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PAN Discussion Group Wednesday June 25th 2008
Subject: Why would anyone murder - and what would hell look like if they went there?
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Time: 7pm to 10pm - ish
Bring drinks and snacks to share
General:
The articles are the basis for the discussion and reading them helps give us some common ground and focus for the discussion, especially where we would otherwise be ignorant of the issues. The discussions are not intended as debates or arguments, rather they should be a chance to explore ideas and issues in a constructive forum. Feel free to bring along other stuff you've read on this, related subjects or on topics, especially topical ones that the group might be interested in for future meetings.
GROUND RULES:
* Temper the urge to speak with the discipline to listen and leave space for others
* Balance the desire to teach with a passion to learn
* Hear what is said and listen for what is meant
* Marry your certainties with others' possibilities
* Reserve judgment until you can claim the understanding we seek
Any problems let me know...
847-985-7313
tysoe2@yahoo.com
The Articles:
First some theories on murder … some of which make you wonder what these guys get paid for ..
http://www.webster.edu/religion-violence/Abstracts/2-pageabstractDuntley.pdf
The evolution of murder
Joshua Duntley, Ph.D. – The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey
David M. Buss, Ph.D. – The University of Texas, Austin
Why people murder their fellow humans is a question of profound theoretical and practical importance, but one whose answer has thus far eluded successful scientific explanation. We present an evolutionary theory of murder that explains why murder occurs, the circumstances in which it occurs, and the contribution of some aspects of religion to the activation of psychological mechanisms dedicated to murder.
Roughly 1 in 15,000 people is murdered in the United States each year (DOJ, 2006; Stolinsky & Stolinsky, 2000). At first glance, this may seem like a fairly rare event. But computed over a 75 year lifespan, it equates to a 1 in 369 chance of being murdered during the individual lifetime of a white woman, a 1 in 133 chance for a white man, a 1 in 104 chance for a black woman, and a 1 in 21 chance for a black man (Ghiglieri, 1999).
The homicide rates in industrialized nations pale in comparison to the risk of being murdered in many cultures. Homicides account for roughly 1 in 10 deaths of adult men among the Huli; 1 in 4 deaths among the Mae Enga; and 1 in 3 deaths among the Dugum Dani and Yanomamo (Chagnon, 1988). Even among the so-called “gentle people” or “peaceful” !Kung San of Botswana, there were 22 murders over a 25 year period among a population of 1,500, more than 4 times the rate of homicide in a typical year in the United States (Lee, 1984).
A number of theories of homicide have been proposed. Some have focused on identifying societal correlates of killing. Others have identified developmental, personality, or psychopathology predictors of who is likely to commit murder. Still others have made arguments for the evolution of different lifetime strategies based on experiences early in development that predispose some people to be more likely to adopt criminal strategies, including murder. However, none of these theories provides a complete or compelling explanation for what leads to the vast majority of murders. For our understanding of homicide to be complete, we must explain, for example, (1) why men are vastly over-represented among murderers (87%); (2) why men are also over-represented among murder victims (75%); (3) why women commit some kinds of homicide more than men (e.g., infanticide of own children); (4) why people kill in qualitatively distinct conditions, leading to predictable infanticides, step-child killings, men murdering women, women killing men, intrasexual rivalry homicides, and warfare killings; and (5) why people experience murder fantasies in circumstances that turn out to correspond closely to the contexts in which people actually commit murder (Buss, 2005).
A new theory of homicide has been proposed to fill in many of the explanatory gaps left by previous explanations of murder. Homicide Adaptation Theory (Buss, 2005; Buss & Duntley, 1997; 1998; Duntley, 2005) proposes that murder was historically one among several evolved solutions for solving a variety of adaptive problems. Specifically, we propose that killing a conspecific contributed to: (1) preventing the exploitation, injury, rape, or killing of self, kin, mates, and coalitional allies by conspecifics; (2) reputation management against being perceived as easily exploited, injured, raped, or killed by rivals; (3) protecting resources, territory, shelter, and food from competitors; (4) eliminating resource-absorbing or costly individuals who are not genetically related (e.g., stepchildren); and (5) eliminating genetic relatives (e.g., deformed infants; the chronically ill or infirm) who interfere with investment in other vehicles better able to translate resource investment into fitness.
Homicide differs from other strategies for inflicting costs because it leads to the absolute end of direct competition between two individuals. A murder victim can no longer compete with his killer. A dead competitor can no longer directly influence the environment or social context previously shared with his murderer. The distinct outcomes of homicide would have created equally unique selection pressures to shape human psychology specifically for contexts of homicide (Buss, 2005; Duntley, 2005).
Psychological adaptations for murder view the world through the lens of local culture, social environment, and ecology, which can increase the benefits and decrease the costs of a choosing homicide as an adaptive solution. Thus, some specific forms of religious influence can activate evolved homicide adaptations. These include religious leaders who exploit their follower’s evolved psychology, a religious belief in a better afterlife as a consequence of religiously-sanctioned murder, divine instruction and justification for murder, and the establishment and enforcement of in-groups and out-groups.
When violence occurs, we want answers. Whether it's Mark Barton's shooting rampage in Atlanta, Cary Stayner's brutal murders in Yosemite National Park, or Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold's massacre at Columbine High School, horrific criminal acts have the ability to repel and fascinate us at the same time. We demand immediate explanations and hunt for scapegoats. Firebrands clamor to control television, film, and the Internet. Gun crackdowns are considered and contested. And even though the reality is that these horrors are statistically rare -- nationally, violent crime has dropped precipitously over the past decade -- the perception is often that things are spinning dangerously out of control.
At the heart of this fear is a search for closure. Unless we know what causes an act of violence, it is hard to put it behind us. But the origin of criminal violence has been one of our most perplexing mysteries. To date, no theory or statistical sample has yielded a conclusive explanation of why some people assault, maim, rape, and murder.
A new book by Richard Rhodes, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb and 16 other books, attempts to do just that. Titled Why They Kill: The Discoveries of a Maverick Criminologist (Knopf), the book chronicles the life of criminology professor Lonnie Athens, who, after years of interviewing violent offenders, came to believe that serious violent behavior is almost always the byproduct of a single specific developmental pattern -- first, childhood brutalization and subjugation; then learning that violence can bring respect; next, achieving respect through violence; and, lastly, regular criminal violence.
