Strangers on a Train

(this article originally appeared on the blog 'Lord of the Flies')

My parents have always advised me not to talk to strangers. Maybe that’s one of the reasons I feel so encouraged. I have nothing particularly ‘for’ or ‘against’ it, but sometimes, especially when my self-confidence is soaring or when I am bored, I do love to initiate a conversation with a stranger. 

It was this particular overnight train journey from Bangalore to Hyderabad on the Rajdhani Express, when I just couldn’t stop shivering, lying on my berth, which was the uppermost and closest to the air conditioning. I had journeyed to Bangalore in the same train the night before, to attend a seminar, and now I was travelling back. In retrospect, now I know why I was shivering- from repeated observation, my body temperature drops down pretty low when I don’t sleep for more than 36 hours. That, coupled with watching a pathetic movie in the cinema hall *alone*, and then wandering around under an overhead sun trying to get the location right, was sure to take a toll on my brain and body. 

I tried hard. To forget the cold and just sleep. I covered myself completely under the blanket. Didn’t work. I started getting frustrated, and then I started crying. It was now almost 48 sleepless hours and I was still unable to sleep. And then I got angry. I got down my berth and went outside the compartment to the lobby between two compartments. This was where two of the service guys were. I was telling one of them that it was extremely cold and asking them if they could increase the temperature. This guy looked at the other guy, who in turn checked the temperature and then told me it was the highest possible. This guy wasn’t even talking directly to me. I asked the other guy if he could provide more blankets. Once again he looked at the other guy, who asked if I haven’t already got blankets. At this point I lost all patience and broke out crying. I was angry, I was shivering, and I was shouting at them that I was feeling terribly cold! The other guy, who wasn’t even talking directly to me, now seemed to feel extremely guilty and gave me an extra thick blanket and made some space for me to sit on a berth in the lobby, gave me a magazine to read, and told me to sit in the lobby, which was warmer, till I felt good enough to go back and sleep. 

The guy, to whom I was talking, left the lobby since there was no space for three there. The other guy, who had given me the blanket, stood in one corner. I told him he could sit down on the berth, that I didn’t mind. After some insisting, he did. 

The magazine he had given to me was in Hindi. I had studied Hindi in school, but that was 6 years back. I was not in touch with the language, so I found it kind of painstaking to go on reading. I was flipping through the pages and looking at the pictures. From the corner of my eye, I noticed that guy reading a Hindi newspaper, and reading it so fast that it made me jealous. 

“Is this your copy of the magazine?” I asked, “Or do they provide you in the train?” 

“No, it’s mine. But you can keep it, I’ve already read it,” was his reply. 

Impressive, I thought. I was curious. I know that these service guys in the train are paid quite low. It is unlikely that they even completed school. This academic inclination was unexpected. He was about my age. And he had invested in a magazine, a not-so-pocket-friendly political magazine ‘India Today’, and he FINISHED reading it! 

And then I gave up on the magazine. 

“I am sorry, I am unable to read this, I have lost the habit of reading Hindi text. My bad.” 

“Oh, I see. I can translate to you, if you find any particular piece interesting.” 

“Haha, no that’s okay. You seem to be a very keen follower of politics?” 

“Well, I am. I love reading about it. There is so much to learn. And it’s very important too. It’s about the future of our country. We should care about it.” 

And then we started talking politics. I wanted to know what someone like him thought about the existing scenario, for a change, not my peers or someone in the media. Sadly, though, I found him pretty biased. I knew that the mood in the north at that time was biased and he seemed to be from the north- although he was dark his features betrayed him. It’s sad that intelligent people like him should fall prey to propaganda... people are generally good, I thought, sometimes they just fall on the wrong side and that is a sad thing to contemplate. Anyway, at that time I was more interested in listening to him than trying to influence him. I did debate but not so strongly, I wanted to know his reasoning. As an afterthought, I think I should have debated. 

The other service guy passed by us en route another compartment, throwing weird glances. 

“I think you should go to sleep now,” he said, “People around aren’t really good.” 

