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Jan. 20, 2012 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
08:26
2079 How to Make a Monster

A rebuttal to those who think that violence is inherent to human nature.

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Hi everybody, Stefan Molyneux from Freedom Main Radio.
Here's one of the most common questions that I get.
Steph, how do you work bald so it is dynamite sexy?
I'm sorry, I just can't tell you that.
But what I can do is answer another question, which is, what does a free society, a society without a government, what does a free society do with random serial killers, with, you know, crazy people who go in and start shooting people in malls and stuff?
My argument, my answer has been for many years, well, there are so many signs that this is going to happen, that any agency or group that was charged with protecting people from such events would find it very easy to identify such potential murderers and change the outcome of the direction, the momentum of their life.
And so I thought that I would provide some evidence for that.
Why not drop some evidence into the argument?
So here's a fellow who had a pretty wretched life, and let's follow it through.
So when he was two and a half, his parents divorced.
His father got sole custody by claiming that the mother was both a prostitute and a drug addict.
He was molested, sexually molested, raped in the first three years of his life.
He was hospitalized and medicated on antipsychotics at the age of three and a half because he was fighting with his daycare teachers, biting and kicking at them.
And at three and a half, he was diagnosed with depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.
The father, who has custody of the kids, calls the cops on the wife, has her falsely arrested and in child protection services many, many times.
And the wife abandons the son, the boy, from his age of 7 to 17.
And this is a pretty wretched beginning.
I think we can all pretty much understand that.
I mean, there was absolutely monstrous parents on every level.
And, you know, brain-destroying, Meds, for want of a better phrase, when he was incredibly young.
So, as an adult, he starts making threats of killing and hurting people.
He openly talks about suicide with his friends.
He's been on...
Psychotropic medication for many years.
His mother smokes marijuana with him a few months before what happens happens.
He's caught by police drinking underage in his Jeep.
He writes a suicide note but doesn't follow through.
He's caught cheating on his girlfriend.
His girlfriend catches him. He talks about suicide again, writes suicide notes.
He takes a gun and shows it to other children.
And I think it's the night before the events in question.
His mother notices, sort of thinks or believes that a gun is missing and goes to try and find it.
The son writes another suicide note.
His mother has...
Kicked him out of his house and thrown out all of his belongings.
And so this man, I guess a young man now, he's a teenager, he sees a friend from the mental hospital, says that his options are running out.
He's been staying with some people outside of his family.
He calls these people he's been staying with and apologizes for what he's about to do.
He calls his mother and apologizes for what he is about to do as well.
The woman, a mother figure in his life, says that he'd been rejected and treated like a dog all through his life by everyone.
And he says he's been a piece of shit his whole life.
He's going to take other pieces of shit out with him when he goes.
Now I'm going to be famous.
It's in a suicide note.
And... On December 5th, 2007, Robert Hawkins walked into the Von Moore Mall in Omaha, Nebraska, carrying an AK-47 rifle and 30 rounds of ammunition.
He gunned down eight people and wounded two others before shooting himself in what's been called the deadliest mall shooting in U.S. history.
People say that we're violent by nature.
This is just simply not true.
And look at the amount of unbelievably wretched, hellish, satanic abuse that this poor child had been subjected to his whole life.
Raped as an infant.
His parents divorce.
His psycho dad drives his mother away.
His mother abandons him. He's hospitalized at three!
At three!
For unbelievably violent and aggressive behavior with his childcare workers.
Of course, he's in the government system.
I think, basically, they were just trying to get him to adulthood so that they would no longer be liable.
But who's liable? I mean, if I kick and beat and abuse my dog to the point where the dog bites someone, I'm liable.
But this is not the case.
When we turn innocent, helpless, dependent children...
into brain-destroyed murder machines and turn them loose in society.
Are the parents responsible? Can the parents be sued for what they did to the child?
Can the father be sued? Can the mother be sued?
No. You see, because we are responsible for what we do to our pets, but not what we do to our children.
Did he receive any sympathy his whole life?
Did he receive any moral compassion and understanding?
Seems unlikely. Did he feel rage against a world where he was this badly treated and did not receive clear moral compassion his whole life?
Where the goal of his mental health care workers was to reintegrate him into the family that had destroyed his mind, wrecked his soul?
It is not human nature to turn out this way.
Look at the amount of pressure, violence, rape, medication, and destruction had to be wrought upon this boy's mind to turn him into a murderer.
Look at the number of cries for help, warning signs, threats of murder, suicidality.
From the age of three onwards, he was clearly saying, I want to kill people.
I want to harm people.
Can we really, really imagine that in a free society where people bought protection from such acts of violence that there would not be significant intervention in this kind of situation?
Of course there would be.
Of course there would be.
Because there would be greater compassion, a clear understanding that this kind of behavior on the part of a child is evidence of abuse on the part of adults.
I can't imagine that there would be a goal called let's reintegrate this child with the lunatics who destroyed him No.
The purpose of a shelter for abused women is not to ship the abused women back to the unrepentant abusers.
So all of this will be well understood, and the simple human compassion of how to help these poor people, these poor children, will be present.
And there will also be economic profit in keeping people safe.
From how these people become over time.
So don't tell me that violence is somehow human nature because then everybody would turn out this way without all of the abuse.
It is the abuse that makes the monsters.
And the abuse can be altered, changed, the children can be protected from it, but it takes a social commitment.
And it takes compassion for the young, and it takes a clear-eyed understanding of the effects of child abuse on society as a whole.
Violence is easy to cure from a practical standpoint.
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