Zathras' Great Machine

Why would you feel bad for him if he were twelve or eight? It's one thing to harass the family pet; it's another to kill an animal without remorse.

I believe most people qualify creatures in two classes: those with visible eyes and those without. Those with tend to be only intentionally killed by psychos; those without average kids will hurt. (Then there's me, who feels guilt even over bugs that go splat on the windshield.)

Hmm. Wonder if the kid is scarred for life, too. Reminds me of the scene in "Princess Bride" in which Westley explains about being disfigured, blind, but not deaf so Humperdinck can hear people talk about how hideous he is... Though I am sure the community will rally together to make the brat's every wish come true.

Yes, this is a sign of how little I care about humanity. So is the fact that neither this nor the article you just sent privately about Benoit surprises me in the least.

I killed a frog accidentally when I was something like twelve and was away at Summer camp. I was running by the pool and stepped on a frog and killed it. I felt absolutely terrible about it and the other children saw that and capitalized on it. Even though I was so traumatized that I was sobbing hysterically, they came up to me and called me a murderer and kept saying that I killed the frog on purpose. Then, for the rest of camp, they all taunted me every time they saw me, calling me "Frog Killer." I was miserable and couldn't wait to go home.

That's horrible, Sparrow. Sounds like the kind of sick kids that killed the kitten I had as a little kid. Or the type that hit me in the head with rulers till I broke down in the eighth grade and then taunted me for being a crybaby. (Or my ex, who did startlingly similar things, come to think of it. He made fun of me for being upset when he told me his father tried to shoot a cat with a pellet gun.)

> Why would you feel bad for him if he were
> twelve or eight? It's one thing to harass the
> family pet; it's another to kill an animal
> without remorse.

Good point, but my underlying assumption is that a younger child doesn't have an understanding (or has, at best, a poor understanding) of the difference between right and wrong. So far as I've seen, a younger child wouldn't see any difference between harassing the family pet and remorselessly killing an animal. (Although admittedly, I didn't major in child psychology or anything.)

This is the underlying assumption behind the law, too: notice that, if an eight-year-old kills a four-year-old girl or something like that (and it does happen), the eight-year-old is typically either tried in a juvenile court or even put into a mental institution, whereas if someone aged in the mid-teens or older does the same thing, it's considered a criminal matter. The assumption is that a moral compass is something that younger children just don't have.

There's a certain amount of research to indicate that this is related to brain development (i.e., that the less-developed brain of childhood can't understand moral issues), but it's preliminary and certainly not uncontroversial.

Anyway.

An 8-year-old blinding himself this way would have my sympathies. A 12-year-old blinding himself this way just might have my sympathies. Regardless of whether you think younger children should be pardoned, though, this creep was certainly old enough to know what he was doing.

Yes and no... Children under 13 generally don't have the complex moral development that those over 13 theoretically (not necessarily) have. However, it is known that as a rule, children that maim or kill other mammals *intentionally* are ones with serious psychological disturbances.

In fact, the DSM-IV definition of "conduct disorder" specifies abuse of animals as part of core diagnostic criteria:
http://www.psychologynet.org/conduct.html

Conduct disorder, in turn, is one of the required diagnostic parts of Antisocial (Severe) Personality Disorder:
http://www.psychologynet.org/apd.html

Note we're not talking about mild empathy-lacking stuff like squeezing the cat so it makes noise, but doing things that clearly are going to induce severe injury or death.

Hmm, that's interesting. I'm going to have to mull that over and possibly rethink my position.

The problem here is that the article doesn't really say whether the kid understood that he was going to cause severe injury and/or death to the frog. Since the article doesn't mention anything about his cognitive development (and the media just loves to report about the mentally retarded, autistic and mentally ill), it's probably safe to assume that he did know that he would be injuring the frog. But not all 17 year olds have that level of cognitive functioning.

(I am assuming that, in this case, the 17 year old did, though.)

If the kid had been mentally ill or retarded or anything like that, you can bet that the article would have said so -- that's the way the media works these days. And even if it weren't, one thing I'm learning from Moggy is that my attempts to find a "silver lining" when I hear about this kind of thing are usually unrealistic.

It's nice to still have some idealism intact, though. I lost a whole lot of my idealism, trust and faith in humanity years ago and there are times when I really miss being able to view the world the way I used to before I got too jaded and bitter.

I can only wonder what viewing the world with idealism, trust, and faith would be -- I don't remember ever thinking that way. Any attempts to find a time where that would have been even possible just remind me of why it would have been unrealistic even at that stage to do so!

I don't really feel like I'm missing out, either; if anything, it has allowed me to truly appreciate kindness as I see it for the rarity it is. It seems to me that those that assume it as part of their everyday existence are the most depressed individuals I've known.