‘They were moving me all around and I had a broken neck.’
Imagine falling and breaking your neck, but no one takes you to the hospital right away.
That’s exactly what a local woman says happened to her inside the St. Clair County Jail and now she’s trying to make sure something like this doesn’t happen to anyone else.
Lisa Brown takes full responsibility for why she ended up briefly behind bars. But now she says a 20-day jail sentence has left her with a life sentence of partial paralysis and disability.
That same shit is in all of us
I don’t believe this is true, I don’t believe I personally could ever take pleasure in another’s serious pain (i.e. doesn’t include laughing at my friend slipping on a banana). While many in nazi germany may have had a bit of repressed sadism, many others had to be tricked or coerced into doing banal evil things.
It’s all about empathy. If you dehumanise a group enough they become “other” to your human subconscious, and you exhibit sociopathic behaviour toward them.
The problem is that it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you dehumanise someone to the smallest degree and feel guilt (because you’re still a good person), your subconscious will dehumanise them further in order to cope. (e.g they’re criminals so they’ve probably done worse). Then the next time you abuse them, it becomes easier.
This self perpetuating cycle keeps happening until you feel absolutely no sympathy for them, and consequently no guilt.
Now, the real question is whether or not you’re capable of dehumanising someone to begin with. I personally think that yes, we’re all capable, and all it takes is some bad influence (e.g bad preconceptions/media brainwashing), and in the case of police officers, a healthy dose of peer pressure.
I don’t think dehumanization works on everybody. Dehumanization works on already kinda shitty people that view themselves as above others. I am not like that personally and I’m sure I’m not nearly the only one. I simply don’t see myself as entitled to cause suffering in any other conscious being, human or not (except that which is necessary to sustain life as an omnivore – which I am entitled as a living being).
I don’t think dehumanization works on everybody. Dehumanization works on already kinda shitty people that view themselves as above others. I am not like that personally and I’m sure I’m not nearly the only one. I simply don’t see myself as entitled to cause suffering in any other conscious being, human or not
You are not like that, currently. But in the right environment and in the right situation, you’ll find out that to the contrary, you are exactly like that.
Humans are wired to (justifiably or not) vilify anyone who’d pose a threat to their safety, or the safety of their loved ones. Vilify a person or group too many times (e.g with daily mass media brainwashing) and they will be completely dehumanised, eventually.
Now, that threat doesn’t have to be physical, or even real. Just perceived threat is enough. It doesn’t have to be substantiated either.
Look at every racist and extremist in existence and try to understand where they’re coming from. They weren’t born that way. Their environments made of them what they are.
So you’re saying that there’s a certain group of people that dehumanization works on? And a different group that it doesn’t work on? Two distinct categories of people?
