Evil vs. Crazy: What's in the Minds of Mass Murderers?

[libby]

The following is from today's Washington Post. The writer is a psychologist who addresses the Sandy Hook School massacre. I found it thought-provoking and interesting, especially so because he gives John Nash, Nobel prize winning mathematician, as one example. As several of our members here (who call southern WV and SW Virginia home) know, Nash is from Bluefield, WV (my home town). 

Evil vs. crazy: What's in the minds of mass murderers?

By Martin E.P. Seligman, Published: January 3, 2013

Martin Seligman, a former president of the American Psychological Association, is a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania and the author of "What You Can Change and What You Can't."

Since the massacre of innocents at Sandy Hook Elementary School, calls have rung out for improving "mental health services." This deflects from actions that would save lives. Such calls blur the distinction — and I now dispense with the euphemisms — between what is crazy and what is evil. Further, they compound our national reluctance to face facts about what can and cannot be changed.

In modern scientific parlance, the label "crazy" centers on delusions, hallucinations and bizarre beliefs. More commonly used technical terms are "insane," "psychotic" or "schizophrenic." While less precise, crazy is no more or less pejorative than the scientific terms.

"Evil" is at least as ancient a concept as crazy. Its hallmark is a narrow moral circle in which other people are objects of moral indifference or hatred, people deemed not to deserve to live. In this usage, the label evil is not mysterious nor derived from a belief in "the devil." Rather, it is clarifying; it denotes people inclined to be violent and to put many other people at risk.

We know evil when we see it: "mean," "violent," "full of hate," "selfish," "grandiose," "without a conscience" and "bullying" all signal evil. Whatever mental illness he may have had, Adam Lanza died and, most likely, lived at the extreme end of evil.

Unlike the classifying and unpacking of craziness, modern science has shied away from unpacking and classifying evil. The two are separable: One can be crazy, evil, neither or both.

Plenty of people are both. Crazy people commit somewhat more violent crimes per capita than non-crazy people, but most crazy people are not evil. John Nash, the Nobel Prize-winning mathematician, was certifiably crazy for much of his life: He had an imaginary roommate and pervasive paranoid delusions. But he remained kind and compassionate. His moral circle was broad and undiminished.

Lanza's alleged autism or Asperger's syndrome does not explain what happened at Sandy Hook. Focusing on his "crazy" part will not help prevent future tragedies; the craziness of evil people almost never comes close to explaining their crimes. Would Lanza have murdered had he not been full of hate, had he not had a very narrow moral circle? You simply do not shoot 6-year-olds repeatedly unless you are exploding with rage and regard the violent suffering of young children and their parents with indifference or worse.

What our nation really cares about is not what label to pin on Lanza but how to prevent such incidents. To do this, we must face the facts about the possibility of changing what is crazy and changing what is evil.

I have spent most of my life working with mental illness. I have been president of the world's largest association of mental-illness workers, and I am all for more funding for mental-health care and research — but not in the vain hope that it will curb violence.

While revising five editions of my textbook on abnormal psychology, I have found that drugs and therapy offer disappointingly little additional help for the mentally ill than they did 25 years ago — despite billions of dollars in funding. And there is zero promise that any developments I am aware of will help curb the violence that mentally ill persons commit.

As for progress on restraining or rehabilitating evil people, the past record and future promise are even more dismal. I know of no development that has much reduced recidivism or violence or done more to identify violent offenders in advance than was in place a generation ago.

I conclude from all this that progress in reducing violence through either helping the mentally ill or curbing the impulses of violent, non-crazy people will be very slow in coming, perhaps even fruitless. That is not where the leverage is.

Crazy people and evil people can commit mass murder, and they always do it with guns. Our society's only real leverage, at least in the near term, lies in reducing access to guns. Our national experience with another lethal menace, cigarettes, shows that government regulation massively saves lives. High taxation on cigarettes and restricting access to them has markedly cut smoking rates and improved health. High taxes on guns and strong restrictions on their availability are the only realistic hope for avoiding many more Sandy Hooks.

