IMAGINING CHINA AND THINGS

Since reinstating my Diary of a Writer only yesterday, I’ve been filled with many ideas. As usual Brian set me off, concerning the problem of blogging being driven by the reader, yet without readers, you’re shouting in a vacuum.
Getting the balance right is difficult. But to me, the actual act of writing is only part of the craft. Writing is about communication, so the end product must be in the mind of the reader. Hence, it is a two way street.

I suspect all bloggers think this.

And in that spirit, I’ll continue trying to communicate. Today I’m doing so by incorporating Blogtalkers, who ask for me to write about my imaginary life. Well that’s easy.
You’ll find my imaginary life all over this blog, ‘cos I’m a writer, and expressing my imaginary life is what I do. It is at the heart of writing, placing different characters and situations in my mind and seeing what comes out.

I’m also trying to imagine the situation in China today.

Suffering another earthquake, 10,000 are believed to have died, with another 10,000 buried. My heart goes out to the casualties.
Yet I’m sure the survivors will cope much better than those in Burma. Why do I bring this up? Because China is a regional power in the area, and wants to be accepted by the world. They can begin by putting pressure on the Burma Junta to let the full aid package in. But I’m not holding my breath.

Crime is also on my mind today.

In the UK a couple of years ago the Serious and Organised Crime Agency was set up – a kind of British version of the FBI. I thought at the time that an organization with an acronym that sounded like a popular sport would be a failure.
Well, how right I was! It seems they have just shelved their 130-strong hitlist of top villains. They’re too hard to catch. Now there’s something to write about in the ‘imaginary’ category.
Call again tomorrow.

© Anthony North, May 2008

FEROCIOUS

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FEROCIOUS

She walked up and down the room, treading the carpet. She walked fast, angrily, ferociously.
‘And you just couldn’t resist, could you?’ She never awaited an answer. ‘God, I knew you were unhappy, I knew we had problems, but this?’
Her face was contorted, her good looks turning to something macabre, insane and – yes – so very defiant. ‘I should have guessed.’ An admonishment. ‘All the signs were there.’ A sense of regret – or was it stupidity for not realizing?

Her husband just sat there, staring into space.

‘I gave you everything,’ she continued, her pace quickening, as if there was no time to get to where she wasn’t going.
Maybe that was why, she thought, suddenly. I’m pacing up and down, trying to work it out, but maybe we were just going nowhere.
Her thoughts turned to words: ‘But that doesn’t let you off, you bas …’
Was that the crescendo, cut off in its prime? Was the ferocity of her mood declining?
The time comes. We know it does – when the anger is spent, maybe through sheer tiredness. And this is the point of reunion, of forgiveness, of being carried away on a tide of ecstasy as they make up.
She turned to face him, knelt by him. And as she stared at the knife embedded in his heart, she knew that this time it was final.

© Anthony North, May 2008

HURRICANE

The weather comes, it blows, it roars,
it batters your home without a pause;
A wind that comes ferociously,
whirling round you and me;
It’s the third, this time around,
much more frequently, they come to pound,
and always that manic thought resounds,
forever there, it does rebound,
that this is pay back for our insanity,
battering nature so we can see,
a better life materially,
but ignoring nature’s beauty,
balance,
and harmony

(c) Anthony North, May 2008

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FEROCIOUSLY SPEAKING

When someone appears ferocious we stand well back. Words such as ‘violent’, or ‘intense’, describe it. And when violence with intensity arises, it is brutal, immediate, without thought, beyond control.
There are various reasons for such ferocity. It is ingrained in a soldier that in the heat of battle, ferocity is the only way. Yes, professionalism usually controls it to a point, but we don’t speak of ‘the dogs of war’ for nothing.

Revenge is usually a motive.

When we are whipped up to the frenzy of revenge, nothing stands in our way. Yet in the modern world a new form of ferocity has come to our streets.
This is the violent delinquent, making life miserable for all. Of course, there’s always been crime, but now it seems to carry a new edge of violence. Why has such ferocity come to crime?

Well, it isn’t actually anything new.