My eyebrows involuntarily went into a questioning stitch, although I knew what he meant. 

“They don’t consider it good, you know, a girl talking to a guy, that too so late into the night,” he elaborated. 

“It’s not like that at my place,” I retorted. 

“Well, in my village, no guy talks to a girl, definitely not in public. In fact, this is the first time in my life that I am talking to a girl outside of my family.” 

I gasped. “Where are you from?” 

“I am from a small village near Gorakhpur.” That’s pretty much north. 

“What about school? You didn’t talk to girls at school?” 

“Well, no. And anyway, girls hardly go to school. Plus they don’t want to talk to guys either. It’s considered bad.” 

“You completed your schooling?” 

“Nope. I studied only till eighth grade. It’s complicated.” 

“C’mon, you can tell me!” I beseeched. 

“Well, actually we were two brothers and one sister. My mom died of some disease. My dad went into a depression and took to drinking. My sister died pretty soon after that. My brother left home, although he visits some times. But he never sends money. I am the only one who can earn and take care of dad. This was almost eight years back.” 

I didn’t know what to say. But he seemed pretty detached, so I didn’t feel embarrassed for asking him. In fact, I ventured further, trying to inquire about the disease. I had to know if it was something curable but they couldn’t pay for it. However, he seemed to not know much about it. My guess is that it was something genetic. 

“Don’t feel sad about me yet,” he continued, “I could have continued my schooling and earned in my village at the same time. It wouldn’t have been difficult. However, all of my friends were dropping out of school. That was the trend, you know, THE thing to do. Rebellious adolescent blood, wanting to go out there and do something. No one liked studying. There was this greed of starting to earn money too. I became one of them. Today, I regret that the most. I could have studied and made my life and ACTUALLY earned money, but no one was there to explain to me how important studying was. Along with my friends, I became a service guy in a train and have remained that ever since.” 

“You have been on this train for eight years?” 

“No, I was on another train before. The Howrah Rajdhani. I like this train better, though. The people in the south are good, not as violent as the north. Suits me. There’s this small stall near the Secunderabad Railway Station, they serve awesome breakfast. I look forward to it every three days!” 

Of course, I thought. This train shuttles back and forth between Bangalore and Delhi, via Secunderabad, which is the part of Hyderabad closest to my home. The one-directional journey takes almost 36 hours. How weird must it feel living on a train! 

“Alright, I guess I must go now, I’m not cold anymore,” I said. 

“Are you sleepy yet?” 

“Well, not actually. I might go later as well.” 

And so we talked about the government policies for another hour. 

And then I got to hear all sorts of stories about the different kinds of people he met on the train. 

“So what do you plan to do, do you want to continue working in the train like this?” I asked. 

“Hmm... not really. I’ll look for something. But I don’t want to settle in my village. It’s pretty depressing. Plus, I have absolutely no interest in farming. Let’s see, wherever life takes me! What about you, what are your plans?” 

“Oh, I need to complete my graduation now and then go abroad for a PhD.” 

I had tough time trying to explain to him the significance of research but he gave me the benefit of doubt! 

“But people like you should come back to the country. Or else, it is not going to develop,” he remarked. 

“Well, yeah... I think I should go to sleep now...it’s late.” 

“Do you really have to? I’m talking to someone after ages. People around are not very interested in the kind of conversations I look for. No one reads anyway. I'm also not a big fan of the kind of movies they watch. I don’t have any friends.” 

But his eyes betrayed more. This is not good, I thought. 

“I really have to go, I am very sleepy. Goodnight!” 

And so I went back to my berth, feeling a slight tinge of guilt. I wasn’t sleepy but two sleepless nights, a day of wandering and the warmth of two thick blankets soon cast their spells and the next thing I remember was being tugged at my feet. 

“We’re in Secunderabad!” said the service guy. I quickly jumped down my berth, hurriedly gathered my luggage, said a quick ‘bye’ and started moving out of the train. I didn’t like the sad expression on his face. 

