I actually find it more disturbing that some people aren't getting upset over this.
*looks around*
*looks around*
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Duck Massacre - What the heck is wrong with people?
- Thread starter FoxyKaye
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
- Status
cyanide said:
Typically, cruelty to animals is a precursor step to cruelty to humans. It feeds their sadistic desires, while being a testing ground to see if they get away with it.
If the hillbillies are killing deer to eat, then they're not being sadistic, they're just using an unorthadox method of hunting. Smashing through a bunch of ducks, so that they might be dead or painfully injured, is a different issue.
So, even if you don't care about animals, you should agree that the perpetrator should be punished, and have this put on their record, as a red flag in case other such incidents occur, so that they may be a suspect and be investigated. It could be the difference between another serial killer emerging or not.
Sometimes it just seems like humans in general enjoy sadistic acts of violence and mutilation. Why else would people become serial killers, kill animals for fun, crowd around the scene of an accident where someone or something was horrifically mangled? It's not just us either, the romans used to kill gladiators, bestiarii (animal handlers), jews, christians, virgin girls, and animals by the tens of thousands per day for the amusement of the mobs.
Are we born fascinated with evil?
Are we born fascinated with evil?
I hate it when people are cruel to animals, and I hate it when people gawk at car accidents. How would those same people like it if I stared at them when they were in one?topicolo said:
I don't think that the fact this stuff makes news is so much a fascination with evil as it is just fascination, curiosity, a desire to get out of the mundanity of daily life. Except for the duck killing, that's just evil. Unless they were doing it to eat, but highly unlikely they were doing that with a car...
topicolo said:
"Man hasn't the dignity for evil." -- Baxter Slate, in Joseph Wambaugh's "The Choirboys."
PlaceofDis said:
Brought back memories when I was a kid. There was a boy in my neighborhood who was just evil and cruel. One day he took cinder blocks and bread to the bridge and killed a whole flock of ducks. What ever happened to him? Wound up killing his grandmother for her inheritance. I'd never wish him harm, but life in prison seemed to be the best thing for our society.
Mitthrawnuruodo said:I'm all for corporal punishment in these cases. Flog the bastard then throw him into a mental institution and loose the key...
Doesn't corporal punishment mean everybody in the city gets punished?
dermeister said:
You got Tiger? COMMAND-CONTROL-D with the curser over corporal punishment. How cool is that! It does two words at once!
I think that's collective punishment, which is forbidden, according to the Geneva conventions (which the US doesn't recognize, but that's for the political forums...dermeister said:
).
I wonder what percentage of serial killers either have some form of animal cruelty on their record, or at least have admitted to killing animals for non-food purposes.MarkCollette said:
Counterfit said:
Jeffrey Dahmer did it.
The Shoemaker... what was his name? he did it. Inadvertently, though. He was a shoemaker and had the idea that, given proper footware, people would never get tired. So he made little orthopedic shoes for his hamsters and kept them on the exercise wheel until they died.
If I can remember correctly, the holy trinity of psychosis is bedwetting, firestarting, and animal torture. If you're a pyromaniac animal killer with enuresis, there's a 90% likelihood of psychosis. Of course, that might be total ********, or I might be repeating it wrong. Correlation ~= causation, post hoc ergo propter hoc, et cetera. But there does definitely seem to be a correlation between being a sick bastard and torturing animals.
thedude110 said:
I'd rather say that part of being human is to care for other humans. That jerk was completely inhuman and as such shouldn't be allowed to be put in jail, where he'd spent tax money on food, clothing, psychologist fees.
I'm with the "let a Hummer run him over" crowd.
I was at the car wash this morning to make a donation to the reward fund. Anyone who wants to can also send in a contribution by mail. They said that the total is about $10,000 now, and the police are narrowing a list of suspects.
This guy needs to be stopped. Next time, it might be a bunch of kids that he decides to run down.
This guy needs to be stopped. Next time, it might be a bunch of kids that he decides to run down.
Freg3000 said:Come again?
[Not trying to be confrontational so don't flip out at me ok
I am my own person. I do not kill ducks. I am responsible for my own actions.
Some crazy man is his own person. He does kill ducks. He is responsible for his own actions.
Hi Freg.
You're not being confrontational and I'm not going to flip out (I don't think).
It seems to me there are three fundamental ways to think about our relationships with other people -- we can think of ourselves as above the other (as those who want to physically injure this man, even if they're in jest), we can think of ourselves as equal to the other, or we can think of ourselves as being in perpetual responsibility to the other (that the other person, in fact, is an ongoing call to our own responsibility to them).
When I was in college (and going through a spiritual crisis) I read the Jewish ethicist Emmanuel Levinas. His fundamental argument was that, after the holocaust, we must recognize the human in all human beings, especially those who act in such a way that seems to defy their humanity. In other words, the greatest crimes are possible when I or we begin to think of others as sub-human.
Another way of saying all of this -- where does justice have its roots? Levinas would argue that justice must have its roots in charity and in love -- and that, while justice must be served, it must be served in light of mercy, compassion and charity (justice must be served with the human in mind).
In L's own words:
"...For me the suffering proper to compassion, suffering because the other suffers, is only one aspect of a relation that is much more complex and much more complete at the same time: the responsibility for the other. I am in reality responsible for the other even when he or she commits crimes. That is, for me, what is essential in the human conscience: all men are responsible for one another and 'I more than anyone else.' One of the most important things for me is this asymmetry: all men are responisible for one another and I more than everybody. It is Dostoevsky's formula ..."
Or, a more clear statement of his ethics as regards any other person
"I do not have the right to leave him alone at his death" (this statement obviously has broader metaphorical implications).
I'm not asking you to buy any of this -- but this way of thinking dramatically reshaped my life. I do believe that we are all responsible for this man's actions, even if that responsibility only manifets itself in a justice that has its roots in charity and mercy. Perhaps most fundamentally -- in this time, when it's so easy to look at others and think of them as less than human, it's vital that, as the empowered, we recognize that every human being demands to be recognized as human (not as inhuman, not as sub-human or or as a "monster"), and that every human being demands our mercy and our charity.
All this from a recovering Catholic who found a spiritual home in the philosophical.
(The quotes are lifted from a series of interviews Levinas gave, collected in Is It Righteous to Be?).
As an Amazon Associate, MacRumors earns a commission from qualifying purchases made through links in this post.
MarkCollette said:
Where do you get that "the hillbillies are killing deer to eat"? When I was a hillbilly, and my family killed deer to eat, we took it home, strung it in a tree, and began a nice, home-style buchery. We didn't run it down, cut off a little bit, and leave the rest by the road.
(BTW, I don't eat red meat anymore, & never killed anything. I think the guns weighed more than me, back then.)
I guess the way poultry is slaughtered in the US is more humane than roadkill? 8,500$ for something like this is complete madness.
I'll never understand Americans.
I'll never understand Americans.
It's very sad and very wrong that these ducks were killed like that.
but three pages of talking about it?
but three pages of talking about it?
- Status