Very insightful article Gena. I appreciate you writing it.
In my teens, I remember seeing the faces of slum-criminals riding motorcyles through the streets of Caracas. There are numerous slums in the city, and it is difficult to avoid contact with these criminals no matter where one is. Their faces were joyfully nihilistic, and showed they had aged in that state, for years. It was the face of the type of person that feels joy in senseless destroying, killing, raping, and that has adopted it as a way of life. I don't compare them with animals, because animals are incapable of living for the purpose of destruction. Even other nihilists like the Columbine Shooters were a leage below them. For these thugs shooting up a school was just Tuesday. When they robbed someone, they shot them, even if they posed no threat, just to get "prestige" from their fellow criminals. They made a living from such crimes, and they enjoyed it. To the point they spent their days planing their next atrocity, for fun, with their criminal friends. Their motto was: "we don't fear death, because we are already dead". It was the most consistent expression of human evil I ever saw.
Fortunately, I've not come across such an individual in more developed countries. But it taught me a lesson that relates to your article: the type of evil that is at end of the "dash" we can let into our souls, if we don't ever correct it, will result in this type of slum-thug joyful nihilism.
Have you ever encountered such an individual in your clinical practice? Is it possible to revert such a deep psychological degeneration, or is there are "point of no return", from which correction is no longer possible?
Wow, Marcos- thank you for sharing that, and articulating it so vividly! Sounds like a harrowing but importantly edifying experience about how low humans can go; I suspect it’s a source of perspective that those of us growing up in developed countries could really use.
I haven’t worked with anyone that wontonly criminal in my practice, so I can’t directly speak to the kinds of “redemption arcs” that might be possible for such people, but I suspect there’s actually a lot of variability in how bad any given “slum-criminal” is and what range of trajectories is possible (e.g., think of the biographies of people like Malcolm X, Maajid Nawaz, etc).
I'm glad you appreciate it. I'm not familiar with Malcom X and Maajid Nawaz, but I'll add them to my list of biographies to read.
If you're curious, I know a few interesting subcultures consistently centered around evil that you may be interested in, from a psychology-of-evil perspective.
One are the Venezuelan prisons and Pranes. An unknown fact about Venezuelan prisons, is that inmates are not the prisoners, but the prison wardens. The prisoners are armed, and the prison guards are not. The inmates organize parties, invite women, run drug stores, commit crimes like extortion, and have their own "judicial" system inside of the prison, dictated by the criminal prison leader, the Pran. The Pran is the meanest, most violent and most evil criminal of the entire penitentiary. Pranes are often young men with a story of violence from a very early age, like the thugs I described above. They raise above the criminal ranks when taken to jail. The morality in such prisons is completely inverted. The meanest and most violent criminals are the most respected ones, the most peaceful and pacific ones are used as slaves. The Pran decides what the "law" is inside of the prison, and forces them to pay a "tax" called La Causa. Conflicts are solved by means of dagger fights, being shot in different parts of one's body, or death by execution. The Pran acts like a dictator, inside of the prison itself. Here is a documentary on YouTube about one of them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60jGRGXOXbU
The other one are the "Holy Thugs" from Venezuela's slums. There is a widespread religion in South America called Santerismo, which is a mixture of African Voodoo and Catholicism. It consists on praying and making ritualistic animal sacrificies to statues of saints, in exchange for the saint's "miracles" or "holy favours". It's similar to paganism. However, in the last two decades a new type of saints emerged, particularly popular in slums called the "Holy Thugs". These are saints embodied as statues of thugs with guns, knives and cigarrettes, to whom the criminals, or their families, pray for protection. This exposes a subculture morally degenerated to the point that venerating a positive deity like Jesus or Virgin Mary is "too good" for them to feel comfortable doing it, so they prefer to pray in the name of the more familiar Holy Thugs instead. There is VICE documentary on YouTube about them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsJtiAVKIDc
Very insightful article Gena. I appreciate you writing it.
