Violent crime to gain leverage over a person or their belongings is one thing. The motive is clear there.
What I don't understand is the demand for a similar motive for EVIL acts. These mass murderers aren't robbing their victims. They're not raping them. They're not seeking to gain materially. It's just fucking evil for the sake of evil. They are killing just to kill. In other words... Evil. Period. The end.
Yep. The technical term for this is they are crazy.
Shrinks say one of every 25 people demonstrate sociopathic tendencies. Very few are violent. They are often successful. Control freaks, indifferent to others, very driven in terms of career or status. These arent necessarily all bad traits. Most CEOs and founders have many of these personality traits. Also politicians, leaders of various types.
A small percentage of them have anger or violent tendencies but a larger subset simply gain some kind of satisfaction from the suffering of others. Often being the source of it. The basic example is the bully. They enjoy hurting people in various ways because it's one of the few things that brings them joy.
Then there are the full on psychopaths who are compelled to kill and torture others for pleasure. They can't resist it. Many of them are serial killers.
I was required to spend time learning about profiling from profilers. Academics and even some FBI. This was so interesting to me I went beyond what I had to study on this subject. Took courses and attended seminars. It's fascinating and scary at the same time.
Most of the whack jobs who shoot up a workplace or school are sociopaths. They aren't 'born killers' suffering from psychopathy. They just have little or no empathy for other people. They also have anger issues. When something frustrates or pisses them off, they cant deal with it. So they fume and fester over a grievance or insult because it makes them feel like they have no control. So they act out. Compelled to get even and because they are sociopaths with no empathy, it doesnt register that they are going to murder people. They only care about settling a score. Because everything is always about them.
One of the key learnings in all of this for me was that psycho, violent religious fanatics (all of them) falsely pretend that what they do is righteous. Killing others in the name of religion. They are drawn to be jihadists or some other religious radical out of a tendency for violence. The truth is some kill infidels and cut off their heads because they like it. Not because it's Gods will.
Again, 1 out of 25 humans has some of sociopathic tendencies. Some call the most extreme of them evil. I call it mental illness. And unfortunately, the only cure for the worst of them is death. Like pedophiles. You cannot unfuck their brain. They will never change.
www.nbcnewyork.com
