Deconstructing Monster Narratives

[trenton]

I have been doing some research on different psychological profiles of criminal offenders, particularly violent offenders. I found some information that challenged the monster narrative and created what some call "moral vertigo" when one can deeply empathize with a perpetrator and see their humanity while simultaneously recognizing the severe harm they cause. I could see the similarities in myself and many of these perpetrators as well as the human vulnerabilities that principate extreme acts. This included sex offenders of various profiles with the most challenging one perhaps being incest cases. In most cases when a parent sexually abuses a child, it is not out of sadism, but out of extreme brokenness and cognitive distortion leading to a twisted sense of harmless love. I found this helpful to me in a way because if such people are not monsters, then I am not a monster either.

I also found the psychological mechanism by which institutional sex scandals emerge which is likely important for prevention. Much of this research is restricted, and potentially over restricted due to the fear of this knowledge being used by dangerous offenders. However, some information that could be used to protect people include the knowledge of psychological vulnerabilities such as a lack of belonging, making a person more likely to be swayed by peer pressure as in the case of some opportunistic or situational offenders. The actions of such offenders are harmful and they must be stopped, but they are still not monsters.

For the most part, perhaps in more that 90% of rape or homicide cases, I could clearly and empirically refute the monster narrative. There are however some extreme cases which seem to have formed the basis of the monster narrative to begin with. This would be profiles such as sadistic offenders or psychopathic serial killers and rapists. I'm almost done reading a book about psychopaths and I seem to be understanding the general patterns.

Starting with sadistic offenders, they are rare but the most dangerous. These are the type who often show early signs of behavioral and developmental problems in childhood. They often start off by torturing animals while using masturbatory reinforcement for intricate sadistic rape fantasies. They are more likely to target random strangers and take sexual pleasure in terrorizing victims for extended periods of time. They often tie their victims up and collect trophies from this person while calibrating their terror to just the right amount to keep the victim from losing consciousness or dying of a heart attack. This profile often has multiple victims and likely contributes to many unsolved murders because most murders are committed by someone you know rather than a stranger, making it more difficult to solve. The sadistic offender is more likely to exhibit traits of psychopathy.

As for my research on psychopaths, I have found some interesting thought patterns they exhibit. They seem to closely mirror my family that deeply traumatized me. For example, my father and his gang would pay money to have sex with children including me. My father exhibited early signs of psychopathy such as animal cruelty and later became a career criminal who would boast about his exploits including using death threats to coerce people for money. Meanwhile, my mother like my father would use love instrumentally while pitting me against the other parent. My mother would treat her suicide threat as a little tiff of no real significance while magnifying anything that could be framed as wrongdoing on my part. My mother may be more of a narcissist than a psychopath compared to my father who showed an absence of moral conscience and little care for his children despite what he would say on the surface. I wrote a document on circumstantial evidence to help law enforcement in cases like those of my father and his gang.

I found that criminal gangs often operate on an inverse moral hierarchy. A person who feels like an outsider to society finds belonging with criminal organizations. From there, these people prove commitment to the gang by performing acts that are universally condemned including child sexual abuse. A father who trafficked his own child would be given strong reputational incentives within the gang by showing his level of commitment to the point that he is not even loyal to his own child. The rape of child is more so about symbolically undermining the society that they hate than it is about the specific child. They take on universal condemnation while causing severe harm to society. This is especially prevalent in cases of school shootings in which the goal is to cause maximum harm to society by targeting its most vulnerable members in a place where they congregate. They pursue infamy by intentionally acting as evil as possible.

I found it interesting that in psychopathy, this person usually attaches no emotional significance to different words or actions. This is what allows them to treat murder with the same degree of significance as what you had for breakfast this morning. For example, "Well, you know, it was like any other ordinary Tuesday. I woke up at my normal time, had some waffles and drove my girlfriend to her job. When I went out for some Starbucks, I later encountered this other guy who was kind of pissing me off. So, I slashed his throat and dumped his body in the river. After that I remembered that a new movie came out in theaters that my girlfriend would love to see. After shooting some hoops at the park, I went with my girlfriend to watch Despicable Me and we loved that movie. We both slept soundly, ready for another day tomorrow." They often insist "I am kind of a 'in the now' kind of guy. I told you I wasn't a serial killer because that was in the past and it is over and done with. But anyway, what's for lunch?"