In Britain, a similar ferocity arose alongside crime in the 18th century crimewave. Looking back, it parallels modern times in that it was a period where capitalism was advancing, and religion declining.
So it seems to be about an increase in our ability to ‘have’, coming alongside a decline in the notion that we ‘shouldn’t’. And when society tells us that we ‘cannot’, we get angry, and ferociously take.

We can also see ferocity in another way.

Nothing diminishes a person more than a lack of self-esteem. It seems to be in our very nature to feel that we are someone. And to be denied can cause anger, violence and more.
Hence, we can also see ferociousness as a lack of confidence. It is the result of our ‘smallness’, our inabilities, and our hang-ups. And as more and more face a crisis of confidence, ferocity is likely to increase.

© Anthony North, May 2008

CANNIBALISM

The Wild West provided many horror stories. But few can beat the fate of George Donner’s wagon train, taking new settlers to California. In August 1846 it took a wrong turn and got lost in the Sierra Nevada.
Starving, the 26 men, 14 women and 44 children decided on a new method of staying alive. They ate each other. The settlers became cannibals - and they are not alone.

CASES OF CANNIBALISM

During Napoleon’s retreat from Russia in 1812 some 12,000 men perished at Vilna in December. Over three days the cold and starvation got so much that many began to eat parts of the already dead.
Some four years later - in July 1816 - the French frigate Medusa ran aground off Senegal. Some 151 men built a raft and attempted to escape. Starvation, drowning and eventually murder led to ten surviving. Many of them had been eaten.
One of the worst modern cases concerned a Uruguayan plane en route to Chile in the winter of 1972, with 45 people onboard. It crashed in the Andes. Slowly they began to die of cold and starvation. After ten days it was decided to eat the recently dead in order to survive. Although eight died in an avalanche, only 19 of the original 45 survived.

CANNIBALS OF THE PAST

In the above cases we can see people turning to cannibalism in order to survive. But there is much more to cannibalism than this. The practice seems to be ancient indeed. Engravings of early Native Americans depict them eating limbs. Many African tribes were cannibal, bringing us the stereotypical image of placing the missionary in the pot.
Remains of Peking Man, discovered in 1972 near Choukoutein in China, and possibly half a million years old, show evidence of human skulls split open and their brains extracted.
The Christian St Jerome wrote of cannibalism in Scotland in the 4th century AD. Greek historian Strabo said that tribes in Ireland practised it. As a normal tribal practice, it survived longest in Borneo and the Amazon basin - areas where Christian missionaries were wary of going.

WHAT EATS US?

So fascinated have we been of the practice that writers such as Jean Jacques Rousseau and Jules Verne used cannibals as fictional heroes; and to this day we like a good fictional cannibal, Hannibal Lecter being an obvious example.
When survival isn’t an obvious reason for cannibalism, why did so many people indulge? The Missionary James Chambers decided, after studying people in New Guinea in the 1940s, that it was all down to taste. Human flesh simply tasted the best.
This agreed with 19th century explorer Alfred St Johnston, who argued the Fijians ate human flesh for its own sake. Studies of modern western cannibals offer another dimension.

FLESH EATING KILLERS

When Wisconsin necrophile Ed Gein was arrested in 1957 he was found to be sexually frustrated, and had been digging up new female corpses for years. As well as satisfying himself sexually, he devoured parts of them.
Wayne Boden, arrested in Calgary, Canada, in 1971, was dubbed as the ‘Vampire Rapist’. This is misleading. Raping and killing four women, most of whom he had already dated, he would bite deeply into breasts and neck. This is as close to cannibalism as you can get.
Many sexual assaults - usually caused by being ‘too rough’ with a sexual partner - can go as far as biting off nipples and swallowing them. At the lower end of the scale we have the love bite.

