vison wrote:Could I have starved a child to death? I don't think so. Why am I different than she is? Or, more to the point, why is she different from me?
Oh, I don't know about that.
I've certainly hit a child, and even strangled a child (
not to death or unconciousness!)
How could I do such a horrible thing?
Easy. These 'children' were my little brothers, and they could be quite a nuisance to babysit
I think it is easy for caretakers of children to get overwhelmed. I don't condone beating or starving them. But I would
guess that the people who
ought to be responsible adults don't know how to deal with the situation, and so lash out violently. After all, I only hit people because I am angry, or because they hurt me, or something. It's an emotional response.
Not the
right one, and certainly one that I curb all the time! After all, I certainly can't hit the students I work with
![Smile :)](./images/smilies/77smile.gif)
.
I still don't know how a woman could
starve a child. That is beyond my comprehension. Bad enough for mothers in poverty to have to
watch their children go hungry, let alone to do it on purpose! But I wonder what she thinks of what she did? That there was no choice, that she 'had' to do it that way....if so, that would be very, very sad. Or, did she enjoy watching the child become weak and helpless, unable to fight back? That would be much sicker, and I can't wrap my mind around
why someone would keep that up.
** Warning ** - next paragraph has graphic details.
I guess that story hit me, because the same thing happened here, a few years ago. The girl was maybe 15 years old, and her grandmother kept her locked in her room and beat her (for months) until eventually the girl starved to death. (I am sorry...I realize this thread was started by people who said they were sensitive to these things, and here I am dragging up all sorts of unpleasant stories (with details)).
vison, I don't think all of these cases are 'just' because children were treated badly. I think human nature has the capacity to stoop to all new lows. Someone who experienced a loving home could still 'go bad' - this happens all the time, too. Drugs (and other addictions) are notorious for making a normally-good person transform into a criminal. Of course, that doesn't mean that there
isn't a cycle of abuse - there is. There are just lots of different ways to go wrong, I guess...
yov, I understand why the talk of animal cruelty makes you uncomfortable. I think it is horrible to torture animals, of course. But when my high school class went to the Holocaust Museum, one of the girls came back all upset that the Nazis killed
horses.
I kid you not. I was like, did you miss the point? While it is certainly sad that they killed the little girl's horse,
they killed the little girl, too! This is what got me.
So, I am fine with being outraged over doing horrible things to animals. I think it is wrong to mistreat animals, or even to just neglect them a little bit. I mean, you should be responsible for your pets (or livestock). It is
good to take good care of them, and treat them decently. But I am not okay with being outraged over treatment to animals
but at the same time being blase towards human suffering. That, to me, would be uncaring, inhumane. I don't think anyone here is doing that. We started off talking about
human suffering, and only brought in animals when people said 'how could anyone do that?' You don't have to like it, of course,
![Wink ;)](./images/smilies/icon_wink.gif)
but I think it is better, in context.
And I know that studying the 'mechanism' of torture and death is just a coping mechanism, so I didn't have to think about what it was really for. But...if I can do it to 'cope'....then I could do it to, say, design one of the blasted things. That is what was scary. If I can detach so that I don't have to bear the full brunt of being a
witness, how is that any different from detaching so I won't have to bear the full brunt of being a
participant? I'd rather take in the shock, and know that I am not in the process of becoming a monster. It is easy to recognize that the Nazis were evil. I was taught this since I was a young child. They are villains in all the movies. Their colors were red and black! But....what happens when someone who looks more inocuous tries to recruit me?