The sadistic psychopathic serial killer / rapist seems to be the kind of thing that I would call evil. They seem to most closely match the monster narrative, although I can still see their humanity in perhaps brain disruptions or developmental complications which which may have led to this kind of disposition. The moral indifference to having 30+ bodies buried in one's basement creates an act so atrocious that language strains to capture the severity of such acts, hence we call them monsters. However, from their point of view, they are the real victims because nobody understands them. Perhaps, we could in a sense say that such offenders are amoral in that they have no attachment to any moral constraints and thus apply them based on self-interest and survival. The rest is a matter of navigating externally imposed rules based on when it benefits them. This often allows the psychopath to get away with a lot of crimes, especially white collar crimes when they have no regard for the harm caused to the population while enriching themselves.

The fundamental question I seem to be grappling with seems to be "if God is good then why is there evil?" Of course, there are a lot of different perspectives I could take on this issue. In any case, how would you deconstruct the monster narrative? Do you think sadistic psychopathic serial killer / rapists or child sex traffickers are evil? Would you have an argument for why such people are fundamentally good? I'm curious as to how you would address these psychological profiles. I'm not entirely confident for the most extreme offenders who were the source of the monster narrative to begin with.

[Oppositionless]

For these people doing evil is like eating. Is a tiger evil for eating?  The psychopathic mind is very simple, like that of an animal. 

Edited 20 hours ago by Oppositionless

[trenton]

@Oppositionless I guess that does pair with serial rapists who say "i just like to fuck." Animals seem to act like this when they just want to fuck so they gang rape a lone victim and rape them. In the animal kingdom, there are fathers who frequently abandon their children and keep fucking while doing nothing to support the family. The closest parallel to a dead beat dad I could find would be like a lion who sleeps all day while the mother works alone to feed the children.

[VeganAwake]

Step far enough out of line in the animal kingdom or society, and face the consequences of the masses.

"Whatcha gonna do when they come for you"

[Breakingthewall]

There are a huge number of people who don't feel real empathy. They don't rape children or murder because that would define them as absolutely unacceptable, but if you put them in an environment where it's acceptable, they would do it without hesitation.

Most people function exclusively to achieve acceptance. Everything revolves around their self-image; every word they say in a conversation, every laugh, every sexual encounter, is self-image regulation. If they don't commit mass murder, it's because of the consequences and because it would define them as monsters. Very few people operate according to an internal compass separate from their self-image.

[JoshB]

Too much text bro keep it simple 

[JoshB]

1 minute ago, Breakingthewall said:

There are a huge number of people who don't feel real empathy. They don't rape children or murder because that would define them as absolutely unacceptable, but if you put them in an environment where it's acceptable, they would do it without hesitation.

Most people function exclusively to achieve acceptance. Everything revolves around their self-image; every word they say in a conversation, every laugh, every sexual encounter, is self-image regulation. If they don't commit mass murder, it's because of the consequences and because it would define them as monsters. Very few people operate according to an internal compass separate from their self-image.

At the end of the day that's just all your dream 

There is no rape or murder to be found within direct experience anywhere 

Edited 6 hours ago by JoshB

[moonawakening444]

15 hours ago, trenton said:

it is not out of sadism, but out of extreme brokenness and cognitive distortion leading to a twisted sense of harmless love.

only someone with a fractured psyche would commit such acts, and the ego is deceitful enough to create a story of like "oh what i´m doing is harmless" 

[moonawakening444]

15 hours ago, trenton said:

I'm almost done reading a book about psychopaths and I seem to be understanding the general patterns.

since i was in my teens this topic has fascinated me in the sense that i always questioned myself if these people are truly evil or if in all cases it´s the byproduct of a fractured psyche due to traumatic events in childhood, i also read a bit of a book that basically talked about all the famous psychopaths and how the FBI / CIA  began developing their psychological profile, but i didn´t finish it because it was to heavy for me in my teens lol thanks for sharing the info

[moonawakening444]

16 hours ago, trenton said:

I found that criminal gangs often operate on an inverse moral hierarchy. A person who feels like an outsider to society finds belonging with criminal organizations. From there, these people prove commitment to the gang by performing acts that are universally condemned including child sexual abuse.

wow, eye-opening! this is why we should make sure our children feel they belong since early childhood

[moonawakening444]

16 hours ago, trenton said:

The rape of child is more so about symbolically undermining the society that they hate than it is about the specific child.

the society that they hate being a reflection the self hatred? 

 

16 hours ago, trenton said:

The rape of child is more so about symbolically undermining the society that they hate than it is about the specific child. They take on universal condemnation while causing severe harm to society. This is especially prevalent in cases of school shootings in which the goal is to cause maximum harm to society by targeting its most vulnerable members in a place where they congregate. They pursue infamy by intentionally acting as evil as possible.

all these acts they perform as a way "proving" how much they hate themselves and therefore the world, but they´re not aware that this is happening? 