Though many people have long suspected links between child abuse and adult violence, Athens's theory, called "violentization," largely discounts other factors such as class, violent media, and mental illness. The theory is controversial, to say the least. It has been ridiculed and rejected by many in the sociology and criminology establishments who consider Athens's research to be flimsy compared to the databases and crime reports usually used for analyses of violent behavior. But Athens has an advocate in Richard Rhodes, who spent several years investigating and testing the violentization theory and believes that the Virginia-raised Greek-American has happened upon the biggest breakthrough yet in understanding the violent criminal mind. Rhodes spoke to the Phoenix this week from his home in Connecticut.
Q: Every time there is a high-profile violent crime, people naturally want to put a reason behind the action. In Why They Kill, you advocate a little-known theory that serious violent behavior is an intimate multistage process, starting with child abuse, which leads to belligerency, occasional violent episodes, and, later, pathological violence. How did you decide this theory was worth writing about?
A: I have spent most of my adult life writing about violence of one form or another. Even though the subject matter of my [books] has been as diverse as the Donner Party and the hydrogen bomb, all of those subjects interested me because of the central questions of "How do people get this way?" and, when you're subjected to violent people, "How do you survive that?" And [I was interested] because of my own childhood, because my stepmother was a violent individual. So I really was primed, and I was never comfortable with all of these theories that I had encountered over the years.
One of the great virtues of Lonnie Athens's work is that it isn't mystified. He doesn't invent strange dynamic forces, as Freud does. He doesn't invoke broad social trends that couldn't possibly explain violence because they leave out most of the people who experience those trends. He doesn't invoke race, testosterone, or genetics. All of these theories don't quite make sense. What Athens did find is something that I think anyone who's been around violence has an immediate shock of recognition about. I did. My wife did. The people I've since told about Athens's work, by and large, unless they are professionals who are invested in a theory, immediately say, "Oh yeah, sure."
Q: What's also different about Athens's violentization theory is that it's based on in-depth interviews with a relatively small number of criminals, versus the analysis of crime and behavioral statistics. Some people dispute Athens's work for this reason, but you argue otherwise. Why?
A: Well, I think what's so valuable about Lonnie Athens's work is that he actually talked with violent people. If you look at most of the sociological and criminological work being done -- you read, for example, that television causes violence -- they are correlational studies done on databases of various kinds. Or they are correlational studies done with laboratory experiments. In the case of the so-called visual-video-media causes of violence, correlational studies by definition don't provide causal explanations. All they provide is variations and various correlations. And I'm particularly struck by how trivial [these studies] are. What they actually look at is something they call aggression, which doesn't have anything to do with violence. We all are aggressive from time to time -- we feel more angry, feel more hostile, whatever. They looked at aggression either by asking questions of people after they've been exposed to violent media, or by looking at behavior on the playground later, none of which has anything to do with serious violence, as far as I can see.
Q: We do want quick answers, however. In the aftermath of Mark Barton's shooting rampage, a lot of attention was paid to the fact that he was a day trader, and how these big financial losses may have led him to go and kill people. But I was struck by a passage in Barton's suicide note, on why he killed his son: "The fears of the father are transferred to the son. It was from my father to me and me to my son. He already had it. And now to be left alone, I had to take him with me." That's essentially the pattern of brutalization that Athens describes, and what you're writing about here.
A: Obviously, we can at least guess that what he means by that is that his father was his brutalizer. We don't know for sure, but there's a hint in that direction.
What I was struck by were these ridiculous love notes [Barton] left on the bodies of people he had beaten to death with hammers. In the big note, he was quite clear: "I killed Leigh Ann because she was one of the main reasons for my demise." So clearly he was angry at her. And I think in the case of the two children, despite his protestations of how much he loved them and wanted to protect them, the fact is, once he killed her, they were in the way. I think one can describe their killings clearly as "frustrative," to use Athens's term. It reminded me of the case of Perry Smith in In Cold Blood, where once he killed Mr. Clutter, he really couldn't leave the rest of the family behind because they had identified him.
Q: But even if Athens's violentization theory is dead-on, it's very rare that we get a full portrait of a criminal's life, especially if the criminal commits suicide. It's going to be difficult to convince people not to look for outside answers. For example, we know very little about Eric Harris's and Dylan Klebold's childhoods. We do, however, know they both listened to Marilyn Manson records.
A: As do hundreds of thousands of other children who will grow up to be doctors and lawyers, and, God help us, politicians. Those reasons are always so glib and easy to say, and yet as soon as you look at the numbers of people who have been exposed to the same thing, you realize that it's not remotely plausible as an explanation [for violence].
My favorite example with media violence in general is the information in [Why They Kill] about medieval Europe. Medieval Europe was much more violent than today's Europe, and the only media they had then was when they went to their cathedrals on Sunday mornings. Even more dramatically, the decline in violence in Europe over the past 500 years paralleled the development of public executions. So at the very time when people were clearly being exposed to the most dramatic sort of visual presentation of violence -- people being drawn and quartered and burned at the stake and so forth -- violence was declining.
I think [film director] Rob Reiner very wisely commented on that with the Columbine killings. Movies and television from America go all over the world, but the homicide rates, the violent crime rates, are very different everywhere else.
I remember vividly as a child growing up in the 1940s that comic books, which were then quite violent, were considered to be the reason our brains were going to be damaged. Comic books were essentially emasculated in the early '50s for that reason, and obviously that didn't stop violence in young people.
Q: Not all of these cultural scapegoats are wrong-headed, though. For example, the fact that guns are so accessible clearly seems to be a factor in recent outbreaks of violence.
A: Guns are a factor. Take, for example, the kids in [the 1998 school shooting in] Arkansas. I don't think that an 11-year-old and a 13-year-old could possibly have taken out so many people had they not had access to semi-automatic rifles. What guns do is make it possible for kids in their initial violent performance -- which at their age, at their size, whatever strength they have, might well not even succeed -- it makes it possible for them to accomplish mass murders the first time out. That's something that you wouldn't even see successfully in an adult [without a gun]. So it clearly does have an influence on the scale of destructiveness of people who are approaching and trying out violence.
Q: Athens's theory also casts doubt on the use of psychiatry in explaining criminal behavior, something that is commonplace in courtroom trials today.
A: If there are so-called psychiatric reasons, we let some people off who have committed violent crimes because they are supposedly mentally ill. Psychiatry has conflated violence with mental illness, even though there's no connection between the two. They get conflated in the courtroom, and people who quite correctly should go to jail end up going to a mental hospital, and then there's the question of whether they'll be released, whether we're talking about [John Hinckley, who shot Ronald Reagan], or whatever.
