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Casebook: Jack the Ripper - Message Boards » General Discussion » Draculas, Werewolves, and Vlad, or Modern Society or? « Previous Next »

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Diana
Chief Inspector
Username: Diana

Post Number: 727
Registered: 2-2003
Posted on Thursday, August 04, 2005 - 1:50 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

There are two theories of how SKs arise.

One is that they have always been with us but unrecognized except in the mythology of dracula or werewolves. Examples given are Vlad somebody, Nero, and Countess Bathory.

The other is that there is something about modern society that has created this phenomenon.

Given that these people have a neurological problem of some kind (or maybe not given if you disagree with me) it would seem that they have always been with us. However the paradigm under which they emerge is very much culture dictated.

What do Vlad, Nero and Countess Bathory have in common? They were all in positions of respect and authority. They had titles. In an authoritarian society they were hard to touch. A murderous psychopath in such a position with no consequences to fear will blaze an infamous trail and they did. Because society was a very top down affair and control was absolute, psychopaths on the bottom rung didn't have much of a chance to get away with anything. John, the weaver's son might have had murderous stirrings but he didn't dare act on them. He knew he would be caught. Methods of execution in the middle ages were not nice. Most psychopaths are deeply into self preservation.

The Enlightenment, the Reformation and the French and American revolutions began to slowly, haltingly change the way societies governed themselves. More and more the absolute authority of one man over others was nibbled away. People began electing their rulers. Those who abused their office were exposed by a newly freed press and there were mechanisms for deposing and even imprisoning them. Meanwhile the freedom of the average person greatly increased. Today we deeply resent any effort by government to snoop into our affairs or micromanage our life. Suddenly John Weaver had privacy and freedom.

It is in this sense that the behavior of psychopathic SKs as we know them today is conditioned by our modern post industrial age. The London police said they had never seen anything like Jack before. Modern researchers say that the numbers in the past were lower. I think they are right. For the first time middle class and lower class psychopaths were in a position to be able to act.

Why do psychopaths take the next step and become Sks? Because they can. The paradigm under which they can do this will be different in different cultures.

Today they have to sneak around. They can't do it in the open like Vlad did. Even people like BTK who craved publicity did not willingly reveal thier identity.

They are still there among us, but we have changed and so have they. The increased freedom and privacy we all enjoy comes with a price, namely that some of us will abuse them.
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Dan Norder
Chief Inspector
Username: Dannorder

Post Number: 815
Registered: 4-2004
Posted on Thursday, August 04, 2005 - 5:55 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Hi Diana,

Sorry, but I've got to put in my support for the "always been here" crowd. There are plenty of examples of serial killers throughout the ages, and many very logical reasons for why we don't currently hear about as many back then as we do now.

One major difference with modern times is that we have a more active way of documenting them. You mention some famous names, but I think you are wrong to assume that they did what they did solely because they were in a position of power (although that obviously had some effect) and that others wouldn't. I think it's more a case of us hearing about it because we have more documentation on events that nobles and royalty did than anything else. This goes for other events other than just killings as well: we always know more about the people at the top of society. It's wrong to assume nobody else was doing anything. These days some guy in North Dakota abducts a preteen and the whole English speaking world hears all the details shortly after -- well, if she was a pretty white girl, but I won't even get into all that. That's not at all how things were like in the past.

I also think going farther back in time shows that there were more socially acceptable outlets for murderous impulses back then. There were various inquisitions, wars, battles, skirmishes, atrocities and so forth that are not presented in a context of serial killing because that kind of behavior was more the norm.

And of course these days we are also far better at catching them than we were in the past. A lot of the more recent ones were caught because of some bit of technology. The Green River Killer was DNA matching on samples taken many years before. BTK was computer files. Others were fingerprints, and so forth. So of course it's going to seem like there are more of them now, as we are just better at identifying them.

