Some people are just really lacking in impulse control. I imagine they are also more likely to end up in front of a judge for the same reasons.
This is why Hell is such a stupid concept.
There’s a literal “moral privilege” in that it’s much, much easier to live life in a good way depending on physical structures in your brain.
You’d be surprised at the rates of TBI in incarcerated violent criminals.
Turns out damaging people’s impulse control pathways leads to crime!
Just yesterday I was walking past an old person on the sidewalk and had an intrusive thought about pushing them out into the street, followed by a thought of “man I’m really grateful that I have a functioning impulse control - it must be hell to go through life where thoughts like that could turn into terrible consequences because there’s no mechanism catching errant impulses”).
While this guy should definitely not be out in public where he’d likely continue to harm people, I think we generally underappreciated just how little separates all of us from behaving just like him, and overestimate how much of his behavior is because of choice as opposed to circumstance.
We shouldn’t try to be so punitive with criminal justice. A functioning society does need to keep violent people separated from potential victims, but we really don’t need to be such dicks about it.
TBI, lead exposure, malnutrition… gotta try to be kind.
Interesting we have more sympathy for those who impulsively, say, eat non-food items, versus lash out violently.
Something I don’t know: is there any reason to be more sympathetic to someone who self harms (say cuts themselves) than someone who harms others as a result of mental illness?
We say “died by suicide” instead of “committed suicide” to speak closer to the reality of a situation, to acknowledge how awful it is when pain exceeds resources available for coping with that pain. We necessarily view murder as abhorrent, and I won’t defend murderers at large, but I question if some percentage of those who kill were mentally ill to the point they deserve exactly equal sympathy to others who were just as ill but whose illness manifested without violence.
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