Frange Rants Part Deux; Can I really hate anyone?

I hope this post doesn't come off too much in the Captain Obvious vein of "mean people suck," and I know I've sort of hit on this note once before in my postings, but after watching more episodes of Intervention (and The First 48) I feel compelled to sound off on just how difficult it is to see what some people are capable of, and the consequences it brings.

In Intervention, they basically ask an addict to participate in a documentary about addiction, and neglect to tell them that they will face an Intervention by their family and friends at the end of the documentary filming.

I don't watch this show for the "train wreck" factor of seeing how some people destroy themselves and react negatively to an Intervention, though I could see how that might be entertaining to some. But, at least for me, the show does way too good of a job making you understand and feel for these people, and by the end of the show when they have the Intervention, I'm just really hoping that they can see past their pride and/or their psychological barriers, and realize that they really really need help, and they're past the point of being able to do it on their own.

Now, it's important to note that I said, "by the end of the show" because lots of times, when you first meet these people, you really can't stand them. I've seen a lot of these addicts be really horrible people to get what they need. Nearly all of them lie to, steal from, and abuse their family and friends, and lots of them then have the nerve to be furious when they find out that their family kept the Intervention a secret from them until they got them there.

So what happens during the course of the show that makes me sympathize with these addicts?

Well, a lot, but to boil it down, every show has what I've come to call, "baby picture time." This is when they have a montage of pictures of the addict when they were a kid growing up, and the addict's family is talking about how great of a kid they were, how much promise they had, and how "full of life" the addict once was.

Then they do this thing where the screen fades to black, and white text comes up on the screen that says something like this,

"When she was 6, Annie was molested by a close family friend."

And you're like, ".....damn... Goddamn.. that sucks."

And then they talk about how she just wasn't happy anymore, and how things just sort of changed... and then they hit you with the hammer...

"When she was 17, Annie was raped by a co-worker."

And you just hang your head, you can't even fathom what that would do to you... and it just all sort of makes sense.

Again, I apologize for ranting and not offering any sort of analysis or intelligent commentary, but how the hell can people do this to someone else?!

It's so horrible, so unbelievably selfish; and in the case of rape and molestation, which is far too common, it's destroying another person's entire life for mere minutes of depraved pleasure. I'm fortunate to have never endured such horror, but it's plainly obvious that it's impossible to ever be the same as you once were. The way you look at humanity in general changes; you've seen the very worst of a person's potential, and that just doesn't go away.

The problem is, as much as I think every rapist and molester should never be able to walk the streets again; I don't think that stiffer penalties, even the threat of the death penalty, would stop the people that do this from doing this. That's not to say that I think that a rapist or molester should ever be allowed to go free, but I just think that it's disheartening that harsher consequences probably wouldn't be an effective deterrent.

It's a sickness. No one aspires to be a sociopath. It takes a certain (mis)wiring of the brain to be capable of causing such damage to someone, either physically or emotionally.

And that gets me thinking. I can see how horrible the addicts are, especially those who scream at their families at the Intervention, claiming they've been betrayed, but yet I sympathize for them when I see the demons they wrestle with inside... can the same be said about the molesters and rapists? Can I sympathize for them, too?

I'm really not sure, and it would be a case-by-case thing, but I really don't think so.

There are fundamental differences; I mean, an addict, while they're abusive and cause pain to their families and friends, it's almost entirely because of their self-destruction, not because the addict is purposefully hurting their loved ones.

I'm of the opinion that everyone is fundamentally good, and those that do evil fall into several categories:

First, there's the ones that truly believe that what they're doing isn't evil or wrong. This could be a matter of interpretation, delusion, or the ability to compartmentalize and see an action as each small part rather than the sum and the consequences.

Second, there are those who know what they're doing is wrong and evil, but feels justified or that his or her action are necessary. This includes the guy who steals so he can eat, the soldier that kills on the battlefield, the vigilante mentality of eye-for-an-eye or the righteous smiting the wicked.

Third, there's those who know what they're doing is wrong, don't feel justified, but still do it because they can't face the consequences of not doing it. This is where the addicts come in. The addict that steals her mom's TV to sell it for meth hates that she does it, but she can't face not having meth, so it's almost a lesser of two evils to them. You can actually sort of trace this back to see that in many of these cases, the decision to become an addict in the first place falls in this same category. Rather than face what they feel they can't face, namely the horrible things that have been done to them, they block it out with dependency and self-destruction.

Finally, there are those who know what they're doing is wrong, but it just doesn't matter to them. The "rules" of what's right and wrong aren't their rules, and they might know them, but the real reasons why they're in place eludes them. These are the sociopaths.

It's never like it is in the cartoons or the storybooks. The villian never really is the villian, but a sociopath is about as close as you get.

Aside: Speaking of villians, one of my favorite villian debates is whether Gargamel wanted to eat the Smurfs, or turn them into Gold. After several heated discussions, I believe I've found the definitive answer.

Both.

(A lot of people say that the original motivation for the start of the series was turning them into gold, and only Azrael wanted to eat the Smurfs, but after ratings dropped, the producers decided to have Gargamel want to eat them too.)

Anyways, it's hard to get back into talking seriously about such things after going on a damn Smurfs tangent; though, actually, if you hadn't heard, Unicef made a Smurfs video that's really pretty disturbing:

http://media.putfile.com/end_of_smurfs

So.. end of rant.