My Little Spleen #1 (...and they don't even blink)
(© 1996 Walter Ehresman)

It's not as if bad people haven't done bad things before. Human history is nothing if not rife with examples of the famous Brian Gysin quote--"man is a bad animal." It's just that, these days, the negative action is compounded by what may be an even greater transgression associated with the mental state of the actor....and it is the latter, the "mens rea" of the perpetrator, which seems to signal an acceleration toward the end. Anyone who comes into contact with the ambitious, the political, has certainly experienced the empty black shark-eyes that look placidly, unblinkingly on as the blade slips in. A moment of pathos is as unlikely--indeed, as impossible--as an erection on the Rev. Donald Wildmon.

There are two sins here: the amoral act itself, and the refusal to acknowledge it, even in those most up-close, surveillance-free moments when the screwer is alone--in an elevator or empty room--with the screwee. Which is worse? Consider: the act itself is easy to judge--amoral conduct is as pure as it is prevalent. These creatures can't help themselves--the self-serving act is instinctual, and can be recognized not only by the detestably selfish nature of the thing done but also by the utter lack of deliberation that precedes it. That these acts arise from the animal hind-brain leaves the higher functions free to scan beyond the activity at hand for general data which might be helpful during the next foray. Analyzed as animal behavior, these traits are easy to understand on some levels, and are easy to deal with (in a karmic sense) as one deals with a rogue crocodile too close to the village. Of course, this is a slander to the animal kingdom--they have the very real excuse of not being sentient.

What of the absence of acknowledgment? Should this be considered worse than the loathsome act itself? Is it that the creature will not acknowledge, or that he cannot? Ultimately, does that distinction matter? Perhaps the answer lies in the concept of humanity....what does it mean to be human? Surely self-awareness is part of that definition...and isn't part of consciousness understanding the nature of your actions and motivations? And what of pathos....empathy.... mercy...at the very least, the ability to conceive of what other people must feel in response to various situations, including those you put them in? Can anyone be said to be truly "human" who finds these ideas alien and irrelevant to their course? As strange as it sounds, the killer who acknowledges the act to the victim in that final moment is somehow more potentially redeemable than the one who refuses that last minor gesture of respect to the dying man.

Because man is a bad animal, who at best will always struggle against acting in naked self-interest, the selfish acts of man can never be eliminated (absent a wholesale lemming-leap into the sea)....the best we can do on that front is to create and maintain an environment that fosters ethical behavior and a sense of community. Hopefully, in such a society, conduct will ultimately be self-policing--when someone's Yin overcomes his Yang, he will feel out of tune with the world...understanding his act and its consequences by its jarring juxtaposition with everything else in the environment, the bad actor will see what he's done as a stain on the fabric of his community and feel compelled to rectify it so as to improve his own surroundings and in turn his own life. At the very least, he will be likely to understand what he has done and the ripples it has caused. We have hope in this....

But what of the more recent phenomenon of the apparent lack of awareness in the perpetrator of the nature of the bad act itself?....the refusal to acknowledge it?....is it endemic to the species? It must not be, given that we're still here. Can we tolerate this trait?....should we? Perhaps it should be viewed as one of those evolutionary deadends that would lead to extinction if it became the norm. Certainly it should not be viewed as it is today--as a sign of the successful man, to be envied, emulated, and celebrated (in a marginally-subliminal way) in commercial mass-manipulation. This path allows for no hope....and it is a symptom of the most dire sort.

It's much like Area 51....where the MPs and the Generals and the goddamn Secretary of Defense will stand right next to you on the hill overlooking Groom Dry Lake, stare you right in the face and say "that doesn't exist." And they don't even blink....and if you take a picture of it, you're charged with treason and hustled away to a converted missile silo in some bleak, flat, soul-charred wasteland in the Dakotas where experimental psychoactive drugs are fed through tubes violating every natural and newly-created orifice in your body to see how malleable your reactions can be made without it being too obvious and/or affecting your willingness to be a pliable, unquestioning consumer.
Of course, you can buy very attractive (if grainy) photos of Area 51 from the Russians at a "going-out-of-business" sale and be OK.

Why didn't they just put this place under the Rockies in Colorado Springs where all the other federal vivisectionist forbidden zones are? Putting it out in plain view in the middle of the Nevada desert is like giving Jesse Helms a bottle of Old Crow, a lounge chair, and a high-powered rifle on a grassy knoll overlooking Henry Waxman. What was the military thinking? I think we've got a good tort here--THE DOCTRINE OF ATTRACTIVE NUISANCE. This is what you're sued under when you have a dog in your backyard that is so hideously vicious and dangerous-looking that the neighborhood kids can't help but scale the 20ft fence you erected for just such an occasion.

But I digress.

Some might be tempted to label this new breed of men as simply "urban predators." I mean, surely we're familiar with the general concept. We know the reality of ill-intent on the streets, and--thanks to Mr. Bush and his Willie Horton ads (funded through truck-sized loopholes in federal campaign spending laws)--we've been told who "those" people are. But this would be a dangerous mischaracterization. The acts of ordinary criminals can be understood on an intellectual level, and make a certain sense in our "cause-and-effect" analyses--these actions usually rise up from the despairing breeding grounds of poverty, abuse, discrimination, and...above all...abject hopelessness. This is not to say that these are excuses. They are merely reasons. But, being explainable, they can be addressed. The genesis of the "upscale urban predator" (see the nearest person with political aspirations) is a much more muddled affair. We can certainly identify some of the factors, most of which fall into the general category of "image is everything"...touted by Agassi before karma balded him. These include: the progressive adoption of form over substance (a process which has been inestimably abetted by the media as a means of feeding itself); the pervasive corruption at all levels of American government; the idolatry of power, at the expense of a moral and aesthetic evaluation of actual achievement; the utter absence of justice in our legal system; a self-perpetuating bigotry and sense of entitlement in the boardrooms and blue-blood breeding enclaves of this county; and the evisceration of higher education, sacrificing the character-building exposure to "liberal arts" for an ultra-narrow fast-track through the spiritual wastelands of business degrees and MBAs. Mix all this into the known psychological effects on too many rats in a box, and you're living the Life of Riley (god help you...and us).

We know these causes are in there somewhere, but we certainly don't know the whole recipe. It must be a synergistic effect, operating at a level we do not yet understand. If we could see, as a country, a clear link between the causes and the monsters that are the end result--I would like to think we would rise up as one and do a mop-up on the bastards, while making sure that no more are spawned.

But we don't know why....not entirely...but we do know that these creatures are wrong....that they are an abomination...that at one level, even your murderer owes you an acknowledgment of your death as he kills you....that somehow, the blankness is more abhorrent than the intent. In the acknowledgment, there is a kernel of empathy....where there is empathy, there is hope.