Domestication

I watched Shutter Island on the plane today. Very good movie, I thought. And, very thought-provoking too. Di Caprio's final tussle between living as a monster and dying a good man, is a lot more than just that. For me, one of the best last lines in any script.

Well, some thoughts were provoked. What drives men to do the real gory stuff? Like the Dachaus and the serial killings and the mass murders of real life. Is it failure of the in-built moral compass, unique to man? Is it conscious choice to override a functioning moral compass, which makes assignment of guilt more palatable? Is it insanity - failure of the senses, and if so, is empathy acceptable?

Or, is it a corollary to the possibility that man's most successful domestication experiment has been on himself - through the institution of civilisation - and in every species, some specimen will remain wild?

A man wields the axe that chops off the limbs of innocent men, women and children in Sierra Leone. Does he 1) not know he is not supposed to do it? 2) want to do it? 3) not know he is doing it? Or 4) not subscribe to the tag of civilized man?