Darrell brooks and the nature of evil

[LoudmouthMormon]

Has anyone else been following the Darrell brooks trial? He’s the guy who drove through a parade in Michigan, intentionally running over a gazillion white people and killing several.  That event had sort of a mitigating impact on all the 2020 craziness, because he was both a Black Lives Matter supporter, advocated for violence against white people, and actually was on unreasonably low bail for allegedly trying to run down his girlfriend.

Anyway, the court case was televised, he did his absolute best sovereign citizen defense, which amounted to absolutely squat. Found guilty of all the counts, will be in jail for the rest of his life with no possibility of parole.

The judge, who has been a paragon of patience this whole time, was finally able to talk about a few things. She talked about the nature of evil. This is worth a watch to anyone interested in topics of justice in human evil.

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRQxpQ6m/

[Kenngo1969]

46 minutes ago, LoudmouthMormon said:

... He’s the guy who drove through a parade in Michigan ... 

Wisconsin.

[Calm]

1 hour ago, LoudmouthMormon said:

intentionally running over a gazillion white people and killing several.

It was a crowd at a Christmas parade and last I checked those weren’t only attended by whites.  It seems to me he didn’t actually care what race anyone was if that was the target he chose even if death to whites was his war cry.  His criminal history has plenty of diversity in his victims.  Seems what he wanted most was just to hurt people. 

Edited November 19, 2022 by Calm

[Kenngo1969]

This is lengthier, but I think it's important because Her Honor names all of the victims.

 

[LoudmouthMormon]

2 hours ago, Calm said:

It seems to me he didn’t actually care what race anyone was if that was the target he chose even if death to whites was his war cry. 

If I wanted this to be about race, as much as you don’t want it to be about race, I would have some pretty ugly things to say.

But I posted this, get folks’ thoughts on the nature of evil.  Something I do whenever I encounter someone in the justice of corrections field, is ask them “does evil exist?“

I tend to get 2 kinds of answers. The first kind, people point out that most of what they see is sick, or mentally ill, or broken, or brought about by drugs, or a result of abuse, but almost zero actual evil. The other response I get: “oh sure, we release evil into the neighborhood on Tuesdays!“

we knew evil exists, but it’s harder to tell if evil people actually exist.

Edited November 19, 2022 by LoudmouthMormon

[LoudmouthMormon]

1 hour ago, Kenngo1969 said:

This is lengthier, but I think it's important because Her Honor names all of the victims.

 

I don’t see the link…

[Kenngo1969]

1 minute ago, LoudmouthMormon said:

I don’t see the link…

Sorry.  I'm not sure what's going on.   It shows up for me as an embedded video.  Try this.

https://youtu.be/C-98ufy-eyI

 

[Kenngo1969]

A "worker" receives one's wages from the one the worker "lists to obey": The wages of righteousness are Life Eternal, while the wages of sin are misery and death.  See Alma 3:26-27.  I have no doubt that Darrell Brooks has had a hard life, most likely with mental illness playing a central role. 

There are at least two kinds of mental illness, broadly speaking: One type is that in which the sufferer knows the results of his illness visit pain and other harmful consequences on those around him, he regrets those effects and results, and wishes to mitigate and to atone for them as much as possible.  And the other type is one in which a person knows that the results of his illness visit pain and other consequences on those around him ... but he doesn't care.  Pain isn't an easy thing to deal with: Some of us internalize it, perhaps to our own detriment, and some of us, as Darrell Brooks did, externalize it, to the great detriment of many others. 

In the Doctrine and Covenants, the Lord tells us that when we receive light, continue in God, and receive more light, that light grows brighter and brighter "until the perfect day" (Doctrine and Covenants 50:24).  If it is possible to receive light and to grow in light, certainly, also, the opposite is possible, to receive darkness and to grow in darkness.  Apparently, the latter is what happened to Darrell Brooks.

The tricky thing is that, at one time, we may find ourselves in the first camp described above, while at another time, we might find ourselves in the second camp described above.  This state of affairs may even describe the Darrell Brookses of the world (though, certainly, I'm not excusing his choice to externalize his pain in the manner and to the extent he did, given how many other people he harmed), and unfortunately, he has spent most of his time (though, certainly, to what extent by choice and to what extent by circumstance may be argued endlessly) in the second camp.