Once on the platform, he tried to help me with my luggage but I declined. One last time, he mustered all his courage, and asked me for my phone number. I must admit that I freaked out a little. I said a polite but curt ‘No’. The good part is he didn’t insist. I could see his friends in the distance, including the other service guy, watching. He must have told them in the night, I thought, and those guys must have encouraged him. I kept walking, rolled my suitcase along and didn’t look back until I reached the exit. 

The Fake Emotions Machine

(this article originally appeared on the blog 'Lord of the Flies')

I wonder if anyone has ever thought of that. They must have, who knows. Of course, we are a long way away from it- even today we know very little about our brain. Mimicking it might be a far cry. 

I have always had this strong urge to get inside someone’s brain. Not as a ghost, who might just possess and control that person, but to BE that person for a few moments. Full, with the burden of his/her thoughts, feelings, emotions, memories, consciousness and conscience. For a few moments, I might be able to perceive the world as that person, perhaps also subjectively reason like that person. And then when I come back I hope to remember my experience and utilise it to understand that person better! 

There exists a lot of ancient literature, akin to Zen, where you do feel like another person for a while through meditation. Paulo Coelho also refers to it in his very popular book, The Alchemist. Also, I think Professor Xavier of the X-Men has similar powers through telepathy. But thinking of implementation, how do we go about this practically? If I am to feel like another person, along with the activation of some brain areas, I need the rush of those hormones that pump inside the other person. If, for example, something potentially makes that person angry, that same something should also cause the blood to flow to my cheek and make me angry as well. Most of these physiological changes can be brought about by hormones. So that makes one imagine a machine that can control hormone levels. I visualise this as a helmet, which can be set to some person I want to be, and then when I wear it, it would control my brain and I believe that brain does control every other part of the body, except perhaps the reflex actions- for which we can perhaps think of a helmet with an attached braid that runs along one’s spine (which controls such reflexes). Sounds scary? 

Now how to set that machine to some person might require explicit permission of that person. Perhaps that machine will be able to take the input once a person wears it, the same way it would generate an output- it will be like setting the zero of the apparatus. How this machine would communicate with the brain is tricky, though. In neuroscience experiments, they directly insert rods through the rat’s skull and supply weak electric currents to make them feel something- but that doesn’t seem like an attractive prospect. As for using electromagnetic signals instead, I am not very sure how effective they can be. If Roger Penrose’s speculation of a Quantum Mechanical brain can lead us somewhere, then perhaps we should find something akin to ‘tunnelling’. 

What would that machine do then- stimulate some parts of the brain? That seems alright. But stimulation in this manner would just make you experience some external emotion, and this in turn might be used to guide your thought. These feelings might never be exactly same since the geography of everyone’s brain is slightly different, and even the dimensions and neuronal branching of the body parts they affect are slightly different, and so stimulation might not produce exactly same results, still they’ll be quite close to the original- and perhaps we can account for that via some form of normalisation. However, the feelings can be very confusing:  you won’t know why you are sad, but you might just feel sad. For the feeling to be more specific, you would need some access to that person’s memory and personality. Sadly, this information is stored in the brain physically, in the form of cell shapes and connections, popularly known as brain wiring. So, they can’t just be imported. Okay... then maybe once neuroscientists figure out how this kind of information is stored in the brain, we can figure out a mechanism to read it off directly! And then it can be communicated to us. Beats Harry Potter’s pensieve, isn’t it? 

So, even if we can’t ‘become’ that person, we can still view this as a fake emotions machine- and the prospects are still huge. Just imagine how useful that will be for psychological studies and research. With all the existing myths and speculations about the mind being shattered, there will be more understanding and acceptance of the human nature. Probably, we’ll be able to finally understand criminals and sociopaths, and also help them rehabilitate. We might also be able to simulate artificial situations and test how we might feel under those circumstances. Perhaps actors might need to do lesser hard work to ‘get into’ their roles. 

People might also start using this machine to ‘communicate’. Especially so, if they have some kind of speech disorder. Also, letting someone inside your brain might become an expression of trust. And the fact that you are not afraid or ashamed of doing so, might take the form of a new Nudism- the ultimate expression of freedom. As we learn to accept the weirdness of other people, we will become less judgmental. 