SEX AND SPIRITUALITY

Many researchers argue that this is a sexual form of absolute possession, and extremely sexually charged. It seems that many of us are closer to being cannibals than we dare to admit.
Cannibalism tended to die out in tribal societies when Christian missionaries arrived. Some researchers argue this is because these tribes suddernly understood the concept of the soul. However, this does not stand up to scrutiny. The Christian Eucharist involves symbolic cannibalism with bread and wine being symbolic of the body and blood of Christ.
A further problem is that virtually all tribal societies understood a form of soul. Indeed, ritualised cannibalism of this sort can be seen as ’soul’ driven. In eating dead enemies, cannibalism can be seen as controlling the spirits of their enemies.
When eating relatives - especially older ones - it is as if the cannibal is imbibing the attributes of wisdom or courage of the ‘victim’. For instance, some Amazon tribes ate the bone ash of their kin - this is certainly not taste driven, but far more fundamental.

ENHANCING THE HUMAN

As late as 1654 a Silesian bandit was recorded eating an unborn baby’s heart to make himself stronger. Again, we have the hint that cannibalism is an enabling practice.
Hungarian anthropologist Oscar Maerth went so far as to argue that cannibalism was responsible for the birth in intelligent thought. Half a million years ago we became human through eating the brains of other humans, thus increasing our intelligence.
This idea seems absurd, yet an experiment with planarian worms is worrying. Taught to navigate a maze, the worm is killed and fed to another. This other worm is able to negotiate the maze immediately.
Even more interesting is the fact that some tadpoles eat adult members of their own species so that they grow to adulthood faster.

IT’S DEADLY, YOU KNOW

Cannibalism is a far more interesting subject than the horror of it suggests. The word itself is derived from the Caribs of South America and the Caribbean, who were said to eat people by their Spaniard conquerers.
Yet, with recent knowledge of Kuru - a spongiform brain disease exhibited by cannibals in the South Pacific in the 1950s - we are beginning to see that cannibalism is deadly.
This presents a paradox. If cannibalism was so widespread, how did tribal societies survive? If they all indulged, why did they not all die of a spongiform disease? Perhaps because only a select few may have become cannibals in any one tribe.

RITUAL PRACTICES

Most tribal ritual throughout the world was orchestrated by a hysteric known as a shaman. He has many other names such as witchdoctor or medicine man. These special people were chosen at an early age and brought up differently to other tribesmen. Usually natural schizophrenics, they could go into trances and speak with spirits.
Another essential practice of many tribal societies was sacrifice. In this way, they appeased the spirits. Yet could it be that early tribal societies realised that eating certain parts of the same species - brains, for instance - caused a strange affliction many years down the road, which we could identify as a spongyform?
If so, a stage of delerium would come where many of the attributes of shamanism would be seen. And with the end result being sacrifice, perhaps cannibalism was a real route through which a tribe communed with their gods.

(c) Anthony North, March 2008

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A WORD OR TWO ABOUT CRIME

THE CRIME POST - AN OCCASIONAL MAGAZINE ON CRIME
What’s on today: Why I write about crime … PLUS … Do we really know what ‘evil’ is? An attempt to highlight the socio-psychology behind killer couples. And to finish off, a 19th century tale of detection.
IT WOULD BE CRIMINAL NOT TO READ IT

A WORD OR TWO ABOUT CRIME

I write a lot about crime, but my posts on the subject haven’t really taken off. I’m not sure why this is. Maybe it is because I speak a load of rubbish, or may it’s because people don’t really want to read about it any more.
This is a valid argument. We tend to only be interested in a particular ‘nasty’ in life when it isn’t assaulting us at the time. Hence, interest in reading about crime can be seen as a pursuit only when there isn’t much crime about.

It was different in 18th century Britain.

There was a crimewave at this time, and it was at this time, also, that the pamphlet became popular, narrating crimes. The reason for this is that the affluent thought their society was the ultimate.
So how could so much crime appear in a perfect society? It was a mind-state that continued into the Victorians. The fact that our interest is not so great today - fiction aside - could be because we realize that our society stinks.

Why do I write about crime?

