"Temporary" Venting Thread V

[Lief Erikson]

I feel so sad about the tendency people have to condemn others without thinking about things from their perspective or trying once to see them as fellow human beings.

There are some people I really am tempted to condemn. I think we have a tendency to dehumanize and villify people that have done evil things that we completely disagree with. For instance, I've been feeling more sorry, lately, for Osama bin Laden, and sometimes I feel very sorry for suicide bombers. They die, expecting to go to Heaven, believing they are doing a great thing for the world. They make the ultimate sacrifice, often out of a sincere belief that they are doing the right thing. And yet they are doing evil, and these people could be much more and have so much better a future. People speak of them and of Osama bin Laden as though they're the devil, not recognizing their humanity and seeing that there is good in them too. We don't like to think about that; we need to stereotype people as villains and dodge the broader and more real look into them.

Another case I think of is those two students who took the footage of their fellow student, who was a homosexual, in the homosexual act. They clearly invaded his privacy in a horrible way, and the student they were filming committed suicide when he learned about the sex tape . This was a terrible tragedy, and the young man's death is horrible. So is the callous choice of those students to film him, without any regard for how it would affect his psyche or his future life. I've seen a lot of that kind of callous attitude among college students. Not that they'd necessarily make a secret sex film of other people, but they make light of horrific things and often act in a brazen way, not caring, or speaking as though it doesn't matter, when those things actually matter greatly. It's as if callousness is the "cool" way, and anyone who disagrees is just being hypersensitive and judgmental.

I also feel horrible for those two students who filmed the guy, Dharun Ravi and Molly Wei, because they didn't murder him, they committed an act of invasion of privacy, and they turned themselves in when they learned of the suicide. But people are blaming them for the student's death. The students' faces are plastered all over the Internet. This incident, and their faces, have been on all the public news stations. The charge of invasion of privacy could get these students 1-5 years in prison, which I believe they do deserve, but prosecutors are trying to get hate crimes added in, to see if they can increase the term the students spend in prison. And everyone I hear from, all over the Internet, is condemning them fiercely, treating them as though they're animals.

These are young people, students, who have their whole lives ahead of them. And now they are vilified everywhere and people are trying to destroy them. What kind of a future can they have after this, especially if the sentence is extended? They should have been able to serve the time in prison appropriate to their crime, between one and five years, and come out in a position to make new lives, without everyone knowing about their past offenses. Then they could have worked to repair the damage done their futures and established better things for themselves.

But now it looks like they might have to spend a longer time in prison than is just for very young people who made mistakes in such a confused and morally gray environment as campus often can be, holding the same kinds of ambivalent attitudes I've seen in many students. People in that environment think so many things are fine, amusing or a good joke even when they're cruel or harsh. I've heard college students laugh about cruel things that happened to others. They can be stupid and thoughtless easily, and careless about other people's suffering. The same kind of thing happens among highschoolers all the time. So much of the college environment is just as callous and self-centered, yet most students get normal lives without legal penalties because they don't go one step further like these students did.

Even after these students come out of jail, after their (hopefully not) extra long sentence, they will have to face an environment where everyone knows them for their crimes and has judged them over and over again. Their faces are all over the Internet and threads have been made everywhere condemning them and wishing the worst for them. This isn't something they'll be able to leave behind them. They were getting an education (over now . . . maybe one day they'll be able to restart it?). They have full lives ahead of them, and we can't say that they will always have the same foolish attitudes they had when they took that film, yet their lives could easily be wrecked by this because people condemn so easily and completely, without taking into account the good in a person or offering anyone a chance. Can't these young people be shown mercy?

People's condemning spirit is cruel, and I hate it, and it makes me so sad. When people deprive themselves and other people of good things, and act either callously or vengefully (including myself, if I recognize my mistake afterward), it makes me so sad. We shouldn't dehumanize anyone or villify people in such a way that we can't feel sorry for them or try to do them good or hope the best for them, because they're the bad guys or have done evil things in their lives. We shouldn't be merciless or condemning.

In the last few days, someone very close to me was also condemning me pretty roundly, and it made me feel so sad for that person and for what he was saying. It's so sad. I believe we need to always keep people's humanity before us and try to treat them as we would wish to be treated, no matter how they treat us.

Anyway, enough with that vent . . .



EDIT: Erm . . . Eärniel, I just realized this is a very long vent. If you think it's too long for the venting thread, feel free to splice it out and create its own thread for it, using the subject heading it presently has.