So I would argue that there were definitely serial killers running around in the past, probably in about the same percentages of the total population. I think the only potentially substantive difference between now and way back then is that a lot of current ones know more about others of their kind and seem to model themselves on that. They all hear Jack the Ripper wrote letters to the police, so maybe they think they should write letters too, for example.
Dan Norder, Editor
Ripper Notes: The International Journal for Ripper Studies
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Diana
Chief Inspector
Username: Diana

Post Number: 729
Registered: 2-2003
Posted on Thursday, August 04, 2005 - 10:40 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Dear Dan, We don't really disagree. They were always with us. As western culture changed they had to find other outlets. Absolutely, inquisitions, petty wars and any other social paradigm that makes it OK to murder and torture became a harbor for them as well as being at the top of the heap in an authoritarian setting.
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Diana
Chief Inspector
Username: Diana

Post Number: 730
Registered: 2-2003
Posted on Friday, August 05, 2005 - 8:58 am:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Don't forget that modern transportation only became a reality in the last century or so. Before that a person could be born in a little villiage, grow up there, marry, have children, grow old and die all in the same place.

I don't know if you have ever lived in a small town. I did for a few years. I loved and hated it. Everybody knew everybody. There was a very appealing coziness about it, but no privacy at all. It didn't matter what you did. The whole town knew about it the next day. At the very beginning someone pointed out an individual pedaling down the street on a bicycle to me. I was warned to stay away from him. He wasn't quite right in the head and wasn't safe to be around. I proceeded to get this person's whole life history.

I doubt that Jack would have survived in such an environment. Its no surprise that he surfaced in a big anonymous city.

That is not to say that you couldn't have an SK in the countryside. In an area of isolated farms where your nearest neighbor is miles away and few people know each other, yes. But that is not the same as a small town.
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R.J. Palmer
Chief Inspector
Username: Rjpalmer

Post Number: 678
Registered: 2-2003
Posted on Friday, August 05, 2005 - 11:01 am:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

"There are... many very logical reasons for why we don't currently hear about as many back then as we do now."

Yes, I can accept that. But how precisely is this distinguishable from what is commonly called 'lack of evidence?'

It does the Psychologists no good to mutter vague things about Caligula or Bathory. Very different beasts, IMHO. The trouble is that the Psychologists haven't even begun to demonstrate with any credible historical evidence that these crimes have always been around, and are just a random genetic blip.

At least Jane Caputi, who uses the FBI' own statistics, is able to point out that the incidents of these crimes rose six fold between 1960 and 1980...the same exact span that Ressler and Douglas were developing their theories. Ressler's own statements about the crimes being American and increasing flies in the face of the random/genetic theory. Our knowledge of these crimes is so tangled up with the reporting of these crimes in the media, that it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish which is the driving force. Almost certainly depends on the culprit. Diane talks about anonymity of the modern city. Yes. Excellent. I agree. But who creates whom? The anonymity isn't a neutral accident of society that allows the neanderthal within to suddenly emerge. The anonymity is part of the affliction that creates him.
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AP Wolf
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Apwolf

Post Number: 2355
Registered: 2-2003
Posted on Friday, August 05, 2005 - 5:34 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

RJ
I am honestly confused now.
If the situation is really so, then why are the greatest mass-murderers - like serial killers such as Lopez and that Russki who sounds like a chewing gum brand - of our planet from remote, and somewhat primitive social background and environment?
The point I was trying to make elsewhere was that the more remote and primitive the killer's environment then the more chance of repeated success; the more modern environment of the city surely rapidly cuts down his success rate of killing folk before he is caught?
Unlike others, I do see the modern city environment as being more conducive to social bonding rather than alienation.
I'm not counting gay killers here, as they seem to thrive in the modern city environment, but your good old Ted still seems to like to get out on the road.
Jack's city was not like our city. He still had the countryside right in his alley.
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Diana
Chief Inspector
Username: Diana

Post Number: 732
Registered: 2-2003
Posted on Saturday, August 06, 2005 - 11:01 am:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

This whole thing is really a subset of the nature/nurture argument.

