Quote: "It is natural to dehumanize murderers, people don't want to believe that a normal human being could be capable of such a crime. In this mindset, for someone to commit murder they must either be possessed by a demon or inherently evil/insane. In doing so the murderer is now viewed more like an animal, without morality, and so they are no longer responsible for their actions. They have been excused of their crimes because people do not want to accept that they themselves are capable of such things."
TBH you still lost me here, in what way should we regard the acts committed by others? I don't think your correct in believing that condemning such people in any way allows them to excuse themselves, you will never hear a terrorist saying he was insane when he did it, quite the opposite.
Murder can be a heat of the moment thing but in this case its obviously premeditated. I dont think dehumanising such a person is in any way excusing them for what they did or even giving them a way out of it.
I dont in any way accept I am capable of such acts and fail to see how else I could express my opinion of those that do.
Quote: "In doing so the murderer is now viewed more like an animal"
As we all know this is an unfair comparison on animals, but we have to call them something, monster whatever, and its not because we need to distance ourselves from our own shortcomings or morals, its because we find it hard to believe, as you say yourself, that
normal human beings could commit these acts, so why think its deeper than that?
Perhaps, you are actually vocalising the public guilt that follows these kind of events. In that we feel deep down responsibility for our leaders acts, which we may or may not agree with but which we feel may have created this situation where innocent men,women and children are killed and injured, maybe they did but they didn't create the monsters. They are always among us and always will be wherever your from and maybe thats also what your trying to express. Once this kind of terrorism starts its very difficult to stop.
In the UK they are more used to this kind of event in recent history 30+ years of it. Look a little closer at that and you might find some things that will disturb your 'psyche' even more, given whats just happened.
At some level we feel 'responsibility' for a society which we believe created these monsters, but calling them names really isn't the problem here and I don't think it will create more of them. We shouldn't blame ourselves for these actions. Those who deliberately target innocents, even in war, are not real soldiers as they would portray themselves, they are cowards. Some people, simply put, commit murder on a scale like this and kill innocent people because they are cold heartless cretins with too low an intelligence, or at the very least a warped mentality, to understand what they do.
Deliberately killing and injuring innocents, whatever the circumstances, is the most immoral act you could possibly commit as a human being.
I don't trip over...I do random gravity checks.
