My Own Reflection

moral:

You may have heard of Josef Fritzl, the Austrian man who imprisoned his own daughter for 24 years (who is now 42), raped her 3,000 times, had 7 children with her and killed one of them (most likely). 

This is the most fucked up, vile thing a person has ever done.  There is no “worse” than this.  This is the end of the line.  

I don’t even know what to think of any of this though.  I feel so horrible and disgusted that something like this is even possible.  How are human’s capable of this?

Initially, when the news broke, I was shocked.  Every part of it is so out of bounds with reality that I discounted it as unbelievable.  But, after reading this story, every part of its horribleness comes back to earth.  I don’t know what to think, I feel so sad for what happened to this girl and these children and my soul just feels a bit more empty.  

What do you make of this?  Do you label this as a solitary act carried out by one crazy man?  How can a person like this happen?  I can’t help but think if you start labeling this “thing” as a man, then you start to place the blame on the human race.  By saying that this is “man” then you attach a line (no matter how thin) from him to yourself and so presume that there is a similarity between the two.  But I don’t want to do that.  Inside of me I know that there is nothing in common with him and me or anyone else I’ve ever known.  Josef Fritzl is different.  And it’s from this point that we start to attribute other names to what he is, because I don’t think we can give him the dignity of being deemed a “human being”…I think he is the closest thing to a monster that we’ll ever see.

On wikipedia:

“The term monster refers to a being that is a gross exception to the norms of some ecosystem. A person referred to as a monster is taken as exceptionally evil, grotesque, unreasonably strict and uncaring, sociopathic, and/or sadistic. The word monster connotes something wrong or evil; e.g.: a monstrous being is: very morally objectionable, physically or psychologically hideous, or a freak of nature”

I think the focus is in the first line.  A “gross exception to the norms of some ecosystem”.  This is the only sense that I can make of Josef Frtizl.  He dresses like a man, works at a job like one…but what he is, is so outside the bounds of what human beings do and are, that he can only be thought of as a monster.

I think this story is a must read simply because you don’t want to hear things like this in your life.  You hear a story like this, and are so disgusted, that you don’t want it in your head and want nothing to do with it.  But doing so avoids an obligations that we have to ourselves, that we must come to terms with the very real, very terrible things in this world and in so doing, we’re better able to understand a part of who we are and our own experience here.

I sat here trying to write something b/c I knew if I went to bed without attempting to get some of this out of me that it’d creep into my dreams…I still don’t know what to say.  Maybe the world just needs balance.  You see and hear about people doing incredibly good things for one another every day, and in order for those things to happen, there has to be something absolutely horrible at the other end of the spectrum.  I really don’t know.  Maybe the shits just starting to pile up, and the truth’s that this event is just a byproduct of the mess people’ve been pushing for awhile now.

I keep thinking of the scene in No Country For Old Men where Tommy Lee Jone’s character is sitting having breakfast and he’s flipping through the newspaper and says, “it’s just all-out war. I don’t know any other word for it. who are these folks? I don’t know… You can’t make up such a thing as that. I dare you to even try”

I’d really like to hear someone else’s thoughts on this

UPDATE:  Fritzl admitted to everything yesterday.  Despicable…