Where do we draw the pathology criminal line?

[WallyandtheBeaver]

Anyone else concerned with the American need to medicate and pathologize Everything? Is there any place for self-discipline anymore? Where do YOU draw the line between coddling and so-called medicine??? Are new 'syndromes' admissable in court as defenses??!? My girlfriend is in school to be a prosecuter. She wonders where people will stop with this stuff; we talk about the twinkie defense, the attention defense, the neglect defense. Where the hell does it end?

 

It's all fine if people are sick, we're not heartless, but what if they are really really hurting other people??!? She has to write a paper on this, its real hard to answer.

[Tony T]

Many people tend to not want to take responsiblity for their actions. It's so much easier to blame stuff on various mental or physical shortcomings than to our own human stupidity.

 

I'm not real concerned about this issue yet. I've actually scheduled the matter for consideration during the third week in March, 2005. Meanwhile, got lots of other problems to address.

[moimeme]

It gives people great satisfaction to find reasons to condemn each other. Nothing gets the old adrenaline all juiced up more than a nice little head of righteous indignation. And oh, how delicious to feel all that wrath against some person you can then believe to be beneath you.

 

I happen to subscribe to the idea that man's normal state is to be cooperative and loving and that all behaviour otherwise is an aberration. Many of those aberrations are medically based.

 

Now really.

 

Here's a couple of scenarios: Society One in which people engage in behaviours which are self-destructive and/or destructive to others, causing untold grief to themselves, their victims, and plenty of other people sho get punished by being murdered or stuck in jails like caged animals.

 

Society Two in which people get their brains checked for illness as part of their physical and if any abnormalities are discovered and if their behaviour has been destructive, they get treated. Not numbed or turned into zombies, just given the types of meds that allow them control over their impulses (tendencies to violence are being traced to impulse control problems, which are treatable) so that they can take the time to make wise decisions for themselves.

 

Take your pick. Oh, right. In Society Two, there'd be less people to feel superior to, less people to exercise revenge over, and nobody to take out hostilities on.