What? No, I consider it a ludicrous, childish phrase that cheapens the debate, and the effects of his actions on his victims. He was a criminal, and quite likely mentally ill in some way, though we’ll never know now.
Howay man, ‘bad guys’?
You are attributing malice and cruelty to mental illness. That is bullshit. Mental illness and cruelty are two completely different concepts. And by conflating them with an ‘unknown’ diagnosis you are saying that people with mental illnesses are dangerous and should be avoided because some of them will lock you up and rape you for a decade. This is incredibly defamatory and bigoted. There is no evidence that supports this whatsoever. Additionally, you are implying that some people with mental illnesses are unable to make moral judgements but are somehow still able to plan and execute a design to lock up and torture multiple women.
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Just a reminder for everyone to stay on topic.
It’s WAY more complicated than that.
Again, (and repeatedly), Castro certainly fell into the territory I (and probably anybody who’s in agreement that we should’t obsess over him) consider ‘least likely to be redeemed’, and if somebody’s not willing to try, then of course there’s no progress to be made.
But again, it’s about us, and our reactions are part of OUR problem.
Maybe a video would help? It has links!
TED: Phillip Zimbardo - on the physcology of ‘evil’
I’d also argue that many things we call ‘mental illness’ are far from it, many are difficulties in coping in a world that honestly doesn’t make much sense. We’re not designed for this, we shouldn’t be trying to turn everybody into lowest-common-denominator clones. We’re creating depression and turning ADD from a different and useful set of mental abilities to something that must be ‘treated’ . . . so there’s layers of complexity there.
There was a topic?
(I’m more than half serious here. There was a statement of fact. What topic one chooses to spin off from that is pretty wide open depending on which part of the statement or its implications or its context one feels like focusing on. I can see at least one more wide divergence which would still be “on topic”, but which I’m not convinced would be productive.)
C’mon. Don’t mix these up. I’ve tried to make this point clear, but I will repeat it again: a mental illness is a type of disability that requires medical treatment to overcome. This does not mean that there isn’t a psychological basis to crimes, cruelty, or malice, but those type of psychological characteristics are normal. Those types of behaviors exhibit themselves when opportunity allows them to or society allows it to occur. A mental illness is different. Everybody can be evil. But being evil does not mean that you are disabled or in distress to such a point that you need medical treatment.
TL;DR: what is considered a ‘negative’ psychological attribute isn’t a mental illness as these attributes exist in almost everyone. A mental illness occurs when some psychological attribute is disabling.
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Stay on the topic of Castro. This is for everyone as there is more than one area going off topic.
What are you on about? I’m not saying anything of the sort, you made that up yourself for me to say. I’m not het up enough to be spouting nonsense like that.
I said ‘quite likely’. It’s also quite likely that he was just a horrible, evil fuck. We’ll never know either way now, though. My point was, I object to the childish phrase ‘bad guys’, and agree that the way that crime, and its solutions are portrayed in our media skew our frame of reference, and make it difficult to deal with such touchy subjects rationally.
I do, very firmly, believe that how we act, even in the treatment of the most depraved criminals, reflects on us as a society, and that rejoicing in more death, or taking more lives is detrimental to everyone. I’ve had some horrible shit be done to me, and one of the people who did that is now dead. Didn’t mean I rejoiced, though I wasn’t sad, I’ll admit.
I think it’s a shame Castro managed to kill himself than to have to serve his sentence, as it goes. I don’t think he was gonna cure cancer while he was there, mind.
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I’m actually not ‘mixing them up’, just pointing out that every actual real person is on an analog scale, nobody lives at the poles.
Having worked several years at DHFS in Wisconsin working with our CMO and others who deal with mental health for a living (I often had to do in-depth analytic work on the more complicated cases). There are plenty of examples of people who are far more screwed up than Castro was being useful members of society. . . and also plenty of examples of allegedly ‘better’ or ‘more functional’ people doing far more damage than he ever could have (Most of our recent American presidents, for example. . . the last two in particular).
It’s all the same thing, if people make bad decisions about other people, the should not be allowed to have influence or power over others. Nobody suggested he be just put back in society, rather I’d advise he have been taken somewhere far away from us (and the sort of person he could endanger) and be put in the hands of people who aren’t over-emotional fools at either end of the spectrum. If they can get something useful out of him, cool. Compared to how much it costs us to keep an average CEO in servants, I’m not going to worry about that.
Meanwhile, some of his real victims (his actual victims, their families, HIS family, and so on) might need to not be constantly reminded, and might need to look forward to a life where they are known as who they are rather than by an association with a cartoon villain.
I don’t know if this relates to addictions. I would not categorize kidnapping, rape, violence and murder necessarily as addictions, but sick compulsions instead. I think the demons that got to him were lack of freedom and control because he obviously lived for the control. At the end of the day, I hope that the girls will find peace in that they will never have to see him interviewed on TV or see his face again. Maybe they can heal.
