Originally Posted by powerclown

Doesn't have to be political figures, replace Roman Polanski with anyone else reviled or scorned. Ex-husbands, ex-wives, ex-girlfriends, ex-boyfriends, the guy that ran over your dog or insulted your mother. The "thin line of civilization"... everyone has a breaking point, even Tully.

Originally Posted by powerclown

My condolences on your personal situation Tully, but here's my thing: in the absence of a threat of punishment, people are more than willing and capable of the utmost violence. I think very, very, very few people are *innately* non-violent, if any. I'm talking about on a gut emotional instinctual level, not an intellectual level which can explain away the sun in the sky or perhaps thoughts of committing violence. All it takes is the right trigger situation to bring it out, and all that keeps it in is the social contract that allows people - who biologically speaking are nothing more than carnivores/hunters/gatherers - to live side by side in large groups relatively peacefully without killing eachother. Take prison inmates for example, human beings all of them. I think we are all aware of what they do to child rapists in prison, or in other words, in the absence of a threat of violence stopping them from acting on their emotions.

I understand the concept of letting go of one's anger or denying one's emotions as an act of self-preservation but it doesn't mean those emotions disappear. I think this relates to 'wanting to get revenge'...I think it may even be more healthy psychologically than repressing perfectly understandable and warranted thoughts of revenge, but again, the social contract forbids it. When I hear people say they 'just want justice' in a benign way for a particularly heinous crime committed, I hear their heads talking not their hearts.