I think it's important to remember that people become violent by choice. Even though they have been brutalized, a lot of us have been brutalized. They nevertheless face decisions as a result of those experiences. There were choices. So [mental illnesses] shouldn't necessarily be invoked in the courtroom as an exculpatory reason why people shouldn't go through the legal system.
Q: You also take issue with the common perception that good people will snap and commit acts of violence. According to Athens, no one really snaps.
A: I think people who aren't violent imagine themselves snapping, or certainly recognize times when they find themselves suddenly very angry. But the real message of Athens's work is that violent people aren't any different from the rest of us in their decision-making process, in their process of interpreting situations. They get angry, they get frightened, they get frustrated, they feel hatred. But at that point, their interpretation of what to do about those feelings is that those are appropriate times to use serious violence. That's where they differ. That's so far down the road that I think people understandably would like some explanation that they can comprehend. Often people aren't even aware of how they would go about being violent. People just simply don't have any experience in that.
Q: One famous case of so-called snapping was that of boxer Mike Tyson, when he bit part of Evander Holyfield's ear off in a boxing match.
A: Tyson adds to that confusion because he's had a lot of experience with the usual psychiatric explanations of violence. The day after he bit off the top of Holyfield's ear, he was telling the media, "I snapped." But right after the fight -- I was watching the fight and watched him being interviewed [later] and wrote it down -- he was very clear about what he was doing. The guy [Holyfield] wasn't playing by the rules, so he wasn't going to play by those rules, either. He went right to street rules.
Q: You also spend an entire chapter on Lee Harvey Oswald, using Athens's theory to try to demonstrate that, despite his and other people's protests, that he was quite capable of killing President Kennedy.
A: I've never believed there was a conspiracy to shoot John Kennedy. I've believed that ever since I first followed the case, and certainly since I've looked at the records since then. But that isn't even necessary to make the point. First of all, I don't think anyone disputes -- anyone who does must have really fallen off the edge -- that it was the rifle that this man bought, that this man owned, that was found where he was in the Texas school depository, that provided at least two of the bullets that hit John Kennedy and the governor. So whatever else is true, it seems to be pretty indisputable that he was involved. Beyond that, I don't think anyone's disputed that he took a shot at General Walker. I don't think anyone has disputed that he repeatedly raped his wife, that he shot the policeman. But let's make it clear that whatever else is true about the larger issue of who was involved in John F. Kennedy's assassination, Oswald was someone who was capable of [it], based on the record of his past. That record has never been examined with violentization in mind.
Q: What was Athens's reaction when you told him you were interested in writing a book on his work? After all, this is an academic whose career, until recently, had experienced more valleys than peaks. He was used to rejection. And then you call up and say you want to tell his life's story.
A: He was shocked. And then I said, "Hey, let's get together for dinner." He and his wife and my wife and I met for dinner in the Village in New York, and he was wary. I think he really wasn't sure what it was that I wanted to do. As it turned out, for a long time afterward -- even though we got to know each other, and spent days in interviews and traveled to Richmond and all the things that went into the book -- it's really clear to me now that, for months and months, he really didn't trust [me]. He thought I was going to steal his stuff. He thought maybe I wanted to write some sort of trashy popular book. There were clues along the way that there was some confusion about that. But it wasn't really clear to me until we really hashed it out in some fairly angry discussions that he didn't trust me. Now I think he does. He's seen the book, and except for the biographical part -- of course, no one ever likes someone else's version of their life -- he's very happy that I wrote the book.
Q: What is Athens like as a person? You spend a substantial part of Why They Kill talking about the harrowing violence he experienced as a child. What was it like to get him to open up?
A: He's a very authentic human being. You can't spend more than a few hours with him without understanding that he's honest and up-front. When I went down to his home to tape the interviews [for the autobiographical part of the book], we spent two days -- eight-hour days -- [recording] it. It was obviously an immensely painful experience. How could it not be? I kept firing question after question. He had organized everything; he knew, obviously, how people do interviews, he had documents in hand, he started at the beginning and didn't deviate from the chronology, and that's very hard to do. And at the end of that time I certainly left with the very clear conviction that I made the right decision.
You know, I left my publisher -- I left Simon and Schuster -- because they weren't enthusiastic about this book. I had been with Simon and Schuster for 17 years. But I really did believe in this book. I left them and took the risk of going and finding another publisher, and did find Knopf, which I'm very happy with.
Q: Given your experiences with violence as a child [Rhodes and his brother were eventually removed from their abusive stepmother and sent to live in a private home for boys], you must have considered your own potential for violence -- moments when, if not for certain individuals, your life could have gone in a different direction.
A: I think my brother was that individual. But I would stress that once you've been through the first part of violentization, the other parts are always potentially down the road. I went through a period as a young husband, in my early 30s, when I was starting to become violent again. I was drinking, I was in a difficult marriage, and some violent behavior started to re-emerge. I realize it now; I didn't realize it at the time. My response then, because I had enough background to know what choices there were, was to start psychotherapy. And I went through eight years of it. And when that was done, those problems were solved. So it isn't just at one point in your life.
Q: How much do you think your book will advance Athens's violentization theory?
A: I just don't know. One has to hope that enough people will recognize that by finding the real causal process [for violence], Athens has also found the way to prevent it, or interrupt it. If people understand that, I think it's going to be possible to prevent school shootings, it's going to be possible to prevent a lot of violence. Obviously, that's going to be a major process. You're talking about the family, basically.
You can't say it's guns and you can't say it's television and you can't say there aren't enough good Christians in America. You really finally do have to say it's because people are goddamned beating their children in a society that has civilized itself in terms of the larger society, and has sequestered violence in state organs, such as the police and the army, that do a pretty good job of controlling [violence] in some areas of our lives. But the family is still private, and, in a sense, no one is protected. People either learn to be violent, or to not treat each other that way.
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http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/265082_murders02.html
'Normal' people don't
commit mass murder Sunday,
April 2, 2006
By MARK ZASLAV GUEST COLUMNIST
The generic headline screams: "Gentle soul kills multiple strangers!" Attention riveted, we read on to find that his friends and acquaintances described the killer as quiet, a bit of a loner but otherwise normal, unremarkable and sweet. The perpetrator's mother, in the midst of her grief and shock, can only say that the son she knew was a kind, gentle soul incapable of such an act.
Unfortunately, bizarre killings are much too common and quotes like these are often credulously included in the coverage. Initial reports about the recent murder of partygoers on Seattle's Capitol Hill seem to follow the familiar script. The horror is all too real, but is the story accurate?