He didn’t make ‘bad decisions’. He acted maliciously and cruelly and planned it all. Get it?
You are trying to pin this mental illness label on him and say that it caused his actions, yet you have done nothing to back that up. All that you do is continue to defame and stigmatize those with mental illnesses who would rather not be caught up in your guilt by association web.
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Mental illness is different than personality disorders. If I had to wager, I’d guess antisocial personality disorder.
No, no I’m not. I’m pointing out that you’re reading a lot into this guy, and to me. Have you . . .read half of what you reply to?
Nor will I. I have no need to back up your misinterpretation. What I have backed up is my actual argument, which is apparently not what you’re responding to.
And I stigmatize people? I do not think that word means what you think it means.
And I have a ‘guilt by association’ web? Where? How did you know when I do not? You don’t even know ME and clearly aren’t trying too hard to understand where I’m coming from. Communication is two-way street, is it not?
I say a thing, you say ‘NO!’, I clarify, you say ‘Prove it!’, I link a couple of sources and explain further, you say TL;DR. You somehow have allegedly read the posts you’re responding to, but you’re still attacking straw men rather than talk to me.
Give me something to be wrong about, I’d LOVE that! That’s the best thing ever,that’s how I grow! But it has to be a real thing. Surely you’re up to the challenge? Can you also embrace your own flaws as gleefully as I do? That speeds things up!
Want to get back to the point? How Ariel Castro is definitely best off not being anywhere he can do harm, but we’re poisoning ourselves by turning him into a cartoon villain, and our media has already screwed up the lives of every actual person involved, especially those who’d like to be known by their names, instead of by their association with a veritable comic book character.
Your post is a great example of projection. And as we know, there is nothing you are ever wrong about. You claim to be so open about it because that makes you So Awesome ™! And then you claim others aren’t. I get it. I shouldn’t have reentered this conversation with you. You are clearly too smart for me. I bow to your brilliance. I’ll give you the last word.
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I’m just roughly quoting him on what he said about himself in court (it’s the second video in [this BBC article][1]):
“I’m not a monster, I’m a normal person, I am just sick, I have an addiction”
From the note and especially his testimony, he seems like an incredibly weak-willed and self-centered person. His explanations for why he did it suggest he knew what he was doing was wrong to some extent, but the way he talks you’d think he felt doing things like buying them a cake on anniversaries of the day he kidnapped them (no, really) and occasionally giving them token amounts of freedom somehow made up for what he did. He asks the court to pity him and the girls to forgive him, because “we had a lot of harmony going on in that home”. He seems to want us to see him as a victim or an outside observer of what he became and what he did.
[1]: Lawyer for Ariel Castro says suicide watch was needed - BBC News[quote=“IMB, post:135, topic:8944”]
At the end of the day, I hope that the girls will find peace in that they will never have to see him interviewed on TV or see his face again.
[/quote]
Absolutely. It seems they are starting to get over it and not having a drawn out trial where they would have to go into detail about their experience with people they didn’t know was very important to them. I hope this will help them to find closure.
Almost nobody ever believes they are a monster. It’s hard to justify living if you concede that point.
Which may bring us back to the suicide.
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For people who don’t want to watch the video of his final remarks to the court, this is apparently a copy of his statement: http://www.wkyc.com/news/article/308810/45/STATEMENT--Read-Ariel-Castros-final-remarks-in-court
Basically he says that he is not a monster, but is addicted to pornography. He also says that he never beat the women that he held captive and that the sex was consensual (he makes a point to state that they were not virgins before he kidnapped them).
Did he? Which daughter are you talking about? He has five adult children, and they all seem to be in the “he is a monster” camp.
There was a daughter who visited him regularly, brought her daughter, and she was interviewed about him. She said she had loved her father (past tense) but came to believe that he was a monster. Honestly, I didn’t commit her name to memory and I didn’t investigate the family to any extent. My point was that he wasn’t alone.
Note that recognizing that someone is a monster doesn’t necessarily exclude loving them, if they haven’t been a monster to you. And loving them doesn’t necessarily exclude agreeing that they should be removed from society for everyone’s sake.
I’m not pleased he’s dead. I’m not displeased he’s dead. I’d rather have seen him spend the rest of his life behind bars with no chance of parole, and I’d rather not have had him commit suicide in this way. On the other hand, I happen to think that it should be someone’s right to commit suicide if they can convince a team of doctors that it’s a rational decision, and I have no particular feeling that he cheated anyone but (possibly) himself, so I can’t get too exercised about it. Good riddance to bad rubbish.
What it does say to me is that we need to improve our ability to predict who’s likely to make such an attempt and delay them until they have had appropriate counseling. On that level, I agree, the system failed us (whether or not it failed him), and needs work.
