What would make you commit murder?

[Judy2]

wives poisoning their husbands used to be a lot more common when divorce wasn't an option yet and women had minimal rights, i.e., there was no other escape if a marriage was abusive.

same with infanticide (=mothers killing their own children), which used to be more common some 150 years ago due to social structures that condemned unmarried single mothers rather than supporting them. 

nowadays, when these things happen, it is likely (not always) due to pathologies of the individual. although, apparently, there are still a lot of women in prison who killed their abusers in self-defense and had to go to jail for it.

 

Edited Wednesday at 05:43 PM by Judy2

[trenton]

@Judy2 nice historical examples. It is good to know that wives murdering husbands has become less common due to allowing them the freedom to divorce a husband. It sounds like although abusive relationships are still awful the ability to divorce is better than forcing people to stay together. Society must allow these relationships to end when they don't work even if divorce court is its own nightmare. It is still preferable to not being able to go to divorce court.

[trenton]

8 hours ago, Elliott said:

Cptsd causes irrational fear and intrusive thoughts like this

I'm not sure why these fears are irrational. Can you define what an irrational fear is versus a rational fear? Which fears do you think are irrational and how do you know?

Also I definitely agree on intrusive thoughts. I have those all the time and I can't help it. It includes intrusive thoughts of harming others. I was told it was either OCD or ADHD. The actual diagnosis is likely multiple, but I still want to feel safe and acceptable.

I also did discuss this with my therapists and psychiatrists too. Some say PTSD, others say CPTSD it more accurate. I tried therapy, but I am now thinking I need to stop trying to change myself under constant existential stakes.

I don't know what I would actually need, but finding a therapist that would be good for me is hard. There are insurance barriers and rare specialties required for me that I can't access. This is why the mental health system is broken and can't necessarily help people in my position. 

[Heaven]

You’re obviously highly intelligent and educated but I feel from the things you write that you lack spiritual wisdom.

When you are highly spiritual you feel like you’re everything and thus compassionate towards others. You can’t murder someone that is you. Not recommending you psychedelics but it can really show you some lessons that you need to learn.

[trenton]

2 hours ago, Heaven said:

You’re obviously highly intelligent and educated but I feel from the things you write that you lack spiritual wisdom.

When you are highly spiritual you feel like you’re everything and thus compassionate towards others. You can’t murder someone that is you. Not recommending you psychedelics but it can really show you some lessons that you need to learn.

I'd love to do psychedelics, but I'm unable to at this time. The most I have ever done were some cannabis gummies which make me sound spiritual when talking. There is a Ketamine treatment center for depression if that counts, but I need to be at least two years since being hospitalized with depression.

I would like to verify whatever spiritual wisdom I can, but for now many of these positions are unfalsifiable from my standpoint. For example, Leo claimed that my father is literally looking through my eyes right now. I'm not sure how I can murder an imaginary other if the other doesn't actually exist, but is merely an imaginary construct. In terms of murdering someone who is me, there is still jumping off of a bridge for example. It can be done, but it isn't fun.

Concerning spiritual wisdom, I believed it overlapped with having compassion for people who do evil things and people who harmed me. Therefore, criminology was a means of studying evil and noticing the similarities in myself. It is ultimately part of a broader project of deconstructing the illusion of evil which doesn't actually exist. I have learned not to judge myself for having homicidal thoughts toward others. I have been hurt badly, but I won't be carrying out any murders any time soon. I can give you a couple of other threads in which I explored compassion for evil people as it was part of my impression of spiritual wisdom translated into criminological studies.

I am now attempting to address what I would consider a shadow. It is unresolved hatred directed at myself and others. This is part of why I ask these questions. Ultimately, I am trying to learn self love, but it is hard for me to do. I have been struggling my whole life to do this, so I apply the compassion to myself when applying it to evil people.

I think we need to be careful with how we define spiritual wisdom. The problem is that unfalsifiable positions can define wisdom in an endless number of ways unless we know what is true. There were some people in this thread claiming the Ten Commandments were spiritual wisdom. There are also spiritual teachers claiming that morality is relative and judgment can be transcended. In my case, my goal is to love myself even though I have unresolved hatred that festers into the desire to harm myself or others. The limitation of compassion for relative evil is that it doesn't logically get you to metaphysical oneness which is a separate claim regarding the nature of love. My present metaphysical framework is "I don't know."

[Emotionalmosquito]

If I finally worked up the courage to ask out a girl I liked, but unbeknownst to me she was the mean girl type. So then she acts into it just to bait me in close enough to do a malicious knee strike. 
 

That just might do it. Well I wouldn’t now, but had I gone through that back in high school, I probably could’ve gone through with it. 

[trenton]

9 hours ago, Emotionalmosquito said:

If I finally worked up the courage to ask out a girl I liked, but unbeknownst to me she was the mean girl type. So then she acts into it just to bait me in close enough to do a malicious knee strike. 
 

That just might do it. Well I wouldn’t now, but had I gone through that back in high school, I probably could’ve gone through with it. 

This is an interesting idea.

I recall that religion used to value the virgin archetype because of what it symbolically represented about a person's character such as the virgin Mary. This is not sexually piety, but also humility, charity, honesty, and so forth.