As a clinical psychologist in practice for more than 30 years, and as someone called upon to testify in court about human behavior, I am regularly surprised at the perpetuation of this urban myth -- that a normal, gentle, non-threatening individual will suddenly "snap" and run amok.
While I am impressed and humbled by the variability of human behavior, the idea that there is generally a degree of coherence or consistency to personality is hardly controversial in my field. Personality traits are defined as enduring patterns of perceiving, relating to and thinking about the world that are manifested in a wide range of social and personal contexts. Research shows that people who go on to commit violent acts generally display serious psychiatric maladjustment relatively early.
Features such as deficits in the capacity for empathy, absence of mature or prosocial guilt for suffering caused to others, idiosyncratic violent fantasies and behavior, cruelty to animals, classmates or siblings, low tolerance for frustration, excessive anger and substance abuse are often in evidence long before the culminating violent act. Parental abuse, neglect or other trauma may occasionally figure in the picture. Each case is different and human behavior is complex, but in short, "gentle," "normal" people generally do not commit mass murder.
Why then are aspects of this story repeated so often in news coverage? I have come to suspect several factors for the resilience of this myth. While reporters may be very bright and dedicated, the sheer news value of such a story, if it were true, would be considerable. The initial informants are apt to be people with limited and superficial knowledge of the perpetrator, who will tend anyway to be someone lacking deep or meaningful connection to other people. Depending on the situation and who uses them, such adjectives as "quiet" or "low-key" do not necessarily imply affability. They are often quite meaningless.
The parents of the perpetrator also are often poor candidates to provide useful, contextual knowledge about his violent predilections and disturbance. Stunned by grief and guilt, in some cases the mother (often there is not a father currently in the picture) may have a history of denying, disavowing or rationalizing the very types of destructive behaviors that preceded the final horrible act. Consciously or unconsciously, to acknowledge the retrospective reality of these problems may make the parent feel psychologically complicit in the crime. Expressions of unconditional acceptance and love by the parents often come at the expense of a candid appraisal of their child's now chronic antisocial conduct and problematic history. Complicating all this, an adult perpetrator may have left the home years earlier and maintained little contact with his parents while his mental illness festered and worsened. The net result is that until law enforcement, mental health and prior victim information become available, data about the perpetrator tends to be misleadingly benign.
The human mind can be described as a learning, meaning-producing machine. Our brains evolved these capacities because the ability to construe, connect, understand and make predictions about events (especially dramatic, destructive behavior by other humans) is essential for survival. When we read stories about mass murder, our minds instinctively make evaluations with regard to issues of blame, vulnerability, fairness and morality.
We ask why this happened and how likely we are to be in similar danger. Instinctively, we look for relevant information about the killer's background to test our established beliefs, wisdom and biases about human nature. Instead, given modern journalistic trends, follow-up articles tend to focus less on the perpetrator's individual behavioral history and personality and may stress some relevant societal ill (e.g., the pressures of bourgeois life, the problems of bullying or taunting in school, racism or other prejudice, poverty, availability of weapons, the failure of the mental health or criminal justice systems). While important, these issues don't get at the essential human "why" of the crime.
Over time, the story will gradually change as more information about the perpetrator is revealed. Obvious, instinctive hypotheses we had about the murderer's likely personality and character will often be proved true. Because of my interest in this kind of media phenomenon, I pay particular attention to the inevitable disclosures about the killer's early life, the qualities of his relationships and his prior run-ins with authority. By the time the full story emerges, however, public interest will have waned and the media will have moved on to the next tragedy. The initial notion of a "normal," "gentle" man suddenly and inexplicably turned sadistic murderer will have gained further hold in the public consciousness.
My recommendation would be that journalists who cover crime and criminals take courses in abnormal psychology, to understand the causes of violent behavior and to be attuned to clues about what to look for in follow-up articles about perpetrators.
Even with such training, it is daunting to look directly at human evil. Confronting these issues runs against the very tide of our "non-judgmental" society. Having worked to help courageous people heal from loss and trauma, I wish the families of victims and perpetrator alike in Seattle's tragedy the strength and guidance they will need to persevere. There will be no ultimate benefit, however, to hiding from evil by promoting fatuous myths about human nature.
Mark Zaslav is a clinical psychologist
How about genocide?
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,542245,00.html
By Georg Bönisch and Klaus Wiegrefe
From doctors to opera singers, teachers to truant schoolchildren, the extermination of European Jews was the work of roughly 200,000 ordinary Germans and their helpers. Years of research -- not yet complete -- reveal how sane members of a modern society committed murder for an evil regime.
Walter Mattner, a police secretary from Vienna, was there in October 1941 when 2,273 Jews were shot to death in Mogilyov in Belarus. He later wrote to his wife: "My hand was shaking a bit with the first cars. By the tenth car, I was aiming calmly and shooting dependably at the many women, children and babies. Bearing in mind that I have two babies at home, I knew that they would suffer exactly the same treatment, if not ten times as bad, at the hands of these hordes." After World War II, it was obvious to most observers that such acts could only have been committed by sadists and psychopaths, under orders from a handful of principal war criminals surrounding Adolf Hitler. It was a comforting way of looking at things, because it meant that ordinary people were not the real perpetrators.
But the horrifying results of an opinion poll that the Americans conducted in their occupation zone in October 1945 could have raised doubts even then about the version of the story that blames everything on a few pathological criminals. Twenty percent of the respondents "agreed with Hitler's treatment of the Jews." Another 19 percent said that although they felt that his policies toward Jews were exaggerated, they were fundamentally correct.
It took until the 1990s before historians and other experts embarked on a large-scale search for those men (and women) who carried out the Holocaust. The research isn't complete yet, but the results available to date are shocking.
The researchers found that the perpetrators included both committed Nazis and people who had nothing to do with the Nazis. The murderers and their assistants included Catholics and Protestants, the old and the young, people with double doctorates and poorly educated members of the working class. And the percentage of psychopaths was not higher than the average in society as a whole.
The number of perpetrators is now estimated at 200,000 Germans (and Austrians). They were police officers like Walter Mattner, concentration-camp personnel, members of the SS, or administrators. Another 200,000 Estonians, Ukrainians, Lithuanians and other foreigners also helped kill Jews, some because they were forced to do so and others voluntarily.