I suppose it’s related to the above. As you’ve no doubt noticed, I write a lot about the paranormal, cults, conspiracy theories, etc. I do so not so much because of an interest in these subjects for the subject’s sake.
Rather, I feel that these areas are all reflections, in the extreme, of the normal. Hence, such subjects highlight the problems within ourselves and society. Crime, I think, fits into the same category. The criminal - as I attempt to show in the linked posts - offers a stark reflection of ourselves.

© Anthony North, January 2008

FROM THE ARCHIVES

EVIL

Evil can mean many things, but a supernatural influence is perhaps not one of them. As to the answer to evil, perhaps this has been known for millenia - but has been classed as ‘evil’ itself.
… read here …

THE GOD MAN

There is a recurring phenomenon in crime of the killer couple. What causes such couples to kill? And can we get to grips with a distinct psychology and sociology at work within the couple …
… read here …

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Fiction Xtra - A SHOT IN THE DARK - meet my 19th century sleuth

In deciding to write about the adventures of my good friend Marmaduke Grey, I feel somewhat overawed. How does one express, in words, such absolute genius when my own mind is inferior to the task. Of course, this is not to denigrate my own abilities. Simply that, next to him, we are all inferior …
… read more …

If you liked this story click Fiction Page for more

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VIOLENT BRITAIN

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What’s on today: How to sort out rising violence in society … PLUS … New health policies demand sensible lifestyle from people. Bush finally takes green measures.
YOU KNOW IT’S THE WRITE WAY

VIOLENT BRITAIN

Five people in Britain died over the New Year festivities due to violence, including a 16 year old teenager. Now, for some countries this is maybe not a terrible death toll, but for Britain, it is part of a growing problem of unrestrained violence.
Measures taken to combat it include attempts to raise the price of alcohol and put restraints on known violent louts. But the problem will never be sorted out by specific measures alone. Something more significant is needed.

Looking back to the 18th century crimewave could be useful.

At this time, Britain seemed to self-destruct into an orgy of crime and violence. Why is this? If we look at the time, certain things become obvious.
It was the time when capitalism was beginning, and religion was in decline. Today, that religious decline is almost complete, and we have a new breed of super-capitalism. Hence, the social ingredients are remarkably similar.

As such, maybe we can gain answers by looking at how the crimewave was finally sorted out.

And it was a three-pronged solution. First of all, the streets were flooded with Police, beginning with the Bow Street Runners. But other things were far more significant.
A new social movement began, financed by philanthropists, to properly tackle social inequalities; and a new breed of preacher – the Methodist – went on to the street to bring back morality.
Of course, I’m not saying religion needs a popular return, but in getting rid of it, we also got rid of the moral and social constraints of good order. We need to relearn these values. But of most importance, the answer to crime is found in taking a holistic approach to society.

© Anthony North, January 2007

DOCTOR GOD

A new NHS constitution will soon be with us in the UK, giving us clear rights we have to health care. However, our ‘esteemed leader’, Brown, has worryingly indicated that this will mean ‘duties’ on us to look after ourselves …
… read more …

BUSH DOES A GREENY

Okay, it’s happened. President Bush has actually signed into law a new energy bill that – wait for it – attempts to help the environment. Now I know what you’re thinking, but it isn’t a joke, really …
… read more …

You can comment on any linked post below if you wish

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A NEW LOOK AT SENTENCING

Okay. The criminal is caught. The police have done their job. Now let’s sentence him. But what sort of sentence shall it be? The 18th century reformer Jeremy Bentham had an easy answer: ‘ … all punishment in itself is evil’.
In a sense we can all agree, but as with ‘turn the other cheek’, such sentiments only work in a perfect world. Forty years before Bentham the Marquess of Halifax had realised the importance of deterrence in punishment when he said: ‘Men are not hanged for stealing horses, but that horses may not be stolen’.

EARLY PUNISHMENT

Due to this deterrent factor, punishment can often be bloody.
Recent research on a corpse found at Stonehenge in the 1920s suggests he was a thief from the 7th century, his head severed by a broadsword and buried in a pagan site so he would rot in hell.
The knight, William De Marisco, offers an early example of being hanged, his bowels drawn and his body quartered in 1242. Each of the four quarters was taken to separate cities for display, a stark warnings to all.
A particularly bloody punishment was meted out to the Beane family in 16th century Galloway following a spate of brutal murders and robberies. All male members had their hands and legs chopped off and left to bleed to death.