There are many ethical problems, of course. This is the ultimate kind of intimacy where no secret can be guarded closely enough. In some sense, you might even your freedom. It can be misused very well. People’s motives can range from spying, to setting the stage for manipulation, or in the worst scenario, for torture. 

Also, there are some serious consequential doubts. We all know that our brains are a little plastic. What is the guarantee that experiencing another’s emotions won’t change the wiring in one’s own brain? If someone’s experiences have been traumatic, how willing would you be to take the risk of trying that out? 

Nevertheless, negatives have always accompanied every technological marvel known to mankind, so they shouldn’t be a deterrent. I think, or at least I hope, that by the time we get to that stage when we are capable of making such a machine, we as a human race would have evolved much beyond the petty and narrow-minded skirmishes of our times. We’ll surely find a way around the negatives, I’m quite optimistic. 

As for my driving force, along with curiosity and research, it is that with such a facility at my disposal, my boyfriend won’t be able to accuse me, “You don’t understand my feelings!!” 

 

The Number Game

(this article originally appeared on the blog 'Lord of the Flies')

The 18th of November, 2013: India is the world’s second most populated country with a population of approximately 1.24 billion, just trailing behind China at 1.36 billion. Which is to say, 17.4% of the world’s people live in India. The United States of America, the third most populated country, is way behind at 3.17 million. 

As an Indian, how do I feel about this? Well... let me remember, how I had felt when I had topped that attendance-shortage list in my college in almost every course (“ouch! Did I skip that many classes?”). Definitely not upset, especially savouring how good the letters of my name looked on the top of a list. But worried, yes, of the consequences. 

India is still a developing country, with a lot of people living below the poverty line. There are also too many administrative problems within. And yet in spite of everything the population just keeps growing and exacerbates the existing situation. The rate of development going hand-in-hand with the rate of population growth is ultimately causing the country to remain in the same place. 

But has this always been the case? Has India always been so populated? What makes India different in this matter, or rather, how and when exactly did Indians get so horny? 

Population census wasn’t common in the past- that makes it difficult to trace a history. Nevertheless, let me try my best. 

The Harappa Civilization rose and fell in the Northwest, around 5000 BC. No one knows what exactly had happened, but is speculated that the few who survived fled the place and mixed with the local population in the other parts of the country. Who were these indigenous local people? Nobody knows. 

Around 1000 BC came the Aryans, most probably from somewhere North, with their then superior technology of welding iron and the Hindu religion. They settled down comfortably. Over time, they mixed with the local population. (This theory is highly controversial, recent research based on genetics goes against it.) 

In the mean time, with a long coastline of about 7,500 km, influx of people in boats continued from lands unknown. 

There was no conspiracy. With plenty of natural resources, India seemed to be a dream country, a country for everyone. Whoever came, stayed back. 

Buddhism was born around 400 BC, and the Indian Emperor Ashoka, finding solace in it from the wars of the past, embraced it and sent word through missionaries travelling far and wide. 

And yet India was pretty isolated, with the mighty Himalayas in the North and the Indian Ocean in the south, immune to invasions as long as the North-western borders were secure. Nor did the Indian kings have any desire of expanding their Empire beyond these boundaries. Our only connections with the outside world were the Arabian traders, who frequently came to trade via the older version of the Grand Trunk Road. It was under this safe haven that the population continued to flourish unabated, and still there was always plenty for everyone. 

But the political situation would weaken periodically, during which social evils would creep in and start building up in the society over time. The caste system became abusive. The widows were certainly not a happy lot. Also people continued to be married off very young (more babies!). 

Around 1200 AD, the Turks plundered some parts of Northern India for the first time, taking advantage of the weak political situation. I guess India never really recovered because immediately there was an influx of Mughals, entering from the Northwest. But this time, India was not plundered. The Mughals also stayed back. They were soon joined by rulers from parts of modern-day Iran in the Southern part of India. In the South, the populations got mixed once again but there was more resistance in the North. 

