On serial killers

I’ve been reading about Jeffrey Dahmer, a reformed Christian. They analysed, or at least reported, on his childhood – it was ok! (That’s not surprise; it’s sarcasm.) He grew up and turns out he liked sex, kinky stuff, and saw nothing troublesome about consuming human flesh. The bad part is his partners, even if they had consented to the sex games, it’s believed that they didn’t consent to dying or being eaten. That’s assumed because at least one guy tried to make an escape, and most, it is believed, were drugged before being killed.

I’ve recently bought a book about male serial killers, and the grouping seems rather arbitrary. What exactly, then, is a serial killer? A person who acts or reacts with intentional killing of another human being. But that’s about where commonality ends. Motives are mostly different, as are tactics, intent, and “victims”. Do I sympathise? And if I did? What I mean to say is that I can’t and won’t judge those who aren’t me or share what is in me. People ask ‘are these serial killers evil or are they mad?’ Are there no other options?

There are a lot of people who like kinky sex. Problem? Not in this society. There are a lot of people who will consume whatever as food, regardless of other’s opinion of its taste or other aspect of its nature. Whales, snakes, endangered animals, insects, gastropods, pork, and human flesh have all been fair game (think of the Uruguayan rugby team in the Andes, as an example). Problem? No. Different cultures, different tastes, different times and circumstances. There’s a lot of people who kill – even in masses. Soldiers, victims of violence, governments, for example. Problem? People may cringe, and maybe rightly so, but history tells us that killing, if not wrong, is at the very least not uncommon human behaviour.

So is Jeffrey Dahmer so far from “normal” humans? I’d argue that he’s not all that far removed from common.