‘Serial Killer’ Mythology and Social Seduction
Ever wonder if so called “serial killers” (insert multi-murderers here please) enjoy their own mythology? Surely they must have a sense of social seduction in their public mystique. For those of us who freely choose not to kill others, we’re infatuated by them. So much so, the mythic proportions span the global spectrum of modern edutainment. You know as a group they must think the rest of us are pretty gullible. Because, for the sake of our prurient satiation, we’ll believe anything. Personal ideation desires believability. Communal complicity shows we’re good at creating a whole genre of fantasy around our fictions. Deviance is seductive and people enjoy the temptations of the taboo. So called “serial killers” are our vicarious salaciousness to the dark side.
We get a belief system going and most often don’t want to alter it in any way detrimental to our viewpoint. Said frequently enough, from one urban legend to another, we’ll accept anything as the “truth”. On an individual basis, multi-murderers must think how easy it is to ruse our collective thinking in social conformity and consensus. After all, we have many enchanting interpretations about them and their proverbial alleged “motives”. So much so, you can barely watch a police television drama or action adventure movie without the deceptive inferences regarding murdering perpetrators. Even though, murder is less than 1% of the annual nationwide crime rate, such shows get ratings. Now, this in no way detracts from the horrible tragedy of the victimization perpetrated by selfish premeditate murder.
It underscores our obsession with them and the carnival atmosphere we resurrect around them. Segments of academia have built careers around multi-murderers. Psychic detectives talk to their dead victims. News stories entice the lure of our amative passions. Forget the general public’s perception, as they have no idea regarding criminology except what’s regurgitated in the realm of “infotainment”. But, for the practitioners, who ought to know better, we get seduced by all manner of mystic inference. Especially when it comes to reverse victimization. We’ll believe what the killers tell us as authentic as to why they did it. Excuses abound. Somehow, early on, they were abused, maltreated and otherwise “victimized” themselves, right?
In the process, many will accept their pretext of “victimization” as an excuse, justification or rationality for horrendous acts of debauchery. Evil, we assert, is some kind of horned personification that somehow turns them into killers. Not unlike all of us, criminals have a knack for deception. But, their mythology about the rest of us is closer to reality. Where we ignore it, they understand we want immediate gratification. Simple answers, like alleged “profiles”, “psychic readings”, and “scales of evil” make good trickery. Along with that comes the ability to recognize our susceptibility to easy and trouble free explanation. Simplicity makes incantations charming through convincing persuasions. Keep it simple give us immediate gratification; don’t confuse us with complex facts and we’re happy. Plus, toss in the hope that all people are basically good, and evil is some cosmic force beyond our control.
That way we don’t see the “killer” in the mirror first thing in the morning. Regardless though, seasoned veterans of law enforcement ought to counter that pretty quickly. Maybe not if you factor in “criminal correctness” and other social seductions. None the less, like our other fellow inexperienced humans, outside the real world of criminological perspectives, we allow ourselves to become beguiled by the fantasy and accept the nonsense of the mythical illusions. In opposition to such “civilized thinking”, the criminal knows exactly what he or she is doing and laughs at our hypocritical pretexts. For the criminal, criminality is freely focused on a futuristic orientation. There’s something he or she needs and not because of some trauma in life’s experiences. We all have traumatic encounters with life. So what? Non-criminality variables as poverty, peers, and class placement are simplistic deflections away from criminal intentions.
When it comes to killing one’s own species, humans are very skilled, cunning and capable. Not only that, we’re particularly adept at cloaking our inherent criminality. As to our criminal capacities, we all have it, we all like it and we all want it. Such is the reflection of our innate neural complexity. In the scheme of our ruses, we are also good at hiding our real and true intentions. We wear a public mask of common sense and civility. Behind that, we safeguard a range of alibis to mitigate our amative proclivities. Some of us call these excuses that disguise the true purposes for the things we want.
That goes hand in hand with the very nature of our prurient duality. One good and one evil. Each internal “self” lurking in the darkness of a mindset to hunt the next target of opportunity. People are passionate in their premeditated and regulated depravity for the sake of private satiation. While some commit heinous acts of aggression, others try to hide in the microcosm of lesser social infractions. Most of us obscure the pretext by in making other choices. From pool rooms to boardrooms, illicit intentions are weaved in a web of human desires, cravings and wants. Criminal cause and effect formulates from the inside of the person not the outside. People commit crimes because they want to.
On a continuum of lesser to greater communal aberrations, as opposed to some alleged “measures of evil”, everyone is capable of anything. And, nothing is more devious than the so called “civilized” human being. Or, for that matter, the alleged pious and self-righteous proselyte. Over time, and throughout history, not a great deal has changed in terms of human nature’s self-centeredness. More or less, technology has aided more clever sophistication. Sure, we enjoy the illusion of our cover stories. Myths, fairy tales and urban legends help conjure feel good illusions that favor fiction over fact. That post-modern pretext about how cultured we are allows for smug posturing airs of shock at the news of the next horrendous act. Move closer so you get a better look.
The human formula for cause-effect intricacies in criminality is not easily formulated into a pristine simple mathematical calculation. By contrast on a basic level, we like things that satisfy our immediate gratification. In the process, people rarely investigate all the factors to substantiate the evidentiary data in a controversial act of discovery. We want things to reinforce emotional needs, have uncomplicated explanations, seem meaningful and remain unquestioned. Like the criminal, we have an ability to point the finger at someone else. We’re good at alibis, scapegoating or asserting some mythic deterministic notion. People enjoy placing blame away from their culpability and back to some mysterious force. And, we like to create clever typologies, like the “serial killer”. Because somehow that sounds sexier to sound bites on television, movie depictions or print publications, internet blogs. Talk about evoking prurient passions. Such portrayals carry dramatic emphasis in the myriad characterizations for sensational thrills.
Criminals are hoping we pursue the fables. Just mention words as “serial killer” and toss in “lust murderers”, “sex criminals”, maybe even “organized” or “disorganized” killers. The more categories the better we think it gets in “morality and meaning”. And, on top of that, many feel the closer we think we get to solving human nature’s intricate hedonistic proclivities. From there the imagination runs wild. Go figure, the media hype, group gossip and classroom fascinations. Anything said or reported over and over again, sooner or later becomes accepted as fact because someone said so. Even though, very often, our fallacies of inference result in faulty generalizations, many relish in the fictitious claims of one thing in place of another. Why? Well now, that’s the most compound complex question of all to answer in terms of human behavior.
Selfishness in egocentric behavior would be a good answer. That is, unless you get caught at it. Then, you can assert the blame on a thing, an entity, a person, etc. In the primacy of human thinking, it’s what’s in the self-willed ideation that counts. Psycho-sexual neural dynamic matters are personal, individual and unique. Plus, ideation is connected to our self-indulgent pursuits in privately crafted carnality. Basically, this is our manifest obsession in one way or anther, to chase the expression of our bio-sexual identity. Most often, this results in amative dysfunction for one or more forms. It is the personal ideation of personal myth for the satiation individual quests to understand one’s life in privatized narrative. It’s a matter of gain versus risk reduction in a profound psycho-sexual sense. To that end, in a sensational hounding of sensual motivation, we track our objectives, target them for conquest. No matter how bizarre, this is rational choice, with reason, logic and malice aforethought. And, the ingredients include the collusion of emotional influences based on the individual’s perspective.
Publicly, the sensationalism in news casting of some dreadful event captures the headlines and eludes critical analysis. In offices, classrooms and coffee shops, the public savors the mere mention of such horrendous deeds. In response, reactivity translates the evocative imagery into vicarious personal fascinations. Up close and personal, we might even catch the live action footage in progress. Later, the internet abounds with instant reruns. Shocking, odious and wicked, we want to see the story and watch the action.
None the less, whether perpetrator or spectator, for every thought and motion we take, our choices are freely made. People scamper in diverse directions to get their piece of the action. We commit social breaches of civility out of personal self-interests. If necessary, we’ll use whatever means to get what we want, including more than one murder to get what we crave. Profit is in the eye of the profiteer. We can easily say “monster”, “sicko” and “devil in disguise”, as we describe the manifest nature of human evil. Yet, all this is all too human and quite normal. But, in front of the community, where people are watching with rapacious interest, you can’t say that. Immediate gratification dictates things must be trouble-free and easy to digest. To use those descriptors is quite an effortless deception. Unless of course, you enjoy the scam of confounding reality, using metaphorical deflection and using the misapplication of such terms.
In our arrogant narcissism, we like gaming the subterfuge of others in proclaiming how much we’ve evolved. While the rest, outside our particular tribal grouping haven’t. But, they’re like us. Every action is premeditated intent to ensure we get what we want. Meanwhile, who do we see and hear in the echo effect of our own consciousness. Is it reflective self-indulgence? Yeah, it’s us looking back from that proverbial psychic reflecting pond. As in the forgoing label making and stereotype typecasting, investigative processes sometimes approach in haste the projection of a perceived “epidemic” of violent crimes. To describe the perpetrators, we choose verbal shortcuts like “sociopath”, “anti-social”, or “narcissist”. Whatever works might work.
