I got into a minor pissing contest with someone today, who I have gotten into similar situations with before. I look at him and all I see is a severely abusive father, and probably some sexual paraphilias of some sort. He is a mess.
To the point, something pushed the present moment away from him, like a raft or life preserver that could have saved him from drowning in water that terrified him. Nothing was there. No one saved him. And so he goes on, attacking the world, controlling the world to the extent of his ability.
For my part, of course, I am a bit vain and oversensitive. I whine more than I ought to. I’m working with guys whose work ethic I cannot but admire. One electrician told me he had a severely strained groin muscle. The doctor told him to stay off his feet for three weeks and ice it up. Instead, he is working 80 hour weeks. He is a better, tougher man than me.
I am still processing a story a guy I met in a bar told me last week. He is a mortician, and his company does body pick up. The cops find a suicide or homicide or simple death from natural causes, and after they have mapped out the scene, he takes the body to the Medical Examiner.
2 weeks ago he had to haul away two women, mother and daughter, who had had their home broken into, been ducktaped to chairs, and beaten so severely with something that their heads were gone.
The person or people who did this are still walking the streets, as far as I know.
Feel the horror of that image, then imagine, if you can, which is doubtful, a horror ten times that within the person who did that, a fear and sense of utter and complete powerlessness so overwhelming that it drives you mad. You break, you stumble, you fall, and you never, ever get back up. Your brain decays until it takes all your will and powerful intoxicants just to get through the day.
Morality in many respects is psychology. The task is not to set rules, but to help people understand how the world works so that they can make good decisions.
And some people are so far gone they cannot be redeemed. They can only be imprisoned or put to death.
That, at any rate, is the present state of our technology. Perhaps one day methods can be devised to help even homicidal psychopaths deal with the absolute tyranny with which their souls are governed, by evils they likely in most cases can’t even recall.
This is random, but I felt I needed to post it.