First, my cards on the table: I think the death penalty devalues all human life and as such irrevocably taints any society that employs it. I don't object to the death penalty out of warm feelings for the people sitting on death row at San Quentin. I object to the death penalty because it is dangerous to define anyone as undeserving of life. Humanity has in fits and starts been drawing back from making such definitions, having failed miserably at doing it well. I live in one of the few countries that has not drawn back far enough, and I live in hope that we will do this in my lifetime.
Marvin, both Nicole and NOprophet have relevant personal experience that you don't, and they don't agree with you.
Nicole says the death penalty wouldn't give her more closure than life without parole has. She isn't having to imagine the situation; she's lived it. Why should we accept what you are arguing for over what she says?
And NOprophet wrote very movingly:
I'd say that wanting to painfully torture to death a person who has done such a thing is an honest, normal and reasonable human response. It's the doing it that's the crazy part. It is a normal human characteristic to be capable of violence, to want to retaliate, to even feel elation with others' suffering in payment for our own. We deny such tendencies within the human psyche at our risk of them getting away from us and pushing us to express that violence actual behaviour with others. It is our responsibility to control our behaviour, and eventually control the feelings and thoughts behind the behaviour.
My main reaction to NP’s post is to point out that I’m doing almost exactly what he said. It’s not like I’m making plans to actually do it, but if I have those feelings (which I do) then expressing them on this thread has to be better than just bottling them up.
My own cards on the table, I have essentially no qualms about the death penalty - in theory. I have no particular urge to have anyone suffer for having done something horrible, nor do I feel any charity about providing resources required to keep them contained. So, beyond a certain threshold of unacceptability, I see some beings as better off dead.
In theory, theory and and reality closely align. In reality, they do not.
The problem is pragmatic and twofold. First, I do not believe that there is a bright clear line of acceptable behaviour beyond which a death is warranted, much less able to defend such a line. Second, and more fundamentally, I have exactly zero faith in any human institution for making any such decisions. Even in the most extreme cases, it's not worth the risk.
I absolutely do not want any government deciding that it has the power to put its own citizens to death.
Last cards on the table, since having children I think I can see the event horizon of my own sanity. It is unknowable darkness beyond the concept of their deaths. And my imagination is very dark indeed.
I do not agree with the death penalty, but in my experience, many people have a visceral reaction when they hear of someone abusing or murdering a child, and they want that person to suffer horribly and die a gruesome death. And especially when people have children of their own and they imagine if it were their child. This seems to be a human, emotional reaction - not to be acted on, obviously, but equally surely healthier to acknowledge it's there and that you feel it, than to repress/deny it. Humans are capable of all sorts of awful things, and denial doesn't make them go away. I am surprised at the reaction to the emotions Marvin expressed, because it's quite a common human emotional reaction. Obviously, Purg isn't the place for expressing strong emotions like that (though people do go off on emotional tangents sometimes), but I really don't see the big deal here. I don't agree with lots of Marvin's opinions, but this was just an emotional expression of outrage at someone killing a child.
The problem is pragmatic and twofold. First, I do not believe that there is a bright clear line of acceptable behaviour beyond which a death is warranted, much less able to defend such a line. Second, and more fundamentally, I have exactly zero faith in any human institution for making any such decisions. Even in the most extreme cases, it's not worth the risk.
I absolutely do not want any government deciding that it has the power to put its own citizens to death.
This is comfortably the best argument against the death penalty, and the only one that gives me pause in situations other than merely ranting on the internet.
Essentially, the risk of executing an innocent person outweighs the benefit of executing a guilty one. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t any benefit to executing the guilty one.
Last cards on the table, since having children I think I can see the event horizon of my own sanity. It is unknowable darkness beyond the concept of their deaths. And my imagination is very dark indeed.
Why? What would be the negative consequences of you not sharing them with the group?
As Fineline said, healthier to acknowledge it's there and that you feel it, than to repress/deny it.
Personally, I'd feel ashamed that I could harbour such repellent thoughts, and would never reveal them in private, let alone public. There are, for an absolute certainty, actions that we ought never entertain, however fleetingly.
Why? What would be the negative consequences of you not sharing them with the group?
As Fineline said, healthier to acknowledge it's there and that you feel it, than to repress/deny it.
Personally, I'd feel ashamed that I could harbour such repellent thoughts, and would never reveal them in private, let alone public. There are, for an absolute certainty, actions that we ought never entertain, however fleetingly.
More posters on this thread have said the feelings are understandable than have said they are repellant.
Furthermore, vast amounts of popular culture from Homer’s Iliad to Tarantino’s Kill Bill are based around the concept of taking violent retribution for wrongs done against the protagonist. I doubt that would be the case if such a concept was widely considered repellant.
Why? What would be the negative consequences of you not sharing them with the group?
As Fineline said, healthier to acknowledge it's there and that you feel it, than to repress/deny it.