Given humanity's endless complexity, judging wisely and righteously requires not only Solomonic wisdom but omniscience (or at least, omniscience to the degree such a trait is possible).  Whatever mercy God or his fellow man might be inclined to show Darrell Brooks, the only option available to the state is to see to it that he "render[s] unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's" (see Matthew 22:15-22): Otherwise, in a worldly sense, mercy would rob justice, and if that were allowed to happen, God would cease to be God (see Alma 42:25).

As an irrelevant aside, I found Mr. Brooks' questioning of his former girlfriend (seemingly endless irrelevant tangents and meaningless attempts at legalese notwithstanding), Erika Patterson, interesting: To me, it seemed to suggest that she has more than a passing familiarity and relationship (of some sort) with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  

[MorningStar]

I hope the judge gets a very nice vacation after that nonsense! I caught parts of it and felt like my blood pressure was rising. What a turd. 

[rodheadlee]

Whoever killed those kids in Moscow Idaho was Pure Evil.

[Kenngo1969]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_lmlOPHYi0&ab_channel=LiveNOWfromFOX

According to Judge Dorow, circa 6:30, whatever behavioral health diagnoses Darrell Brooks received, in her opinion they did not play a role in what he did (I take that to mean that she does not consider them to be significant mitigating factors). She mentioned Antisocial Personality Disorder. The Mayo Clinic has this to say about APD:

Quote

 

Antisocial personality disorder, sometimes called sociopathy, is a mental disorder in which a person consistently shows no regard for right and wrong and ignores the rights and feelings of others. People with antisocial personality disorder tend to antagonize, manipulate or treat others harshly or with callous indifference. They show no guilt or remorse for their behavior.

Source: https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/antisocial-personality-disorder/symptoms-causes/syc-20353928

 

I am not, of course, any kind of, or anything approaching, an expert, but from what I have seen of Mr. Brooks, this description seems to fit him quite well. It seems to be the sort of mental illness I mentioned before, in which those diagnosed with it are perfectly well aware that their behavior is wrong—they simply do not care. Circa 14:30, Judge Dorow begins examining Mr. Brooks’s efforts to evade responsibility for what he did (untruths, attempts to alter his appearance, apparently in an attempt to evade detection, and so on), which show consciousness of guilt.

Circa 19:00 Judge Dorow discusses the criteria for sociopathy from the DSM-V. While by no means is this an attempt by me to toot my own horn, circa 20:00, Judge Dorow begins delineating the difference, essentially, between the two types of mental illness I discuss, mentioning cases in which she has dealt, for example, with people with schizophrenia. Circa 23:35: “There are times when good people do bad things, but there are many times when evil people do bad things. … Medication cannot cure evil.” Whatever mental illnesses Mr. Brooks has, “the bottom line is that none of [them] caused you to do what you did on November 20, 2021.”

 

[Calm]

3 hours ago, Kenngo1969 said:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_lmlOPHYi0&ab_channel=LiveNOWfromFOX

According to Judge Dorow, circa 6:30, whatever behavioral health diagnoses Darrell Brooks received, in her opinion they did not play a role in what he did (I take that to mean that she does not consider them to be significant mitigating factors). She mentioned Antisocial Personality Disorder. The Mayo Clinic has this to say about APD:

I am not, of course, any kind of, or anything approaching, an expert, but from what I have seen of Mr. Brooks, this description seems to fit him quite well. It seems to be the sort of mental illness I mentioned before, in which those diagnosed with it are perfectly well aware that their behavior is wrong—they simply do not care. Circa 14:30, Judge Dorow begins examining Mr. Brooks’s efforts to evade responsibility for what he did (untruths, attempts to alter his appearance, apparently in an attempt to evade detection, and so on), which show consciousness of guilt.

Circa 19:00 Judge Dorow discusses the criteria for sociopathy from the DSM-V. While by no means is this an attempt by me to toot my own horn, circa 20:00, Judge Dorow begins delineating the difference, essentially, between the two types of mental illness I discuss, mentioning cases in which she has dealt, for example, with people with schizophrenia. Circa 23:35: “There are times when good people do bad things, but there are many times when evil people do bad things. … Medication cannot cure evil.” Whatever mental illnesses Mr. Brooks has, “the bottom line is that none of [them] caused you to do what you did on November 20, 2021.”