TYBURN ONWARDS

From as early as the 12th century English justice usually came in the form of stocks, branding or hanging, with the Tyburn Tree close to today’s Marble Arch in London drawing vast crowds to see executions.
These spectacles comprised moral theatre as well as execution, offering both deterrence and retribution. The 12th century also saw rudimentary prisons such as Newgate coming into being, but they were only holding cells until real sentencing was passed.
Prison as a form of sentencing in itself only evolved following the work of early criminologist Cesare Beccaria in the 18th century. Advocating education as crime prevention, he loathed capital punishment, opting instead for incarceration. To the Victorians this was good, for it allowed time for contemplation so as to purge the soul.

RETRIBUTION

Modern prison sentencing is, of course, in a pickle as we debate the rights and wrongs of punishment or rehabilitation. Which is most important? For instance, is crime fundamentally criminal or increasingly psychological in nature?
If criminal, then punishment is the answer. If psychological, then rehabilitation would seem to be the key. But certainly one factor that is rarely considered today is the importance of retribution.
In an ideal world retribution should play no part, but the simple fact is the police cannot do their work in isolation. Policing only works with the help of the public. And if the public feel reporting crime is pointless because they would not get retribution, then in order to allow the police to work efficiently, retribution simply has to be a factor in punishment.
We have now identified four central elements that can comprise sentencing: punishment, rehabilitation, deterrence and retribution. But there is an eternal clash of contrary opinions of experts in the field.

MINIMUM SENTENCE

This clash concerns varying opinions on sentencing for punishment or rehabilitation, with retribution nowhere to be seen and never the twain shall meet. Well maybe they can meet, and meet most effectively.
Let’s deal with retribution first. At present, in Britain, when a criminal is sentenced to two years imprisonment, he can expect to serve perhaps 15 months. This should change. Rather than being given a maximum sentence, the sentence should instead be minimum.
Good behaviour should not result in a lesser sentence. Rather, bad behaviour should result in an extended incarceration. The human rights lawyers would, of course, have a field-day with this, but read on.

PUNISHMENT OR REHABILITATION?

Let us now look at punishment and rehabilitation. As an example, we will take two criminals who commit the same spate of robberies. One does so for greed and clearly requires punishment. The other is a kleptomaniac who cannot help it.
He has a psychological illness, so clearly needs rehabilitation. What we need is a sentencing policy that works equally well for both offenders. And this requires a fundamental change in our attitudes to sentencing.
When an offender is sentenced it is a fundamental requirement of justice that the punishment fits the crime. However, the sentence should then fit the perpetrator.
The first point is catered for by both offenders receiving the same length of incarceration. But for the latter point on sentences to fit the perpetrator, I want you to imagine prison as a corridor with a number of rooms leading off.

THE CORRIDOR

The first room is labelled ‘hard labour’, the final room is labelled ‘probation’. Between these two extremes are a number of rooms which cater for all varieties of criminals, working from hard punishment to soft punishment to psychological treatment to rehabilitation.
The role of the offender is to pass through every room before release. If, by the end of his sentence, he is not in the last room, he cannot be released until he is.
Of course, this would be expensive, and far more complicated than a simple corridor, but look at the system at work. The clearly bad criminal would have a hard time passing out of the punishment stage, but would eventually come to the realisation that if he never passes through the corridor, he will never be released.
Alternatively, the kleptomaniac would pass quickly through punishment onto the psychological treatment stage. Indeed, if we look to the paedophile, he would no doubt quickly pass through the punishment stage, but if he cannot successfully be treated, the system would allow him to be permanently held in the psychological stage.
A further beauty of the system concerns the silly offender who made one simple mistake. Such a person would quickly pass through the punishment and psychological stages and in a matter of days reach the final stage of probation.
As well as removing him from the ‘university of crime’ problem of incarceration, the system allows leniency and the ability for him to be punished, feel shame, know he is being dealt with, but still allow him to be a member of society. Whereas the hard criminal who cannot change would forever remain off the streets.

