An Argument For "Youth"-anasia, Redux
Apologies again for those who come here looking for space-related commentary (I would not hazard to use the word "insight" since I'm sure a fair number of our readers would be loathe to call us insightful...). This posting, in part a followup to this one:
An Argument for Euthanasia
has been spurred by the latest gem I found in my morning paper:
We Wanted to Kill Someone - Teen Killers
There are those who have objected to my comments in the past (backed up by the psychiatric profession, no less) that people who begin by torturing and killing animals have a high likelihood of moving on to people at some point. Sociopaths come in many flavours, from our recent gun-toting loon at Virginia Tech and the gang-bangers who roam the streets of towns around the world to the soccer hooligans and thugs who are regularly featured in the news media (outside the US) for their behaviour at sporting events.
But these two little angels really defy description. And should be removed from the gene pool before they are allowed to breed. Or, as the mother of the victim rightly said, "If we had a death penalty they should get the death penalty."
Submitted for your consideration - and to raise a thought point. Is our species ready to make the leap off this rock, before we figure out what is fundamentally wrong with our culture/civilisation/society/whatever, or are we doomed to carry the seeds of this sort of behaviour with us throughout the cosmos? And, if we were to run into an alien species somewhere in the course of our relentless expansion, would they have the same sorts of behaviours in their society, or would they be like the Asgard* in Stargate?
*(in action, not appearance - because, frankly, they do look a lot like cheesy puppets to me..)
An Argument for Euthanasia
has been spurred by the latest gem I found in my morning paper:
We Wanted to Kill Someone - Teen Killers
There are those who have objected to my comments in the past (backed up by the psychiatric profession, no less) that people who begin by torturing and killing animals have a high likelihood of moving on to people at some point. Sociopaths come in many flavours, from our recent gun-toting loon at Virginia Tech and the gang-bangers who roam the streets of towns around the world to the soccer hooligans and thugs who are regularly featured in the news media (outside the US) for their behaviour at sporting events.
But these two little angels really defy description. And should be removed from the gene pool before they are allowed to breed. Or, as the mother of the victim rightly said, "If we had a death penalty they should get the death penalty."
Submitted for your consideration - and to raise a thought point. Is our species ready to make the leap off this rock, before we figure out what is fundamentally wrong with our culture/civilisation/society/whatever, or are we doomed to carry the seeds of this sort of behaviour with us throughout the cosmos? And, if we were to run into an alien species somewhere in the course of our relentless expansion, would they have the same sorts of behaviours in their society, or would they be like the Asgard* in Stargate?
*(in action, not appearance - because, frankly, they do look a lot like cheesy puppets to me..)