 

If he is a sociopath (certainly sounds like one to me), why wouldn’t that be seen as a mental illness? (Not being argumentative, asking for clarification)

[Meadowchik]

I'm more concerned about navigating good versus evil than knowing if a person is evil. Good people can cause evil to happen and do evil things. 

In the case of your OP example it's not so important to be able to say a man is evil, as it is to say they have shown themselves to be a danger to society.

Human beings are social creatures. We need each other. Navigating good from evil can be complex and also the most difficult part of socialising. Learning to draw a boundary is a hard lesson. If I can say no to an evil thing someone does or suggests, then it doesn't really matter if they are Evil or not. One danger of trying to categorize a person as Evil is that we then forget to guard against the evil which occurs on a more banal level. Neglecting our loved ones is an important example of banal evil as it is so easy to do and can be so harmful.

[teddyaware]

16 hours ago, Calm said:

It was a crowd at a Christmas parade and last I checked those weren’t only attended by whites.  It seems to me he didn’t actually care what race anyone was if that was the target he chose even if death to whites was his war cry.  His criminal history has plenty of diversity in his victims.  Seems what he wanted most was just to hurt people. 

In this day and age, there’s no excuse for making assumptions and remaining uninformed about almost any subject. In this particular case, all one has to do is perform a Google search under the search terms “Darrell Brooks racist” and scores of articles and ‘search hits’ appear that combine to leave little doubt in one’s mind that Brooks was motivated to deliberately plow into that Christmas parade crowd because it was mostly composed of white people. After learning about Brook’s virulently racist history and the fact that Waukesha, Wisconsin is only 3% black (another thing I looked up), it seems highly unlikely his attack wasn’t motivated by his hatred of white people.

[teddyaware]

4 hours ago, Calm said:

If he is a sociopath (certainly sounds like one to me), why wouldn’t that be seen as a mental illness? (Not being argumentative, asking for clarification)

Look up “personality disorder vs mental illness” and it will help to answer your question. In psychiatry, sociopathy is considered a personality disorder and not a mental illness. But to be honest, in this case saying Brooks has a personality disorder an not a mental illness seems to be a distinction without a difference.

[Calm]

2 hours ago, teddyaware said:

Look up “personality disorder vs mental illness” and it will help to answer your question. In psychiatry, sociopathy is considered a personality disorder and not a mental illness. But to be honest, in this case saying Brooks has a personality disorder an not a mental illness seems to be a distinction without a difference.

I was wondering about Ken’s opinion, not the experts, which is not settled btw***.  Personality disorders often may be classified as mental illness.  Iirc, it is the degree with which it interferes with functionality or control.  Been too long since my clinical psych classes and these days I am more interested in Individual viewpoints.

I should have phrased it better.  I am interested in people’s personal views about accountability interacting with mental disorder.

”in this case saying Brooks has a personality disorder an not a mental illness seems to be a distinction without a difference.”

This seems to be the case often enough when it comes to evil it makes me wonder how much of a difference there is even at levels where there is significant control.

***https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/the-british-journal-of-psychiatry/article/distinction-between-personality-disorder-and-mental-illness/F4FC446AEB38B5704ED132245F86E93B

Quote

Whichever of the four concepts or definitions is chosen, it is impossible to conclude with confidence that personality disorders are, or are not, mental illnesses; there are ambiguities in the definitions and basic information about personality disorders is lacking.

Conclusions

The historical reasons for regarding personality disorders as fundamentally different from mental illnesses are being undermined by both clinical and genetic evidence. Effective treatments for personality disorders would probably have a decisive influence on psychiatrists' attitudes.

 

 

Edited November 20, 2022 by Calm

[Kenngo1969]

6 hours ago, Calm said:

If he is a sociopath (certainly sounds like one to me), why wouldn’t that be seen as a mental illness? (Not being argumentative, asking for clarification)

Oh, I'm not saying Darrell Brooks is not mentally ill: Clearly, he is.  However, I maintain the dichotomy I introduced earlier in the thread.  (Perhaps the "mental illness v. personality disorder" is a superior classification [especially since it's the one favored by experts, which, as I have admitted freely, I am not], but, as I said, there is mental illness that reduces or removes one's culpability for one's behavior and mental illness that does not.  Darrell Brooks suffers from the latter, not from the former: "Knows it varies from the norm and wishes to change it" versus "knows it varies from the norm but doesn't care because the person is [manipulative, conniving, scheming, uses it to get what (in this case) he wants, etc.")

