The Ides of March (ugh, she got creative with the title)
On the moral neutrality of humankind, the sheer audacity of men, Vol 3 of Slow Crime Sundays (on Luay Sako, and sentencing principles) + the usual wraps.
I’ve been away for a chunk of this month, spending some time in the beautiful NSW Northern Rivers region. I always get a bit angsty around March, and have learnt I need a break before the second quarter of the year, especially if life has been busy (which the start of 2024 certainly was!). I can handle a lot if I know I have a break coming, so I now book them in regularly to bookend periods of work.
The northern rivers is such a beautiful area if you can ignore the spiritual scam artists. I did enjoy eavesdropping on a few conversations which cracked me up, including a group meeting (a business networking group of some sort?) run at the excellent Woods cafe in Bangalow (must visit! eat banana bread!), where a man loudly and confidently proclaimed ‘I always say that the difference between a 6-figure business and a 7-or-8 figure business is that the latter is only built with staff on a boat together on a river of tears…the team that cries together and know each other deeply can bring amazing things into the world’.
OKAY first of all, Chad, the only amazing thing you are wanting to bring into the world is more money for yourself. Secondly, the world and planet can only accommodate so many 7-or-8 figure businesses, and it’s likely that the majority of these businesses are selling things no one really needs and don’t add any real value to people’s lives. The degrowth economy all the way, babeh. A nice little piece here about other forms of simplicity in life. THIRD, if anyone in my work team asked me to cry with them and told me that they wanted to ‘know me deeply’, I would shoot out of there faster than you could say ‘where the fuck did she go?’. I LIKE and trust my team and work very well with them, but this faux pretence of vulnerability and deep sharing does not belong in the workplace. Workplaces do not equal families/friends/partners. Let’s just try for solid awards, good enterprise bargaining agreements, no gender pay gap, and adherence to Fair Work laws ok? I weep for the poor staff members of the business owners at this meeting who will now probably have to sit in sharing circles.
(Blink twice if you need help).
Apart from these teeny moments of angst, I loved this region and will return. Kayaking the Brunswick river was a highlight, especially manoeuvring through mangroves and seeing stingrays. I always try and do something new when I go away (though the e-bike in Ubud was a notably bad idea, I was hit by a motorbike and fell off) as this is such a nice way of finding beginner’s mind.
Are humans good or evil?
I’ve been pondering a few questions lately. The first was instigated by a question someone asked me at my IWD day event, whether I still believe in the essential goodness of human beings, despite the (forensic) work I do. I had to pause and think about this. My instinctive answer has always been yes, but over the past year or so I’ve reconsidered this, and realised that at some stage my answer has shifted to a no. I don’t think people are necessarily bad (though I do think we would do very well to remember the banality of evil). While this phrase was coined by Hannah Arendt, psychological studies like the famous Stanford Prison Experiment have shown that in the right circumstances, with the right pressures, good people can do horrendous things. Zimbardo coined this the Lucifer Effect, and wrote a book about this (recommend!).
Essentially, I think that I now think (v meta) that humans are morally neutral.
Being an atheist, I don’t possess any belief in our immortal souls and see humans as animals, just with larger pre-frontal cortices and opposable thumbs. The anthropocentrism which characterises our view that we are special in some way has come at the cost of many other species. While our pre-frontal cortices and opposable thumbs have given us immense power, we’ve often used this power to the detriment of other people and the planet. Unlike many other animals — because of our brains we have choices, and the capacity to engage in executive processes (thinking, planning, strategising, considering the past and future), and questions about good and evil are best examined through the question of the choices we make and the way we exercise our cognitive faculties in decision-making.
We all make choices big and small daily, and I suspect that many of us believe that if faced with a large moral dilemma we would make the moral choice. I am more doubtful. We are rarely faced with big, clear-cut moral dilemmas, and are instead presented with a series of smaller cascading choices (do I close my eyes to that small injustice to protect my peace? Do I speak up or stay silent because I don’t want to offend? Do I say something nasty when I could take the time to consider my response? Do I learn more about this issue, or just say I’m too tired? Do I increase the rent I charge my struggling tenants, even though I don’t really need to? Do I yell at the receptionist because I am stressed? Do I leave a note on a car if I’ve reversed into it? Do I tell the cashier she gave me too much change?). While these choices may seem small — and we often make them unthinkingly — we build ourselves through these choices and may perhaps find that unwittingly, we have formed ourselves into beings who would not make the bigger altruistic and ethical choice because of the smaller choices we have already made.
From a psychological perspective, some altruism is hard-wired into us and children as young as 14 to 18 months will reach out to help others. A range of experiments have shown that people will help others for a few reasons — for reputational gain, to prevent punishment, or to stop the aversive emotion which comes when we see others in pain. Evolutionarily, altruism makes it more likely that kin groups will survive, or for non-kin related altruism, that humans will survive and reproduce (it always come back to these same basic drives).
While most of us have altruistic traits and moral reasoning wired into us, societal norms will influence how we experience these. In addition, some people (called moral exemplars) develop a self-identity based around moral/ethical functioning, and carefully develop and practise their moral skills, allowing them to align their actions with certain ethical principles, even under very difficult circumstances (such as those who work in humanitarian fields in war-torn regions). More reading about this here.
