The Monster von Frankenstein

I apologise in advance as this will be somewhat a train of thought post and therefore I am likely to get even myself lost during moments here.

Frankenstein is a book by Mary Shelley where a scientist, Victor Frankenstein, manages to piece together a human body from a collection of parts. This body is initially bereft of life but through a series of experiments manages to imbue the body with the vital spark and both its heart and brain, and subsequently the rest of it, start working. Being of essentially human origins, besides being initially a collection of dead bodies, it becomes self aware and its education begins. However, its (for the sake of clarity the monster will hereinafter be referred to as David - He was never called Frankenstein, that was simply the name of David's creator and that name has begun to encompass both David and his creator) education is somewhat different to the way that you or I are educated.
David's education starts with Victor being utterly repulsed by his appearance that he runs away. David is released and is left without guidance. He decides that he needs to meet with other humans to learn from. With this in mind he watches a family for a year. When he approaches them, they get scared and drive him away. He realises that his appearance is not what people are accepting decides to approach a child, reasoning that a child won't care as much about appearance. By chance this child is the young brother of Victor and insults David. David, attempting to keep him quiet by covering his mouth. This kills him and is David's first act of revenge for Victor making him and then abandoning him. However, it is accidental.
David and Victor meet by accident and David explains to Victor the situation. He says that because he is a living thing, he has a right to happiness and that Victor, as his creator, should provide him with a companion that will accept him. Victor can see the logic and so they leave for Scotland together to make a female companion for David.
While in the process of this, Victor starts thinking that two are probably worse than one, especially a breeding pair. He decides to destroy Davina (the female companion to be) before she is finished. David witness this and vows to destroy Victor's chance of happiness on his upcoming wedding night and kills Victor's somewhat more human partner.
On the wedding night, Victor prepares himself for a fight to the death. Telling his wife to wait upstairs for him he waits for David's arrival. Unfortunately for Victor (and his wife) David's revenge was not Victor's death, but the death of those closest to him so that he can feel the same isolation as David does. He sneaks in to the bedroom and kills Victor's wife.
Victor then vows vengeance upon David and they end up chasing each other for a few months until they find themselves in the Arctic Circle.
Victor dies of exposure. David finds him dead. Grief-stricken and filled with remorse he decides that so that no one else will be hurt, he will go up to the North Pole and burn himself to death rather than let anyone else know of his existence.
Thus ends the sad tale of Baron Victor von Frankenstein and his creation, David the Monster.

Ok, so that was a fairly quick recap on the story in case anyone has either not read it or has forgotten the salient points. In saying that, I have not read it either and so I might be wrong on a few points.

So there are a few things that come out of it. Firstly and quite quickly, something comes back to this post in which I discuss the difference between humans and animals. Mary Shelley seems to agree with my points here. David argues for his human-like rights; something I proposed should be the deciding point of whether an animal should be afforded the same rights. Secondly he defeats his instincts (survival) for something that he deems is more important than himself - in this case, the fact than his vengeance has cost the lives of four people and one like him for the gain of nothing and also the fact that his difference is obviously the cause of this. He decides that this is reason enough that he should not be allowed to continue his existence. Self sacrifice was one of my differences between humanity and animals. David put a value on his own life and determined that it was not higher than his revenge.

Secondly, it seems that a crucial point of his self awareness was the fact that he desired companionship. He grew to full self awareness as his desire for friendship grew. As this grew, he also gained more 'human' characteristics. It is the result of many studies that children of any age crave association with others. This is a critical part of their growth - the association with others teaches them social skills and aids in their development in a way that can not be taught in any other way.
It is also a result of similar studies that at the formative stages, a child's mind is more plastic, but that what is taught is remembered for longer (Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it). In the formative time for David, he was firstly abandoned. As a consequence of his abandonment linked with his desire for companionship, he sought out others. As he watched this, his mind formed the deeper desire to gain friends and a bona fide family. When this was taken from him by the second rejection, he learnt that no one liked him and no human would ever like him. Whether this was true or not, it was what his experiences taught him.
Looking at this, it is no surprise the direction that he decided to go. It has been seen many times before - usually in the lives of psycho killers. Repeated (shall we say it?) inhumanities teach inhumanity. David was taught that he was not worthy of what others had simply because he didn't look like them. Logic dictated to him that this was a lie and that he was worthy of the same as everyone else. And so he decided that if he wasn't worthy of it, no one else was - simple logic especially in the mind of a child.