© The Washington Post Company
www.washingtonpost.com

[RC]

It is already is against the law for crazy people to have guns.  No new law is needed!. Gun control is just another attempt to control people and remove our God given right of self defense. Evil will always be present in this world.  Would it make you gun haters feel better if Lanza had killed the poor kids with a hammer or other object?  NRA had it right, some times you have to confront evil and kill it.  How are the very strict gun laws working it Chicago? This 1/4/2013 and they have had 5 murders.  Here in WV we have a very high rate of gun ownership, and ccw, and one of the lowest crime rates in the nation.

[The Troll]

It is already is against the law for crazy people to have guns.  No new law is needed!. Gun control is just another attempt to control people and remove our God given right of self defense. Evil will always be present in this world.  Would it make you gun haters feel better if Lanza had killed the poor kids with a hammer or other object?  NRA had it right, some times you have to confront evil and kill it.  How are the very strict gun laws working it Chicago? This 1/4/2013 and they have had 5 murders.  Here in WV we have a very high rate of gun ownership, and ccw, and one of the lowest crime rates in the nation.

  If you have noticed that the  latest mass killing were done by a crazy person who has a clean record.  Who hadn't bought a gun illegally, they stole the guns from legal buyers.   

  Who said something like this, people who are willing to give up freedom to be safe, will never be safe or free. 

  Believe me when I say more gun laws will not make a perfect safe place to live.  No society is safe from crazy homicidal murders.  Be it cars, trucks, gasoline, explosives, clubs, knifes and a pair of good strong hands around your neck is going to keep you perfectly safe. 

[Henry Hawk]

It is already is against the law for crazy people to have guns.  No new law is needed!. Gun control is just another attempt to control people and remove our God given right of self defense. Evil will always be present in this world.  Would it make you gun haters feel better if Lanza had killed the poor kids with a hammer or other object?  NRA had it right, some times you have to confront evil and kill it.  How are the very strict gun laws working it Chicago? This 1/4/2013 and they have had 5 murders.  Here in WV we have a very high rate of gun ownership, and ccw, and one of the lowest crime rates in the nation.

Very well said....

[Palehorse]

. . .Gun control is just another attempt to control people and remove our God given right of self defense. . .

Ol Sky Daddy didn't give you any rights. It is the U.S. Constitution that provides those rights. . .

The great Sky Daddy only says "Thou shalt not kill". - No exceptions. . .

[duke jupiter]

Ole' Duke sez "crazy folks have always been around, if you don't believe me just look around".

Best regards,
Duke (heck sometimes just look in the mirror) Jupiter
ps still crazy after all these years

[Locutus]

Ole' Duke sez "crazy folks have always been around, if you don't believe me just look around".

Best regards,
Duke (heck sometimes just look in the mirror) Jupiter
ps still crazy after all these years

[followsthewolf]

Ole' Duke sez "crazy folks have always been around, if you don't believe me just look around".

Best regards,
Duke (heck sometimes just look in the mirror) Jupiter
ps still crazy after all these years

Thanks, Paul

[The Troll]

Ole' Duke sez "crazy folks have always been around, if you don't believe me just look around".

Best regards,
Duke (heck sometimes just look in the mirror) Jupiter
ps still crazy after all these years

  I guess that the Christian God is the only one who can stop people from going crazy.    How has that worked for the people on earth, God ain't doing his job and he is perfect.

  We all know that the god of the Muslims don't mind killing.  A mob of people took a man out of jail, beat him to death, threw his body off a two story building and burn his body in the street.     Why, they said that he was caught burning the Koran, god's holy words.    Give me a break.   

  Why don't the crazy asshole Muslims let their god do it, burn him in hell. 

[Henry Hawk]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhXPlCjr0Vw
This video is a testimony of a father of a Sandy Hook student who survived the incident.  He speaks volumes and I am 100% behind his logic.