Nevertheless, the population continued to grow. 

After the Mughals entered the picture, there was certainly a strong religious divide between the local kingdoms that held against the Mughal rulers and the Mughal kingdoms. Due to continuous wars and more male-centric policies, the male child became more important, and the richer people usually continued to produce babies till they had a satisfactory number of male children. Also, polygamy was not uncommon under the Mughal rule. 

Over the course of time, many religious reformation movements took place and new religions like Sikhism and Jainism were born. Hinduism also got fragmented to different philosophies. Under the new Muslim rulers, many local people started adopting Islam, accelerated by favourable policies, although the majority still remained Hindu. In the meantime, the Christian missionaries also started to arrive on the coastal region and encouraged many people to convert to Christianity. 

The Spanish came, and the Portuguese. They settled in small parts of the coastline, building their port-cities. But they were mostly traders, and sometimes started settling down. 

And the population, of course, was booming. 

The first colonisers were perhaps the French, who conquered the Eastern part of India. But they were soon outdone by the British. By exploiting the religious and linguistic diversity of the people and the disunity among the Indian rulers, the British succeeded in colonising large parts of India. It wasn’t easy since there was a strong presence of the Indian Civilization, but the British were good at their game. Initially there was diplomacy, the battles happened afterwards. 

Unlike the previous visitors, however, the British didn’t stay. They continued to be colonisers, with allegiance to the British Crown. The wealth and natural resources of the land were being used to fuel the Industrial Development, and later the Arms race, back home, compromising the requirements of the local population. Poverty set in more strongly than ever before. 

Along with furthering social problems, poverty itself breeds more poverty. Of course, poverty killed people but there were more being born. Under poverty, more children mean more security, more help at work and more income. Also, in the absence of quality forms of entertainment, amidst a stage in life where you see no purpose, abstinence is sure difficult. Birth-control measures weren’t in then. Here, I’d like to digress a bit and say that it is often erroneously believed that poverty is the primary reason for India’s burgeoning population growth. It is rather the other way round, that the growing population is keeping poverty alive. Poverty is a secondary factor. The real, and pretty obvious, reason why India and China have such huge populations is because they started very early. That, combined with the monsoons and the numerous rivers which meant that there would always be food for everyone. This also attracted more people from outside to come and settle here. Under the protective cover of well-established civilisations, the populations could comfortably grow. The population of Europe started catching up with this rate only after the Industrial Revolution. 

Amidst this poverty and religious divide, weakened by the split into Pakistan (and not all muslims chose to go to Pakistan), India became independent in 1947. Ever since independence, the life-expectancy doubled and the infant mortality rate fell, but that went hand-in-hand with popularisation of birth-control measures and so the rate of growth of population slowed down. Women immediately got equal rights in all aspects, constitutionally (although, religions are still allowed to continue their traditional practices if they wish to). Unlike many other parts of the world, contraceptive measures and abortion did not conflict with the existing religious views, except for some sections of the society. The marriageable age has been increased but it has not been enforced very strongly because people don’t like it a lot. The sudden surge in education after independence, and the Indian media, have actually been the major contributors towards population control. As the cost of living increases, the poor are starting to realise that the problem of ‘more mouths to feed’ is greater than the advantages of having ‘more hands to work’. And the government is trying to help by encouraging and subsidising birth-control measures. 

Nevertheless, Indians still love kids. The growth rate has come down, but it’s still a positive number, which means the population continues to grow. Being a democratic country, India gives a lot of power to its people, so making a law which limits the family size is next to impossible. Such a government would be immediately voted out of power. China, being a communist nation has succeeded in this respect, although they have recently relaxed their one-child policy. 

Because of this huge population, India is first in many other arenas too, like having the largest number of poor, and having the largest number of people having HIV AIDS, etc. Whatever be their percentage, it is the sheer number which magnifies all the stats. It’s not easy to administer such a huge and diverse population. In spite of the developments in infrastructure and transport system, it is never able to keep up with the growing number of people who require them. 