Crimes of Conviction, Crimes of Excess
Like Satan in the Old Testament, evil had many faces. There were those who committed crimes out of conviction, the dedicated Nazis in the police force -- members of the SS and the military who, like Hitler, were convinced that the Jews were the root of all evil. Some committed their first murders in the 1920s and 1930s. There were also those who committed crimes of excess, taking advantage of the Jews' lack of rights in Eastern Europe to rape and steal. In Western Galicia, for example, members of the occupation police force would spend their free time shooting Jews in the ghetto or blackmailing them for their jewelry.
There were those who just carried out orders from above, like Major Trapp of Reserve Police Battalion 101. According to witness testimony, Major Trapp was in tears when he ordered the shooting of 1,500 women, children and elderly Jews near Warsaw, all the while saying: "An order is an order!" In July 1942, his men drove the victims out of their houses, loaded them into trucks and took them to a remote clearing to be executed. They shot them in the head or in the back of the neck, and in the evenings the soldiers' uniforms were covered with bone fragments, brain matter and bloodstains.
Just as there is usually more than one perpetrator, there is a host of reasons why perfectly normal men turn to murder: years of indoctrination, blind faith in leaders, a sense of duty and obedience, peer pressure, the downplaying of violence as a result of wartime experiences, not to mention the lust for Jewish property.
One man who seemed to have no trouble switching from his desk to the massacres in the East was Dortmund native Walter Blume, born in 1906, the son of a teacher and a lawyer who completed the German equivalent of the bar examination with a poor grade of "adequate." Nevertheless, in 1932 Blume got a job as an assistant judge on the district court in his hometown.
Blume's career in the Hitler regime started on March 1, 1933, shortly after the Nazis came to power. His first position was as head of the political division at the police headquarters in Dortmund. After joining the Nazi Party and the Storm Troopers (SA), he became head of the Nazi secret police, or Gestapo, in the eastern city of Halle, in Hannover and later in the capital Berlin. The main purpose of rapid rotation in high-ranking positions, typical of the Gestapo, was to provide opportunities to gather repressive experience.
Starting on March 1, 1941, Blume headed the personnel department in Division I of the so-called Reichssicherheitshauptamt (Reich Security Main Office, or RSHA). His first assignment was to assemble suitable personnel for one of the murder commandos of the so-called Einsatzgruppen (Special Action Groups), a force consisting of roughly 3,000 men, known as the "Gestapo on Wheels." This group followed Hitler's army as it marched eastward and was charged with the immediate liquidation of "Jewish Bolshevism" and the "excision of radical elements."
Blume himself led a unit known as Special Commando 7a, which was part of Einsatzgruppe B. According to Blume's own records, his unit killed roughly 24,000 people in Belarus and Russia between June and September 1941. A short time later, Blume returned to the RSHA, where he was promoted to the position of division head and SS banner leader. In August 1943, he went to Athens, where he and two associates of Adolf Eichmann organized the deportation of Greek Jews to the Auschwitz extermination camp.
Blume was placed on trial in Nuremberg in September 1947, together with 22 other men, whose regular occupations qualified them as members of upper-class civil society. They included a dentist, a professor, an opera singer, a Protestant pastor, a teacher -- and a few journalists. Fourteen were sentenced to death, but only in four cases was the sentence carried out. US High Commissioner John McCloy pardoned the rest, including Blume, and they were gradually released from prison over the years. Blume went on to become a businessman.
Most of the perpetrators were never punished. There have been 6,500 convictions to date, and only 1,200 of them were for murder or manslaughter.
One way to historically moderate the punishment in many legal systems …
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2003/jan/19/ukcrime.prisonsandprobation
Infidelity or nagging should no longer be used as an excuse to escape life for murder, say Ministers
Gaby Hinsliff, chief political correspondent
Sunday January 19 2003
Article history
Husbands who claim their partner's nagging or infidelity drove them to kill will face much tougher sentences under a government shake-up of so-called 'crimes of passion'.
Ministers are secretly reviewing the defence of provocation, which has its origins in the bygone tradition of men fighting duels, under which a defendant can evade a murder charge by arguing that their victim did or said something that made them lose control.
Ministers argue that it reflects a medieval view of marriage, in which a man whose honour is insulted by a domineering or unfaithful wife is entitled to fatal revenge rather than a divorce. It also encourages defendants to blacken the victim's name in court, painting her as a bad wife.
The review will prompt impassioned debate over modern relationships, with critics likely to argue that men instinctively respond differently than women to infidelity and that 'feminising' the law is unfair.
'This defence institutionalises the blaming of the victim - "I killed her, but it was all her fault" - and we say we are going to put the victim at the heart of the crim inal justice system,' said a Whitehall source.
'We put a high value on human life and have high standards of responsibility. Times have changed: we don't have duels and we don't see men's ownership of their wives in the same way.'
The provocation defence cannot secure a killer's acquittal, but reduces the charge from murder carrying a life sentence to manslaughter, with a much shorter or even suspended sentence.
Solicitor-General Harriet Harman, Home Secretary David Blunkett and the Lord Chancellor's Department are still discussing the reforms.
Leading options include scrapping the provocation defence altogether - understood to be Harman's preference - or strictly limiting the circumstances in which provocation could be claimed, making clear that sexual jealousy is not enough.
Ministers are also studying the US system of homicide counts, under which different 'grades' of murder carry different tariffs.
The review follows the case of Madeleine Humes,who was killed by her husband, Les, a solicitor, after she confessed to an affair with her karate instructor. The court heard last year how their teenage daughter tried to seize the knife from Humes as he repeatedly stabbed her mother. Humes, who said in court he 'just saw this red mist', got seven years for manslaughter - leaving his wife's family furious.
'If Madeleine had survived and he had been charged only with attempted murder or GBH, he would have got more of a sentence than that,' says Paula Watt, Madeleine's sister.
'But he killed her, so he gets less. What kind of signal is that sending to people? All the way through, Les was seen as a victim - Maddie wasn't heard at all.'
Home Office research on homicides found that women were much more likely to be killed by a husband or lover than a stranger: one of the most dangerous flashpoints is a woman leaving the relationship, even if - as in the Humeses' case - the marriage was not previously known to be violent.
Using the defence requires defendants to show it was reasonable, given their character, for them to have responded by killing. But there is little definition of what counts as provocation.
'We call it the "nagging and shagging" defence - classically, it will be either "she was sleeping with someone else" or that she nagged him,' said solicitor Harriet Wistrich, of campaign group Justice for Women. 'But if it is simply that she is leaving you, is that enough of an excuse for murder?'
Several women who have killed abusive partners - famously Sara Thornton - have claimed provocation, arguing that they snapped after years of putting up with domestic violence.
