
Norway mass murderer Breivik was 'already damaged by the age of two' - teslacar
http://www.tv2.no/a/8241631
======
Waterluvian
I've seen this story a thousand times. Someone is abused in some manner,
becomes an abuser, and the cycle repeats.

I struggle with reconciling these cases because there's two drastically
different perspectives you can look at it from:

1\. Brevik is a mass murderer and should be punished to the fullest extent of
the law.

2\. Brevik is a victim who was never given a fair shot at life to begin with.
He was moulded into the horrible person he became.

What is the point of transition where we stop treating someone like a victim
and begin treating them like a criminal? How many serious offenders have been
raised in such a damaging way that you could argue they're not exactly
responsible for any of the awful things they ended up doing?

It brings doubt to how we handle serious criminals in modern times.

~~~
tinus_hn
Does it really matter that much? Even if you were to say he's not responsible,
you can't let him out on the streets.

One of the goals of the justice system is to protect society from criminals by
removing them from it, temporarily or permanently.

~~~
deepsun
Agree, but justice systems are different:

Some countries (like ex-USSR) also practice _punishing_ for a crime in prison
-- further humiliating and abusing convicted person. Don't know if there's a
reason (if ever were), but some people argue that it helps to reduce future
crimes by other people ("don't do that, or you'll get to prison, you know what
they do there"). Can't tell if it's supported by statistics.

In other countries, like Norway, justice systems are the other way around --
besides removing criminals from society, they also bear a job to re-
socializing criminals -- treating them humane and helping them to find a job
after the prison.

These other responsibilities affect answer to your question.

------
seagullz
"As the trial for Breivik's bomb-and-shooting rampage that killed 77 people
entered its second week, the far-right fanatic told a court that he was the
victim of a "racist" plot to discredit his ideology. He said no one would have
questioned his sanity if he were a "bearded jihadist." "

[https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2012/04/23/breivi...](https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2012/04/23/breivik-
claims-racist-plot-to-cast-him-as-insane)

[http://bridge.georgetown.edu/mental-illness-a-key-factor-
in-...](http://bridge.georgetown.edu/mental-illness-a-key-factor-in-terror/)

------
wtbob
What worries me about this is the detailed nature of this account. Surely
every one of us has had quite a few painful years: imagine if it had all been
recorded in dry, bureaucratic detail.

I'm reminded of the story about æroplanes and the mythical average pilot: just
as no pilot is actually average (and, in the original story, that's why
cockpits designed for the average were bad for everyone), might it not be that
none of us is statistically normal, and thus _every_ one of us is thus
_abnormal_ , and hence dangerous to the bureaucratic state?

None of this is meant to minimise Brevik's horrific crime, of course. But I'm
worried about this level of detail being available for anyone on the planet. I
don't know what the solution is: obviously, it's now possible to record lots
of details about anyone, and just as obviously, it's possible for those
details to be made available. That implies that those details _will_ be made
available, and so we as a society must come to terms with that.

Still, it's a bit chilling that a State can track a man down to that level of
detail.

------
BadassFractal
You eventually realize that it's next to impossible to hate someone when, if
you were born into their situation, with their genetics, their environment,
their condition, you would very likely have done the same exact thing. There's
a tragic amount of predetermination in life.

~~~
adekok
Studies show that there is a large correlation between genetics and life
outcome.

i.e. when treated badly, most people will end up bad, some won't. When treated
well, most people will end up good, some won't.

There are people who are pre-disposed to do bad things, no matter what. There
are people who are pre-disposed to do good things, no matter what.

See the stories about Romanian orphans for how a bad system can turn most
people into functioning sociopaths:

[http://www.livescience.com/21778-early-neglect-alters-
kids-b...](http://www.livescience.com/21778-early-neglect-alters-kids-
brains.html)

Yet some still turn out OK.

------
muramira
Am I the only one to cry out bullshit! The guy is a terrorist, period. He
deserves to pay for what he did. I survived a genocide and you don't see me go
around and kill people.

~~~
cooper12
No one is saying his childhood absolves him of any responsibility. The article
is merely looking at his upbringing. It's apples and oranges where you compare
genocide to child abuse.

------
javajosh
It's remarkable there was any awareness of his predicament at all. All too
often it seems that society is only sensitive to the more obvious forms of
abuse (sexual and physical). Yet I suspect psychological abuse is far, far
worse. I bet if you looked deeply into the lives of U.S. school shooters you'd
find a similar story.

