“It was weird that I didn’t feel remorse,” NY Times, 2014-06-08, from a story about two 12-year-old girls, Morgan Geyser and Anissa Weier, who lured a third girl into a woods and stabbed her19 times.
I’ve heard this before and I always wonder why, if you didn’t feel remorse, you would think it was “weird” that you didn’t feel remorse. There’s a whole world of morality and philosophy and culture hiding in that little phrase. Does anybody really feel remorse or does anybody else just not think it’s weird?
Of course, we all act as if remorse is what you feel after you do something wrong. We act as if everyone knows what is wrong and what is right, and we respond to regrettable events appropriately, the way everyone would.
The girl who made the statement above believed it. Well, she says something like that. If you take everything people say at face value, you would have to say that she meant it– she thought she would feel remorse. She was prepared for it, but still committed to the task at hand– proving to “Slender Man” that she was evil enough to earn his trust.
She could have said to her victim, it’s nothing personal.
It is quite possible that most people don’t feel remorse. We all pay lip service to values like kindness and compassion but, as when we charge adolescents as adults in order to maximize the amount of suffering we can inflict upon them, we don’t seem so different.
The judge will sentence these girls to long, long terms in federal penitentiaries. And then she might just say to herself, “it was weird that I didn’t feel remorse”.
Oh but wait– the judge is an adult. She will have learned long ago to say– regardless of what she really feels– how sorry she is to have to punish these girls like this.