Thirdly, he showed remorse. This is interesting of itself - he was never taught this because no one ever showed it to him in their dealings with him, and so either he learnt it as an aside somewhere or it is inherent in the human mind (which by now I have decided that he has). But even in the case of the latter, the path that he has taken, which we have seen in the lives of serial killers worldwide, this is a rarity. In fact it is generally considered more than just a symptom in these cases and is often more of a partial cause - if you don't care about the results for others then it doesn't matter what you do as long as you come out it positively. Which means that he was not in the same category as such luminaries as Richard Kuklinski, the infamous 'Ice Man' who despite initially feeling remorse, started to feel that killing gave him a sense of power.
Which means that he was simply a normal human who had been taken in a direction that he could not escape from and in which killing was the only way to continue. His thinking was that if he could kill the one that had made him unacceptable then he would feel some closure and would be able to live alone for the term of his natural life. When this was proved to be not apparent, by his remorse and grief, he decided that not only would he be not able to ever live with others, but that he could not live alone with himself, which is one of the most common excuses for suicide - the inability to be a part of yourself.

The next part is a question. Why is it that people assume from the outset that the worst possible thing that could happen is that they die? That was the conclusion that Victor made - if David was going to have revenge and it was going to be really really bad, than of course it would be his death. Interesting that an 18 year old, upper middle class girl who had not had any experience at all similar to this would decide that this wasn't the worst revenge that could be had - that it was in fact the death of someone close to you. Interesting also that this is one of the two reasons that vengeance is decided, the other being the slow destruction of the life of the other nemesis.

Something else; all of the people born human (rather than David who was made a human) indulge in the classic human pastime of prejudice. As soon as Victor sees David alive, he flees; when he tries to talk to the kid, he gets insulted; as soon as he reveals himself to the family that he watched for a year, they attack him - I will admit that is creepy, if someone came up to me and said "I've been watching you for about a year. Can we be friends?" I would probably attack them to. Basically the only person in this tale that doesn't, is David himself.
It occurs to me that the only people who don't indulge in prejudice are those who are considered outcasts. Although that isn't completely true - they still indulge, just with people who are close or similarly outcast to them. Since David never got the chance to meet anyone that was similar to him, he never got to show proper prejudice.

The last thing that I want to say here.
I'll come at it sideways.
The reason that recruiting child soldiers is such a brutally efficient way of getting loyal people fast is that once they've killed, they know that there is no coming back - murder is the only taboo that we are born with. When you show them that they are still accepted then they come into the life that accepts them willingly. If this is a life where cruelty and killing outsiders is the norm, then that is the life that they will live, no matter the consequences, until they are accepted into another life where their previous sins are not accepted but not a cardinal sin.
David experiences the first part of this. He kills someone by accident, but he already knows that no one will accept him and therefore there is no life that he can take. His only recourse is to continue in the path that he is already on because he doesn't see an alternative, although he continues to try and get out of it. His desire for a companion is now a desire for a counterpart who will accept him even after his sins more than it is a desire for association with others - he only wants one because in his mind only one will possibly accept him, classic romantic thinking.
When this falls through, he defaults to the original path and kills again, these times as a willing participant. He sees through the jaded eyes of the betrayed that without a literally custom built companion, no one will ever accept him. Whether he is right or not, I can't comment on; but his logic is flawless.

Here is the major difference between David and Victor (despite the obvious physical difference) - David rules himself through a logic that, while impeccable, doesn't have the advantage of secondary, wiser eyes and also hasn't been taught right or wrong besides what is inherent in him already. Victor jumps to conclusions and his logic is ruled by preconceived notions of what is right, being a non human (David) putting himself on the same level as a human (for example Victor).

The power of Belief 2

So the Westboro Baptist C(ult)urch.
What can we say?

Not much, so I'll just go straight into the negativity of their beliefs.
While a lot (roughly 103%) of what they do is negative, there is only one facet that I want to cover here.