Personally, I'd feel ashamed that I could harbour such repellent thoughts, and would never reveal them in private, let alone public. There are, for an absolute certainty, actions that we ought never entertain, however fleetingly.
More posters on this thread have said the feelings are understandable than have said they are repellant.
Furthermore, vast amounts of popular culture from Homer’s Iliad to Tarantino’s Kill Bill are based around the concept of taking violent retribution for wrongs done against the protagonist. I doubt that would be the case if such a concept was widely considered repellant.
This is so, and much TV and film too.
Nevertheless it's not universal and I would suggest that the idea that once revenge has been taken the avenger achieves some kind of satisfaction is overstated. In the case in question once the murderer is dead your child is still dead and there is nothing you can do and nowhere further to go. Nothing is actually resolved. What you have achieved, unless your perpetrator is truly alone in the world, is inflicting the pain of loss on another family.
Why? What would be the negative consequences of you not sharing them with the group?
As Fineline said, healthier to acknowledge it's there and that you feel it, than to repress/deny it.
Masturbation may be common and healthy too, but that's not a good reason for you to perform the act in front of lots of other people.
What? Surely the analogy here, if you want to go with masturbation, would be that acknowledging and talking about sexual feelings is healthy. There can be healthy and unhealthy outlets for those feelings, just as there can for feelings of fury, but this is not about these outlets, but talking about the feelings. Masturbation is a private sexual act, and but expressing outrage at something that has happened in the news is a common social thing that many people do in groups. Again, not suitable for Purg, just as talking about one's sexual feelings might not be suitable for Purg, but that doesn't mean those things should never be talked about in any context.
I think maybe middle class society feels the need to repress strong negative feelings, feels horrified and repelled by them, because it doesn't seem very civilised. But history and psychology suggest that we are all capable of awful things as well as great things. I would suggest that people who feel that murderous feelings are socially unacceptable and must be denied, buried away, and never acknowledged or mentioned, are the kind who, in are more likely to actually abuse or murder. Because the feelings are not dealt with and simmer beneath the surface, and may explode one day. Whereas bringing them into the open takes away their power, lets them be seen for what they are, simply feelings, feelings that may rise up in others too.
I am thinking actually of mothers - I am not a mother but I have observed in 'mum culture' that mothers often feel real fury with their kids, feeling that they hate them, and even want to kill them. Not that they really do or really would - they still love their kids deeply - but the feeling is there, especially when they are very tired and stressed and overwhelmed. And it's been a no-no for anyone to mention these feelings, but more recently mums are starting to admit these feelings and realise they are not alone, and that it's just a feeling, and doesn't make them a terrible person unworthy of kids. And equally I think of the mother who do abuse and even kill their kids - if they had the opportunity to talk about the feelings, rather than suppress them, it might be a different story. Not, of course, that everyone who suppresses feelings will abuse and murder - it will be a minority, but still a minority that might be greatly lessened if these feelings weren't seen as such taboos.
My imagination is dark enough to ask the question what if my child was the perpetrator?
I think that is question everyone needs to consider when thinking about this kind of topic. You have to look at both sides. It is explored in Margaret Forster's novel Mother's Boys, for instance, which explores the aftermath of a killing from the perspective of both the mother of the murdered teenage boy, and the mother of the young man who murdered him. And explores all the strong feelings.
Why? What would be the negative consequences of you not sharing them with the group?
As Fineline said, healthier to acknowledge it's there and that you feel it, than to repress/deny it.
Personally, I'd feel ashamed that I could harbour such repellent thoughts, and would never reveal them in private, let alone public. There are, for an absolute certainty, actions that we ought never entertain, however fleetingly.
More posters on this thread have said the feelings are understandable than have said they are repellant.
Furthermore, vast amounts of popular culture from Homer’s Iliad to Tarantino’s Kill Bill are based around the concept of taking violent retribution for wrongs done against the protagonist. I doubt that would be the case if such a concept was widely considered repellant.
Revenge fantasies are very common, granted. I've written about them myself. But I've imagined other people doing those things, not me, because that's the safe way to explore such feelings. And the conclusion I've reached is that taking violent revenge on someone is utterly fucked up, for everyone.
But would we execute a woman who killed her child? Well, I say we, but I couldn't.
I think most parents would take the view that being a parent has to be a mitigating factor in any such case... "Your honour, the bog was clogged with bangers and mash again and he'd just told me he needed a scale model of the Eiffel Tower made out of toothpicks that day and it was two minutes to nine..."
Why? What would be the negative consequences of you not sharing them with the group?
As Fineline said, healthier to acknowledge it's there and that you feel it, than to repress/deny it.
Personally, I'd feel ashamed that I could harbour such repellent thoughts, and would never reveal them in private, let alone public. There are, for an absolute certainty, actions that we ought never entertain, however fleetingly.
a haiku, writen just now called "repression made my bowels bleed"
thou art holier
than me, who asked god "please kill"
me to spare my child
Why? What would be the negative consequences of you not sharing them with the group?
