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I am sure it happens many times a day, somewhere... Crooked people aren't hard to find. Always someone out there who'll take advantage of you.

Humans are monsters. Can anybody be surprised at this??

Edit: Those people seem to be mentally deficient. Now that is not to say that all people who are monstrous to other people are mentally deficient. And I don't say that to excuse them either. But what I am saying is that in this particular case, I think this is a group of mentally deficient and morally degenerate people. Sort of like Deliverance.

Even 100, to 1000, to 10,000 years from now, maybe forever; I doubt anyone will ever be able to decipher, decode, translate, and make understandable what went on in this particular incident (and yes, a million other incidents that happen around the world today, and that have happened in the world before--WWII, anyone?).

What was the saying? It's from somewhere...I don't remember, but the saying is essentially something "Capable of great good, is capable of equally great, or greater, evil" or some such...that's not a direct quote. For humanity, for all the good we can do and are capable of, it seems like whenever one or two people do something bad like what these people did, the whole species takes 4 steps backwards. Sometimes I wonder if we're more barbaric now when we're sentient and evolved, or if we're more barbaric before when everything was instinct and primitive?

If you think about it compared to non-sentient animals who only do things out of NEED; they kill to EAT; they sleep, they wake, they reproduce (some take care of their young), they kill to eat for themselves, for their fellow-species, etc.

If you think about us, at the level we're at, sure we have opposable thumbs, we have medicine, science, comfortable housing. Then the flipside; we have poverty, we have war, we have nuclear and biological weapons, we kill for MONEY, for SEX, for a piece of land, for pride, for reputation, and worse, some of us kill for the SAKE of killing. For everytime we try to do something right someone cheats; for everytime we try to be honest someone lies; for everytime we try to create someone destroys.

Sure, one can make an argument that some animals share some of our traits; killing for territory, killing for a mate. But the difference? There's a balance. Animals, the environment, there's a balance between the good they do and the bad they do, and everything has a reason. Us? We've thrown that out the window.

That's why we have sayings like 'The never ending battle'; because, really, it is never ending. I fear that no matter how evolved we get there will always be people like these six people in the news.

You know, Ethan, you have a point. But there is also a flipside. The capacity for great evil is also the capacity for great good. We human beings don't operate on the level of instinct anymore; we have the ability to think, to reason, to behave in ways that our basic programming does not dictate. Sometimes people use such gifts for evil, but sometimes, and, in my opinion, far more often, we use those gifts for good. In nature, the weak are killed by the strong, to weed them out of the gene pool and reduce competition for scarce resources. Humans care for their weak, their sick, their wounded. Poverty is not a classification that lasts long in the animal world, and while it seems like it's not getting any better here in the human world, it can, and it does. When I was doing my Public Health Nursing clinical, I saw firsthand what the homeless go through, and how there's not enough money, not enough funding, not enough anything to go around, to help all those who need helping. I saw how people subsisted on handouts, and sometimes less than that, while the rich get richer and spit on the poor for not having the same opportunities of birth. But I also saw what good people are doing to help those less fortunate. There's a free-to-low-cost health clinic in La Crosse where I did my training, where doctors and nurses and dentists and all sorts of professionals donate their time AND supplies to help those who can't help themselves. There's a clinic being built in my hometown right now that will be for the benefit of the homeless and poor, and I intend to volunteer my time there when it is finished.

My point is, the human race is too big to lump everyone together, and too dynamic to judge everyone based on the well-publicized acts of a few. There are good people out there. We are no more evil today than we were a thousand, a hundred, or even ten years ago. We are what we choose to be. People will do evil. People will do good. The only thing that any one person has any control over is if he will act on his good impulses or his evil ones.

A better one is Heinlein's: Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.