A large portion of their reasoning goes somewhat like this.
"We are followers of Christ. Followers of Christ are called to be of one heart and mind. Therefore anyone who disagrees with us can not be called a follower of Christ."

The next part of their reasoning goes something like this.
"Christ said that his followers (us) would be hated for following him. We are hated for doing his work. Therefore we must be followers of Christ. Since everyone hates us, no one else can be legitimately called followers of Christ"

The next part of their reasoning goes something like this.
"Since God hates sinners, being everyone that doesn't follow Christ, which is everyone that isn't us, God hates everyone that isn't us. Since God isn't subtle about his methods (Look at the Old Testament where he would kill nations for the sin of one man) and he calls us to tell all about him, we must tell everyone that they are going to go to hell."

The final part of their reasoning goes a little something like this.
"People don't like us because we're telling them the truth that they are going to hell. Therefore they are going to hell"

In an interview with one of the members of this small group, it came out that she didn't actually want people to listen to their message in case people repented because if they did that, they wouldn't be punished for their sins. While this may not be the view shared by all of the members, it shows the type of hatred that is a definite part of the teachings.

Any hoo, back to the point. The reasoning is circular and lead the thoughts essentially in this way.
"People who dislike or hate us are going to hell and we should tell them that. People don't like us for telling them that they are going to hell, therefore they are going to hell and we should let them know."

So what is the negative power of belief in this case?
Here they refuse to take accepted belief over dogma. This is one that is especially good in small doses - it leads to questioning the accepted order, which may yet be wrong.

But why is this bad when it leads to questioning? Because in its extreme case (which we see with the WBC) it doesn't allow questioning. Everything becomes black or white, and there is no way that any shade of grey can be anything other than the darkest of blacks. It once again prohibits growth, but it also disallows anything else to be even considered. In this case, they refuse to believe that there are more than 15 or 20 actual followers of Christ in the world because, in their words "They'd be doing the same as we do and we'd have heard about it"


The real problem in this case is that they've warped their views so much that every time they do anything that someone dislikes they re-validate everything that they do once again.

The power of Belief 1

There are two things that I want to talk about in terms of the negative power of belief and therefore there will be two separate discussions. It is important that I say that both of these aspects can also be positive in the right dosage (very mild).

They both take different forms and affect different people. Thus, I will focus on possibly the most notable incidences in each case. In this discussion, I will look at the Nazi party nearing the end of WWII. In the next discussion I will look at one facet of the Westboro Baptist C(ult)hurch. (as an aside, written that way you can almost trick yourself into thinking it says Cthulhu)

So firstly, the Nazi party. What did they most notably believe in? The Motherland and the divine strength of the same. Everything else was secondary, which isn't to underplay it, but everything else came from this one core belief. The hatred of the Jewish race, the gypsies and homosexuality came from the belief that this was what was making Germany weak. The love of the aryan 'race' came partly from Neitzche's theory of the Übermensch and partly from the view that this was the purist and therefore strongest race; and so the propagation of this bloodline meant that Germany would strengthen itself through its people.

And how did this play out?
Towards the end of the second world war possibly the most common reaction among the Nazi high command was disbelief - there was no way that they could lose the war and so therefore there was no justification to the claims that they were. Documentation of Hitler's last weeks show that he couldn't accept that there wasn't a way that his men weren't simply lulling the Russians into a false sense of security before crushing them close to Berlin. When they entered Berlin and it became clear that Germany had lost the war, Hitler committed suicide with his wife Eva Braun. Following this the rest of the high command gave up hope - after all, how could they win when their leader had abandoned them and Germany.

So what was the negative power of belief in this case?
Refusing to accept fact over belief. What they 'knew' to be true had lost out to what was actually true but there was no acceptance of this because their belief overrode the facts.

We've seen this in many other cases as well. Possibly the other most well known one was Galileo's fight with the Catholic church over the shape of the earth leading to his conviction for heresy and subsequent house arrest.

So then the question is how negative is this power of belief.
It blinds you to the reality of what is actually happening. This in itself is bad enough, it disallows growth from your accepted beliefs, and as I've stated previously, if you're not growing, you're regressing.
It forces you to lie to yourself by discounting, belittling or misinterpreting data that is true.

Negative indeed.