Causes are not excuses

In light of recent extraordinary criminal activity (mass killing in Norway, looting and riots in London, also the gunman at the Estonian Ministry of Defence) there have been calls not to look at the causes of these crimes. These actions have been deemed by some as mad or crazy acts which supposedly took place irrationally, from some sort of natural evil that surfaces from time to time. Those acts might have been desparate and committed by people who are not sane and they are, of course, criminal, but that should not prevent us from looking into why these actions were taken. What was it that has driven some members of the society into these horrific actions against their own societies? As a side note, it is interesting to observe that although the preoccupation of governments have been focused on how to react to an outside terror threat, these actions have been taken by the citizens against their own state.

I do not advocate shifting the blame from the individual who committed the crime to the society on the whole. It is clear that those individuals who were proven to commit a specific act deserve to be punished according to the law. However, in order to prevent such acts in the future, it is important to look at and analyse the causes of these events. The society should also look into things that are wrong and try to remedy these. This way, the horrific events could be turned into possibilities to make a better society. This does not mean that we somehow reward the criminals, because the motivation should not be fear of someone doing something similar again, but to eliminate the root causes of these actions.

Some people (especially those who like to see things in black and white terms) think that there are people who are evil and that is that. Those ‘evil’ people need to be tracked down and put to prison or even killed. That is not the way I look at things. I think people and life in general is much more complex. Goodness and evil are subjective, relative terms that could, at best, relate to specific actions in a specific ethical or moral framework, but not really to the whole of a person.

Faced with complex set of issues that shock or frighten, people tend to seek for strong leaders with simple, harsh measures. However, I think it is best to analyse the situation and also look at the root causes of these criminal events. Trying to ignore problems will not make them go away.