Supporting people to develop morally/ethically (I prefer the less judgement-laden nomenclature of ethics) is an essential (and deeply unpopular act) especially as the problems we now face (climate change, geopolitical strife, food insecurity) are massive and possibly deathly for humanity. Individually, we can all start to think about who we are a little more deeply, and instead of sitting smug in our fallacious and instinctive sense that we are good people, might choose to find some necessary discomfort in examining our actions, realising how discrepant they are with standards of ethical decision-making or the values we hold dear, and course-correcting slightly in our smaller, day-to-day decisions.
Why are men?
On a less serious note, why are men, and can they absolutely not resist centring themselves?
I was reminded of this at my very excellent IWD day event, attended by about 90 women and two men. One of the men was very lovely (you sir, are a good ally) while the other refused to get his picture taken for social media, but told someone from the organising committee that if she ‘brought the author to [him]’, he would let her take a picture for his social media. Having been duly summoned, he then proceeded to touch me twice without asking (stop doing this, men), told me he was an ‘emerging writer’, asked me for a bizarre staged picture of me handing him my book (?!) and then did not even buy my book!
I’ve had similar experiences like this at other events, including last year after an excellent panel at Brisbane Writers Festival on trauma, domestic violence and meaningful change. The panel spoke at some length about male entitlement and attitudes, and I also spoke about true psychopathy being quite rare. After the event a man walked up to me and told me that he is a ‘very experienced clinician’ (clinician is such a non-specific term, even podiatrists are clinicians and unless you have specific forensic training, your views about psychopathy are meaningless) and that ‘people like you’ (…me), miss a whole lot of psychopathy because he has experience and knows there are lots of people walking around out there with these traits! The utter audacity of this man blew me away. To walk up to a trained female professional and immediately offer an unsolicited view discrediting her words and knowledge was such a brazen act, especially given the panel focused on gender issues and the manner in which men privilege themselves at the expense of women. Anyway, I made big ‘help me now’ eyes at my publicist, muttered something non-committal, and skedaddled off to sign some books.
I’ve noticed that women rarely do this, it’s almost always the men in my audiences/readership. Female audience members have been unfailingly courteous, respectful and thoughtful, while men have more often spoken/written to me to either tell me I’m wrong, or to share their work with me under the guise of ‘networking’. And no, not all men of course — some very excellent men have communicated with me on social platforms and are true allies and all round good blokes.
I share this not to shame men, but to note that terrible behaviours are rife, even amongst men who probably see themselves as good allies (and to be fair, they might be, in certain situations). I think it’s really important for men to be aware of and consider how they dominate public spaces and make women feel unsafe/unwelcome/shut down. Here are some specific behaviours to be aware of:
Talking over women, taking up more time than is your share. If there are 10 people at the table, you only get 1/10th of the time, unless otherwise agreed. Monitor this yourself.
Assuming a woman wants to hear what you have to say.
Monopolising time.
Being louder or more physically imposing/prominent than others in mannerisms and the space utilised (allowing for variations based on body size of course).
Refuting a female expert with no evidence other than your own opinion.
Making sexualised remarks/comments.
Making a comment or monologuing, when asked if you have a question.
Touching a woman without her explicit consent.
Manspreading, not being aware of women walking toward you and instinctively expecting that they will be the ones to move.
Not speaking up in support of women when other men are saying inappropriate or sexist things.
Implicitly or explicitly buying into tropes about women being ‘emotional’, ‘crazy’, ‘needy’ etc etc.
SLOW CRIME SUNDAYS
(Disclaimer: As a registered psychologist, I cannot provide diagnoses or commentary about mental health unless I have seen a client, and if I have seen someone, then I cannot speak about them publicly for obvious reasons. What I present in this section are general thoughts only, and these musings are not intended to be seen as clinical advice. I’ll be picking out overseas or historical cases and using them as a way to springboard into discussions about relevant forensic issues. I have no specific knowledge of these cases, and my commentary is meant to be informational and educational in nature only.)
No specific deconstruction of a crime this month, but something much more important — an exploration of sentencing principles. I’m raising this because of the Luay Sako case - Celeste Manno’s killer. He received a 36-year sentence for Ms Manno’s death, and a 30-year non-parole period. There was an outcry because he didn’t receive a longer sentence, understandably led by Ms Manno’s family who are grieved, likely traumatised by the extremely violent nature of her death, and very distressed by the failures of the police to protect her. While these emotions are understandable and are common sentiments expressed by victim-survivors of crimes and their families, the push for a longer sentence is often centred around the need for retribution, which is not one of the key sentencing principles used in Australia.
Sentencing principles help the court system decide on an appropriate sentence, and the key principles used in Australia are:
parsimony – the sentence must be no more severe than is necessary to meet the purposes of sentencing
proportionality – the overall punishment must be proportionate to the gravity of the offending behaviour
parity – similar sentences should be imposed for similar offences committed by offenders in similar circumstances
totality – where an offender is to serve more than one sentence, the overall sentence must be just and appropriate in light of the overall offending behaviour.