As Fineline said, healthier to acknowledge it's there and that you feel it, than to repress/deny it.
Personally, I'd feel ashamed that I could harbour such repellent thoughts, and would never reveal them in private, let alone public. There are, for an absolute certainty, actions that we ought never entertain, however fleetingly.
More posters on this thread have said the feelings are understandable than have said they are repellant.
Furthermore, vast amounts of popular culture from Homer’s Iliad to Tarantino’s Kill Bill are based around the concept of taking violent retribution for wrongs done against the protagonist. I doubt that would be the case if such a concept was widely considered repellant.
Revenge fantasies are very common, granted. I've written about them myself. But I've imagined other people doing those things, not me, because that's the safe way to explore such feelings. And the conclusion I've reached is that taking violent revenge on someone is utterly fucked up, for everyone.
There is a big difference, surely, between analysing the feelings logically, and the instinctive gut reaction feeling.
Okay, say a child is deliberately and cruelly attacked by someone they trusted, and almost dies. That child will be traumatised. There will be all sorts of huge, strong, overwhelming emotions that the child experiences - and one may well be intense fury and a desire to kill their attacker. When the child expresses these emotions, is it better to acknowledge them without judgement, or to say 'Ooh, you mustn't feel that way! That's very bad. Try to forgive'? From my observations and understanding, the latter leaves children not able to deal with the trauma, afraid of the intensity of their emotions and they don't heal. And I would say the same applies to adults. We are all human. Some have experiences that give rise to far greater emotions than others, some are exposed to awful trauma and cruelty, and people need to be able to process and express their feelings in order to not be consumed by them. I do think that we Brits are traditionally not so good at dealing with this sort of thing, and there is more a cultural tendency to sweep strong emotions under the carpet.
More posters on this thread have said the feelings are understandable than have said they are repellant.
Furthermore, vast amounts of popular culture from Homer’s Iliad to Tarantino’s Kill Bill are based around the concept of taking violent retribution for wrongs done against the protagonist. I doubt that would be the case if such a concept was widely considered repellant.
The difference is that we were not talking about popular culture here; we were originally talking about a specific individual with whom you had no dealings.
Failing to recognise the difference is like thinking the effects of large calibre ammunition are the same in real life as in those movies.
Murderers are often thoroughly nasty psychopaths, but behind all the media coverage they are actual people too. I'm with @quetzalcoatl here.
You can't diagnose at a distance, but conservatively, I would say that Campbell is away with the fairies. I suppose for the committed advocate of executions, that is irrelevant. It turns my stomach.
I have an issue with saying "we shouldn't discuss these feelings in public" ... on a discussion board.
So let's talk about rape fantasies, or animal cruelty fantasies, or cannibalism fantasies.
I sure as hell would have issues about that. Some things are between a patient and their shrink.
Do you think expressing an outraged desire that someone who rapes and murders a child be cruelly punished and killed should be kept private between that person and their shrink?
Am I the only person who often hears/sees people express this kind of reaction to disturbing news stories quite naturally in conversation? And knows it doesn't lead to plotting to kill the person, because after the emotions are expressed and mutually acknowledged, people often then talk more rationally about why a person might have done this, what can society do to stop this sort of thing, or they may then move on to sharing of feelings of fear and vulnerability about their own children's safety. This is such basic, natural human behaviour in response to disturbing news stories.
I am thinking actually of mothers - I am not a mother but I have observed in 'mum culture' that mothers often feel real fury with their kids, feeling that they hate them, and even want to kill them. Not that they really do or really would - they still love their kids deeply - but the feeling is there, especially when they are very tired and stressed and overwhelmed. And it's been a no-no for anyone to mention these feelings, but more recently mums are starting to admit these feelings and realise they are not alone, and that it's just a feeling, and doesn't make them a terrible person unworthy of kids. And equally I think of the mother who do abuse and even kill their kids - if they had the opportunity to talk about the feelings, rather than suppress them, it might be a different story. Not, of course, that everyone who suppresses feelings will abuse and murder - it will be a minority, but still a minority that might be greatly lessened if these feelings weren't seen as such taboos.
This is a topic that is so close to me because of my present circumstances but also because my one and only infant was such a trying experience I thought "That's it. If I can get this one successfully launched I don't think I need to see what it's like to launch a second one."
I was a single parent - her father abandoned us when she was 18 months old - and of course on top of the economic anxiety and insecurity, as a young first time parent you have no freaking idea of how an infant will mash your nuclear buttons.
I recall on several occasions thinking "OK. She's fed, she's dry, she's safe and tucked in. I need to close the door and go do something else because I feel like if I don't, the next thing I do will put me in an orange jumpsuit for the rest of my life."
It's totally irrational. Completely visceral. An infant who can't tell you what is the problem, screaming at the top of her lungs, setting off all one's own inner screaming infants, and you can't stop it or fix it or solve it.
The amount of self control that is demanded is just - well - I had it, but I can see how others with fewer emotional resources and maturity end up acting on their impulses.
