On Monday, May 22, another senseless act of mass killing took place when a bomb went off during a concert in Manchester, England.
I believe the death toll at last count was 22. Thousands of people went to a pop concert that night by Ariana Grande (I know, I’m not sure which one she is either), and the last thing they expected was to be the main event story on the late-night news.
That same weekend, which was the long weekend for us here in Canuck country, I myself attended two separate events where I was under the same roof as thousands of other people; complete strangers that were there to enjoy a show or a game just like I was. Night one was seeing a comedian perform at TCU Place, and then night two was the Saskatchewan Rush game at SaskTel Centre.
I’m lucky. I came home on both nights. Twenty-two people in Manchester didn’t.
What exactly makes these people tick, the kind that think getting a hold of a bomb, going to a very public place and hitting the green light is the answer to any problems? What *exactly* makes a killer?
A 2015 article on TIME magazine’s website shared information on a study that was done to see how the brain reacts to “murder made moral”, such as the kind of legal homicide that occurs in times of war.
Psychologist Pascal Molenberghs of Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, recruited 48 subjects and asked them to submit to functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which could scan their brains while they watched three different scenarios on video loops.
In one, a soldier would be killing an enemy soldier; in the next, the soldier would be killing a civilian; and in the last, used as a control, the soldier would shoot a weapon but hit no one. In all cases, the subjects saw the scene from the shooter's point of view. At the end of each loop, they were asked "Who did you shoot?" and were required to press one of three buttons on a keypad indicating soldier, civilian or no one—a way of making certain they knew what they'd done. After the scans, they were also asked to rate on a 1 to 7 scale how guilty they felt in each scenario.
In Molenbergh's study, there was consistently greater activity in the lateral portion of the OFC when subjects imagined shooting civilians than when they shot soldiers. There was also more coupling between the OFC and the TPJ—with the OFC effectively saying ‘I feel guilty’ and the TPJ effectively answering ‘You should’. Significantly, the degree of OFC activation also correlated well with how bad the subjects reported they felt on their 1 to 7 scale, with greater activity in the brains of people who reported feeling greater guilt.
I guess we’re still waiting for the day when these kinds of tests can effectively weed out those who are ‘justified’ in their destructive actions.
We leave the safety and comfort of our homes and go to these public events such as games and concerts because we want to enjoy ourselves and be entertained; to forget the everyday, menial problems of our daily lives and just have fun for a few hours.
We don't go to these events and think that something as heinous as a terrorist suicide bombing can take place. But as this world is so keen on showing us these days, a demonstration of true evil can happen at any given time.
It's scary to think that you just don't know what your fellow human beings can be capable of. Perhaps what's scarier is realizing that you stop being surprised with each vile, horrific act of killing because humanity has reached a point where we almost come to expect it when we turn on the news.
I'm done being shocked whenever a low-life, disgusting excuse for a human being decides that innocent lives need to be wiped off the face of the earth. These days, I'm just mad.
For this week, that’s been the Ruttle Report.
