Elusive Trope's picture

    Our Criminal Minds

    One of TV's darkest shows is Criminal Minds - which follows a team of profilers from the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unity (BAU) based in Quantico, Virginia.  The BAU is part of the FBI National Center for the Anaylsis of Violent Crime.  The typical show focuses on the team as attempt to prevent gruesome serial crimes as they try to solve them, utilizing the powers of profiling.  There is definitely a sensationalism to the show as episodes show various perpetrators are shown doing their grisly crimes. Thomas Gibson, who plays Unit Chief Aaron Hotchner, I think, however, touches upon a significant reason why the show is as popular as it is. 

    "When I read these horrific stories that seem to happen metaphorically in the house next door, there's something that's captivating about it in a very dark way," Gibson says. "There's something that we as a society want to understand about how some of us turn out this way."

    I would go a little further.  Because these serial killers are part of us, they reflect to a certain degree the spectrum of humanity.  We will call them such things as "monster" as a way to separate them from the rest of us, to make them "not-us,".but when we stop to think about it even Hitler, Ted Bundy, and Charlie Manson were as human as the rest of us.

    Others will inject the notion of evil as an entity that is outside of humans into the equation.  But I think it is to the credit of the people who write and produce the show that they do not shy away from the more unsettling notion that what separates a Bundy or Manson from the rest of us isn't much.  It may be a trauma from childhood or a neurological misfiring.  In other words, the worst monsters among us are in some way a reflection of us.

    One of the ways that they do is with the show particular hook, which is to begin and end each show with a quote from the great and creative minds of history.  The quotes are spoken by the various characters of the BAU team.  These quotes tend to highlight the nuances of the drives and internal wounds and demons that make these crimes a reality. A few examples:

    From Season 1, episode 10 “Popular Kids,” spoken by Jason Gideon

    "Unfortunately, a super-abundance of dreams is paid for by a growing potential for nightmares."

    - Sir Peter Ustinov


    "Ideologies separate us. Dreams and anguish bring us together."

    - Eugene Ionesco

     

    From Season 4, episode 2 “The Angel Maker,” spoken by Aaron Hotchner

    “We all die. The goal isn't to live forever, the goal is to create something that will.”

    - Chuck Palahniuk
     

    “The past is our definition. we may strive, with good reason, to escape it, or to escape what is bad in it, but we will escape it only by adding something better to it.”

    - Wendell Berry

     

    From Season 6, Episode 5 “Safe Haven,” spoken by Derek Morgan

    "All humanity is one undivided and indivisible family. I cannot detach myself from the wickedest soul."

    - Mahatma Ghandi
     

    From Season 6, Episode 12 “Corazon,” spoken by Spencer Reid:

    "No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks."

    - Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

    Our culture's latest monster is, of course, Jerry Sandusky.  Perusing the comments on articles about the Penn St scandal, there are few people identifying with Sandusky.  Variations on the monster theme are abundant. 

     But one of the reasons that this particular dark episode has captured the attention of the media and public is that the other people involved in the story are not so easily tossed aside as monsters, especially Joe Paterno. 

    As the story unfolds it is becoming increasingly apparent that there are many non-monsters who were complicit in ensuring that the monster was able to keep on doing his monstrous acts.  What is so unsettling to many is that someone like Joe Paterno, who was believed to be the embodiment of integrity and decency, could allow such a monster to remain on the loose.

    In order to explain it, people will reach for such things as "absolute power corrupts absolutely," replacing the entity of evil with another entity such as power.  Just as a society cannot believe that they could become like the Germans during the reign of Hitler, to look aside as the Holocaust occurred, people do not want to believe the potential resides within them that could enable an monster to prey upon children.

    This is not to say that anyone in Paterno or McQueary shoes would have done the same thing - put the University and himself above the welfare of children.  I believe that most people would have done the right thing.  But the difference between those who do and those who don't do the right thing is so slim as almost not to exist. 

    And this in no way is a long way to state because of this that we should not judge those who do not do the right thing.  If anything it is the basis for a imperative that we do judge and judge with a passion.  

    What could be referred to as the current media storm swirling around Penn State can also be referred to as collective reflection.  We are drawn in as we see ourselves, or at least our potential selves, reflected back at us.  The students tipping over the media van is us and they are we, just as those who light candles for the victims of Sandusky tonight are us and we are them. Just as the victims are us and we are they.