So today, 1 in every 6 person lives in India! And with 50% of the population being below the age of 25 years, you can easily see that the population is only going to grow. It is predicted that India is going to surpass China in the population arena in a few decades. 

As we can infer, India has always been very populated. Although we must definitely stabilise the population, in my opinion it is futile to be more ambitious here. All we can do is educate more people and also make the best use of this human resource for the country’s development, and hope that everything will fall into place someday. 

Is India still a country for everyone? Although a lot of educated Indians emigrate to the developed countries is search for a better lifestyle, while the poor in the country continue to live in bad conditions, it is still going to be difficult for me to answer that question as ‘no’. India has never resisted immigration and continues to shelter every eccentric belief system that its people love. Even prostitutes and eunuchs have important roles in certain traditional rituals (although that has significantly diminished) and are thus an important part of the society. The country is a home to some of the richest people in the world as well as to some of the poorest. Students from poorer nations come to India for higher education. India remains hugely diverse with 1,642 spoken languages and 8 major religions, excluding the numerous tribal ones. 

India is also racially diverse. Although there are a lot of speculations, the truth is that we have absolutely no clues to our racial origins. In fact, we’re all pretty much mixed up and yet the mixing has been different in different parts of the country, so yes, we still look quite different from each other, much more different that a British dude would look from a Greek dude. 

Only the continent of Africa exceeds the linguistic, genetic and cultural diversity of India. 

What unites us, in spite of this diversity? We have no idea, but I guess it’s our common History. Whatever it is, we are still functioning, and that shows that it works! 

  

P.S.: Whenever someone picks up a debate with India in an online forum, no one can really keep up with the endless streams of comments form Indians - no matter good/bad, logical/illogical or hilarious... with so much support, it feels awesome, for once, to have such a large population! 

 

The Psychopath and the Satan

(this article originally appeared on the blog 'Lord of the Flies')

They say that one man in every 100 is a psychopath. And one woman in every 300. Not too uncommon! And they say that 20 in every 100 prison inmates are psychopaths. I don’t know their sources.

In case you haven’t heard of it yet, a psychopath is defined as a person with an antisocial personality disorder, manifested in aggressive, perverted, criminal, or amoral behaviour without empathy or remorse. Once you absorb this meaning, it’s not difficult to guess why psychopaths are more concentrated in prison cells. Ted Bundy was an infamous psychopath, now you know what I mean.

Many psychologists recognise the existence of psychopathic behaviour, supported by evidences in brain imaging that suggests that all psychopaths have something in their brain that is similar to each other but different from the rest of the population. It is also believed to have a strong genetic component, and some evolutionary benefits that go with being a psychopath in a society which is not entirely composed of psychopaths, since they can take advantage of other people in that case. A defining characteristic of the psychopath is the non-existence of the feeling of ‘remorse’. A psychopathic kid might be the one who brutally tortures a cat and laughs as he/she does that. In short, it’s more like Satan himself taken the form of a human.

There is a large body of literature about psychopaths, and it is a well established subject. One of the interesting ones that I’ve found online is here. All psychopaths are not violent, however, because violence might not always serve the best of their interests, but their distinguishing factor is that they are abnormally remorseless.  Psychopaths do understand that there is something different about them, but they have no difficulty in emulating the behaviour of the people around them. Psychopaths are, therefore, not shady/mysterious people, but people in the heart of the society, sometimes even the leaders.

When I had heard about psychopaths for the first time, it made me very scared that something like that exists and is not too uncommon. However, it made me feel kind of relaxed, that now I had found an explanation for many crimes that otherwise seem illogical and irrational. A poor guy killing a rich guy to rob his money might be bad, but there is some crude economic logic in there. There’s hardly any logic for psychopathic behaviour.

In one of the philosophy lectures I attended online, there was a passing mention of psychopathy. The lecturer called it a ‘sickness’, or pathology, arising from some absent associations in the brain that doesn’t allow one to perceive another as a living being with some emotions and feelings. He had also given an example of an entire psychopathic society with a more restricted form of psychopathy, where the whites in America might not have been psychopathic towards each other but they were psychopathic towards their black slaves. It’s some sort of objectification of another person or creature, which may be because of Nature or Nurture.

