Violence and insanity

On the news yesterday there were two contrasting items that referred to violence and questions of (in)sanity. In Norway the man who planted a bomb in Oslo and then shot down as many as he could at a political youth camp was declared sane and sentenced to prison. The trial was not about guilt - but focussed at the end on whether he was insane and therefore to go to a secure psychiatric unit, or sane and sent to general prison.

Meanwhile in Jersey a man being tried for killing of family and friends was cleared of murder and convicted of manslaughter, diminished responsibility due to depression deteriotaing into psychosis.

Without getting into either case in detail, it set me thinking about how we as society react to issues of overwhelming violence.

Whilst some may see a sentence based on 'diminished responsibility' as an easier ride, a get out clause, finding excuses, on the other hand there can be an undercurrent of wanting insanity to be part of the reason.

When something really horrific happens it can be easy to put it down to stress, pressure, insanity or even simply the heat of the moment.  It removes it from the category of things a 'normal' person might do. 'She heard voices that made her do it', is reassuring because it means that all those who don't 'hear voices' aren't likely to do anything like that.

It makes all the horror part of 'something other', just as people think that bad things happen in other places.  Especially the wishful thinking of rural life or nice surburbia - bad things don't happen in Ambridge, violence, murder, that is for Eastenders not The Archers. Even the recent ripples of complaints about the lastest rural plotlines show the tension between having a story to follow and the inherent heresy of challenging our idylls.

I have seen it in people's lives, when something happens to them instead of some statistical someone else suddenly the belief about our safety and security is torn to shreds. If A can happen to our family, then so could B, C, D...etc.

Living with that fear is emotionally exhausting - ask anyone who has extreme anxiety conditions. For society to continue to function, for any of us to dare to cross the road or catch a plane we need that belief that 'things happen to other people'.

And so being able to dismiss horrors as due to something that makes the killer less responsible, less human maybe, makes it easier to get through life - that normal person in the supermarket queue won't do that kind of thing. Of course that depends on our subconscious belief that we would somehow be able to tell who is a danger and who is normal - and that's a whole other blog.