In my teens, I remember seeing the faces of slum-criminals riding motorcyles through the streets of Caracas. There are numerous slums in the city, and it is difficult to avoid contact with these criminals no matter where one is. Their faces were joyfully nihilistic, and showed they had aged in that state, for years. It was the face of the type of person that feels joy in senseless destroying, killing, raping, and that has adopted it as a way of life. I don't compare them with animals, because animals are incapable of living for the purpose of destruction. Even other nihilists like the Columbine Shooters were a leage below them. For these thugs shooting up a school was just Tuesday. When they robbed someone, they shot them, even if they posed no threat, just to get "prestige" from their fellow criminals. They made a living from such crimes, and they enjoyed it. To the point they spent their days planing their next atrocity, for fun, with their criminal friends. Their motto was: "we don't fear death, because we are already dead". It was the most consistent expression of human evil I ever saw.
Fortunately, I've not come across such an individual in more developed countries. But it taught me a lesson that relates to your article: the type of evil that is at end of the "dash" we can let into our souls, if we don't ever correct it, will result in this type of slum-thug joyful nihilism.
Have you ever encountered such an individual in your clinical practice? Is it possible to revert such a deep psychological degeneration, or is there are "point of no return", from which correction is no longer possible?
Wow, Marcos- thank you for sharing that, and articulating it so vividly! Sounds like a harrowing but importantly edifying experience about how low humans can go; I suspect it’s a source of perspective that those of us growing up in developed countries could really use.
I haven’t worked with anyone that wontonly criminal in my practice, so I can’t directly speak to the kinds of “redemption arcs” that might be possible for such people, but I suspect there’s actually a lot of variability in how bad any given “slum-criminal” is and what range of trajectories is possible (e.g., think of the biographies of people like Malcolm X, Maajid Nawaz, etc).
I'm glad you appreciate it. I'm not familiar with Malcom X and Maajid Nawaz, but I'll add them to my list of biographies to read.
If you're curious, I know a few interesting subcultures consistently centered around evil that you may be interested in, from a psychology-of-evil perspective.
One are the Venezuelan prisons and Pranes. An unknown fact about Venezuelan prisons, is that inmates are not the prisoners, but the prison wardens. The prisoners are armed, and the prison guards are not. The inmates organize parties, invite women, run drug stores, commit crimes like extortion, and have their own "judicial" system inside of the prison, dictated by the criminal prison leader, the Pran. The Pran is the meanest, most violent and most evil criminal of the entire penitentiary. Pranes are often young men with a story of violence from a very early age, like the thugs I described above. They raise above the criminal ranks when taken to jail. The morality in such prisons is completely inverted. The meanest and most violent criminals are the most respected ones, the most peaceful and pacific ones are used as slaves. The Pran decides what the "law" is inside of the prison, and forces them to pay a "tax" called La Causa. Conflicts are solved by means of dagger fights, being shot in different parts of one's body, or death by execution. The Pran acts like a dictator, inside of the prison itself. Here is a documentary on YouTube about one of them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60jGRGXOXbU
The other one are the "Holy Thugs" from Venezuela's slums. There is a widespread religion in South America called Santerismo, which is a mixture of African Voodoo and Catholicism. It consists on praying and making ritualistic animal sacrificies to statues of saints, in exchange for the saint's "miracles" or "holy favours". It's similar to paganism. However, in the last two decades a new type of saints emerged, particularly popular in slums called the "Holy Thugs". These are saints embodied as statues of thugs with guns, knives and cigarrettes, to whom the criminals, or their families, pray for protection. This exposes a subculture morally degenerated to the point that venerating a positive deity like Jesus or Virgin Mary is "too good" for them to feel comfortable doing it, so they prefer to pray in the name of the more familiar Holy Thugs instead. There is VICE documentary on YouTube about them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsJtiAVKIDc