"It's a natural achievement--" another witty Taupin lyric
To the extent human pathology may be considered "disabling," and we can leave that open as an ethical matter, Paul John Knowles was certainly an interesting innovator; his story brought to mind the early post-Meloni absent SVU episode where Hargitay is in a psychological tug of war with the improvisational psychopath she maimed. Not a favorite by any means, but the writers seemed to lift it from the Fawkes Natural Born Killers. Paul was certainly a man of my tween years, and unless it got burrowed somewhere, this was off my radar. I make an effort not to transliterate too much television reenactment on this account, but one of his surviving victims was a woman with cerebral palsy. She was portrayed as trying to ineffectually outmaneuver him, to no avail, and this corresponds to my home invasion at the hands of equally opportune African predators. How can we fight back without provoking worse? But from what the narrative suggested, Knowles could control himself when he wished, or deluded himself into believing it. This is a difference in kind from recur victims being driven over the line, as I've intimated. Most psychopaths rationalize their way out of monstrosity. By contrast, Knowles seemed to enjoy toying with it, even had some residual facade of conscience. Taken as a whole, however, are they a macro-evolutionary warning? I wonder.
No comments:
Post a Comment