    Going forward, as this story unfolds, we can find a way through continued reflection to touch upon that part our humanity which embraces love, that part of humanity upon which we all depend.  It is true that being human means not being perfect.  Being human means to fail.  But we can strive to struggle for the best which is in us, even though we are for the most part the walking wounded.  

    It all reminds me of a part of lyrics from the Sarah McLaughlin song: Fumbling Toward Ecstasy, something we should tell each of us, tell ourselves:  

    Peace in the struggle for peace;

    Comfort on the way to comfort.

    It also reminds of a song from Jane Siberry - and here is a video of her performing it live to a small audience. 

     

     

    Comments

    This is lovely. Jane Siberry nicely expresses how we can be certain and uncertain at the same time.

    I agree with Gandhi about not being able to detach oneself from even the worst of humanity but disagree with Shelley saying that people don't choose evil for its own sake. Or if not for its own sake, also not because it is for their own good. To view the matter as Shelley does makes Gandhi's statement an observation of nature when it is actually a call to a very onerous task.

     


    You've captured one of the facets of Criminal Minds that I find intriguing.  Each of their quotes, more or less, one finds agreeing with in and of itself.  But when one starts piling them on top of each other, contradictions and dissonance begins to happen.  Which may be a way of saying that to be human is to be a paradox, to be an aphoria.


    The idea of being an ἀπορɛία is compelling. One could say the progression from Hegel to Derrida is the articulation of the notion.

    Your comment about piling the quotes on top of each other reminds me of Nietzsche's view of "layers" of drives that seek their own end without regard to an overarching design. Structure as a network of disassociation; a photographic negative of the Hegelian idea of the real. 


    Soaking in the comment right now.  The thing that popped into my mind right away actually was Neitzsche comment, and how this is in a way the polar of opposite of the Rick Warren view of the Purpose Driven Life, and how so many people gravitated to this.  And then there is the chaos theory which showed that what appears to be chaotic (without purpose?) actually could still be reduced to a simplistic formula and that what was significant, in part, was the initial conditions.

    So now this brings me to the concept of the sensitive dependence on initial conditions as it relates to why some of us turn out this way and others turn out that way.  All part of the design, but the actual outcome is not designed. 

    Will continue to soak.


    In turn, I will mull over the matter of chaos theory and sensitive dependence.

    Your observation that the "purpose driven life", as depicted by Warren, is the polar opposite of what Nietzsche was trying to talk about, is spot on. The geometric nature of the opposition has been a component of a question that I have been thinking about for decades:

    The clearly stated views of Nietzsche are, with few exceptions, the exact opposite of the view of Christianity he chose to militate against. This concordance is either a perverse sort of acknowledgement of the truth within the tradition or a very large joke that calls for the reader to just listen to themselves when they talk that way. Or maybe it is both sides of the either/or at the same time. Whatever the case may be, the mirror like quality of his presentation is why the different possibilities ever occurred to me. Certainty combined with uncertainty.


    Certainty combined with uncertainty.  Or maybe as Derrida put it the structure of structure is play.  And as Huizinga says "Play only becomes possible, thinkable and understandable when an influx of mind breaks down the absolute determinism of the cosmos."


    I am trying to 'get my head around' all this.

    Herzog has a new movie out:

    http://www.fastcompany.com/1794334/werner-herzog-into-the-abyss-interview

    I know this much. From past experience I find that there is usually a locker room next to the showers and athletic stuff is usually available nearby.

    If I saw some grown pig butt f&%king a ten year old boy, I would simply find a bat and then bash that mofo right in the noggin.

    The only moral issue for me, assuming I could gather myself, would be to warn the fellow first.

    Then i would instruct the kid to get dressed and we would then call his parents. In the mean time I would call 911 on my cell or on the phone in the locker room.

    Then I would call a newspaper and then......

    the end


    "to look aside.... and enable a monster to prey upon children."

    People getting all worked up and enraged and PREACHING, as though Joe Paterno and the Penn State abomination was the worst example of "looking aside" as children were destroyed that we could see around us today.

    Looking aside - it's easily done. We've apparently got it down to a science, for we look aside as millions of families get hammered under, and millions of children lose their homes, their schools, their friends, their food, their safety at home, their parents, their futures.

    Sometimes I wish Joe Paterno had been running the Fed.

