Is it wrong to be fascinated by evil?
When you opened the newspaper this morning, did you look for the coverage of the Josef Fritzl case? Or did you rapidly turn the page so that you could read something less upsetting?
Do you regard the terrible story of a man who kept his daughter captive in a cellar for 24 years, raped her thousands of times, and had seven children with her, as a salutary example of the terrible depths to which a human being can sink? Or do you regard the coverage of the case as a sickening example of how the media will always seek to pander to our basest instincts?
When we discussed these issues on The World Tonight with the Reverend George Pitcher and the forensic psychologist Professor David Canter, they both said that to be interested - even fascinated - by the Fritzl case is healthy. The scientist and the cleric were united in their view that to be interested in even the most appalling human behaviour is to show that we recognise that, despite our horror, we share something with all our fellow humans. (You can listen to our discussion by clicking on the "Play" button below.)
There are, of course, important questions that arise from the case -- but they are questions mainly of interest to the people of Austria. How could a man hide an adult daughter and three of the children he bore him in the cellar of his own home for more than 20 years? (Three other children were allowed to live above ground with Fritzl's wife; the seventh died shortly after birth. Fritzl was found guilty of "murder by neglect".)
Why were no questions asked when a convicted sex offender (Fritzl had a previous conviction for rape) reported that his then 18-year-old daughter had apparently run off to join a cult, but was then allowed to adopt three of her children whom he said she had dumped on his doorstep? Why did no one apparently notice that he had built a virtual second home below ground and was regularly providing food and other necessities to his "hidden" family?
Perhaps one reason why we are fascinated by the case is that it helps us define who we are. We read of the depravity of Josef Fritzl and we say to ourselves: "I could never behave like that. He is a bad person; therefore, I am a good person."
But here's an interesting fact: throughout yesterday, as the Fritzl trial reached its climax, and the verdicts and sentence were announced, the most read story on the BBC News website remained the death after a skiing accident of the actress Natasha Richardson. Only on Monday, the day the trial opened, did the name of Josef Fritzl figure at the top of the "most read" list.
Make of that what you will. But to those of you who wonder why the media seem so often to concentrate on the deviant and the extreme, I would suggest that perhaps one reason is that only by revealing the extremes of the abnormal can we begin to define what is normal. (Also, of course, as has been known ever since the invention of journalism, horror sells papers. Never under-estimate the commercial imperative.)
We know who we are by defining who we are not. And I suspect that many of us take comfort today in the knowledge that we are not - and could never be - Josef Fritzl.
© MMIX~RS~q~RS~~RS~z~RS~12~RS~)
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Robin,
I must say that I am not fascinated by the Fitzl case and that I have not been following it. Why should we be so fascinated about it? After all, we know what humans are capable of. The whole human history is full of violence, we have seen plenty of murderers, torturers and rapists. To be surprised by such a case nowadays implies that we fool ourselves that such deeds are a thing of the past. Unfortunately, they are not. Violence is ingrained in human behaviour and I do not know when that is going to change. Have you seen a todler having a tantrum, trying to hit their mother, who is trying to placate them? Where is that tendency for violence coming from at that early age? Why si it that the child knows about how to cause pain, before knowing how to do good? Is that some kind of deep instinct that stems from the natural history of humankind?
These are questions that are important, but more important are the questions you asked in the second part of your blog. Why did nobody notice, why was he allowed to adopt the children? Why did the police not investigate properly the disappearence of his daughter? Those are the questions we need to find answers for.
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#1 - Isenhorn
It is not often that I disagree with ou but, on this occassion I must. We don not know when it is going to end for the simple reason that it will not end. It is the human condition.
Other elements in nature may appear cruel but there is usually a perfectly logical explanation for them. The higher up the evolutionary tree you climb, the more complex it becomes until you reach the human species which, uniquely in my experience, have developed the capacity to inflict acts of savagery for the gratuitous pleasure of it.
Mercifully, we seem to have developed elements of self control and social regulation to reduce the effect but you will never be able to factor it out altogether. The serious question is how, in a civilised western society, such offenses could go unnoticed or, worse yet, be allowed to remain buried until events forced them to the surface.
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Hello Robin
As with almost any human behaviour, I can only assume that our fascination with evil stays with us because it enhances our species' survival value.
That curiosity about almost anything at all does that can hardly be denied, but I'd say that acquired knowledge of bad and dangerous events has a particular value in that it serves to forewarn us. To take a rather extreme example, the vivid image of a bloody and torn corpse might usefully be held, in a traveller's mind, while he or she passes through tiger country.
It's purely conjecture on my part, but surely our brains will have been selected for to give particular attention to those matters that are potentially threatening.
Writers of thrillers and horror stories have long exploited this effect, holding our brains enthralled even while we know full well that their accounts are purely fictional.