But Ministers believe these cases could be covered by extending the law on self defence to cover cases where the woman was not responding to an immediate attack, but was still effectively killing to save herself.
High-profile cases involving provocation include Joseph McGrail, who walked free in 1992 with a suspended sentence for kicking his wife to death, after pleading provocation on the grounds that she was an alcoholic and swore at him. The judge said the dead woman 'would have tried the patience of a saint'.
So if child killers are evil, what if the child killers are chlidren themselves. A case from my old neighborhood.
http://www.karisable.com/mbulg.htm
James Bulger March 16, 1990 – February 12, 1993
On Feb. 12, 1993, in Liverpool, England, Robert Thompson and Jon Venables murdered 2 year old James Bulger after kidnapping the toddler from a butcher's shop in a shopping center with his mother, Denise who was momentarily distracted as she conducted business.
Two ten year old boys skipping school took the young child on a 2½ mile walk culminating at the railroad tracks. At a canal, on the way, he sustained head and face injuries from being dropped to the ground.
They were seen by at least 38 people, some noticed head injuries on the little boy. It was reported that he seemed upset and distressed, yet other's reported he was also seen laughing happily.
Once they reached the tracks, blue paint was thrown in James's face, they kicked him, battered him with bricks, stones, and a 22 lb iron bar; shoved batteries in his mouth; and sexually assaulted him before covering his lifeless body with bricks and stones on train tracks. A train severed his body. The boys went home afterwards to watch cartoons.
Several days later, James's mangled body in two pieces was discovered on a rail embankment. At the place his body was found, James was honored with floral tributes, including one from Thompson.
Both boys were arrested promptly based on security camera footage, witnesses, DNA and other forensics tests. Due to their age their identities were to be kept confidential however Information in this high profile and shocking crime distributed over the Internet and through the media soon made these identities public. The defendant's families were given new identities and relocated to undisclosed regions of the country after the mothers, Susan Venables and Ann Thompson, reported being attacked in the street, receiving repeated threats, and negative media coverage heavily placing the blame on the parents of these young defendants
Thompson, who was very short for his age, was described as quiet yet friendly. When he was five, his drunken father who beat and sexually abused his wife and children abandoned family. The following week their home burned down. His mother a heavy drinker, who had attempted suicide, could not control her seven aggressive, violent sons who bit, hammered, battered, tortured, and threatened to knife each other. When one of the boys was returned home from foster care he attempted suicide by overdose. Robert was the least able to defend himself from his siblings.
One of his first lawyers to interview him said: "He was a strange and lost little figure, who could be quite cool and tough. But he is no psychopath and he never showed violence or even bad temper either before or since the murder."
His father has not contacted him since his arrest.
He displayed no sadness or regrets during the trial. He failed to admit to any responsibility for James' murder, despite the blood evidence and Venables' confession. He glared at the press during the trial.
His mother sobered up, moved near where he was housed and visited him with four of her children daily. He earned 5 GCSEs in 1999 and reached A-levels in design and technology. Amanda Miller, a volunteer with the offender's family support group, said: "He seems remarkably well adjusted given the circumstances ... I mean, I'm amazed he doesn't cower in the corner."
In 1999 he admitted to his guilt.
Emotionally immature, Venables was hyperactive child who fought at school but after his parents separated, he spent two days a week at his father's (Neil) house nearby. He became a loner with attention-seeking tendencies. He banged his head on walls and cut himself with scissors at school. He received no help for these behaviors. His mother, Susan, suffered from psychiatric conditions including severe depressive problem. His brother and sister attended special needs for major learning disabilities.
Appearing younger and more naive than Thompson. Venables claimed Thompson bullied him but that it was Venables idea to approach James, though it was Thompson's idea to kill Bulger.
With his mother present at the time of his arrest, police and psychiatric interviews revealed a confused and frightened child fully aware of the seriousness of his legal problems.
According to an officer he confessed to his parents in his presence: "He ended up sort of curled up on Sue's lap and he was crying and crying and they said over and over that they loved him and would always love him and then, really very quickly, he said: 'I did kill him.'"
Daily during the three-week murder trial, vulnerable and shaken Jon Venables cried. He broke down and sobbed when the verdict was read. His father Neil Venables shook and wept as his as his body jerked and folded. John's mother sat erect, stiff, still, showing no emotion, eyes fixed in a trance like state.
The court would not allow testimony or evidence detailing their dysfunctional young lives. The defendants did not present a defense. They were found guilty and sentenced to an institution for young offenders.
Even though no evidence was presented that the boys watched violent movies, the judge explained that one father had a number of violent videos,most likely accessible to the boys when they skipped school. Bulger's death was similar to the death in Child's Play 3; a video his father rented the week prior the murder.
The judge called it "unparalleled evil and barbarity" and gave them an indefinite sentence.
Venables and Thompson did not want to be released out of fear for their safety. One broke down in tears before his Parole Board hearing. June 22 2001, after serving 8 years, 4 months and 10 days in a secure facility, Thompson and Venables both 18, were paroled on a life licence -- immediate incarceration if they break any terms of their release, or seen as a danger to the public.
They were legally and confidentiality provided with false identities to rebuild their lives at a cost of £4 million in government money. By law, an anonymity ruling protects Venables and Thompson from the press in England and Wales - not Scotland, the foreign press or much of the internet.
In 2004, Denise, James's mother, received a tip on Thompson's whereabouts. She saw him but did not make contact.
As of March 2006 Robert Thompson was living with a male lover.
And so to Hell , which differs according to your religious tastes
http://www.crystalinks.com/hell.html
Hell, according to many religious beliefs, is an afterlife of suffering where the wicked or unrighteous dead are punished. Hell is almost always depicted as underground. Hell is traditionally depicted as fiery within Christianity and Islam. Some other traditions, however, portray hell as cold and gloomy.
Some theologies of hell offer graphic and gruesome detail (for example, Hindu Naraka). Religions with a linear divine history often depict hell as endless (for example, see Hell in Christian beliefs). Religions with a cyclic history often depict hell as an intermediary period between incarnations. Punishment in hell typically corresponds to sins committed in life. Sometimes these distinctions are specific, with damned souls suffering for each wrong committed (see for example Plato's myth of Er), and sometimes they are general, with sinners being relegated to one or more chamber of hell or level of suffering (for example, Augustine of Hippo asserting that unbaptized infants, whom he believed to be deprived of Heaven, suffer less in hell than unbaptized adults).
