No Hugs for Them

Wednesday, April 17, 2013
Yesterday when I wrote my declaration in favor of humanity, my Hot Mom responded that while she was sending hugs to the victims and responders of the Boston attack, those responsible should be deprived of this comfort now and forevermore. No hugs for them, she noted. 

And this got me to thinking. The problem with having a large, dispersed population is that the traditional form of punishment known as "banishment" doesn't work anymore.

Imagine if banishing those people who are capable of such heinous acts was still possible. They would be cut off from civilization, from the comforts of modern life, from the succor of community and family. No reputable family would take them in, no business would take their money, no group would welcome them to their proverbial fire. They would be destitute, and utterly, completely alone. 

On the other hand, there are certainly advantages to living in a society that no longer has the option to banish. More diversity, fewer constraints on behavior that does not hurt others, less superstition. These all contribute to the net good in the world. Which means I guess I'll have to be satisfied with the modern equivalent, otherwise known as "prison."

My thoughts and support to the law enforcement professionals working diligently to find answers in Boston. And hugs. Sending those, too.

4 comments:

Eric said...

I have to admit, I cringed reading the first paragraph.

My gut instinct is that the perpetrator(s) will prove to be deserving of contempt instead of pity, but then we just don't know yet.

One of the recent books I've read was Dave Cullen's Columbine, a book about two boys who wanted to plant bombs to kill and maim spectacularly but had to settle for shooting their schoolmates and teachers when the bombs failed to go off. And I was brought to tears many times by the deaths of so many kids, and the life-altering injuries suffered by so many others, and by the grief suffered by the families who lost someone and by the families of injured survivors who had to struggle through the painful process of rehabilitation and readjustment (Cullen often comes back to the story of one gifted student who survived the assault with a traumatic brain injury, requiring him to relearn walking and talking; he's apparently doing very well in a finance career now). But I was also brought to tears by the killers, or at least by Dylan Klebold, who might have been something other than a child-murderer in another life. Cullen makes a compelling case that Eric Harris may have been a psychopath, with a brain with a limited capacity for empathy (and what do we do about human beings who may be wired from birth without the capacity for being humane, I have no idea?).

Klebold was possibly a manic-depressive, or something along that spectrum. Had he not been best friends with someone cognitively incapable of compassion, he might have merely killed himself. If he hadn't done either, and made it to adulthood, he might have been me. I don't know that I have it in me to say he should have been deprived of comfort had he somehow survived his own carnage in your neck of the woods. That I pity what he turned into and could have been doesn't touch the horror I feel over what he actually was and did; these are not zero-sum games.

I don't know, anyway, who the Boston killer was or who they were. One suspects that someone who plants bombs like this fits the profile of a psychopath, and isn't sure how to feel about a human who may have a biologically different brain that makes him dangerous (and don't you already notice that even considering innate biological differences in this way raises spectres of evil greater than what any single psychopath can accomplish by himself? we're into the kind of discourse eugenicists indulge in, which should make our skins crawl, yes?). But it could just as easily be someone commanded by demons or angels whispering in his ears alone. And even if this is the work of a psychopath, someone who scores high on Robert Hare's clinical checklist, one doesn't know if it's his work alone or if he had helpers who might deserve our pity and grief, too.

I don't think it should have to be said that this isn't something that takes away from our feelings for the victims. Pity, grief, compassion, horror--these aren't conventionally limited resources; we feel them until we're exhausted, we rest or hide and then we feel them again. Some people think if you feel sorry for the criminal you have taken something away from the victim. And this seems especially terrible when we face the reality that the victims in Boston have only really begun to suffer and need so much of whatever we can give them.

Janiece said...

Eric, like you, I don't feel that pitying a mentally ill perpetrator of even the most heinous act takes away from the compassion we feel for their victims. With very few exceptions, the issue is always, always more complicated than an "us versus them" mentality (9/11 being the exception that proves the rule for me as it pertains only to the hijackers themselves, YMMV).

However, being desirous of not having those who would kill innocents be members of our community is not the same thing as a failure of empathy. The phrase "no hugs for them," i.e., banishment from society as a punishment for illegal acts, is a mainstay of our justice system (she says to a criminal defense attorney). I apologize if you think I meant otherwise.

I guess my point is, while I believe in redemption and in people's desire to change, the aftermath of these events usually leads me to want those who would commit such acts OUT of my society, my community, my world.

Eric said...

My apologies in return if I gave offense--none was intended.

The purposes of the contemporary justice system is a subject much more complicated than needs to be gone into. Suffice it to say that incarceration for the purposes of neutralization isn't quite the same thing as banishment, and banishment isn't a feature of the modern justice system (the occasional small-county judge who unconstitutionally sentences someone to depart from and never return to the county notwithstanding). We do seem to use psychiatric commitment as a form of banishment in some cases, and this is a very real possibility if it turns out the Boston murderer is legally mentally ill; but ostensibly lifelong civil commitments are for the purposes of treatment and hypothetically a person acquitted on grounds of mental illness could return to society someday if "cured".

I think, perhaps, that my original point wasn't that we don't share the desire to see a perpetrator of mass murder and maiming exiled or worse. It's that this instinct I share with you might be something we have to suspend or hold at bay until we know more, and then we might find ourselves surprised and conflicted as I've found myself surprised and conflicted (for example) by my feelings towards the Columbine murderers.

Again, my apologies if I'm out of line. All is proffered with respect and affection.

Janiece said...

Eric, you're not out of line. It's always wise to reevaluate our first instincts in times of trouble and strife, as our knee-jerk reactions are seldom the wisest course.

I want law enforcement to find out what happened and evaluate the outcomes of those discoveries. I want those responsible to face the consequences of their behavior, whether those consequences are them finally getting the mental health services they so desperately need or simply being locked up in a Federal Prison because they're irredeemable sociopaths.

But regardless of what the final analysis reveals, I want them removed from society.