As a writer one of the few things I have shied away from is getting into the mind of someone who has done something barbaric. Something I, and more generally most people, would consider uncivilised and worthy if imprisonment if not execution. Trying to get into the mind of the man who just slaughtered people in New Orleans at a New Year celebration is one such time. I had a discussion with someone who would not allow any psychological damage in his thinking, not wishing to give him any excuse for choosing to be evil.
Evil is not a word I use. We all have it in us to hate and murder – look how indifferent we are to animals – and though few of us will be driven to kill inside civic society if that society evaporated then as in Lord of the Flies, ordinary people would turn savage. Savagery is, after all, where we came from. However, knowing this is knowledge and knowing what drives murderous insanity is a way of helping us all deal with such people. If we don’t find out every reason people do these things we leave ourselves vulnerable to them.
#neworleans
#isis