In Islam and Christianity, however, faith and repentance play a larger role than actions in determining a soul's afterlife destiny.
Hell is often portrayed populated with demons, who torment the damned. Many are ruled by a death god, such as Nergal, the Hindu Yama, or some other dreadful supernatural figure (e.g. Satan).
In contrast to hell, other general types of afterlives are abodes of the dead and paradises. Abodes of the dead are neutral places for all the dead, rather than prisons of punishment for sinners. A paradise is a happy afterlife for some or all the dead.
Modern understandings of hell often depict it abstractly, as a state of loss rather than as fiery torture literally under the ground.
The term Hell is derived from Old English Hel and ultimately from Proto-Germanic Xaljo. The English term is related to Old Norse Hel. In relation, surviving representations of Germanic polytheism in the form of Norse mythology feature Hel, the daughter of Loki and Angrboda. Hel rules over Niflheim.
Hell appears in several mythologies and religions. It is commonly inhabited by demons and the souls of dead people.
Baha'i Faith
The Baha'i Faith regards the conventional description of hell (and heaven) as a specific place as symbolic. Instead the Baha'i writings describe hell as a "spiritual condition" where remoteness from God is defined as hell; conversely heaven is seen as a state of closeness to God. Baha'u'llah, the founder of the Bahá'í Faith, has stated that the nature of the life of the soul in the afterlife is beyond comprehension in the physical plane, but has stated that the soul will retain its consciousness and individuality and remember its physical life; the soul will be able to recognize other souls and communicate with them.
Baha'u'llah likened death to the process of birth. He explains: "The world beyond is as different from this world as this world is different from that of the child while still in the womb of its mother."
The analogy to the womb in many ways summarizes the Baha'i view of earthly existence: just as the womb constitutes an important place for a person's initial physical development, the physical world provides for the development of the individual soul. Accordingly, Baha'i's view life as a preparatory stage, where one can develop and perfect those qualities which will be needed in the next life.
The key to spiritual progress is to follow the path outlined by the current Manifestations of God, which Bahá'i's believe is currently Baha'u'llah. The Baha'i teachings state that there exists a hierarchy of souls in the afterlife, where the merits of each soul determines their place in the hierarchy, and that souls lower in the hierarchy cannot completely understand the station of those above. Each soul can continue to progress in the afterlife, but the soul's development is not dependent on its own conscious efforts, but instead on the grace of God, the prayers of others, and good deeds performed by others on Earth in the name of the person.
As diverse as other religions, there are many beliefs about Hell in Buddhism.
Most of the schools of thought, Theravada, Mahayana, and Vajrayana would acknowledge several hells, which are places of great suffering for those who commit evil actions, such as cold hells and hot hells. Like all the different realms within cyclic existence, an existence in hell is temporary for its inhabitants. Those with sufficiently negative karma are reborn there, where they stay until their specific negative karma has been used up, at which point they are reborn in another realm, such as that of humans, of hungry ghosts, of animals, of asuras, of devas, or of Naraka (Hell) all according to the individual's karma.
There are a number of modern Buddhists, especially among Western schools, who believe that hell is but a state of mind. In a sense, a bad day at work could be hell, and a great day at work could be heaven. This has been supported by some modern scholars who advocate the interpretation of such metaphysical portions of the Scriptures symbolically rather than literally.
In Chinese mythology, the name of hell does not carry a negative connotation. The hell they refer to is Di Yu . Diyu is a maze of underground levels and chambers where souls are taken to atone for their earthly sins.
The popular story is that the word hell was introduced to China by Christian missionaries, who preached that all non-Christian Chinese people would "go to hell" when they died. As such, it was believed that the word "Hell" was the proper English term for the Chinese afterlife, and hence the word was adopted.
The Chinese view Hell as similar to a present day passport or immigration control station. In a Chinese funeral, they burn many Hell Bank Notes for the dead. With this Hell money, the dead person can bribe the ruler of Hell, and spend the rest of the money either in Hell or in Heaven. There is a belief that once the dead person runs out of Hell money, and if he does not receive more, he will be eternally poor...
Luke 12:5 records Jesus speaking about God's Judgment: "But I will forewarn you whom ye shall fear: Fear Him, which after He hath killed hath Power to cast into Hell; yea, I say unto you, Fear Him." In Paul's letter to the Thessalonian church he describes a separation taking place: "The Lord Jesus shall be revealed from Heaven with His mighty angels, In flaming fire taking Vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ: Who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the Presence of the Lord, and from the Glory of his Power" (2 Thessalonians 1:7-9)
Most modern Christians see Hell as the eternal punishment for unrepentant sinners, as well as for the Devil and his demons. Unbelievers are said to deserve Hell on account of original sin according to many conservative denominations. Sometimes exceptions are understood for those who have had extenuating circumstances (youth, mental illness, invincible error, etc.). As opposed to the concept of Purgatory, damnation to Hell is considered final and irreversible.
However, the foundation of the Christian faith is that it is the death of Jesus Christ, and acceptance of his love for us, that allows repentant sinners to avoid the torments of Hell and enjoy eternity with God. Various interpretations of the torments of Hell exist, ranging from fiery pits of wailing sinners to lonely isolation from God's presence. However, the descriptions of Hell found in the Bible are quite vague.
The books of Matthew, Mark, and Jude tell of a place of fire, while the books of Luke and Revelation report it as an abyss. Also, Revelation 20:10 (NIV) illustrates Hell as a "lake with burning sulfur". Our modern, more graphic, images of Hell have developed from writings that are not found in the Bible. Dante's The Divine Comedy is a classic inspiration for modern images of Hell.
Other early Christian writings also illustrate the anguish of Hell. These texts include the Apocalypse of Peter and the Coptic Apocalypse of Paul. Both these pieces of literature tell of the author being taken on a personal tour of Heaven and Hell. These writings tell of what the authors witnessed during their journeys.
Most Christians believe that damnation occurs immediately upon death (particular judgment), and others that it occurs after Judgment Day, which is written about in the book of Revelation. Attitudes by many Christians toward Hell and damnation have changed over the centuries, and most Restorationist groups reject the traditional concept of Hell altogether. These latter theologies allege the mutual exclusivity of barbaric portrayals of Hell with the benevolent nature of God.
Russian Orthodox Church mystic Daniil Andreev (1906-1959) described hell in his opus magnum Roza Mira (Rose of the World). His vision significantly departed from the Christian tradition, depicting an entire hierarchy of multiple Sheols different in appearances, purposes and relationships to human cultures and to 'diabolic' worlds co-existing with the visible Universe.