 

Edited November 20, 2022 by Kenngo1969

[Calm]

On 11/19/2022 at 2:39 PM, LoudmouthMormon said:

I wanted this to be about race, as much as you don’t want it to be about race,

I don’t care whether or not his intent was to kill whites only or whether he just wanted to kill.  I only care his intent is represented accurately.  It is certainly possible that he was incoherent enough that he didn’t realize POC would be in the crowd.  His history shows he was into beating up blacks at times though, so my guess is he just didn’t care who he hurt.

But why mention “a gazillion white people”? Why not the likely more accurate “people” since spectators to a Christmas parade in Waukesha, Wisconsin likely were not all white given the city is over 20% nonwhite?  It is an odd inclusion. 

Edited November 21, 2022 by Calm

[Calm]

1 minute ago, Kenngo1969 said:

Oh, I'm not saying Darrell Brooks is not mentally ill: Clearly, he is.  However, I maintain the dichotomy I introduced earlier in the thread.  (Perhaps the "mental illness v. personality disorder" is a superior classification [especially since it's the one favored by experts, which, as I have admitted freely, I am not], but, as I said, there is mental illness that reduces or removes one's culpability for one's behavior and mental illness that does not.  Darrell Brooks suffers from the latter, not from the former: "Knows it varies from the norm and wishes to change it" versus "knows it varies from the norm but doesn't care because the person is [manipulative, conniving, scheming, uses it to get what (in this case) he wants, etc."

 

I personally don’t believe mentall illness vs personality disorder is a superior classification and it is not favored by all experts in my experience. I prefer categorizing by degree of impairment myself.

[SeekingUnderstanding]

It seems that good and evil acts are easy to identify. Good or evil people would require Godlike knowledge not available to mere mortals IMO. 

[BlueDreams]

On 11/19/2022 at 11:26 AM, LoudmouthMormon said:

Has anyone else been following the Darrell brooks trial? He’s the guy who drove through a parade in Michigan, intentionally running over a gazillion white people and killing several.  That event had sort of a mitigating impact on all the 2020 craziness, because he was both a Black Lives Matter supporter, advocated for violence against white people, and actually was on unreasonably low bail for allegedly trying to run down his girlfriend.

Anyway, the court case was televised, he did his absolute best sovereign citizen defense, which amounted to absolutely squat. Found guilty of all the counts, will be in jail for the rest of his life with no possibility of parole.

The judge, who has been a paragon of patience this whole time, was finally able to talk about a few things. She talked about the nature of evil. This is worth a watch to anyone interested in topics of justice in human evil.

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRQxpQ6m/

i gotta admit, this first half is still a really weird start. I don't think I agree with the synapsis....particularly since the so-called mitigating event happened well over a year after the "2020 craziness" I think you're referencing. I don't think I even really associated the two much. I haven't followed the case, though what I do see is more about him are intermittent posts and links to hebrew israelites (basically a black centered hate group) and a propensity for more extreme/conspiratorial beliefs.

I mention this in brief, in part because this comment had me thinking about people's tendency to connect broad movements to evil. As in this belief/movement/faith tradition believes or does XYZ and is thus at least in part culpable for the evil a person exhibits. IRL I find this oversimplified to the obsurd. Most the time I see that people who've been corrupted tend to either corrupt general institutions/movements to fit their desires or gravitate to groups that lend toward extreme views in the first place (examples include hate groups, conspiratorial views, etc). 

Anyways I find the formation of evil interesting. It's sometimes on the periphery of the work I do and I still remember the first time I was confronted with a person who was evil as a teen.

 

22 hours ago, LoudmouthMormon said:

But I posted this, get folks’ thoughts on the nature of evil.  Something I do whenever I encounter someone in the justice of corrections field, is ask them “does evil exist?“

I tend to get 2 kinds of answers. The first kind, people point out that most of what they see is sick, or mentally ill, or broken, or brought about by drugs, or a result of abuse, but almost zero actual evil. The other response I get: “oh sure, we release evil into the neighborhood on Tuesdays!“

we knew evil exists, but it’s harder to tell if evil people actually exist.

