Identifying the Monsters Among Us
Would that we could. That we could isolate from among the normal members of a community those who nurse deadly grudges until they become death's emissaries. What could possibly occur to normal people to resign them to the malignant pathology of hatred? Not much, I would venture to say. These are not normal people, but rather sociopaths who tenderly guard bitterly corrosive hatred and nurse it until they feel the time is right to deliver disaster to the victims who most often are innocently unaware and certainly have nothing at all to do with the genesis of that hatred.Humankind can and does on occasion raise monsters. These are fatally tainted genetic stock. Do we, could we, with that understanding impinge on peoples' liberties to reproduce without the societal injunction to apply oneself to raising well-adjusted, societally responsive and reliably responsible human beings? If there was a way to vet people to determine their suitability as parents, could we ever follow through? Not likely, since that's a direct infringement on civil liberties, at the very least.
So are we then doomed to forever live with the ongoing presence in one degree or another of totally disaffected, socially unamenable and destructive personalities? Seems that way. And why is it that these horribly dysfunctional personalities seek out their victims from among the most vulnerable in our society? Obviously, because among other things they're also cowards and seek the easiest route to achieving their damnable goals.
On the other hand, such personalities are fairly recognizable. When a family member displays overt pathological symptoms of utter disregard for human life why is it that others from within the family cannot bring themselves to alert people in authority, be they medical practitioners or policing agencies? Oh yes, that's right, they often do, and those same agencies inform the concerned family member that sorry, there's just nothing that can be done until the actual commission of the crime.
So, for example, if Charles Carl Roberts who assaulted that one-room schoolhouse in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania, having left unmistakable clues to the impending disaster which his wife discovered and could have done something about pre-disaster, would the local authorities have been empowered to do anything to arrest the inevitable? Four little girls and a teaching assistant are dead, many other female children have been left in dire physical straits. If they do recover from the physical assaults upon them, will they ever recover from the mental anguish?
On the other hand, now that we've seen four separate instances of crazed murderers blazing their way into schools in the past month with unbelievable consequences, will we become more alert? Will responsible social safety agents within our society become more actively responsive? Is there, for heaven's sake, any way at all in which society at large can more effectively protect their children?
We send our children to school to achieve an education. It is the duty of the parent to ensure that their child is exposed to every learning opportunity conceivable within the normal operations of a civil society. It is the responsibility of the municipality, the state, to ensure that children are housed in an institution of learning with safety paramount.
Admittedly, it's a hard thing to do, to identify a sociopath in your own family structure. And then what? Seek help. From where? Medical institutions are more hard-pressed than ever to provide essential services to their populations. Mental health units are always underfunded, incapable of fully implementing programmes meant to treat people diagnosed with mental illness.
Somewhere lies the responsibility to serve and protect.
posted by Pieface @ Tuesday, October 03, 2006
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