IIIIITHE1IIIII said:
Oftentimes, understanding a criminal's reasoning seems to be a difficult challenge for the average citizen, as opposed to the simple cases where kids pilfer candy or breaks public property. Those minor criminal actions are easily explained through the kid's innocence, and poor upbringing from their parents who failed to teach it what is right and what is wrong. It may also be explained through the kid's lack of reasoning abilities-, that it fail to understand the possible consequences of its actions.
- You are assuming that understanding the criminals reason gives some justification for his actions. This is incorrect. More on that to come.
This does not exclusively apply to kids though. If a poor and/or homeless person steal food from a store, it is fairly easy to sympathize with its actions, which will not be condemned by the average citizen in the same way as, for instance, murder would. The reason to this is because the reasoning is obvious, and the only person who can't see it (or simply choose to ignore it) would be the owner of the store.
There are exceptions regarding murder as well though. If a woman is being held prisoner in a man's house (that has happened on several occasions) for years, it would be no struggle to figure out why she would eventually murder him, even if she was able to escape without doing so. In fact, it may not even be considered a criminal action because of the reasoning which is as obvious as it possibly may be. I mean, in this case (where murder is not necessary, which it isn't in almost all cases), she is willing to break the laws in order to make peace in her mind. Because the awareness of him being alive would make her depressed and frustrated for the rest of her life.
- This is not murder. If she is being held against her will, and she kills him while escaping, it is still in self-defense, and not against the law. Not all killing is murder. If she escaped, then later he was tried and convicted... then 15 years later when he gets out of prison she went and killed it, it would be murder.
The average citizen sympathize with her for perfectly understandable reasons, but what they fail to do is to sympathize with the man who held her captured. In the end, they are both criminals. Yet, only one of them receives sympathy from the public. The reason? People can only understand her reasoning, but not his. Instead, people say "He was free to do what ever he wanted, yet he chose to held her captured? This action cannot be defended."
- There is right and wrong. What he did was very wrong, and what she did was a response to that. If I punch you, I'm wrong. If you defend yourself, your punches aren't equally wrong - you have the right to defend yourself. Only one deserves the sympathy of the public. One can feel bad about his upbringing, but that doesn't mean he didn't deserve what he got.
Her reasoning makes sense to the masses, the poor/homeless thief's reasoning makes sense to the masses and the kid's resoning or lack of reasoning makes sense to the masses. When it comes to the man who held her captured though, the outbreak from the masses becomes massive once the court has confirmed that he is not mentally ill. He will be hated throughout the rest of his life, while she and the poor thieves are heroes who dare to break the laws.
- Let's be clear - her reasoning makes sense to the masses because the reason makes sense, period. A man who decides to absolutely ruin a woman's life by kidnapping and violating her, a trauma which will negatively impact the rest of her life, has surrendered his right to be given any kind of positive viewpoint. If he is not mentally ill, then victimizing someone else in this way cannot be justified.
Here is what the masses fail to see: The man had a horrible upbringing with parents who never played- or spent time with him, and did not even let him go to his friend(s) houses out of fear that he may tell them about their drug abuse. He had to go to school on his own, while his friends used their bikes. In school, he was constantly bullied because of his smelling clothes who also happened to be too small. And his teachers kept yelling at him in front of the whole class for arriving one hour too late, when all he wanted was some extra sleep from everything regarding life. He eventually pulled through all necessary education to get a decent job, but the scars from his childhood never healed, and he kept hating himself for reasons that he couldn't explain. One day though, he finally met the dream girl of his life. The relationship lasted for a few months, but after a while she started feeling uncomfortable around him and wanted to break up. At that point he was terrified. Loosing her would result in the greatest depression of his life, and probably suicide. To stop this from happening, he did what he had to do in order to maintain control of his life (sounds familiar?), and what he did should be obvious at this point.
- Let's look into this situation a little closer, though. This person has these emotional scars, obviously, but he has escaped his parents. He has an education, a job, a life. Everything he has learned since then, in life, on TV, by the media, makes him know, fully well, that kidnapping someone is wrong. If you were to ask him, academically, if what he was planning to do was right or wrong, he knows the answer. In fact, chances are, at some point in the past it would have been unthinkable for him. But he thinks about it... imagines it... wants it... And eventually he's willing to disregard his victim's feelings to the point where only his own matter.
He saved his own life, she eventually restored peace in her mind and the thieves got food on their tables. Yet, he is the only one hated by the masses who probably wanted to see him dead anyway.
- No, he didn't save his own life. If the threat to your own life is suicide, then you are your own problem. You must correct this without victimizing others. He could choose to get help, or try a constructive way to deal with his depression. but instead he CHOOSES a route that damages someone else.
Moral: There is reasoning behind every criminal's actions. We should feel sorry for all of them no matter how severe their crimes may be, and we should be nothing but equally sorry for their victims. There are two kinds of people: Fortunate, and unfortunate. And the fact that they cannot will as they wills is what they have in common.
- Your moral is false. We can feel sorry for them, but that doesn't negate the need to punish them. And we should NOT be equally sorry. When people bring consequences on themselves for their actions, they are culpable, even if there's a "reason" for it. The fact is, two people can go through the exact same thing, and one becomes a kidnapper, while the other goes to counseling and deals with it without hurting others. You can feel bad for both people, but when the kidnapper gets himself murdered by the girl he's kept trapped in his basement, noone's crying, and noone should. There is not just fortunate and unfortunate. There are good and bad.
- Certainly it would be best to understand the motivations of criminals, but there are limits. The prisons are full of people who, with a better justice system, could be genuinely reformed instead of merely punished. However, that's not all of them. At some point, it must be acknowledged that people who willfully commit terrible actions need to be dealt with accordingly. He put her in the basement(bad, wrong, never justifiable), she put him in the ground(also wrong, if it was avoidable, but easily justified).
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