Autism and SKs are different animals. But there are parallels in our understanding of the phenomena.

For instance in the 1950s Bruno Bettelheim was confidently asserting that autism was caused by cold unaffectionate mothers. (nurture -- or lack thereof)

After a number of women were divorced "because they ruined the kids" and another group of women committed suicide it was discovered that Bettelheim was wrong.

We are now discovering several specific genes that cause autism, the latest discovery was on chromosome 17.

But that doesn't explain why in recent years the rate has zoomed from 1 in 2000 to 1 in about 160.

The latest discoveries in the field of DNA have enabled us to understand the nature/nurture conundrum in a new way, namely that genes can be turned on and turned off by environmental influences.

Not everyone has genes for autism. And among the people who do probably not all of them will be autistic. The probability is that the number of people with the genes has remained static, but whatever the environmental trigger is, there is more and more of it.

Unfortunately the FBI statistics seem to indicate that whatever the environmental trigger is for SKs there is more and more of that too.

I think culture affects how and how often it is triggered and after it is triggered, how it emerges.

These things are not the result of nature or nurture alone but a subtle interaction between the two.
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Rosey O'Ryan
Unregistered guest
Posted on Friday, August 05, 2005 - 5:12 am:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Dear Diana,

I must congratulate you on the very perceptive post above. I look forward to more of the same. Perhaps the answer to the Whitechapel events lie in a wider historical perspective than we have hitherto considered. Who knows?
Rosey :-)
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Rosey O'Ryan
Unregistered guest
Posted on Friday, August 05, 2005 - 11:33 am:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Dear Mr Palmer,

May I take you to task on the indiscriminate usage of the term "neanderthal" in the context construed above. Really!
As a member of the party to the party of the first party who ate them...I feel we owe them a minor courtesy and a little guilt (no doubt). I say give Neanderthal their due!
Rosey :-))
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Mr Poster
Unregistered guest
Posted on Friday, August 05, 2005 - 5:44 am:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Interesting stuff. But I have to ask two things:

John, the weaver's son might have had murderous stirrings but he didn't dare act on them. He knew he would be caught. Methods of execution in the middle ages were not nice. Most psychopaths are deeply into self preservation.

Is it not true that harsher sentences have never ever deterred criminals? The harsh sentences such as deportation or hanging for minor theft for example implemented in Britain in the 1800's did nothing to reduce crime rates. Even today, when prison in America is not just confinement but a sentence of rape and violence, this does nothing to curb criminal tendencies given the crime figures in recent times. And the chances of John the Weaver being caught for anything seem fairly slim to me given that any dissappearance or grusome occurrence could very easily be passed off on any religous/mythological/superstitous event or happening.

Meanwhile the freedom of the average person greatly increased. Today we deeply resent any effort by government to snoop into our affairs or micromanage our life. Suddenly John Weaver had privacy and freedom.

This always reminds of some Monty Pythonesque depiction of gruelling peasant life on the mud farm in medieval times yet no evidence exists to suggest that. People worked in agriculture mostly and when there was no work in the fields, they pretty much enjoyed themselves drinking or doing whatever peasants do to pass the time `(hence the stereotypes probably of rosy cheeked buxom women and hale and hearty well fed men, not starving downtrodden subhumans). The ruler did not micromanage everything, but rather got his taxes, his harvest and an occasional army and the peasants did what they did, working or enjoying himslef with little interference. John Weaver today has a hell of a lot less privacy and freedom than his ancestor (try dissappearing off the face of the earth today and think how easy it was 300 years ago to just leave your village and pick up a new name).

I just dont see modern society as having produced serial killers. If anything, there could be an argument made that modern society has reduced the occurrence of such chappies and the only reason we dont hear more about serial killers from earlier times is that there were so many other ways a death coould be explained away, or the value of life was less, or people didnt care or there are just no records, or that people "dissappeared" more often or whatever.

Mr P.

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