I feel like these impulses are so counter to what people think is normal that they barely even recognize them when they have them, they stomp them down so quickly as to believe they never ever had such a thought about their beloved child.
Maybe there are women out there who are better wired for their first time maternal experience than I was, or who have easier infants, or both, and they can truly say they never had any thought or impulse that wasn't 100% unconditionally loving and nurturing. I think it's possible.
I just think that my own experience is not uncommon.
From a parental point of view, if someone did something like that to my child then not only would I not want them to receive compassion from others, I would happily torture the life out of them over a period of several weeks and then stand proudly in the dock and declare that I did it, that I'm happy I did it, and that if the bastard hadn't died so quickly I'd have still been doing it now.
But I don't believe this. It is very rarely the case that parents of murdered children make any attempt to torture and kill the murderers, and it's highly unlikely that Marvin is such an exception.
I'm sure he'd be very unhappy, and he wants to impress upon us how unhappy he'd be. (Now that he has a child of his own, and all.) But even extreme sorrow doesn't usually manifest itself in torture, and I think it's more than a little sad that he feels he needs to display this fantasy for an audience.
I am glad that the society I live in isn't run by people who think that that
"Justice" is just a fancy word for "caring more for the worst kind of scum than you do for the people they hurt".
and if Marvin is going to borrow other people's tragedy as the occasion for his histrionics, I suppose it's fair to ask someone who also thinks
How severely we punish crimes is a measure of how acceptable we think they are.
whether he also thinks parents who don't loudly demand the torture and death of their their children's killers are indicating that they think the crime was, after all, not that unacceptable?
Why? What would be the negative consequences of you not sharing them with the group?
As Fineline said, healthier to acknowledge it's there and that you feel it, than to repress/deny it.
Personally, I'd feel ashamed that I could harbour such repellent thoughts, and would never reveal them in private, let alone public. There are, for an absolute certainty, actions that we ought never entertain, however fleetingly.
a haiku, writen just now called "repression made my bowels bleed"
thou art holier
than me, who asked god "please kill"
me to spare my child
You literally have no idea about the recesses of my mind. 'holier' isn't a phrase I'd ever use.
Seems to me there's a difference between saying you feel like doing such and so to someone, and saying you actually want to do such and so to someone. And it seems to me MtM has stepped over that line. That's where our discomfort and upset with him come from. Well, me at least.
Dave, you say you don't believe it. Exactly. People express emotions in the heat of the moment. Very common for parents to express such strong, visceral emotions when they hear a news story of a child being assaulted or murdered. Very rare for it to actually happen in reality. I don't get the impression that Marvin is rationally claiming this is what he would really do. No one can possibly know what they would do in such an awful situation. He was expressing a gut reaction, a commonly expressed gut reaction to such things.
Heh, do you move in circles where people never 'feel their feelings at you'? Where people hear of appalling things and just say 'dear, dear' in emotionless tones? Maybe this is a class difference, because I am totally baffled at people's reactions to Marvin's comment, and the idea that strong emotions should be suppressed and kept hidden away, like they are something dirty to be ashamed of. It always seems weird when I, who have a tendency to take things literally, am able to tell that something is not literal when others are not.
I suppose it's fair to ask someone who also thinks
How severely we punish crimes is a measure of how acceptable we think they are.
whether he also thinks parents who don't loudly demand the torture and death of their their children's killers are indicating that they think the crime was, after all, not that unacceptable?
On some visceral, non-logical level, yes I do think it strikes me as a sign that they’re less upset about it than those who are more obviously angry/vengeful.
I’ve always felt “I forgive you” to be functionally the same as “it doesn’t matter”, and as I said in that quote the severity of a punishment to correlate to the severity of the crime.
I used “felt” deliberately there, because while cold logic may propose alternatives, my emotional response to situations such as this bypasses all logical apparatus of my mind and goes straight to the primordial animal that lurks in the hindbrain of us all.
I’ve always felt “I forgive you” to be functionally the same as “it doesn’t matter”, and as I said in that quote the severity of a punishment to correlate to the severity of the crime.
Have you ever forgiven somebody for hurting you or yours badly?
If you have you’ll know how very hard it is and what incredible strength it takes. The polar opposite of ‘it doesn’t matter’.
I’ve always felt “I forgive you” to be functionally the same as “it doesn’t matter”
And yet you identify with a religion that has forgiveness at the very heart of it - its USP if you like.
How do you reconcile those contradictions?
ISTM that forgiveness carries with it accusation - if it didn't matter, there would be nothing to forgive. Forgiveness is saying "it does matter, but I will suffer its mattering".
It might be argued that we see that cosmically acted out at Calvary.
This doesn't argue for easy grace, for easy forgiveness. But it places it there as an aspiration, which will demand that we choose not to stay in our desire to hurt and avenge.
Nor does it mean people are just "let off" - public protection alone argues against that.