IN CONCLUSION

Such a new sentencing policy would require an immense leap of imagination from the authorities. But without such a fundamental change, the streets will not be safe and perpetrators will not be given the form of punishment they individually require.
The system allows punishment to be hard if need be or soft if required. If psychological treatment and rehabilitated are needed, they are endemic to the form of sentencing received.
As for retribution, a sentence would mean just that, with no possibility of parole. And as for deterrence, the hard man could receive a life of incarceration for the simplest of crimes.
Surely that would make them think twice. Indeed, the system is so universal that even the human rights lawyer would be gagged. For in every case the method of sentencing that is finally meted out is entirely the choice of the perpetrator, and his behaviour and needs inside.
Thus, the only human rights affected are down to his own behaviour.

© Anthony North, December 2002

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GET IN LINE

I did some strange jobs during my time in the Royal Air Force, and few were stranger than when the call came out from the local police for help. This usually concerned recruiting ‘bodies’ to appear in an identity line up.
Much has been said about the practices of detectives during the 1970s in the UK – Life on Mars fans will know what I mean – so maybe these activities can offer a personal insight.

I was based just outside London at the time.

When a line-up was required at the local police station, the call would come in, and a rough description of the suspect given so that those chosen would in some way reflect what he looked like.
I remember once getting the instruction, small and scruffy. So it was obvious I’d be in the line. However, scruffy, in the RAF, meant ‘casual’, and if we were scruffy haired or unshaven, we’d be in trouble.

So, many casually dressed airmen stood to attention next to …

… well, scruffy wasn’t in it. He seemed to come from a different planet to us, and I remember thinking, even if he was innocent, he’d be picked when compared to the rest of us.
Would this system lead to possible miscarriages of justice? Quite possibly. And the fact that witnesses were in the same room as the line-up in those days, tapping the chosen person on the shoulder, didn’t help.
But our good detectives were always appreciative. ‘Right, come on fellas,’ they’d say after the job. And off we’d go to the pub (bar) next door, whether open or not, safe in the knowledge they’d make sure we’d never remember leaving.

© Anthony North, November 2007

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IDIOT POLICE

British police continue their relentless decline to idiocy and totalitarianism. The Daily Mail offered two typical stories on 15 Oct. First of all, we have the Priest interviewed by two policemen for an hour for ‘hate crime’.
They turned up at his house. His crime? Writing about Muslim veils in a Newsletter. But this is nowhere near the infamy of a cricket lover who, after the TV in the pub was turned to football, lit a cigarette.

Landlord presses panic button. Six riot police crash in.

Of course, such stupidity is still rare, but increasing all the time. I used to have great respect for the British police. They made me feel safe. Now, the respect has gone, and a force that is supposed to be about law and order makes me fear for my freedoms.

© Anthony North, October 2007

CLIMATE CHANGE MEDIA

The decision to award the Nobel Peace Prize to Al Gore is worrying. Awarded jointly to him and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), it places global warming at the forefront of global security …
… read more …

NO BROWNIE POINTS

It hasn’t taken long for Britain to realise what kind of Prime minister we have in our ‘esteemed leader’ Gordon Brown. With the Tories finally nudging ahead in the Polls, the Backroom Boy is facing challenges from inside his own Party already …
… read more …

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Inde-Pol

VIOLENT CULTS

Cults come in all shapes and sizes. They can be of any form of spirituality, from Christianity to the Occult, to Flying Saucer cults. They can appear strange and insular, while many do a great deal of charity work.
Then we have the more sinister form of cult. Some of these make the headlines through mass suicide, but perhaps the most dangerous is the cult that ends up using extreme violence or intimidation.

