Monsters!

Cookie doesn't mind being called a "monster".

It is easy to call someone a "monster" for doing something heinous. It is easy to wish horrible things happening to a "monster".

That is a dangerous path.

When we single people or groups out as "monsters", we distance ourselves, the "real" humans, from the concept that human beings are capable of doing horrible things to other human beings. "They" are the exceptions. The abhorations. The moral deformities that have made them less-than-human. "They" should be contained, tortured, destroyed, and used as cautionary tales to wreck fear into the hearts of every caring parent.

When we deny the humanity of someone who has done something horrible, we deny our own capacity for horribleness. We subconsciously accept their badness as inherent. And we subconsciously accept that we are inherently nothing like "them". Sure, we made a racist joke at work, lied to our spouse, and was rude to the cashier, but at least we don't hurt people, unlike those "monsters"!

And when we deny the humanity of someone who has done something monstrous, we fail to see the attitudes, mechanisms and systems that fed into that monstrous act. I'm not denying a criminal of his own culpability. But as a society that strives to be just, we cannot deny our culpability either. What makes the difference between my own failures, and this human being who tortured and killed a young girl? And if I want to rise above my own corruptibility to embody someone who is kind, generous and just, what can I do to protect the vulnerable in society, like Tina Fontaine? What can I do to encourage those around me, and the society I live in, to rise above the monstrous side of our nature, and embrace our potential for nobility?

A sociopath may use, manipulate and hurt others because they fail at empathizing with the humanity of others. They can easily categorize a person as an object or "other". They can disassociate from what happens to other people. I think the best way we can combat monstrous and sociopathic behaviour in our society is to embrace, with pain and humility, the humanity of each and every person.

Tina and Raymond