Seems to me there's a difference between saying you feel like doing such and so to someone, and saying you actually want to do such and so to someone. And it seems to me MtM has stepped over that line. That's where our discomfort and upset with him come from. Well, me at least.
It's also about enthusiasm, isn't it? Supporters of the death penalty vary between the cerebral and those full of relish, and the latter are a bit off-putting. I'm not sure where Marvin fits.
I’ve always felt “I forgive you” to be functionally the same as “it doesn’t matter”, and as I said in that quote the severity of a punishment to correlate to the severity of the crime.
Have you ever forgiven somebody for hurting you or yours badly?
Not that I can recall, no.
ETA: not when said harm was deliberate, anyway. Accidents are easier to forgive.
I’ve always felt “I forgive you” to be functionally the same as “it doesn’t matter”, and as I said in that quote the severity of a punishment to correlate to the severity of the crime.
Have you ever forgiven somebody for hurting you or yours badly?
Not that I can recall, no.
ETA: not when said harm was deliberate, anyway. Accidents are easier to forgive.
Do you skip over the "as we forgive" bit in the Lord's Prayer?
Trying to avoid ITTWACW but I can't square defiant rejection of the concept of forgiveness with Christianity.
Humans brains, for the most part, are dedicated to continuous survival, reproduction whenever possible, and occasional reasoning. This hierarchy is why it is so easy to appear to dismantle an emotional person's comments logically, because the feeling portion was pulling most of the levers. While feelings make for poor arguments, this doesn't invalidate them.
It is important to recognize that nobody gets to pick how they feel. All we can assert is that people take responsibility for what they do with those feelings. And it just so happens that Marv is coming to terms with some powerful new feelings about children.
Saying "I find it incredibly difficult to forgive" shows an acknowledgement that (a) forgiveness is an option and (b) forgiveness is something they are working towards.
"I have never forgiven anyone who has wronged me" is ... it's almost cartoonish in its villainy. The kind of thing a despotic ruler or a Bond villain would say, except in real life, that's absolutely fucking terrifying if you give the consequences even a moment's consideration.
Dave, you say you don't believe it. Exactly. People express emotions in the heat of the moment. Very common for parents to express such strong, visceral emotions when they hear a news story of a child being assaulted or murdered.
There's a difference between saying such things in an oral conversation and taking the time to type them out and post them*. In multiple, successive posts. I agree with @Dave W that the performative aspect unsettles me and it's the kind of thing that keeps me off social media. I don't think it's good for us. It's like taking an emotional selfie.
*Possibly voice-to-text has blurred this distinction; I certainly think it makes for ill-considered posts. The difference is that written words stay.
I’ve always felt “I forgive you” to be functionally the same as “it doesn’t matter”, and as I said in that quote the severity of a punishment to correlate to the severity of the crime.
Which just proves how little you've thought about it, as @Boogie points out. I know you used "felt", but as adults we are expected to exercise some control over how our feelings come out. Doubly so when expressing them involves all the rigmarole of posting on a bulletin board. People who don't learn to exercise control over their feelings often act impulsively and some of them end up in jail for, well, killing other people.
I am thinking actually of mothers - I am not a mother but I have observed in 'mum culture' that mothers often feel real fury with their kids, feeling that they hate them, and even want to kill them. Not that they really do or really would - they still love their kids deeply - but the feeling is there, especially when they are very tired and stressed and overwhelmed.
Many of the women I know who have killed their children were also trying to kill themselves at the time, succeeded in killing their children by overdose, and misjudged the dose for themselves. I'm sure @Marvin the Martian will tell us some additional suitable form of torture for them.
Really, you can't imagine that people could possibly feel upset if they're not expressing anger and vengeance to the degree you expect? And here I though I was lacking in empathy!
As for your "feelings" about forgiveness - I guess you really aren't on board with this whole Christianity thing, are you? (I'm not either, but not because I equate degree of caring about something with the floridity of calls for vengeance.)
I'm curious, though - what's your reaction when someone forgives you for something you've done? "Fuck you, then, for making such a big deal about it, since obviously it didn't really matter to you"?
Dave, you say you don't believe it. Exactly. People express emotions in the heat of the moment. Very common for parents to express such strong, visceral emotions when they hear a news story of a child being assaulted or murdered.
There's no "heat of the moment here" - it was a typed message 60 posts into a thread about a crime that happened last year.
I don't mind his strong emotions, but I don't particularly want to hear his considered fantasies about how brutal he'd be to the murderer of his own child. Why should we be expected to play the uncritical audience?
Eutychus, I've seen people post such things online in forums just as much as say it orally in 'real life'. The heat of the moment emotions don't necessarily dissipate by writing them. And the visceral reaction may continue, even while the person can also logically analyse. You can have both at the same time. Or focus on one or the other at different times. They are not set in stone.
Dave, I didn't think Marvin was expecting us to play uncritical audience. Normally when people make such comments, people do go on to discuss more rationally, in my experience (both online writing and on real time speaking) But I am seeing a knee-jerk shock reaction to his comment, which seems just as instinctive and emotional as his.
