(no subject)

[theweaselking]

"Okay, I'll plead guilty to murder - BUT ONLY AS LONG AS THE VICTIM STAYS DEAD! As soon as he stops being dead, you have to release me, okay?"

There's an argument going on right now about whether or not this idiocy is insanity (because it's insane) or whether it's just religion (because she's insane in a really uncreative way.)

Repeat after me, people: Having an overactive imagination and the inabilty to tell fantasy from reality is NOT IMPROVED by you being unoriginal.

Comments

[jagash.livejournal.com]

*shrug* Depending on time spent. I mean, if resurrection occurs then the net crime is less severe then murder and only at the level of child abuse. 10 years in maximum security might be enough for release at the point that the victim comes back from the dead.

[the-trav.livejournal.com]

I agree in the case of resurrection, however if corpse animation were to occur, then the victim would be forced to suffer undeath, and zombieism has been referred to as a fate worse than death in the past...

Not to mention the general liability for damage to public assets which would doubtless occur in a zombie apocalypse.

I think this matter is probably better solved through legislation rather than via court precedent so that all possible ramifications are properly addressed (in order of severity of course, with all due considerations)

[jagash.livejournal.com]

Perhaps, but I wouldn't want to open up the debate in a venue were the pro-life and the zombie-rights lobbyists can influence the process. There is something to be said for the impartiality of Jurisprudence.

[torrain.livejournal.com]

Also, while she might not have directly desecrated the corpse, she certainly knowingly brought about the circumstances under which it would be treated shoddily...

[stormfeather.livejournal.com]

Well, the bottom line is that I'm totally fine with her not being called (legally) insane due to this, since it means she gets to get punished by the law.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

I'm not fine with excusing her insanity just because it's labelled "religion" and she didn't have a strong enough personality to maintain ORIGINAL delusions.

[hypatiasghost.livejournal.com]

But there's a different between colloquial "That's fucking insane" and the legal and medical definition of insanity. This woman is not being plagued by a serious illness; she's just, as I said below, stupid and wrong. Stupid and wrong people go to jail a lot. Truly mentally ill people get committed and given medicine. (usually not under great conditions, but that's not the point.)

If she's competent and rational in all other areas besides her irrational social order, then she's competent.

[the-trav.livejournal.com]

I guess the question is what is more likely to fix her?
A stint in jail, a stint in a psych ward, or neither?

If it's neither then which is cheaper / more humane?

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

She.
Thinks.
Dead.
People.
Can.
Come.
Back.
To.
Life.

She's *absolutely incapable* of rational thought.
Which means she's absolutely incapable of knowing right from wrong.

Making her legally insane, as well as just plain standard normal fucking insane.

[hel]

One is not insane simply because one does something that is morally wrong for reasons that are morally wrong, even when those reasons are morally wrong to the point that others find those reasons insane. One is arguably insane if one does something that is morally wrong without knowing that it is morally wrong. It's not believing in insane things that makes you insane, it's not knowing the difference between right and wrong.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

It's not "morally wrong", here. It's blatantly, counterfactually wrong. It's making decisions based on pretty much the exact *opposite* of facts. It's anti-thought.

She doesn't know right from wrong because she's worked so very very hard to ensure she never has to learn or display any ability to tell fact from fantasy.

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

Ah but her inability to tell right from wrong isn't because she is insane. Mentally, she's healthy. Batshit, yes. Insane, not technically.

Besides NO court wants to rule "religious beliefs" and "insane" together. Because that's a whooooooole barrel-load of fugly right there.

[hypatiasghost.livejournal.com]

"If she just subscribes to extreme religious beliefs, then that's not insanity. That's a decision to violate the law."

I am well pleased by this. This isn't an insane decision, it's a stupid and wrong one, made because she was not careful enough in her thinking. Just like people who think that *they* are going to get away with a crime because they're just lucky, or whatever other silly reason they have -- they know they're doing something wrong, they just think it will turn out okay in the end.

However, I do want there to be room to treat people differently if they're actually mentally ill -- hearing voices, having delusions and ideas of reference, etc.

[gothpanda.livejournal.com]

I disagree--brainwashing is basically taking advantage of someone who is mentally ill, because you have to be a very special kind of weak to allow that to happen to you.

Soldiers aren't necessarily responsible for the shit they do when ordered by their commanding officers because they have been brainwashed into obeying every order without question (I'm not saying that soldiers have weak personalities, because it has to be beaten into them). Same thing here, except this woman went along willingly with a group of people who were out to kill her child. That takes a special kind of sick.

That's not to say that the mother shouldn't be treated and the cult broken up and the leaders prosecuted, I just think the woman was insane.

[hypatiasghost.livejournal.com]

No. You don't have to be a very special kind of weak to allow that to happen to you. You have to be a very special kind of noncomformist for it to *not* happen to you.

It's very, very easy to brainwash people. You could be brainwashed in a matter of hours. See Milgram experiments, and all following experiments along that line.

It *doesn't* take a special kind of sick. It's really easy to get there.

Which is why I haven't responded to the_trav's response yet. Because it's weird for me to find myself on the side of people saying "No mercy, she gets what's coming to her." I'm usually all about mercy. But there's nothing to *treat* in this woman, she's not mentally ill, she's just *wrong*. She needs, maybe, a good set of courses in critical thinking and logic and some philosophy and some history wouldn't hurt -- education, in short. Cognitive behavioral therapy wouldn't go amiss, I think, to help her with the errors in cognition she experiences, and to help her beef up her own self esteem. But she's still culpable for what she's done, unless she argues that she was coerced. She doesn't think she was coerced.

[gothpanda.livejournal.com]

But she obviously was coerced. She didn't just come up with those heinous actions on her own--she was influenced by the cult.

I do still think that type of weakness is absolutely mental illness. Just because 90% of the population is susceptable doesn't mean that it's not a sickness. It's just a sickness we've chosen to ignore until people do something stupid, like this.

[spawnofweevil.livejournal.com]

Agreed, much as I wish I weren't. You are entirely correct.

If everyone in the room says that A comes after B in the alphabet, when it comes your turn, you have to have a very strong will and sense of self esteem and comfort with your own intelligence not to be sitting there thinking 'did I hear the question wrong? Am I confused? I don't want to look stupid...'
A very large - we're talking 75% minimum - proportion of the population are going to cave to peer pressure and say the same as everyone else to avoid being singled out and 'different'. And people can be damned persuasive.


Sitting her down and explaining in really simple terms, possibly with sock puppets, that she is WRONG and needs to think for herself and that MURDER IS BAD is about the only 'cure' - and she'll probably not believe you.

How many beliefs do you have that you have never questioned, just because that's how you were raised/what your parents did? Humans are designed to be brainwashed is the problem. You just have to hope their parents do the job right, which relies on the parents having been brainwashed into being 'normal', intelligent, socially functioning people themselves as children.

[hurfadurf.livejournal.com]

"His body was hidden in a suitcase packed with mothballs and fabric softener sheets behind a home in Philadelphia for more than a year."

The fact that they hid the body suggests they knew they had done something wrong, and didn't want to get caught. Ergo: they know what WRONG is, and went ahead and did it anyway -- ergo, not insane.

Stupid and horrible, yes. But SANE.

[gothpanda.livejournal.com]

how horrible. That poor little boy. His mother is clearly nuts; and once they've "de-programmed" her, she will be a mess.