RAJNEESH FOUNDATION

Typical was the Rajneesh Foundation of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. Born in India in 1931, he experienced a spiritual death and rebirth in 1953, going on to found his cult in Poona, near Bombay, in 1974.
A mixture of humanistic psychology, meditation and sex, in 1981 he bought a 64,000 acre ranch in Oregon, living a life-style which included 93 Rolls Royces, surrounded by his four thosand followers. However, he was soon outgrowing his ranch and decided to take over the near by town of Antelope, wanting to call it Rajneeshpuran.
This involved various conspiracies with his lieutenant Ma Anand Sheela, including an attempt to assassinate a prosecutor (two British women were eventually jailed for this).
Money was also ploughed in to buy up the businesses, even opening an airport to bring in his regular seven thousand festival visitors.
However, his cult collapsed in 1985 amid faction fights and he left America following immigration and fraud trials. Believing that you could only be spiritual if you were rich, Rajneesh died in 1990, his ideas continuing with Osho, an organisation that runs hundreds of small centres through the world.

AUM SHINRIKYO

Undoubtedly the most violent modern cult was Aum Shinrikyo, or ‘supreme truth’, the ten thousand strong cult headquartered on the slopes of Mount Fuji, Japan, and headed by Shoko Asahara.
Determined to bring about Armageddon so that he could rule everyone, Aum Shinrikyo became a mixture of Buddhism, occultism and fascism.
Fat, bearded and partially sighted, Asahara was born poor and was a bully, building up a huge stockpile of weapons and chemicals for his war. His cult was rounded up by armed police following a series of major crimes, the most infamous being his Sarin gas attack on the Tokyo underground on 20 March 1995, killing twelve and injuring thousands.
The Japanese authorities later discovered that his cult was based on his committing sexual and physical atrocities on his own members.

CHARLES MANSON

Sometimes such cult activity is seen as straight forward crime, such as the Manson Family killings. Charles Manson had had a lifetime of abuse, crime and imprisonment. In the height of the 1960s he moved to California, becoming guru to a number of drug abusing hippies in a ranch in Death Valley.
Believing himself to be Christ, he was convinced the Beatles song, Helter Skelter, was a coded reference to armageddon. One night in August 1969 he sent his followers out to brutally murder actress Sharon Tate, wife of Roman Polanski, and four others at their home.
The following night they murdered Leno La Bianca and his wife. The Family was eventually arrested when follower, Susan Atkins, confessed to the crimes in prison. Manson remains in prison, unrepentant.

NEGATIVITY

What causes such violence to arise in cults? Upbringing can be seen to have a great impression on behaviour of guru and disciple, and, as such, the incidence of aggression. One large school of thought believes that being the recipient of violence in childhood predisposes the adult towards violence.
This is feasible but fails to acknowledge an important element which usually goes alongside violence towards children - namely, a lack of affection. Basically, if a child does not receive affection, he will be unable to understand or recognise affection in others, resulting in an attitude to life based upon purely negative stimuli.
This idea can be seen in most gurus, who often come from broken homes, often devise theologies based on the negative impulse of Armageddon, and do not recognise friends, only acquaintances.
This anti-social tendency was noted in the mid-1950s by Dan MacDougald, an American penologist, who researched the behaviour of prison inmates.
MacDougald became interested in the fact that we screen out thousands of impulses from our consciousness, being interested only in stimuli we subjectively decide is important. He argued that the criminal cut himself off from all positive stimuli and lives his life through a series of negative responses.
The understanding of such notions as ‘love’, ‘hope’ or ‘responsibility’ was unknown to the hardened criminal. By giving inmates attention, MacDougald showed that an understanding of more positive feelings could be successfully encouraged.
The argument here is that a person who does not receive affection will learn only how to hate.

PSYCHOLOGICAL DISTANCING

Concentrating on negative impulses due to lack of affection can cause further personality traits to rise due to the effect of culture upon the individual. Seeking out only the negative values in life can lead to an unwarranted hatred of particular types, such as homosexuals or ethnic minorities.
People always realise the differences in such groups, but a stable upbringing allows positive stimuli to deter negative feelings towards them. Not so the person brought up without affection.
He is all too ready to hate, and all too ready to become aggressive towards them.
Such impulses are endemic in society and the phenomenon is known as aggression due to ‘distance’, the term used here to signify a lack of understanding.
Culture naturally imposes negative stereotypes upon ‘differentness’. The impulse is usually thought to be due to lack of understanding, but it is most likely lack of affection which pushes the individual away from acceptance and co-existence, to aggression towards those who are different.