    Look aside.


    people should be PREACHING when it comes to doing something when doing something is a matter of turning to the authorities.  Given that JoePa was one of the most powerful, if not the most powerful, person in PA, that he didn't get more involved is unacceptable. 

    Now tell me, I see those million families getting hammered.  I have picked up the phone: who do I call?  What is the phone number that starts getting people into action that will ensure future families from getting hammered?  I am sure others would like to know what that phone number is.

    It is mere lazy intellectualism to compare the situation of watching an economic system do its nasty work on people to the situation of watching an individual move through one's organization and commit heinous actions on small children. 

    But let's go down your path - where have been all the activists when America was setting pretty but there was people in other countries who were suffering far worse than the American poor.  How dare they start preaching now only when it is they who are suffering. Why did they care only about the well-being of people based on which side of what border they lived on? How can they preach now?


    Wow. 

    You ask, where all the activists were when there was wealth in America and suffering overseas?

    And I reply... are you mad? Is this some sort of twisted post-structuralist nonsense? Listen: YOU COULDN'T GET LEFTY ASSHOLE ACTIVISTS TO SHUT UP ABOUT OTHER COUNTRIES! That's all they ever babbled about! Christ, it was the suffering in Myanmar and the Congo and Nepal and El Salvador and on and on and on and on. They never SHUT UP about overseas exploitation and the WTO and the child labour and the slave labour and the exploitation in the sex trade and on and on and on.

    In fact, this was SO much the case that this was the absolutely bog-standard academic JOKE about young lefties and progressives. 

    Which leads me again to wonder... if you don't even know this most basic fact about the Left... are you sure you're not Clearthinker?

    Or perhaps, are not, in fact, writing from Indiana, but maybe from darkest Albania? Or even... Alabama?

    And as for the children? Let me be clear, Trope. I believe you have shown that your judgment, when it comes to matters of violence, is utterly unsound. And that's a consequence of the absolute dogs bollocks nonsense you've been doing lately, what with the screaming FRENCH REVOLUTION because some kids throw a brick or whatever. You seem unable to grasp the violence occurring every day - millions thrown out of their homes and out of work and low on food, hundreds of thousands killed overseas - but then when a brick is thrown or some poor is begotten punk kid uses the word revolution, you shit yourself screaming. 

    And if memory serves, weren't you into the same schtick about Wisconsin? And the grand harm IT was doing? Yeah.

    It's as though you've developed these set piece arguments in some basement a million miles away, become enamoured of them, and then come out to throw them at people - no matter the actual, lived on the ground, reality before you.

    Like this one you've tried before, about how progressives somehow cared not a whit for foreigners. It's almost.... impossible to respond to because it's so offline. Really. It's like saying Conservatives have never cared for the Individual. You know what I'm saying? And again with the violence thing. Bricks thrown, barrels set on fire, and yes, it's the bloody APOCALYPSE to you. But the Establishment? 

    Hey. They're safe. Let's have them over, gather them... around our table.

    Nice people.


    Obviously there have been activists working for others in other countries.  Always has been. During those wondrous days of my activism I was able to bring in actistist who was working side by side with Rigobeta Menchu to my small community to understand what was going on in Guatemala.

    The point is that the bulk of the movement in this country that is "upset" with the way things are were not upset enough to go to the streets when they personally were benefitting from the corrupt system.  Your inability to acknowledge this fact is the problem.  You are willing to look aside from the fact of why people have joined your movement.  You don't care about the motivations.  They're on my side - that is all that matters.

    But it does matters.  Because in the next stage, and the stage after that, these people will be involved in deciding the nature of that stage.  And now we are back to the French Revolution.  You want to think that can't happen again.  I believe people are people, want to acknowledge our dark side as well as our light side.  Good luck with your faith in the ultimate goodness of people.


    1. See if you can tell the difference between the following phrases:

    "Activists."

    "The bulk of the movement."

    Now. It's not my problem when you wrote the first, if you meant the second. Try harder to think before you write, or to write the phrase that you actually want. Because these are two very different things.

    2. As for the rest of your Tripe, apparently people who accepted a corrupt and materialistic system are likely to be violent. So God forbid they ever get any power. Which is - again- just another way of saying how scary you find the idea of poor people gaining any power. Because.... just to clue you in a fraction... the rich people in the capitalist system sure seem to have accepted its corruption and materialism as well.

    And yet you want THEM around your table, while the poor? I believe you're more of a nervous bystander. 