A close opposite to the virgin archetype is the whore. The whore was not originally intended to just mean how many sexual partners a woman had. More importantly, the key characteristics of this archetype was its deceptive nature. It is a person who would offer you love in order to trick you and betray you. Cheating would be an example of a betrayal, but the archetype is much broader in terms of deception and betrayal under the guise of love.

In terms of why men murder intimate partners, it often involves the perception that this person is a whore and she betrayed you in some way.

Important not to overlook that the whore archetype applies just as easily to men. There can be men who love bomb a woman in order to decieve her and harm her in some way. This was documented in human trafficking cases of a woman entering a relationship that isolated her from her family. Obviously a rapist is a whore as well, and in that case whore is probably an understatement.

How common do you think it is for women to trick men like this and betray them?

[trenton]

@Emotionalmosquito I googled what mean girl refers to.

I have many different names for it. She could be a narcissist. She could be a devil. Basically the qualities men refer when calling a woman a "bitch" includes playing the victim, spreading lies and gossip, picking fights, enforcing loyalty, and so forth.

I don't want to be sexist by calling her a bitch. I don't want to be overly clinical by calling her a narcissist. So I just call her a devil and tell her to go to hell where she belongs. In your case you call her a mean girl.

I did have homicidal thoughts toward family members who treated me this way. My family had some mean girls in it. 

[trenton]

Were you guys thinking I was actually planning to murder someone?

I mentioned in the opening that this is obviously a bad idea and it should be avoided. Of course that would be insane. What matters for my purposes is understanding the perspective of violent people while integrating a shadow side from unresolved harm while my therapists repeatedly recommend I date.

I'm just really afraid of dating because I learned that intimacy was unsafe, but my therapists recommend it still. It is better to address these sorts of things now rather than in a relationship.

If I enter a romantic relationship, I still intend to ask a woman, "would you murder me if I cheated on you? I know some would. Personally, I wouldn't like it if you cheated on me, but I won't murder you for it. I just want to know what your standards are like in a relationship. I'm not trying to threaten you or anything."

I thought this was a fair and normal question for dating.

[trenton]

It may seem strange, but we can add pregnancy to the list of possible triggers for intimate partner homicide.

In some cases, the abuser becomes jealous because the woman shifts attention away from him and toward their recently conceived baby. Therefore, the abuser might escalate his violence to the point of murdering this person because she got pregnant after having sex with him.

Homicide is the leading cause of death in pregnant women.

I honestly didn't know this, but if you are a woman with someone who beats you, then be aware that the abuse may escalate in the event of a pregnancy. If this person has a firearm, then the probability of a homicide skyrockets. It sounds insane, but it doesn't even have to be infidelity.

[integral]

Honestly, if I had the ability to kill someone by snapping my finger, I would have done it non-stop.

Epistemic blind spot would be the biggest reason I wouldn't use this power. Most people want to kill other people out of ignorance and a lack of understanding. And I would fear I would fall into that trap and so I wouldn't kill.

[trenton]

12 minutes ago, integral said:

Honestly, if I had the ability to kill someone by snapping my finger, I would have done it non-stop.

The anime Death Note explores this premise in depth if you haven't seen it. It is all about a man who goes insane with this power and develops a God complex around terrorizing humanity. It is very difficult to resist when something very taboo becomes easy to do because it gives one a sense of impunity. Currently, I don't think I am developed enough to resist such a power because of the promise of making things the way I want them to be. I would become like a God striking down all who I deem unworthy. I would prefer to have my victims publicly struck down by lightning or impaled by crosses. I'm not sure how I would become developed enough to resist such power. I would probably have to realize that I already am God such that the power of the Death Note would pale in comparison to the omnipotence of actual God rather than a tool for a crazed serial killer who feels unstoppable.

[integral]

4 minutes ago, trenton said:

Currently, I don't think I am developed enough to resist such a power because of the promise of making things the way I want them to be. I

This reminds me of the Lord of the Rings, where the power of the ring shows you your deepest fantasy and promises you that you can achieve it with the ring's power.

Gandalf and the other good characters, when they look into the ring, a fantasy in their mind appears of them accomplishing all of their goals using the ring's power. The ring's purpose is for control and power, and it uses that fantasy to corrupt you to seek power.

So Gandalf wisely refuses the ring because he sees how in the end he will be corrupted by his own good intentions.

[trenton]

@integral that is a good parallel. 

I know that in the end, Frodo was supposed to have failed. He was also corrupted by the power of the ring. If not for Smeagol forcing the destruction of the ring, man would have lost. In the case of Smeagol his obsession is what ultimately destroyed the ring. I'm not sure what the deeper message would be, but given the power of the death note corrupting me, I would be corrupted by the ring too.

This also shares a parallel with the Sith from Star wars promising someone their deepest fantasy and desires while claiming power and control can get them everything they want. The costs become easy to overlook when corrupted by the power to the point that Anakin would slaughter younglings without hesitation.

I think there is a reason control and power are common themes in evil in fiction. In real life my revenge fantasies are tied in a desire for control and power. The fantasy is that destroying this person will somehow get me what I want, but it won't, and murderers find this out the hard way in prison. Part of the problem for revenge is that harm is diffuse and caused by many partial and ignorant actors such that I can't pin all of my pain on one person as it would be logically incorrect considering the cumulative nature of my pain across different sources. 

It would probably help to clarify what was taken away from my that felt undeserved. Anakin losing his mother to the Tusken Raiders comes to mind.