FWIW, I agree with boogie that genuine forgiveness is a painful, difficult process, very different from saying something doesn't matter. But it also involves acknowledging, expressing and dealing with strong emotions, including anger and even maybe the feeling of wanting to kill someone. And there are plenty of people who want to deny these feelings, sweep them under the carpet, and just say 'I forgive you' because they know they are supposed to forgive, because Jesus says so. And then it is not real forgiveness - it is a denial of the seriousness of the issue and their feelings, and generally results in the anger and resentment coming out in other ways, like passive aggression, or self hatred or depression.
Doc Tor: 'Shocking' is subjective. I wasn't shocked by Marvin's comment. Marvin's comment itself is a reaction to something he finds shocking. But I'm not saying people shouldn't be shocked at Marvin's comment - if that is their emotional reaction, then it is - more that to me a shocked audience is not the same as a critical audience. I was responding specifically to Dave's comment: 'Why should we be expected to play the uncritical audience?'
Comments
Marvin, both Nicole and NOprophet have relevant personal experience that you don't, and they don't agree with you.
Nicole says the death penalty wouldn't give her more closure than life without parole has. She isn't having to imagine the situation; she's lived it. Why should we accept what you are arguing for over what she says?
And NOprophet wrote very movingly:
Would you please address this directly?
In theory, theory and and reality closely align. In reality, they do not.
The problem is pragmatic and twofold. First, I do not believe that there is a bright clear line of acceptable behaviour beyond which a death is warranted, much less able to defend such a line. Second, and more fundamentally, I have exactly zero faith in any human institution for making any such decisions. Even in the most extreme cases, it's not worth the risk.
I absolutely do not want any government deciding that it has the power to put its own citizens to death.
Last cards on the table, since having children I think I can see the event horizon of my own sanity. It is unknowable darkness beyond the concept of their deaths. And my imagination is very dark indeed.
As Fineline said, healthier to acknowledge it's there and that you feel it, than to repress/deny it.
This is comfortably the best argument against the death penalty, and the only one that gives me pause in situations other than merely ranting on the internet.
Essentially, the risk of executing an innocent person outweighs the benefit of executing a guilty one. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t any benefit to executing the guilty one.
My feelings exactly.
Masturbation may be common and healthy too, but that's not a good reason for you to perform the act in front of lots of other people.
Personally, I'd feel ashamed that I could harbour such repellent thoughts, and would never reveal them in private, let alone public. There are, for an absolute certainty, actions that we ought never entertain, however fleetingly.
How comfortable are we with the prospect of a death sentence in that scenario?
When you kill someone you kill a part of everyone they matter to. Acceptable collateral damage?
More posters on this thread have said the feelings are understandable than have said they are repellant.
Furthermore, vast amounts of popular culture from Homer’s Iliad to Tarantino’s Kill Bill are based around the concept of taking violent retribution for wrongs done against the protagonist. I doubt that would be the case if such a concept was widely considered repellant.
This is so, and much TV and film too.
Nevertheless it's not universal and I would suggest that the idea that once revenge has been taken the avenger achieves some kind of satisfaction is overstated. In the case in question once the murderer is dead your child is still dead and there is nothing you can do and nowhere further to go. Nothing is actually resolved. What you have achieved, unless your perpetrator is truly alone in the world, is inflicting the pain of loss on another family.
What? Surely the analogy here, if you want to go with masturbation, would be that acknowledging and talking about sexual feelings is healthy. There can be healthy and unhealthy outlets for those feelings, just as there can for feelings of fury, but this is not about these outlets, but talking about the feelings. Masturbation is a private sexual act, and but expressing outrage at something that has happened in the news is a common social thing that many people do in groups. Again, not suitable for Purg, just as talking about one's sexual feelings might not be suitable for Purg, but that doesn't mean those things should never be talked about in any context.
I think maybe middle class society feels the need to repress strong negative feelings, feels horrified and repelled by them, because it doesn't seem very civilised. But history and psychology suggest that we are all capable of awful things as well as great things. I would suggest that people who feel that murderous feelings are socially unacceptable and must be denied, buried away, and never acknowledged or mentioned, are the kind who, in are more likely to actually abuse or murder. Because the feelings are not dealt with and simmer beneath the surface, and may explode one day. Whereas bringing them into the open takes away their power, lets them be seen for what they are, simply feelings, feelings that may rise up in others too.
I am thinking actually of mothers - I am not a mother but I have observed in 'mum culture' that mothers often feel real fury with their kids, feeling that they hate them, and even want to kill them. Not that they really do or really would - they still love their kids deeply - but the feeling is there, especially when they are very tired and stressed and overwhelmed. And it's been a no-no for anyone to mention these feelings, but more recently mums are starting to admit these feelings and realise they are not alone, and that it's just a feeling, and doesn't make them a terrible person unworthy of kids. And equally I think of the mother who do abuse and even kill their kids - if they had the opportunity to talk about the feelings, rather than suppress them, it might be a different story. Not, of course, that everyone who suppresses feelings will abuse and murder - it will be a minority, but still a minority that might be greatly lessened if these feelings weren't seen as such taboos.
