There is a reasonably horrifying story in today's Seattle PI, Section B, Page 5 from which I would like to quote (and yes this will get around to science before it ends):
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"A man told investigators he beat a woman to death with a hammer, slit her throat and kept the body in his closet for three weeks, moving it to a trash bin only when the smell became unbearable, according to police.
....
Relatives and friends of Hamill at the court hearing said they didn't believe he intended to harm the woman, whom he had met in an alley behind Jimmy Z's, a bar, the night she was killed.
"He did a terrible thing, but he's not a terrible person," said Lindsey Hamill, his sister."
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Now I bring this up here in a science forum because in my mind this is no different from the self-delusion of those who reject the advice of climatologists (with respect to global warming) or biologists (with respect to evolution).
I mean give it a break sister. You don't hit someone over the head three times with a framing hammer, slit their throat, and not intend harm.
And it is pure insanity to say "he did a terrible thing, but he's not a terrible person."
The human capacity for self-delusion may be one of the things that does truly separate us from the other animals on this planet. And perhaps our failure to deal with it the reason why history continues to repeat itself millenia after millenia.
Here's a quiz for everyone. Who is the person that started the group that initially spearheaded the war in Iraq? You only get 3 guesses. Bush? No! Cheney? No! Wolfowitz? No! Rumsfeld? No. It was a corporate office of Lockheed Martin ... the very same company that has made billions off of the war. The ability to engage in self-delusion is in need of some serious study.
Wonder what the chances are of a drug that cures this delusional state making it to market in a phramacy near you? Zero!
