Comments on: Crimes of Passion

By: rumar

rumar — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 18:49:36 +0000

“I fear our fragile God-given capacity for empathy is under siege” GOD GIVEN is the key.

“I fear we are at risk for losing respect for one another and for human life”
today’s society doesn’t respect human life.

I believe our society has reached its apex is now headed down to disaster.

By: Bob

Bob — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 17:15:53 +0000

You neglect to mention the role of easily available guns. As you state, “crimes of passion are nothing new.” We have to assume that there will always be unstable people wanting to commit an act of violence. I am a survivor of the 101 California Street multiple murders in San Francisco in 1993. That super unstable person’s delusional fantasies involved the use of the high-powered weapons he had seen in movies and in fact used. Of course there are always murder weapons. Kitchen knives are ubiquitous. But you can do a lot more damage a lot more quickly and easily with a gun. If you remove guns from the “nuts + guns” formula, lives will be saved.

By: Mac

Mac — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 04:12:03 +0000

Excellent post, Dr. Ablow, and Claire, I loved your response!

I (unfortunately) think that Dr. A may be correct about the erosion of empathy in today’s society.
I grew up watching “The Three Stooges”, “Tom and Jerry”, “The Roadrunner”, and other extremely violent (albeit comedic) shows and cartoons. The Brothers Grimm wrote some pretty gnarly tales even longer ago…

But the amount of real violence and disregard for others seems to have reached new levels in recent years. One theory might be that there are many more people in the world now, so the ratio might still be the same, but I kind of doubt that.

I am convinced that the “existential panic” of having nothing real inside (fuelled by the constant, and apparently welcome, onslaught of “reality” TV, and all the true-self-negating options on the internet–the staged YouTube beatings are particularly disturbing…) is indeed a huge part of this very sad lack of empathy in our society today.

We all do really need to get back to being authentic, and let the dramatic entertainment be what it used to be: dramatic entertainment.

By: Claire Huolihan

Claire Huolihan — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 03:58:46 +0000

I hope you are wrong too but unfortunately many people are afraid to be alone, to know their own mind as you say. They surround themselves with all the varied audio and visual media we have now instead of taking advantage of quite moments to comtemplate life’s mysteries and their own thoughts about anything under the sun. Alot of people are into celebrity worship too much and can’t see or appreciate the wonderful people around them in their everyday life. At any given time, any one of the many people we know can support us in our times of need. We don’t need just one special someone to prop us up constantly. We need networks of support at times and we need to learn to stand alone sometimes too. I heard today in the news about some teenagers who have formed a group called “Do Hard Things” (or something like that). It has to do with taking on challenges, learning to grow up and not just slide thru adolesence and young adulthood. I wish them well.