I think that is question everyone needs to consider when thinking about this kind of topic. You have to look at both sides. It is explored in Margaret Forster's novel Mother's Boys, for instance, which explores the aftermath of a killing from the perspective of both the mother of the murdered teenage boy, and the mother of the young man who murdered him. And explores all the strong feelings.
Revenge fantasies are very common, granted. I've written about them myself. But I've imagined other people doing those things, not me, because that's the safe way to explore such feelings. And the conclusion I've reached is that taking violent revenge on someone is utterly fucked up, for everyone.
Of course, Campbell is a child, and I'm amazed that anyone can recommend killing him, apart from his state of mind.
I think most parents would take the view that being a parent has to be a mitigating factor in any such case... "Your honour, the bog was clogged with bangers and mash again and he'd just told me he needed a scale model of the Eiffel Tower made out of toothpicks that day and it was two minutes to nine..."
So let's talk about rape fantasies, or animal cruelty fantasies, or cannibalism fantasies.
I sure as hell would have issues about that. Some things are between a patient and their shrink.
a haiku, writen just now called "repression made my bowels bleed"
thou art holier
than me, who asked god "please kill"
me to spare my child
There is a big difference, surely, between analysing the feelings logically, and the instinctive gut reaction feeling.
Okay, say a child is deliberately and cruelly attacked by someone they trusted, and almost dies. That child will be traumatised. There will be all sorts of huge, strong, overwhelming emotions that the child experiences - and one may well be intense fury and a desire to kill their attacker. When the child expresses these emotions, is it better to acknowledge them without judgement, or to say 'Ooh, you mustn't feel that way! That's very bad. Try to forgive'? From my observations and understanding, the latter leaves children not able to deal with the trauma, afraid of the intensity of their emotions and they don't heal. And I would say the same applies to adults. We are all human. Some have experiences that give rise to far greater emotions than others, some are exposed to awful trauma and cruelty, and people need to be able to process and express their feelings in order to not be consumed by them. I do think that we Brits are traditionally not so good at dealing with this sort of thing, and there is more a cultural tendency to sweep strong emotions under the carpet.
Failing to recognise the difference is like thinking the effects of large calibre ammunition are the same in real life as in those movies.
Murderers are often thoroughly nasty psychopaths, but behind all the media coverage they are actual people too. I'm with @quetzalcoatl here.
Do you think expressing an outraged desire that someone who rapes and murders a child be cruelly punished and killed should be kept private between that person and their shrink?
Am I the only person who often hears/sees people express this kind of reaction to disturbing news stories quite naturally in conversation? And knows it doesn't lead to plotting to kill the person, because after the emotions are expressed and mutually acknowledged, people often then talk more rationally about why a person might have done this, what can society do to stop this sort of thing, or they may then move on to sharing of feelings of fear and vulnerability about their own children's safety. This is such basic, natural human behaviour in response to disturbing news stories.
This is a topic that is so close to me because of my present circumstances but also because my one and only infant was such a trying experience I thought "That's it. If I can get this one successfully launched I don't think I need to see what it's like to launch a second one."
I was a single parent - her father abandoned us when she was 18 months old - and of course on top of the economic anxiety and insecurity, as a young first time parent you have no freaking idea of how an infant will mash your nuclear buttons.
I recall on several occasions thinking "OK. She's fed, she's dry, she's safe and tucked in. I need to close the door and go do something else because I feel like if I don't, the next thing I do will put me in an orange jumpsuit for the rest of my life."
It's totally irrational. Completely visceral. An infant who can't tell you what is the problem, screaming at the top of her lungs, setting off all one's own inner screaming infants, and you can't stop it or fix it or solve it.
The amount of self control that is demanded is just - well - I had it, but I can see how others with fewer emotional resources and maturity end up acting on their impulses.
I feel like these impulses are so counter to what people think is normal that they barely even recognize them when they have them, they stomp them down so quickly as to believe they never ever had such a thought about their beloved child.
Maybe there are women out there who are better wired for their first time maternal experience than I was, or who have easier infants, or both, and they can truly say they never had any thought or impulse that wasn't 100% unconditionally loving and nurturing. I think it's possible.
I just think that my own experience is not uncommon.
AFF
I don't object to Marvin talking about his feelings. He can talk about masturbation, too - but I don't particularly want to see a live performance.
In a similar vein, I dislike him feeling his feelings at us in such a performative way.
Marvin said: But I don't believe this. It is very rarely the case that parents of murdered children make any attempt to torture and kill the murderers, and it's highly unlikely that Marvin is such an exception.
I'm sure he'd be very unhappy, and he wants to impress upon us how unhappy he'd be. (Now that he has a child of his own, and all.) But even extreme sorrow doesn't usually manifest itself in torture, and I think it's more than a little sad that he feels he needs to display this fantasy for an audience.
