What can turn a peaceful man into a criminal ?

For all things philosophical.

Moderators: AMod, iMod

duszek
Posts: 2356
Joined: Wed Jun 03, 2009 5:27 pm
Location: Thin Air

Re: What can turn a peaceful man into a criminal ?

Post by duszek »

A novel like this one, a psychological study of a man turning into a criminal, could be used by people in a penitentiary who are interested in resocialization:
They could meet as a support group, read the novel piece by piece themselves out loud (take turns reading to the group) and make comments and discuss in detail providing examples from their own personal experience. They would feel like experts and report about what made them take a wrong turn and they might give advice to each other.
Prisoners ARE experts, I suppose.

And their English would improve too.
duszek
Posts: 2356
Joined: Wed Jun 03, 2009 5:27 pm
Location: Thin Air

Re: What can turn a peaceful man into a criminal ?

Post by duszek »

-1- wrote: Wed Dec 27, 2017 7:53 am
duszek wrote: Mon Dec 25, 2017 3:43 pm I listen to M. Proust on CDs for recreational purposes.
I love to listen to French monologues by males with perfect pitch (purely for the sound of it) in Film Noire movies. They all sound so very, very philosophical! And I get that impression without understanding a single word of it. Imagine a movie where a thug is getting ready to rob a bank, or to disembowel a prostitute while she is alive, or throw over the government, and he first gives a half-hour monologue on his motives, why his motives are compatible with the French existentialist movement, he has a minor intellectual diversion to cover his criticism of Prousst, he makes a slight belittling of English cuisine, he makes a detour to denounce the German Forty-Seven, the futurist artist group emergent during the Great War, and finally closes his monologue with a compelling and emotionally highly charged petition for a pay raise for himself by the studios. All this comes through, even without understanding a single word of his speech, and I am telling you, this is true, no lies.

The best experience of this kind is to watch the movie "L'Etranger" or "The Outsider". Marcello Mastreianni (or is it Mastroianni?) is the king of French existentialist monologues.
However, in Germany boys prefer to learn English or Spanish than French because French sounds so "gay".
Or they feel effeminate when they try to speak it.
dorothea
Posts: 72
Joined: Tue Nov 07, 2017 1:46 pm

Re: What can turn a peaceful man into a criminal ?

Post by dorothea »

I don't think there is any substantial evidence that a peaceful person can be turned into a criminal - in the sense that a good person can become evil. Our characters are formed from the interaction among our biological and psychological inheritance and our social experience, upbringing, education, events in life. Character is pretty settled for most people by early adulthood - though parents frequently notice that some traits manifest surprisingly early. ( eg my boy, when 4 years old began begging to go somewhere, anywhere, on the bus on his own. Since leaving school at 16 he has never stopped travelling, and getting by, all over the world. Both parents still live in the town they were born in). I don't know the book - but my guess would be one of several plausible possibilities: a mistrial, framed, or the victim of ambiguous events decided against him; misinformation given to the reader - eg, he was not a peaceful man but one of those brooding psychopaths who neighbours say, 'kept himself to himself' after the massacre; the crime for which he was sentenced was a crime in the eyes of the law, but the law was not a just law - eg helping a desperately sick person to die, and being convicted of murder. Aristotle, Leibnitz, Schopenhauer could help.
Let's know how it goes please.
User avatar
-1-
Posts: 2888
Joined: Thu Sep 07, 2017 1:08 am

Re: What can turn a peaceful man into a criminal ?

Post by -1- »

duszek wrote: Wed Dec 27, 2017 8:08 pm However, in Germany boys prefer to learn English or Spanish than French because French sounds so "gay".
Or they feel effeminate when they try to speak it.
In my culture... rather, in my subculture consisting of my friend Paul and me (a two-person culture) we felt that a German person feels inadequate as a man and as a productive member of society, unless he is trampling on a new-born baby in steel boots.
seeds
Posts: 2147
Joined: Tue Aug 02, 2016 9:31 pm

Re: What can turn a peaceful man into a criminal ?

Post by seeds »

_______

What can turn a peaceful man into a criminal?

Military indoctrination (patriotic brainwashing), wherein you are peaceful with the members of your own society, but criminally and murderously violent with members of other societies.

What’s the difference between a soldier who violently slaughters a bunch of strangers just because his “commanding officer” told him to do it, and that of a mentally deranged psychopath who does the same because a voice in his head told him to do it?
_______
duszek
Posts: 2356
Joined: Wed Jun 03, 2009 5:27 pm
Location: Thin Air

Re: What can turn a peaceful man into a criminal ?

Post by duszek »

Blackmail.

Mr Karlin is a gangster.
He persuaded Stanley to try making pictures of nudes, now he is threatening to show the pictures of Stanley working with the nude models (taken secretly) to his wife, teacher of his daughter, his boss.
They also made a picuture of Stanley talking to Mr Karlin´s "assistant" who is being searched by the security of the civil service and has left the country by now.

The gangsters want from Stanley pictures of secret material at his workplace.
Celebritydiscodave2
Posts: 200
Joined: Tue Oct 10, 2017 6:52 pm

Re: What can turn a peaceful man into a criminal ?

Post by Celebritydiscodave2 »

Society knocking him back down each and every time he tries to stand up.
duszek
Posts: 2356
Joined: Wed Jun 03, 2009 5:27 pm
Location: Thin Air

Re: What can turn a peaceful man into a criminal ?

Post by duszek »

Society ?
That´s us, isn´t it ?

How is that ?
Celebritydiscodave2
Posts: 200
Joined: Tue Oct 10, 2017 6:52 pm

Re: What can turn a peaceful man into a criminal ?

Post by Celebritydiscodave2 »

It is the sum total influence on one of everybody. One example: Parents abuse you, and it becomes suicide or class A drugs. Your an addict without a job, so you steal for your next fix, you steal only because you are still human. You get up when it`s already too late, you are behind bars where the population take you back to where you started, back on class A, this or suicide, you are a user once more. Just one conviction later and your life is over, you can get up no more, for nobody will house you for want of insurance cover. You give up on society like it has given up on you, and the criminal existence becomes the only possible one, save a miracle. Society creates its own criminals, and it`s very good at it too.
Post Reply