Both in the video and in general I think the biggest problem is defining what is the difference between a good or even troubled person doing an evil thing and a person where evil is a descriptor of them. I decided a long time ago that I don't believe in a purely evil person. As in a person that was "born bad" per se. It's theologically non-doctrinal and pragmatically I just haven't met an evil baby. That's not a thing. I think of evil people as those who proactively and consistently take on evil actions, thoughts, and deeds as their preferred means of existing. There can be degrees of this as well. Many have limits or distorted moral codes that give some semblance of "good." For some this is a façade...usually means to reduce social ramifications they don't want or a means to validate themselves by insisting that they aren't "that bad" because they refuse to go down certain evil paths. To me it can be a sign that they know and still respond to some good and fuels my first believe that no one is born bad.

So for me evil people exist, and it's not super hard for me to see them. I've met and heard stories of them more than once and they follow strong themes/patterns. They're like black holes of existence...seeking means and methods to satisfy their impulses without any form of culpability. They tend to distort light around them, sucking in good ideas, beliefs, and institutions to fit their desires. And in that process they can become destructive to those who have the misfortune of knowing them. Sometimes, like this man, via extreme violence. More often in less obvious ways, such as through manipulation and emotional/sexual degradation.  Evil environments increase the likelihood that someone will choose and/or become evil. Personally, I think that's what I see from the story of the flood in the PoGP. A people got so culturally distorted that the capacity for good to grow from them became basically impossible. This makes them incompatible to life, which is innately good IMHO.

That said, it's possible for evil people to change...or for people with a propensity to some version of evil to change to some degree. I don't know if this guy fits that bill. But I've seen people truly shift from a pattern of evil to a pattern of good. It's not easy and the more entrenched and dark it gets, the harder it is to move from that. Still, it's possible. MY goal when confronted by evil is to give the opportunity for someone to change while making sure that they are not harming others around them, both in the process or in their decision not to choose change.

 

With luv,

BD  

Edited November 20, 2022 by BlueDreams

[Kenngo1969]

4 hours ago, Calm said:

I personally don’t believe mentall illness vs personality disorder is a superior classification and it is not favored by all experts in my experience. I prefer categorizing by degree of impairment myself.

"Impairment," perhaps, is in the eye of the beholder.  If I had to guess, I would say that Darrell Brooks doesn't see himself as "impaired" because, it seems to him, his way of doing things (manipulating others, blaming them for his misfortunes and misdeeds, taking advantage of them, and so on, ad infinitum) has gotten him what he wants.  In light of that circumstance, why change?

[3DOP]

Blue Dreams wrote:

"I decided a long time ago that I don't believe in a purely evil person."

Emphatic yes! I reject "total depravity" (John Calvin) too.

The "nature" of evil is literally nothing. The absence of good health is an evil, but it is not something. Evil merely observes a good that is absent. The same may be said in the moral realm. Without goodness, there is no such thing as evil. It makes me happy to understand that evil cannot "exist" except as a lack of the good. I will go further than Blue Dreams, I do not believe in a purely evil thing.

"And God saw all the things that he had made, and they were very good."

---Gen. 1:31

Edited November 20, 2022 by 3DOP

[Kenngo1969]

4 hours ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

It seems that good and evil acts are easy to identify. Good or evil people would require Godlike knowledge not available to mere mortals IMO. 

On the one hand, at least in many cases, there is more good even in the worst of us and more bad in even the best of us than many of us might suspect.  On the other hand, in at least some cases, evil is as evil does.

[Raingirl]

On 11/19/2022 at 1:39 PM, LoudmouthMormon said:

If I wanted this to be about race, as much as you don’t want it to be about race, I would have some pretty ugly things to say.

But I posted this, get folks’ thoughts on the nature of evil.  Something I do whenever I encounter someone in the justice of corrections field, is ask them “does evil exist?“

I tend to get 2 kinds of answers. The first kind, people point out that most of what they see is sick, or mentally ill, or broken, or brought about by drugs, or a result of abuse, but almost zero actual evil. The other response I get: “oh sure, we release evil into the neighborhood on Tuesdays!“

we knew evil exists, but it’s harder to tell if evil people actually exist.

I think Judge Dorow did an outstanding job of explaining that any supposed mental illness that this murderer may have had (He was found competent by several professionals), had absolutely nothing to do with his actions. She also did an outstanding job of explaining why she believes these were the evil actions of an evil person. This murderer is a very clear example of a narcissist. I could go on (I’ve watched the majority of the trial), but this murderer doesn’t deserve any more attention.  

Edited November 21, 2022 by Raingirl