To blame or not to blame

Putting criminals committing homicides to death has been a very controversial issue in a lot of nations although many countries across the world have abolished the death sentence. Many a time, we read news about the brutal behaviours of what people call, ‘cold-blooded’ killers and felt chills creeping up our spine. We asked ourselves: how could a person did something so cruel to others?

On the side of social moral, killing or taking away others’ life by force has been deemed a serious crime or even in the religious term, sin. However, neuroscientists now are discovering that some of the ‘cold-blooded’ killers might not be what we previously thought they were, namely-they are not bad, they are actually suffering brain abnormality which renders them being so emotionless and vicious.

In the issue of Scientific American, Mind (Sep/Oct, 2010), Kent A. Kiehl and Joshua W. Buckholtz have a study regarding the mind of a psychopath. The word, ‘psychopath’, makes most of us think of the movie images such as Anthony Hopkins’s Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs. Yet, in reality, many psychopaths could be likable people when they want to be according to real-life cases. This, therefore, becomes a very challenging part in terms of studying psychopaths, meaning these culprits show none of the classic signs of mental illness, hallucinations, or hearing voices. They do not even appear socially-awkward. On the contrary, they often possess better-than-average intelligence. The bizarre part of psychopaths is usually that they lack of empathy; and that is why they can kill others showing no regret and mercy at all. Based on the new studies, doctors and neuroscientists are speculating that people with the damage in the area of paralimbic system, a horseshoe-shaped band of tissue nestled in the deepest recesses of the brain, may develop psychopathic traits and behaviours. This paralimbic system includes several interconnected bran regions which register feelings and sensations and assign emotional value to experiences.

I personally think the research demonstrated another noteworthy approach regarding how we should treat ‘cold-blooded’ killers. Perhaps government should spend more time and resources locating the real problem of those killers and prevent more tragedies from happening. The recent news about a man who had killed two young girls was released after serving in jail for six years because of the judicial law change and the claim that he had mental illness. The ironic and sad part is that he committed homicides again after he came of out the prison a year later. If the probing of a ‘cold-blooded’ killer’s mind can be taken into consideration when dealing with this sort of case, perhaps neuroscientists can find and determine whether a serious criminal suffers from abnormality in his or her paralimbic system, thus giving him or her appropriate treatments. After all, if a person cannot feel empathy or in a more layperson’s term, has no heart, it seems a bit unfair to blame him or her so much. This certainly is a very tricky issue as most of us feel angry and indignant when hearing news about some killer that tormented a victim with atrocious and horrific ways before ending the victim’s life.

Echo

What a rainy day! Cats and dogs cannot even describe what we have been having for the last few days. The typhoon certainly brought torrential rain and flooded everywhere on this small island. Once again we witnessed the power of Nature!

I took the MRT (metro) to go to teach a class in the XinYi district this afternoon. People out in the rain surely didn’t look very happy. Wet clothes, shoes, bags scattered on the street, and the only pleasant sight would be the colours of various kinds of umbrellas. I shook off the depressing thought on such a gloomy day and dodged the stinging wind and landed on the front gate of Eslite bookstore. Arriving on the second floor, I noticed an array of new arrivals, the books and novels. Quietly on the corner stood a book which has the mysterious Indian fish pin and the colour of the red earth. I stepped forward and saw the author’s name-Echo. Oh that was one of my favourite writers from my high school days. I even met her at her speech event in my hometown. It’s been over twenty-two years since that day but I still remember clearly her talk and stories about travelling and living.

Life is just unpredictable, isn’t it? I of course am not the same high school student I used to be; and on the contrary I have also travelled and lived in five different countries myself. I have also tried to learn four different languages. Echo Chen was an amazing writer and artist. She was the legacy of Chinese contemporary literature. I picked up one of her seven books and thumbed through several pages. There again, the magic and power of her words mesmerised me over and over. Time went by like a click sound of the clock. I read the book for twenty minutes without noticing it’s my time to go.

Just like one of her famous song lyrics, ‘The Olive Tree’, do not ask where I am from. My hometown is far away. Perhaps we all have this sort of dream or feeling hidden in us but very few of us would actually act it out. So I believe most of us are good writers but only very few of us really make up our mind penning down the lines…
To you, Echo, San-Mao, I hope you never have to roam like a nomad in another world if there is really one.