The real lesson here is: _if you 're a borderline woman, do NOT have
children_. If you do, give them up for adoption. We as a society should be
ready and willing to forcibly separate children from borderline parents.

~~~
brianberns
> We as a society should be ready and willing to forcibly separate children
> from borderline parents.

Who gets to decide if someone is "borderline"? How do we know that the people
making this decision are not borderline themselves?

Unfortunately, I don't think there is a way to impose morality on others that
is not vulnerable to the same problems that it's trying to fix.

~~~
mikeash
We don't seem to have a problem imposing the morality of "don't kill people"
and "don't steal stuff." Is this fundamentally different?

~~~
vacri
Have a look at how Australian Aborigines feel about their separation from
parents because of contemporary morals.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stolen_Generations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stolen_Generations)

~~~
mikeash
A tragedy, but not an answer to my question. Is there a fundamental difference
between this and putting people away for murder, or is it just a matter of
making sure we get it right?

------
mgarfias
This reads scarily like how my ex is with our boy. I hope that the proper care
he gets 1/2 time at my house keeps him from going nuts

------
4991throwaway
Wow reading the account of his childhood was very eye-opening.

For starters, I should say I've never hurt anyone willingly, not in any
serious way at least, nor for any length of time. Secondly, my parents are
happily married as were their parents, my home life was mostly fine. My dad is
an emotional black hole but I love him.

What I found strikingly similar to Anders was his emotional reaction to
people, being distant, few friends, fake smiles that I usually have to try
very hard to make them be believable. He obviously got hurt by people in his
life and learned to depend on himself to keep his ego intact, and that's my
experience as well.

I have a deep desire to be normal but I know i'm not. Up until about 9 or 10 I
was a pretty normal kid, but then my family moved across the country. I knew
nobody in the new town. Before the move I had a best friend, several other
friends and I had a pretty happy childhood overall. I'm convinced I had ADD
because I was extremely hyper-active and my primary outlet in my new school
was to draw, most of my worksheets until about middle school were filled with
random doodles. I day-dreamed constantly, I was always behind on work because
I could rarely focus on doing any one thing for more than a few minutes.

So in my new school, I had an extremely hard time making any friends. I have
one I would consider a close friend, though the older we get the more distant
we seem to become. So all the ADD-fueled mannerisms that I thrived on before
moving, that my old friends accepted me in spite of them, all worked against
me at the new school. I didn't fit in anywhere at my new, much larger school.
I never really got into fights or was overly picked on, but I always felt
rejected just for being me.

DUring high school at a job, one of my bosses told me once "You're a really
serious guy, you know that", because I seldom showed any emotion. At the time
I took it as a compliment. I'm much more emotive these days, but the damage to
my personality has been done. I live alone, haven't had a girlfriend in over a
year and I generally have very little contact with people outside of work, and
only at work. I really seldom desire any, though I do love to be in small
company as long as i'm not the center of attention. My old childhood friends
really are strangers to me now, I tried to reconnect with most of them but the
person I was back then isn't the person I am today.

I guess I just wanted some more insight into this. I certainly don't mean
anyone harm, but everytime I see a psychological profile of a serial killer, I
always see a part of them in me, the desire for time alone and the lack of
adherance to most social norms and the general distance with people both
physically and emotionally. My neighbors I'm pretty sure are afraid of me
simply because I seldom have any guests and I keep to myself for the most
part, especially after my last girlfriend moved out over a year ago. I really
don't know any of my neighbors very well at all even though I've lived here
over 5 years.

I want to be a normal, people enjoying person, I have that drive in me, but
something stops me. Not sure why I posted, but there are a lot of wise people
who post here so I'm curious what input they might have (good or bad).

------
BlytheSchuma
This all could have been prevented with a Government regulated IUD program.

------
ggrochow
Sucks I can't really read the article because some-custom scrolling or scripts
are breaking the vim-fx FF plugin and the normal-scrolling doesn't even move
the page.

~~~
nickysielicki
Firefox or Chrome?

If Chrome, give vimium a try. I have no such issues with Chromium 57.0.2987.98
+ vimium + ublock origin + umatrix. The only scripts running are served from
'*.tv2.no', but even with blocking those the article loads fine, albiet
without images.

vimium:
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/vimium/dbepggeogba...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/vimium/dbepggeogbaibhgnhhndojpepiihcmeb)

umatrix:
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/umatrix/ogfcmafjal...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/umatrix/ogfcmafjalglgifnmanfmnieipoejdcf)

ublock: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublock-
origin/cjpa...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublock-
origin/cjpalhdlnbpafiamejdnhcphjbkeiagm)

~~~
falsedan
> _FF_

FireFox

~~~
jwilk
Is Firefox (note that the latter f is lowercase) really such a long word that
it needs to be abbreviated?

~~~
falsedan
n

