Fleeting Contemplation of Violence
May 20, 2015 11:45 AM   Subscribe

Whenever I see a character on TV do something really loathsome, e.g. threaten someone's children, my gut reaction is often "Kill them!". I'm anti-violence, but have never been pressured to an extreme (no existential threats to me or family or blackmailing). And, even so, I can't say the notion's never arisen. I've never taken the slightest step, and prefer to think I wouldn't. But I'm ashamed it arises. Do others also imagine and immediately discard with shameful self-disapproval? Or do moral minds never go there?

Our society easily throws around utterances like "I could just kill you!" or "I could wring his neck!" The imagining of extreme violence seems neither rare nor taboo, so perhaps this answers my question. But even though I'm never plagued by or obsessed with such thoughts, I'm alarmed they'd even appear, even momentarily, among solutions for vexing problems. Does this make me a latent psycho?

If your answer is "no", consider: when a woman rejects me, I never think, for even an instant, "Well, hey, I could always rape her". If that thought ever came up, I'd drop everything for an immediate trip to the shrink. I think most people would agree on that; so why would murder as a consideration (however fleeting, unimplemented and swiftly rejected) be any more acceptable?

PS - For the record, I'm not presently contemplating anyone's murder (except maybe the fictional Ramsay Bolton). And my self-control's quite good. So don't worry about "setting me off" with your reply! :)
posted by Quisp Lover to Human Relations (1 answer total)

This post was deleted for the following reason: Heya, the mix of this being sort of chatty in construction and the really-not-necessary side mention of rape is making this seem like a bad idea for Ask. -- cortex

 
Everyone does this all the time. Here's an article on the subject: Forbidden Thinking.
posted by The Minotaur at 11:54 AM on May 20, 2015


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