'evil' or any other nebulous concept.[/quote]
To some extent, I agree.
But we know, for example, that it's very difficult for 95% of people to actually kill someone else, or harm them to the point of death. Even most soldiers in war zones can't do it. Even the Taliban use IEDs to avoid hands-on direct killing.
There's been a large amount of research into this issue; estimates suggest that even soldiers in WW1 would fire above their heads rather than at the enemy. Hitler had to drug his battalions. Stalin piled his with vodka, but even then he had to employ a psychopath for blackwork because ordinary Russian soldiers lost their minds after committing direct murder.
It's one of the reasons why militaries in developed countries have developed in the way they have.
The argument for the other 5% in a military context has been that they are a mix of psychopaths and the very rare individual that can overcome their moral lines to save their colleagues in a life or death scenario - - and these rare individuals are recognised for that feat. We give them medals.
But then, when we come to these type of cases, these findings are simply not applied. We say it's a cycle of abuse, or they are victims themselves, forgetting that pretty much nobody else has the capacity for this kind of behaviour, even when their life is at stake.
One of my relatives works in legal for child services in a London Borough. He says the vast majority of child abuse cases he sees involve serious parental addiction: drug or alcohol. It's mostly alcohol for the violent abuse cases (a parent who drinks a bottle of vodka a day), and drugs for the neglect (heroin addiction etc).
To some extent, that makes some sense - - those are parents not in their right minds. But in these cases, addiction doesn't seem to be a factor.
I mean, what the hell are you if you can beat a three year old to death, when soldiers in 1916 from backgrounds where their dad took a belt to them on a regular basis couldn't even fire at the enemy?
That's the layer that's missing when we look at these cases.