Why?

My post today will be about death. Not because it's ANZAC Day, but because of two articles I read about in the news yesterday.

The first is about two girls over in Perth who decided to kill their friend. Why? So they could experience what it was like to murder someone. ...wha? Now, I can freely admit that there are any people who tick me off enough that I want to kill them (although being passive aggressive, that's not likely to happen soon), but these two just woke up on Sunday morning and decided that they'd like to kill their friend. Moreover, they did it quickly because "As our friend, we did not really want her to suffer." They later turned themselves in.

Several neurons are failing to fire here. What goes wrong in the brain chemisty that leads not just one, but two people to suddenly do this. Even expert are baffled. There is so much we don't understand (although there is a lot we do understand. I refuse to take the "we don't know anything" approach some would force us to), and this just shows we have so much to discover about ourselves.

Closer to home, there was the incident in South Auckland just a few days ago, when a kid was beaten to death after soiling his pants. From the articles, it looks like the home was pretty screwed up anyway, and this wasn't the first abuse the kid suffered. And the adults also look like they loved the kid. "The woman's counsel, John Rowan QC, said in a brief opening address that she did not intend to kill her son or to cause any serious injury which she knew was likely to result in death."

People talk about dogs that stay with their masters though the masters beat them. But how much are we not talking about children who stay with abusive parents? This is another case of brain chemisty going into weird areas, leading to a very strange view of the world:

"She said it was clear that the boy needed medical help after being beaten on January 31, but that the couple did not do so because they feared they would be in trouble for inflicting the injuries and they could have their other children taken from them."

There is so much yet to learn. The simpliest question, and the toughest to answer, is: Why?