The sentencing purposes are:
just punishment – to punish the offender to an extent and in a way that is just in all the circumstances
deterrence – to deter the offender (specific deterrence) or other people (general deterrence) from committing offences of the same or a similar character
rehabilitation – to establish conditions that the court considers will enable the offender’s rehabilitation
denunciation – to denounce, condemn or censure the offending conduct
community protection – to protect the community from the offender.
While just punishment, denunciation and deterrence are very important principles in the Sako case, retribution or the idea of a ‘life for a life’ are not principles enshrined in case law in Australia. Sentencing principles also allow for mitigation when there are factors (mental health, social disadvantage) which may have contributed to the commission of the offence (i.e., why it happened), or which may impact on how onerous prison is for a person. Sako’s very severe personality disorder acts as a mitigating factor, and is also linked to why the offence happened.
While mitigation is often seen by the public as a get-out-of-jail-free card, it’s not, and 30 years in a maximum security prison is a whopping long time. Think about where you might be in 30 years, and what you want for yourself — and erase all that. That’s what a prison sentence implies — the loss of years and any opportunity which comes with that (while also clearly acknowledging that this is what a perpetrator often takes from a victim too, and this loss of years is just punishment). Someone like Sako will also likely be strictly monitored under some form of post-sentence order for the rest of his life, and will likely never again experience freedom in any meaningful way. It’s also helpful to remember that no one asks for a personality disorders, and most people with these disorders find their experiences of the world very difficult indeed, especially in a constrained and rule-bound institution such as prison. Many people with severe PDs find it very hard to cope in prison and often end up in isolation or management cells (where you are effectively locked down alone in a tiny cell for 23 hours a day).
Often when a serious crime like murder is committed, there is anguish and many questions around ‘what if’ for those left behind. This can sometimes be reflective of a post-traumatic response (‘if X had not happened, or Y had done this, we could have prevented this crime and my friend/sister/partner/child would still be alive’). In cognitive processing therapy for PTSD lingo, this is what we might call a ‘stuck point’ — a belief about why a traumatic event happened (often centred around shame, guilt and self-blame) which stops people from processing a trauma, thus keeping them stuck in PTSD. When working with victims of crimes such as sexual assault, the goal is often to shift this self-referential and skewed thinking and to create a more realistic conceptualisation of why a crime it occurred (‘the assault happened because the perpetrator chose to rape and there was little you could have done to prevent it’) and to learn to process the natural feelings which arise (anger, fear, sadness, horror, disgust) instead of sitting stuck in guilt, shame, or anger directed at people who were not the original perpetrator. This is a useful framework to consider when thinking about supporting the secondary victims of crime (e.g., family, friends) to process a horrific crime and to re-build their own lives in a way which feels meaningful but still honouring of the huge loss which may have been inflicted.
Also a gentle reminder to remember that two things can be true at once.
We can continue to work hard for the rights of women and fight to ensure no one ever again experiences what Ms Manno did, and we can recognise the need for mitigation in sentencing, and note that retribution based approaches alone are unlikely to effect any meaningful outcome or change.
WHAT I READ (IN WHOLE OR PART) IN MARCH
I Have Some Questions For You - Rebecca Makkai
What Happened to Nina - Dervla McTiernan
Disobedient Bodies - Emma Dabiri
Come and Get It - Kiley Reid
The Hunter - Tana French
The Glad Shout - Alice Robinson
The Family Law - Benjamin Law
The Pulling - Adele Dumont
The Book of Form and Emptiness - Ruth Ozeki
What Happened to Charlotte Salter - Nicci French
Laziness Does Not Exist - Devon Price
Appreciation - Liam Pieper (such a great pisstake on the wanky art world, read it!)
MEDIA WRAP
I had this article published by the Guardian about trauma vs BPD, had SKILLS excerpted by Breathe Magazine worldwide, and taped this podcast episode for Well Well USA.
I also did a Q&A with Jill Stark for Queenscliffe Literary Festival — it was fantastic, with thoughtful, incisive questions from Jill, a brilliant crowd and very kind organising committee. I was especially blown away by the calibre of the questions asked by the audience (you go, women of Queenscliffe!)
UPCOMING EVENTS
16th April - An In Conversation at Emerald Hill library in South Melbourne, tickets here.
1st May - In Conversation at Bargoonga Nganjin (North Fitzroy library) - keep an eye on their events page. Karla will be in attendance! Bring treats (no chicken, she’s intolerant).
I’ll also be at Sydney Writers Festival 24-26 May, and Brisbane Writers Festival from 31st May - 2nd June - busy month! Programs live on the SWF and BWF websites — and especial props to Jackie Ryan’s team at BWF for such a fabbo program. This year I’ll even be contained enough and not such a HOLY-ROLLING-HECK-I-HAVE-TO-SPEAK-ON-PANELS anxiety wreck, and will be able to attend other events.
An especial plug for my workshop on trauma-informed interviewing for writers at BWF - info here.