    Good luck with your faith in the ultimate goodness of the rich. 


    the problem here is that you think my primary view of people is based on how much they make.  Which makes sense to someone consumed with classism.  But the thing is that I view humans through a different prism, and I would add - a more nuanced prism.

    did you even truly listen/watch the Siberry video?


    Well gee, Trope. Sure, I listened to Jane, partly because she's a bit of  friend of mine. She's from around here, you know? I own all her albums, have seen her live, spoken a bit, know lots of her friends. And adore the album that song's from. 

    Oddly, she changed her name - not sure you knew that - and sold off all her possessions, and made her catalogue available on-line for free/name-your-own-price. Then went travelling round the world, playing for people at house parties and such. She's since changed her name back apparently, but still... interesting to me, how much her lifestyle today resembles that of a particular social group you despise.

    Anyway. Glad you like her stuff.


    i just don't believe her sentiments about people are only applicable to people with a particular amount in their bank account. 

    and I don't despise that "particular social group" - rather I don't see the applicability to the larger society of that social group's mode of organization.  It's great when everyone is on the same page, but that has never been the case in human history.


    Wow to you, too.

    [Comment edited. As I suspect you know, we're not keen on public discussions about blogger behavior. If you are concerned, you may bring your concerns to the moderators. Thanks, G.]


    Thanks for stepping in and editing the comment. 


    If there's going to be collective reflection, I wish that it will be on how professional sports personalities are treated like the new royalty worldwide.

    The adoration of professional sports breeds societal corruption as surely as the "bread and circuses" of ancient Rome. Yes, it is a deadly virus infecting U.S. universities. But from elite commandos sent to rescue kidnapped baseball players in Venezuela, while the other 5 persons kidnapped per day in Caracas get no such government services, to players spot fixing in cricket in Pakistan, the sickness is everywhere. What, you don't like your government? But hey, how about those soccer wins?


    sports - competitive endeavors - have part of human society from the beginning.  Moreover, in our modern society, sports serve the need for formal rituals that seems to reach deep into our DNA.  We cannot merely dismiss sports as something shallow.  Look into how the Rugby championship help South Africa heal in the aftermath of Apartheid and you will know what I am talking about.


    I taught at an elite College in the U.S. for 10 years.  Date rape was the name of the game; frat boy-football players had their own lawyers. No surprise what happened in State College. 

    I heard an interview with a former football player who said, if he'd seen what was going on in that shower, he wasn't sure what he would have done, but kicking the shit out of Sandusky was the first thing that came to mind. 

    I've never seen Criminal Minds, but I saw Drive last night.  The mystery of that movie seemed less about what divides everyday 'us' from serial killers, as to what teaches people how to kill, whether for retribution or survival?  The fantasy of that film would definitely have culminated in Gosling quietly entering the shower and taking Sandusky out (maybe with an implied flashback to his own youth and what instilled this survival reflex in him to begin with). 

    Is this a narrative to emphasize?


    Is this a narrative to emphasize?

    How much control do we really have as to which narrative is emphasized?  By that I mean, in part, how much do we control what resonates with us?  The movie Die Hard  is a recent example, but probably two of the big ones that came out around the same time were Dirty Harry and Death Wish. These films reflect some basic notion about how we would like to believe we would react to someone like Sandusky.  Yet is it really how we want out society to operate?


     I don't know.  I'm really trying to figure out what kind of superhero Gosling represents.  Did he learn how to kill that way or did he unlearn how not to kill? (Disclaimer:  it's a European story set in an American city.)


    I haven't seen Drive, so cannot really comment on it.  I can only read about it. But your comment brings up the question:  Did Sandusky learn to rape children or did he unlearn how not to rape. The same question goes to Paterno: did he learn how to turn a blind eye or did he unlearn how not to turn a blind eye?


    I guess that's fair. 

    They're all acting outside of societal law and convention, but the narratives around them are really different.  A Sandusky acts out of the need to gratify a private desire (presumably), while Gosling's character acts out of care for the community or pseudo-family he's come to love. 

    The narratives seem different to me based on that distinction:  do you ignore your understanding of social contract so you can get away with rape or demolish it so you can protect your community, which is under attack?  Gosling's character is indeed far-fetched, because he seems to care so little for personal gain.

    Paterno's story is surely less simple.


    Chungking Express comes to mind, although I am not sure exactly why -- something for me ponder


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