INSULARITY

And so too with cults. Here, insularity from the prevalent culture causes distanced to rise, hence furthering the aggressive responses of a guru to the population at large. As for the follower, the abuse meted out by the guru takes away affection.
But as the guru is their god, their natural aggressive impulses back up that of the guru, being focused, also, against the outside population, resulting in gassing of the Tokyo underground system, or other atrocities. Such forces have become non-understandable and unimportant, so aggression towards them is natural.

SOCIAL HIERARCHY

Social hierarchy can also be seen to play its part in the control or use of cult aggression. Most animal societies are regulated by hierarchy and human society would devolve into chaos without rules and leaders.
In particular, rules tend to lead to co-operative impulses. However, subordination to the rules and standards of a particular society can lead to a suppression of personal identity. Certain actions which an individual feels acceptable may be deemed unacceptable by the majority. Hence, an individual looses an element of himself, and this lacking can lead to alienation and eventual aggression.

STANLEY MILGRAM

The authority instilled by a hierarchy can alternatively be used to channel aggression through obedience - an obvious cult trait. The researcher Stanley Milgram showed this in an infamous experiment in the 1960s.
An actor was strapped to a chair with fake electrodes attached to him. Subjects were told to ask him questions and if the response was wrong, they were to inflict an electric shock, rising in severity to the point that unconsciousness occurred.
The subjects were unaware that the shocks were nothing more than the actor screaming out in pain and eventually feigning unconsciousness. Yet only a minority refused to participate, and many were prepared to go on to induce severe pain and unconsciousness.

NEGATING MORALITY

Experiments such as this give insight into how a major element of a race could go on to construct death camps, and show genocide can so easily be instilled.
One interesting factor gleaned by Milgram’s experiment concerned how the subjects side-stepped personal morality. They frequently asked if they were responsible for the pain being inflicted. Told that they were not, they were able to proceed.
Responsibility had been passed to higher authority, such as a guru. Hence, a Nazi death camp guard can claim he was simply obeying orders.
When an aggressive action is demanded by a leader, a human being can be compelled to obey. And the same principle can be seen in action when a criminal absolves himself from blame, claiming that it was society that made him do it.
In his own mind, the stimuli was born from actions against HIM, rather than his actions against others; a point that can be seen in the life of Charles Manson, often referred to as a serial killer, but in actual fact, an archetypal cult guru.

© Anthony North, October 2007

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WHY DOES BAD EXIST?

Recent comments and events have led me to ponder a question I’ve asked myself many times before. Namely, why does bad exist in the world? And it is a question that has always led me to a disturbing answer.
Atheists love the question. They point out that if God was really a benevolent God, then he would not have allowed bad into his Creation.

We could say man isn’t created in God’s image, but God in man’s.

This answers the theological point. For instance, if God is a reflection of us, then as we have bad in us, bad would inevitably be existent in God’s Creation. Except, of course, if we created the image of God, He didn’t ‘create’. We did.
We can place bad on a malevolent fallen angel – old Lucifer. But to do so is a cop out. The thing about ‘evil’ as an influence is that it takes away responsibility from the person. We can too easily say, it wasn’t our fault.

So is it in the genes?

I’m afraid I don’t like this answer either. I see it as just a modern interpretation of the above. If bad is in the genes, then again, it isn’t our fault. So a reason for bad, it seems, evades us.
I usually fall on this answer: prior to learning morality, man was an instinctual animal, with no moral requirement to not do what he needed to survive. Maybe bad is this influence not kept at bay by sufficient moral teaching to fight it.
But there’s one other question that begs an answer. If there was no ‘bad’ in the world, how would we know when we’re good?

© Anthony North, September 2007

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Click Tony On, on Blogroll, for my current affairs blog.
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