And then there are these psychopath apologists with their books, blogs and websites. Some say that if psychopathy is a sickness, then those guilty of crimes shouldn’t be made accountable of them. On the other hand, some give pep talks to the psychopaths, saying that it’s okay to be a psychopath and that they shouldn’t feel bad about it and that they can still lead a normal life, etc.

However, there is no satisfactory or absolute test to declare whether a person is a psychopath or not. And the tests that do exist occasionally come out positive for some friends of mine, whom I know beyond doubt aren’t psychopaths. That made me doubt this theory. A lot of books and websites even define psychopathy differently. On top of that, many articles on psychopaths are often followed by comments claiming, “My teacher is a psychopath because she did this...,” or “My mom/day is a psychopath,” or “My wife/husband is a psychopath,” or the funniest of all, “Bush is a psychopath”,etc. That shows that the article is totally lost on them. People can just be plain selfish or narcissistic or shallow, but that doesn’t mean they are all psychopaths.

And then I happened to hear this last speech by Ted Bundy hours before his execution. I knew about his gruesome record. But to me he just seemed crazy, somewhat stupid, but not a psychopath. The guy in the story 'perfume' is more of a psychopath, and so is Hannibal, but they are fictional.

So, do psychopaths exist? I doubt it very much.

This new concept of psychopath strongly reminds me of the ancient belief in Satan. Unimaginably bad and sinister things that people had no explanation for was attributed to the work of Satan. People could have made a ‘deal’ with Satan, or they could have been possessed by an evil spirit. And that we always contrast with the ‘good’. It’s always black or white. It’s always ‘them’ versus ‘us’. We somehow have this tendency to like such ideas.

Why are we so reticent to move out of our comfort zone and acknowledge the grey? How many people wonder about what went on in the mind of the criminal as he was committing the crime, what went on before that and after that? No one wants to think about the unpleasant things. Of course it is uncomfortable, but if we let that remain black and mysterious we are never going to get past it. We are never going to find a solution to the problem if we don’t even acknowledge that there is a problem and just continue to punish criminals. Of course we should punish criminals, but will it not be better if we parallely make efforts to the effect that the criminal psychology does not take over the minds of individuals?

Crimes are borne out of depravity. It might be money, it might be emotions. It might not be a direct consequence but there's always a very indirect link. If someone has lost it and committed gruesome crimes, isn’t it obvious that there will be something different in their brain because of which they lost it so easily in the first place? If a psychopathic kid is selfish and remorseless, what pleasure could he possibly get by torturing a cat? There is no pleasure centre in the brain that gets activated by torturing random creatures. There has to be a suppressed vengeance, or else a suppressed bully inside the child, which might have arisen out of some emotional depravity.

There are no dark characters. There is no Satan. We have to stop thinking that ‘they’ are the bad ones. ‘They’ are some of ‘us’. They might be past reasoning, but there must be some way to get to the core of the problem. And even if that problem is irreversible, to detect the origins of the problem and make sure that such things are prevented in the future. A theory of Psychopaths seems to be an escapist theory, just like an easy way out, without addressing the more real problems. The thought that some people are just bad and one can do nothing about it! It's illogical vilification of people. Like they used to vilify 'witches' once.

I know that the theory of Psychopathy dominates a lot of psychological studies but the more I read, the more unconvinced I am. Some researchers believe that there are varying degrees of psychopathy. Now that sounds more plausible, but hey, isn’t it the same as saying, there are varying degrees of bad people? That’s certainly not enlightening.

Notwithstanding all the literature on psychopaths, some written by self-proclaimed psychopaths, I would still say that the psychopath is the modern-day devil. There is a mystery, for sure, but it cannot be unsolvable. We just got to expand our horizon and think from the weirdest points of view.

Or probably I don't understand because I might be a psychopath! ;)