In Hinduism, there are contradictions as to whether or not there is a hell (referred to as 'Narak' in Hindi). For some it is a metaphor for a conscience. But in Mahabharata there is a mention of the Pandavas and the Kauravas going to hell. Hells are also described in various Puranas and other scriptures. Garuda Purana gives a detailed account on hell, its features and enlists amount of punishment for most of the crimes like modern day penal code.
It is believed that people who commit 'paap' (sin) go to hell and have to go through the punishments in accordance to the sins they committed. The god Yama, who is also the god of death, is the king of hell. The detailed accounts of all the sins committed by an individual are supposed to be kept by Chitragupta who is the record keeper in Yama's court. Chitragupta reads out the sins committed and Yama orders the appropriate punishments to be given to the individuals. These punishments include dipping in boiling oil, burning in fire, torture using various weapons etc. in various hells. Individuals who finish their quota of the punishments are reborn according to their karma. All of the created are imperfect and thus have at least one sin to their record, but if one has led a generally pious life, one ascends to Heaven, or Swarga after a brief period of expiation in hell.
Muslims believe in jahannam (which comes from the Hebrew word gehennim and resembles the versions of hell in Christianity). In the Qur'an, the holy book of Islam, there are literal descriptions of the condemned in a fiery Hell, as contrasted to the garden-like Paradise (jannah) enjoyed by righteous believers.
In addition, Heaven and Hell are split into many different levels depending on the actions perpetrated in life, where punishment is given depending on the level of evil done in life, and good is separated into other levels depending on how well one followed God while alive.
There is an equal number of mentions of both hell and paradise in the Qur'an, which is considered by believers to be among the numeric miracles in the Qur'an.
The Islamic concept of Hell is similar to the medieval Christian view of Dante. However, Satan is not viewed as Hell's ruler, merely one of its sufferers. The gate of hell is guarded by Maalik also known as Zabaaniyah. The Quran states that the fuel of hellfire is rocks/stones (idols) and human beings.
Although generally hell is often portrayed as a hot steaming and tormenting place for sinners there is one hell pit which is characterized differently from the other hell in Islamic tradition. Zamhareer is seen as the coldest and the most freezing hell of all, yet its coldness is not seen as a pleasure or a relief to the sinners who committed crimes against God. The state of the Hell of Zamhareer is a suffering of extreme coldness of blizzards ice and snow which no one on this earth can bear.
The lowest pit of all existing hells is the Hawiyah which is meant for the Hypocrites and two-faced people who claimed to believe in Allah and His messenger by the tongue but denounced both in their hearts. Hypocrisy is considered to be the most dangerous sin of all despite the fact that Shirk (association of God with His creation) is the greatest sin viewed by Allah.
The lightest torture given by God in the hereafter to the unbeliever has been said to be given to Abu Talib. He was the father of Ali bin Abi Talib the fourth Caliph and the uncle of Muhammad. He helped Muhammad in his mission but failed to denounce his ancestral worship of pagan idols. He was said according the prophet to have suffered from the burning under his feet which makes his brain boiled.
The Qur'an also says that some of those who are damned to hell are not damned forever, but instead for an indefinite period of time. In any case, there is good reason to believe that punishment in Hell is not meant to actually last eternally, but instead serves as a basis for spiritual rectification.
Even though in Islam, the devil, or shaytan, is created from fire, he suffers in hell because hellfire is 70 times hotter than the fire of this world. It was also said that Shaytan is derived from shata, (literally `burned'), because it was created from a smokless fire.
Japanese Religions Note: The following viewpoint does not specify which Chinese-based religion it is referring to. The structure of Hell is remarkably complex in many Chinese and Japanese religions. The ruler of Hell has to deal with politics, just as human rulers do. Hell is the subject of many folk stories and manga. In many such stories, people in hell are able to die again.
Judaism
Judaism does not have a specific doctrine about the afterlife, but it does have a tradition of describing Gehenna. Gehenna is not hell, but rather a sort of Purgatory where one is judged based on his or her life's deeds. The Kabbalah describes it as a "waiting room" (commonly translated as an "entry way") for all souls (not just the wicked). The overwhelming majority of rabbinic thought maintains that people are not in Gehenna forever; the longest that one can be there is said to be 11 months, however there has been the occasional noted exception. Some consider it a spiritual forge where the soul is purified for its eventual ascent to Olam Habah (heb. "The world to come", often viewed as analogous to Heaven). This is also mentioned in the Kabbalah, where the soul is described as breaking, like the flame of a candle lighting another: the part of the soul that ascends being pure and the "unfinished" piece being reborn.
When one has so deviated from the will of god, one is said to be in gehinom. This is not meant to refer to some point in the future, but to the very present moment. The gates of teshuva (return) are said to be always open, and so one can align his will with that of god at any moment. Being out of alignment with god's will is itself a punishment according to the Torah.
Maya Faith
In Maya mythology Xibalba is the dangerous underworld in nine levels ruled by the demons Vucub Caquix and Hun Came. The road into and out of it is said to be steep, thorny and very forbidding. Metnal is the lowest and most horrible of the nine hells of the underworld. It is ruled by Ah Puch. Ritual healers would intone healing prayers banishing diseases to Metnal. Much of the Popol Vuh describes the adventures of the Maya Hero Twins in their cunning struggle with the evil lords of Xibalba.
Taoism
Ancient Taoism had no concept of hell, as morality was seen to be a man-made distinction and there was no concept of an immaterial soul. In its home country China, where Taoism adopted tenets of other religions, popular belief endows Taoist Hell with many deities and spirits who punish sin in a variety of horrible ways. This is also considered Karma for Taoism.
Unification Church
The Unification Church teaches that hell is the condition of being separated from God's love. Hell can be said to exist in this world as well as in the afterlife. Those in the state of hell can repent by paying a condition of indemity and change their condition, both before and after death (Although, the process is done differently). The Divine Principle, the main textbook of church teachings, says:
It is not God who decides whether a person's spirit enters heaven or hell upon his death; it is decided by the spirit himself. Humans are created so that once they reach perfection they will fully breathe the love of God. Those who committed sinful deeds while on earth become crippled spirits who are incapable of fully breathing in the love of God. They find it agonizing to stand before God, the center of true love. Of their own will, they choose to dwell in hell, far removed from the love of God. About this article
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This article appeared in the Observer on Sunday January 19 2003 . It was last updated at 02:22 on January 20 2003.
That’s all folks!
Colin
