Are you overly-sensitive to images of cruelty?

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I know I am. I was watching "Henry...potrait of a serial killer" last night. The movie is loosely based on the serial killers Henry Lee Lucas and Otis Toole. As always after seeing images of such monstrous sadism, I am actually traumatized today. I was unable to fall asleep until 5:00am this morning and I just can't get it out of my mind. Now ofcourse the obvious question is; "then why do watch things like this if they bother you so much"? It is a dichotomy between being utterly sickened by the cruelty of some people and being fascinated by it. I am just desperate to understand why some people are so sadistic. I know enough about psychology and in our times at least, there are plenty of plausible explantions
within the boundaries of nature and nurture. Nevertheless, all the materialistic and derministic explantions in the world just serve to generate more questions in my mind. Assuming they are valid, it would suggest something about the fundamental nature of reality. It would suggest that we are nothing more than products of dead, mechanistic, non-conscious forces that neither know nor care anything about suffering, injustice, etc...It would suggest that there are no rewards for behavior most of us call "good" and no punishments for behavior most of us see as "evil". I am not naive about any of this. From all the scientific evidence at our disposal as well as my own observations over the years, existence just seems objectively meaningless. I adopted an existential outlook on life a long time ago...but I must admit that it's been very little comfort to me overall. I feel that there MUST be something *more* to existence than the chaotic and pointless by-products of physics-chemistry-biology. All the same, I have NEVER heard a remotely acceptable "immaterial" answer for the problems of "evil" and suffering and believe me....i've looked under EVERY philosophical, spiritual and mystical nook and cranny. So until some alternate answers are forthcoming from "elsewhere" (whatever the nature of some potential "elsewhere" may be) I feel the only rational, albeit unpleasant, answers emanate from the perspectives of scientific materialism and hard determinism.


In the interest of full disclosure...I have been diagnosed with NLD...not Asperger's or anything else *officially* on the spec. My own personal life is troubling enough these days and I realize it's pointless to make matters worse by getting upset over the unspeakable horrors of existence which I can obviously do little or nothing to change. But like some unconsciously masochistic fool or something....I am still compelled to cry out for answers to questions that have eluded humankind since it's inception. If all this misery, hatred, cruelty, suffering and injustice is simply the unavoidable result of a non-conscious cosmos, why on earth do we continue to justify it? Why don't we just stop procreating and allow the human species to become extinct? To my mind, it would seem like the most merciful thing to do. When pondering both the wreckage of history and the present, I must ask if this is truly the best we can do as a species. If so, i'm afraid I feel that our best just isn't good enough.


Eh well....sorry....I know i'm just babbling right now. I am so depressed, anxious, confused, etc....about everything right now. I feel like this inexpressible anguish has cost me 30 IQ points. My mind seems like an infinite whirlwind of disconnected thoughts, images, emotions and focusing on any one idea seems impossible at this time.

Basically.... i'm just wondering how many of you feel literally traumatized by the horrors in life which do not affect you personally and which you can do nothing about.

My mother went to the casino where they bet on horse racing. I tagged along to kill a day of my life when I saw the horses getting ready to race. I broke down and started to cry because a huge percentage of race horses are ran until they go lame/lose use of a foot. Mom thought I was going for a crap but I cried for a half hour straight in the bathroom. I'm normally quite 'robotic' to people but I cry because I'm ashamed of what the human race does to itself and other living creature. It's is true we are omnivores, but we are so cruel and ret*d. Why couldn't I have come back as a monarch butterly or an ant?

I am not bothered by scenes of violence and destruction exercised upon people who -deserved- to be destroyed by violence. In fact I see such scenes as portrayals of justice.

In five more days I will celebrate the destruction of Hiroshima and three days after that I will celebrate the destruction of Nagasaki.

Those who sow the wind, will eventually reap the whirlwind.

ruveyn

^^ What????

You are not old enough to have been in Korea, and too old to have been in Vietnam. What's with the anger?

I feel like the OP. And I can't understand, for the life of me, why so many people have such deep pleasure hurting others horrendously. I don't understand this world.

images no offense crying at some race horses that human nature love the only dominant feeling in humanity and history is violence death and persucution, acts of justice or savagery it makes me feel alive

Sadly...nature doesn't seem much less cruel than human beings. Okay...we can forgive nature on the grounds that it "knoweth not" what it does. So maybe sadistic human beings (at least ones who aren't appear to be suffering from defacto mental retardation or a serious brain disorder like schizophrenia) KNOW the difference between "good and evil". But if we look at this from strictly scientific and deterministic angle, it DOES seem like they really can't HELP what they do.

If sadistic psychopaths are afflicted with some neuropsychological abnormality as well as past traumas, can we be sure they would've been sadisitc psychopaths if these things were not a factor? Ted Bundy was one serial killer who did not appear to have a significantly traumatic upbringing. Still... we don't know what we would've uncovered if his brain had been rigorously examined.


It is emotionally more convenient for me to believe that anti-social behavior and sadism stems from some mysterious vacuum of "evil" and "free will" we know nothing about in any remotely objective sense.


Emotions are usually always irrational though and as much as I hate to say it, all the best evidence we have at our disposal suggests that humans possess no such thing as any genuine "free will".


It's a horrible thing to ponder IMO but nonetheless. It's horrible to think that maybe, but for the "grace" of our own neurobiology/life experiences, any one of us could be one of these "monsters" we find so despicable.

I was very sensitive to this as a child, became less so in my twenties, and am now back to being very sensitive concerning it. I remember some occasions as a child being very traumatized when viewing such scenes. One time it lasted for years.

actually clone you fail to see one vital point they don't realise and can't help it THEY ENJOY IT
look at the list
fred west
bundy
CHARLEY MANSON
jack the ripper
vlad peppish
gengkis khan

Few things really faze me. If anything I'm less sensitive than most people, but that doesn't mean I enjoy watching it. I can be a bit upset at the thought of someone who's vulnerable or fragile being hurt by another. Elderly people would be a good example.

Such things don't really bother me. As far as i'm concerned, if you aren't going to do anything to prevent it, you have no right to get upset about it anyway.