In response when a killing occurs, we get excited while “reading” the “signature” of the crime scene. But, in reality it’s the evidence that counts. Afterward, we say he or she maimed animals, collected dead specimens, lit fires and indulged in necrophilia or cannibalism. That’s salacious and enticing for television and academia. However, where’s the evidence? First, we make excuses for them. Second, we invite belief and acceptance for speculative theories in cognitive bias. Third, we over-dramatize the use of metaphor and assume facts from fiction to ensure personal validation. Fourth, we hide the fact that we’re seduced by it and turned on vicariously. Our prurience is skewed to private advantage. And, sexuality has transformed for everyone involved.
With regard to cognitive bias in the satiation for subjective validation, there’s no plague or outbreak of multi-murderers. Just business as usual for people in general. Only human nature’s evolutionary processes still at work, lurking for advantage of one thing over another. As usual, cloaked in the guise of historical revisionism, many proclaim their theoretical antitheses. We do that to fit our particular agenda. The contagion here is our pretext to gullibility, which is really a cover for what we really are. Both good and evil, while civil and criminal. Humans have killed since the dawn of recorded history, by murders, rapes and robberies all over the world.
The conjecture by some as to an epidemic of “serial killings” is social and political for a hidden agenda. Do you really think the criminality of so called “serial killers” is a serious social problem, when murder is less than 1% of the entire crime index? You can the data, so figure it out. Why is the murder rate either going down or stabilized? Plus, in spite of all our techno-savvy, how come the solution rate is going down too? But wait, maybe you’re working on a graduate thesis, or you’re new to the criminal justice field. Okay, you probably want to be a “criminal profiler”. Then again, you might be proposing a paper for a scholastic journal to enhance “academic” standing within the pseudo-scientific community. Better yet. You might be a reporter, performing your star qualities on a cable network or news show. In that case, we have to sensationalize, right? Hold on, you could be a budding crime writer, with little or no real-world experience. In that case, who wants to read stories about “serial thievery”, or “serial bankruptcy”?
None of that sounds very sexy. So, with killers we come up with things like “heat of passion”, “in cold blood”. Now, that’s seductive. On the issue of “impulse control”, it gets better. Typically this is postulated cleverly for theories about multi-murderers. In some research, including college texts, training manuals and television documentaries, you often hear said that the criminal “snapped”. Writers of fictional drama include such nebulous notions in their story telling. For the novice writer, with little or no on the job or actual field experience, you can overlook the shortsightedness of such translated naivete. To say that something “triggered” him or her is extraordinarily misleading. Furthermore, it is alleged as a result of “losing it”, the murderer carried out the killing.
Come on now, do you really believe the killer when he or she tells you that? This sounds, to a classical criminologist, as a replication of the atavistic typological cave dweller throwback. And, perpetuates a fixation on determinism from the positivistic schools of thought. In other words, this line of persuasion seems to exonerate the criminal at every opportunity. However, if you think about it in rational terms, there is a sudden impact in the bare bones reality that the criminal actually premeditated his or her every move. The criminal’s “proficient methodology” for executing his or her wants is as clever as yours. Criminals demonstrate the desire to accomplish selected objectives. Simply put, criminals plan their actions. Murderers don’t all of a sudden crack under the pressure of social intercourse. They organize, plan, calculate and execute their objectives.
Criminals conduct their own tactical surveillance as it were. Carry out environmental assessments. Examine the potential for targets of opportunity and weigh risks versus benefits. If caught, they know that in our society, punishment is not sure, swift and certain. Deterrence has been relegated to a not so certain possibility. People, as criminals, and specifically as killers, understand the nature of what they’re doing. They’re counting on your pious gullibility to make virtuous your sense of morality and meaning. For the multi-murderer, the criminal hopes to deflect from their responsibility. In the meantime, the criminality of the individual freely formulates the excuses needed.
In fact, they do their own threat analysis. This formulates a basis relative to enhancing the competitive edge them. Even if such action spans a few seconds, thinking is the precursor to the premeditated event. Thoughts precede actions, because we are what we are therefore we think. A killer doesn’t have to ensure elaborate schemes as seen in the movies. He or she wants to have his or her way with others no matter what. Habitual ways of thinking and acting are not necessarily synonymous with an inability to control one’s actions. Control is essential to the criminal’s success. We do certain things every day out of habit. But, we still recognize what we’re doing in the process. Claiming an “irresistible inner force” is part of the criminal’s con game. Basically people are their own “moral agents” and remain responsible for freely choosing the actions they commit. Don’t fall for the gambit of “serial killer” mythology and social seduction. For more information on possible associated references to research data, please contact the author.