[Breakingthewall]

2 hours ago, JoshB said:

At the end of the day that's just all your dream 

There is no rape or murder to be found within direct experience anywhere 

Sure , keep watching videos, everything is going to be ok

2 hours ago, JoshB said:

Too much text bro keep it simple 

Sure . The op explained a personal history, quite interesting btw. Why a genius like you need to try to humiliate him?

Edited 3 hours ago by Breakingthewall

[trenton]

13 minutes ago, moonawakening444 said:

the society that they hate being a reflection the self hatred? 

 

all these acts they perform as a way "proving" how much they hate themselves and therefore the world, but they´re not aware that this is happening? 

@moonawakening444 some of this might seem like a bit of stretch for understanding incomprehensible behavior that most would simply call evil. Personally, I haven't seen anything about these people hating themselves. Instead, I found that these people are often narcissists who have inappropriately high self esteem while believing themselves to be the victims. A common DARVO tactic in such offenders might be that one of their victims deserved to be raped and they should have known better than to piss this guy off.

They seem to find the rules of society as constraining and they want to place themselves above the rules and other people who they frequently dehumanize or actively exploit their humanity to maximize suffering. A person can feel like an outsider rejected by society while having inappropriately high self esteem. The one thing that would obliterate their self esteem would be if they self reflected on the harm they caused others and took accountability for their actions. Therefore, they must rationalize their behaviors while boasting about exploits against stupid people who deserve to be raped and killed.

They often operate under the just world fallacy. Good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people, also known as karma. Therefore if they can get away with raping someone, then that person deserved to have something bad happen to them and because they got away with it, that is the proof that their behavior is acceptable.

I made a document on my father that explains more details of his psyche. He seemed narcissistic or psychopathic in his behaviors. I might share it on the forum later.

[moonawakening444]

16 hours ago, trenton said:

For example, "Well, you know, it was like any other ordinary Tuesday. I woke up at my normal time, had some waffles and drove my girlfriend to her job. When I went out for some Starbucks, I later encountered this other guy who was kind of pissing me off. So, I slashed his throat and dumped his body in the river. After that I remembered that a new movie came out in theaters that my girlfriend would love to see. After shooting some hoops at the park, I went with my girlfriend to watch Despicable Me and we loved that movie. We both slept soundly, ready for another day tomorrow."

this reminds me of an Epstein file; where someone was asking for a painting of children being tortured that should be delivered by Wednesday asap because someone really wanted to put that in the main entrance of their mansion, something like that; and the way the person was talking about it on the e-mail, so casual, like she was talking about breakfast... now it all makes sense 

[moonawakening444]

@trenton first of all, i appreciate you sharing such a vulnerable experience.... i can see your perspective and i´ll be reading what you share on the future!!

when i speak about self hatred i mean that they believe in the illusion of separation and therefore that if they kill someone it must be because the person deserved it... not realizing all is One

Edited 3 hours ago by moonawakening444

[moonawakening444]

16 hours ago, trenton said:

They often insist "I am kind of a 'in the now' kind of guy. I told you I wasn't a serial killer because that was in the past and it is over and done with. But anyway, what's for lunch?"

"interesting"...

the level of self deception one can reach

it´s like Diddy changing his name for L.O.V.E

🤡

Edited 3 hours ago by moonawakening444

[moonawakening444]

17 hours ago, trenton said:

The moral indifference to having 30+ bodies buried in one's basement creates an act so atrocious that language strains to capture the severity of such acts, hence we call them monsters. However, from their point of view, they are the real victims because nobody understands them.

from what i´ve reflected reading all this so far it feels like Evil would be unimaginable levels of self deception, only that could explain a "monster" seeing itself as the victim....

there´s this episode where leo talks about what is devilry... 

it´s a quite harsh perspective to reflect on... but in the end it´s what resonates the most with me at the moment.. 

Evil being the ego and our need for survival and that in their minds the monsters really don´t see themselves as monsters and that is precisely self deception, so selfishness out of survival creates self deception (the trickster energy that the Devil archetype has) and that is that source of Evil in the world...

what are your thoughts???

Edited 3 hours ago by moonawakening444

[Willy Phallicus]

This place is a horror show but maybe rightfully so and just because this existence is monstrous and horrific does not portend that its architect is malicious or evil.

I look at it like this: If you want to give true substance to an abstraction the first thing you do is very lovingly and very tenderly run it through a shitpipe of existential terror of a feeding and fucking frenzy until the madness is beyond all measure.  Anything short of this and you still got nothing but gossamer cotton candy instead of true vital sentience giving expression to a fierce and burning love as it rips through eternity into infinity.