I am glad that the society I live in isn't run by people who think that that and if Marvin is going to borrow other people's tragedy as the occasion for his histrionics, I suppose it's fair to ask someone who also thinks whether he also thinks parents who don't loudly demand the torture and death of their their children's killers are indicating that they think the crime was, after all, not that unacceptable?
You literally have no idea about the recesses of my mind. 'holier' isn't a phrase I'd ever use.
Heh, do you move in circles where people never 'feel their feelings at you'? Where people hear of appalling things and just say 'dear, dear' in emotionless tones? Maybe this is a class difference, because I am totally baffled at people's reactions to Marvin's comment, and the idea that strong emotions should be suppressed and kept hidden away, like they are something dirty to be ashamed of. It always seems weird when I, who have a tendency to take things literally, am able to tell that something is not literal when others are not.
On some visceral, non-logical level, yes I do think it strikes me as a sign that they’re less upset about it than those who are more obviously angry/vengeful.
I’ve always felt “I forgive you” to be functionally the same as “it doesn’t matter”, and as I said in that quote the severity of a punishment to correlate to the severity of the crime.
I used “felt” deliberately there, because while cold logic may propose alternatives, my emotional response to situations such as this bypasses all logical apparatus of my mind and goes straight to the primordial animal that lurks in the hindbrain of us all.
Have you ever forgiven somebody for hurting you or yours badly?
If you have you’ll know how very hard it is and what incredible strength it takes. The polar opposite of ‘it doesn’t matter’.
I’ve always felt “I forgive you” to be functionally the same as “it doesn’t matter”
And yet you identify with a religion that has forgiveness at the very heart of it - its USP if you like.
How do you reconcile those contradictions?
ISTM that forgiveness carries with it accusation - if it didn't matter, there would be nothing to forgive. Forgiveness is saying "it does matter, but I will suffer its mattering".
It might be argued that we see that cosmically acted out at Calvary.
This doesn't argue for easy grace, for easy forgiveness. But it places it there as an aspiration, which will demand that we choose not to stay in our desire to hurt and avenge.
Nor does it mean people are just "let off" - public protection alone argues against that.
It's also about enthusiasm, isn't it? Supporters of the death penalty vary between the cerebral and those full of relish, and the latter are a bit off-putting. I'm not sure where Marvin fits.
Not that I can recall, no.
ETA: not when said harm was deliberate, anyway. Accidents are easier to forgive.
Do you skip over the "as we forgive" bit in the Lord's Prayer?
Trying to avoid ITTWACW but I can't square defiant rejection of the concept of forgiveness with Christianity.
It is important to recognize that nobody gets to pick how they feel. All we can assert is that people take responsibility for what they do with those feelings. And it just so happens that Marv is coming to terms with some powerful new feelings about children.
"I have never forgiven anyone who has wronged me" is ... it's almost cartoonish in its villainy. The kind of thing a despotic ruler or a Bond villain would say, except in real life, that's absolutely fucking terrifying if you give the consequences even a moment's consideration.
*Possibly voice-to-text has blurred this distinction; I certainly think it makes for ill-considered posts. The difference is that written words stay.
Which just proves how little you've thought about it, as @Boogie points out. I know you used "felt", but as adults we are expected to exercise some control over how our feelings come out. Doubly so when expressing them involves all the rigmarole of posting on a bulletin board. People who don't learn to exercise control over their feelings often act impulsively and some of them end up in jail for, well, killing other people.
Many of the women I know who have killed their children were also trying to kill themselves at the time, succeeded in killing their children by overdose, and misjudged the dose for themselves. I'm sure @Marvin the Martian will tell us some additional suitable form of torture for them.
I'm assuming that Marv will forgive me, despite it's obvious intentionality.
As for your "feelings" about forgiveness - I guess you really aren't on board with this whole Christianity thing, are you? (I'm not either, but not because I equate degree of caring about something with the floridity of calls for vengeance.)
I'm curious, though - what's your reaction when someone forgives you for something you've done? "Fuck you, then, for making such a big deal about it, since obviously it didn't really matter to you"?
fineline: There's no "heat of the moment here" - it was a typed message 60 posts into a thread about a crime that happened last year.
I don't mind his strong emotions, but I don't particularly want to hear his considered fantasies about how brutal he'd be to the murderer of his own child. Why should we be expected to play the uncritical audience?
Sure I will, because no harm has been done beyond a short period of being startled by a spider picture.
I still think you’re a bastard for posting it though. 😈
Dave, I didn't think Marvin was expecting us to play uncritical audience. Normally when people make such comments, people do go on to discuss more rationally, in my experience (both online writing and on real time speaking) But I am seeing a knee-jerk shock reaction to his comment, which seems just as instinctive and emotional as his.
Person A says/writes something shocking.
Person B is shocked.
Person B is exhibiting an entirely reasonable reaction to what Person A has said. The two are not equivalent.