Thoughts upon Charles Manson's Parole

On April 11, Charles Manson was denied parole for his role in the Tate/LaBianca murders .

Manson is a madman, there's little doubt about that. He collected followers at a time when young people were receptive to a hippie messiah and they connected with his distorted vision of racial apocalypse and counter culture.

We enter this world with a limited set of tools; among them are usually a few “meta tools” that let us create new tools if we aren't initially supplied with them. So if we aren't given by nurture or nature a set of values that “killing is wrong,” most of us have tools to fashion that new rule ourselves.

Some of us do not. However, the rest of us have tools that help others make missing tools. Those people are called parents and teachers and clerics and babysitters and neighbors, etc.

Manson may have come into this world with a full toolbox, but if so, we'll never know. What we do know is that he was not surrounded by adults who could teach him how to use his own, or give him new ones.

I'm not dismissing his actions, just taking the opportunity to cite him as an example of a broken human being that no one was able to mend before he hurt a lot of other people.

Would I feel this way if someone in my family had been a victim? No, of course not. That's why we exclude victims and other prejudiced parties (in a legal sense) from juries. It colors our judgment. But an extreme example like Manson sometimes lends perspective to the principle, as difficult as it may be.

We understand broken bones. We still don't understand broken minds. I learned years ago in my linguistics studies that there are more euphemisms for mental illness than any other aspect of the human condition. You can even make up euphemisms and everyone will know what you're talking about. We do it all the time without even thinking, as I did when I said a certain minister was one parishioner shy of a full pew ; you knew what I meant.

Started: 2012-04-11