There was a case in the US where a teenager from a wealthy family killed several people while driving drunk. The kid was heartless about the entire situation. The defense argued the kid suffered from "affluenza" which meant he was spoiled growing up so he doesn't understand right and wrong so he shouldn't be punished for it. Yeah that's called a sociopath it were anyone else. So of course the family's influence apparently won them a lighter than normal sentence where the kid's father was able to find his son to a Club-Fed type of facility to which he paid the bill.
Then there a was a TV show I watched where they made fun of girls who were Justin Beiber fans. They asked them a series of questions over how do they feel about Justin Beiber over fictional facts presented as true. One was that Justin Beiber beat up his grandmother because she cheated on cards. The girls defended Bieber saying that the grandmother shouldn't have cheated on cards if she didn't want to get hurt.
My short years on this planet had taught me humans are capable of great things, but our stupidity also see no ends. The very fact there can be AIDS denialists, environmental climate change denialists, or even people who actively pursue to get AIDS demonstrates just how stupid people can be, and worse. When bias comes along, those people will find all the ways they can to defend their preferences, even if they are presented with facts that effectively destroys their argument.
As for that court case you mentioned, I don't even know where to begin about that because I really don't know what to believe. On one hand there are also people who are genuinely trying to cheat the system, but on the other hand, if we the "be generous and understanding", "criteria of adequacy", knowledge path, etc..this is what comes out:
Psychopaths by DSM IV categorization characterizes the individual to lack/unable to feel empathy, remorse, guilt, or those critical components that makes a person human and with conscience(they did studies where the person's head was being monitored while they were shown images or words such as guilt, fear, empathy, etc. These individuals registered barely any brain activities in those areas associated for those things that a normal person would have). That being said, many psychopaths however, commonly shared a trait of having experienced rough childhood and barely any real love by families, which leads me to sometimes hypothesize that their traumatic childhood/upbringing could be what triggered their behaviors in the future. I remembered watching a documentary on youtube about psychopaths(me and my habits of going to the weird parts of youtube when i'm bored) and there's this psychopath who's classified as one of the most evil/dangerous one in captivity that they're interviewing. They had to be separated from him because he can kill anyone anytime without warning simply because "he enjoys/seeks a rush". Like others he also shared a very distressing childhood. Anyways while interviewing him they asked about his first murder, and he said one time passing by in the woods he saw an adult man performing oral sex on a young boy. In his words, he said "At that moment, I know he's going to die", and very quickly he killed the man. He said he got a surge/great sense of feeling from killing that man, and he enjoyed it so much that ever since then he started killing people to look for that good feeling again, which he "unfortunately" can never find anymore in his future victims. Towards the end of the show, they asked if he will feel remorse, and he said the day he will, he will go hang himself, which I genuinely believe he means it. At that moment, it struck me with the belief that despite all the horrific evil deeds and murders he had conducted, it's possible he was just unfortunately a very very confused man. I had a belief that his sense of rush of killing wasn't really from murdering, but actually from killing the pedophile, which probably gave him a sense of moral achievement or satisfaction, all due to his traumatic childhood and anger and vengeance against who had wronged him. This confusion led to the dictation of his behaviour. Anyways, psychopathy is listed as DSM IV, and why I shared this is because I believe humans aren't born evil, but rather how they are brought up and their experiences, combined with their attitudes, rationale, etc, all can have contributing factors to their behavior, personality traits, and attitudes. This is why studies demonstrated why cognitive dissonance, conformity, are such powerful psychological effects that even moral people can act evil/antisocial in the face of the influences of these.
However once again, how do we identify? And with the case for China, with the amount of sociopathic attitudes some people are having in order to earn money, what could be done?
Finally with a government and society where sometimes their focus are questionable, how/what changes can we realistically hope for or expect?