Best regards
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You seem to be fascinated by it. You've had two blog entries about it and the previous one was about a 17 year old boy who killed 15 people and then himself. America and the world was gripped for months over the OJ Simpson case. These things happen all the time all over the world, there is no end to them. You can find them in any society you look at. In Brazil where police hunt and kill runaway children. In China where political and religious dissidents are imprisoned by the government and their body organs harvested and sold to wealthy foreigners for money. In Thailand and Indonesia where the government looks the other way at the lucrative business of selling sex with children to foreigners. Maybe this gets our minds off the really large evils in the world which affect us directly such as wealthy highly paid finance "experts" bankrupting the entire planet and bringing down every economy on earth for their own personal gains. Why not watch real evil unfolding by following hearings in Congressional committees where those people responsible in one way or another for it are brought before Senators and Representatives one by one to make their excuses and explain why it wasn't even in part their fault.
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Good points from all above. It seems to me that we are right to take an interest in these kind of attrocities, but as Marcus says, we shouldn't be distracted from the seemingly less evil but often more significant events of the day.
Most news agencies seem to strike the right balance themselves - the exceptions being tabloid press/tv who focus soley on single stories (or sometimes non-stories, such as the Lady Diana stuff).
In these days of almost unlimited access to global events through the internet, what we read is our choice, and those figures for most viewed BBC story could be pretty telling (except of course they ignore the figures of those who glance at the headlines and hear the full stories on the radio/tv etc).
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Evil? Nearly two and a half million people have been run out of their homes into what amounts to open air concentration camps to die slowly in Darfur at the instigation of and with the participation of their government. Why? The real reason is because they are black and the area is being ethnically cleansed which is a polite term for committing genocide by Arab Sudanese. Over two hundred thousand have already died. That's like the entire city and metro aread of Reading, Southampton, or Plymouth dead already. And about to die, at grave risk, likely to slowly die, the equivalent of most of the people in the metro areas of Liverpool, Leeds, Sheffield, Bristol, and Manchester combined.
And as big an evil, News R US barely reports it. There was more coverage and vitriolic condemnation about 800 or fewer non combatants killed in three weeks of war in Gaza than in the years of Genocide in Sudan. And while you can read the hatred posted by anti-Semites about Gaza every day here and on blogs all over the intenet, you never hear them talking about Arab genocide in Sudan or anywhere else. That may be the greatest evil of all.
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No discussion of evil is complete without bringing up European colonial empires of the past and how their policies have affected societies all over the world even to this day. I'll bet Europeans in countries who ran these empires are taught a very different version of history than those who were born and educated in nations that are their former colonies. In this regard, the view of the British Empire, the granddaddy of all empires upon which the sun never set are probaby more akin in the US to that of Mugabe in Zimbabwe than to those in the UK. The worst war in American history, the Civil War was a direct consequence of the slave trade based cotton economy in the southern colonies the British colonists created. That war was their legacy, the causes of which was a problem even the best minds who ever devised a government, the founding fathers of the United States couldn't solve.
The wholesale theft of entire nations of people, of their labor, of their resources, of their cultural artifacts is the sordid history of those colonial empires. The policy of Spain in the new world was nothing short of genocide to steal gold for the Spanish crown. I'll bet much of the gold I saw in Toledo came from Meso America. Brits and French may rail about the cruelty of the Nazis but to the victims of European colonization, there was no difference.
In America, the colonists made the mistake of thinking they were British citizens with the same rights of people living in England. When they found out they were no better off than any other peoples the British crown subjugated and exploited, they revolted. The opening salvo at the battle of Lexington and Concord at Old North Bridge in Concord Mass. on April 19, 1775 was the shot heard round the world.
"By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled;
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard 'round the world."
Ralph Waldo Emerson
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concord_Hymn
It was the beginning of the end of the British empire.
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Ah Marcus, for a while I thought you'd taken my advice, shown some personal courage/confidence and taken your rather pointless posts elsewhere.
However, it turns out that you've just been bothering the God types on another blog and couldn't resist another random stab through your historical blinkers.
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You can't change the past crosseyes. When it comes to history there is only one choice. Learn its lessons or repeat them. If you don't like it, don't argue with me, take it up with Santyana, he said it first. But I don't think we have anything to worry about in regard to the second coming of the British Empire. From what I can tell, Britain doesn't even rule the world of test cricket anymore and they invented cricket. Well maybe women's cricket but that doesn't count :-)
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Oh dear, that'll be a "no" on having the courage to act on one's own convictions then.
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what are you complaining about crosseyes, I've been reading your jibberish for years and have yet to find one shred of sense in any of it.
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robin
can you please post a reason as to why you cannot put up the clip of newsnight as i asked in your post of the 'cellar'
if anything is to be gained
you need to listen to the voice of the abused
a voice rarely heard
everyone speaks for us
because we are frightened to tell you all
how very much the same as abusers you are in the west
adults abuse children
respectable people
in the high street
the child reflects what happens at home
and at school
adults learn to hide the abuse
and blame children
it is happening all over
and if you rise against it you get crushed
post the newsnight clip
of the other austrian cellar victim
of at least the audio
if she will allow
as i feel you should ask her
then i will explain all
including children with anorexia and those go on suicide killing sprees
POST THE CLIP ROBIN OR SAY WHY NOT
I GIVE THANKS
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High on the list of evils should be those perpetrated by religion. Who can ignore the torture chambers of the Inquisition in the annals of the most horrible crimes against humanity. It was like the incident in Austria only multipled ten thousand fold. And today in Islam, there are places where the same happens in the name of Allah.
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