Comment on the recent Cleveland kidnapping story.

Click to enlarge: Cleveland kidnapping suspect Ariel Castro.

Neighbors and news outlets have been consumed with the objective normalcy that hid a decade of abuse and unalterably damaged three young girls and their families.

We're hearing again about how unexpected the discovery was, of unspeakable abuse, of heroes, of Stockholm Syndrome, and of a self-preserving communal apathy that allows such things to happen (ie, we jealously mind our own business).

But tell me, how do you distinguish normal behavior that conceals criminal activity from normal behavior that doesn't?

This difficulty doesn't surprise me; criminals are clever, that's how they get away with criminal activity for so long.

 

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Click to enlarge: Which one of these things is not like the others? A real puppy nestled among very similar stuffed animals.

We have difficulty distinguishing the fundamental differences among things that superficially look alike and may even appear identical - cults and religions,[1] dictators and presidents, a helio-centric universe and an earth-centered universe, cures and miracles, etc, and this cognitive reality has created a modern mess in which those who full well know the difference purposely confuse matters by misapplying words and labels to manipulate listeners (comparing George W Bush to Hitler, eg).

(One has to ask, if we truly cannot detect a difference, is there a difference? Yes, of course, just as there is a difference between a Ptolemaic universe and a Copernican universe. Yet despite our understanding, the sun's behavior in the sky remains the same. The more refined your detection and reason, the greater your insight.)

[2013-05-08]

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[1]
A recent TV ad promoting an upcoming documentary on cults (on The History Channel, IIRC), threw in a picture of Billy Graham, the single exception to a collection of other figures we typically associate with cult leaders (mass suicides, brainwashing, etc).

Some would agree there is no difference, but if so, they're just not looking hard enough, and actually expressing an opinion, not an observation.

Someone probably included Graham's pictures just for fun to see if they'd get a reaction. That's one of the problems: Serious examination of serious subjects is hampered by doing incendiary things like this. What good comes of insulting part of your audience from the git-go? It only tells anyone paying attention that you're not taking it seriously.

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