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Guest Laurent.

I think it was their goal to open this discussion about the nature of this evil-child without actually giving some kind of answer ('cause it would not be as fun).

LARA: Here, my gut says, how can anyone know about, yet alone commit, murder at five years old.

FRANK: It's happened, more and more.

LARA: Has our culture bred this possibility? Is it violence on TV? Is she Damien? Is this girl some evolutionary mutation? And are there more of these kids, these people, coming?

I guess you are interpreting Frank's next line as an answer to Lara's questions:

FRANK: Here's my thing, Lara. Recently I've seen, I've experienced evil. It feels like a force, like gravity, like the wind. It has blown across Cambodia, been a cyclone in Nazi Germany, it gusts throughout Los Angeles. Danielle Barbakow is a pre-storm, a breeze, of an approaching hurricane.

Unfortunately, I don't see it this way. Frank does not elaborate on the nature of his conception of evil. He's only imaging the qualitative property of the concept. "It feels like a force", approaching, ever stronger... but what is it? The discussion is still open.. and indeed here we are 10 odd years later.

Edited by Laurent.
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I think it was their goal to open this discussion about the nature of this evil-child without actually giving some kind of answer ('cause it would not be as fun).

I guess you are interpreting Frank's next line as an answer to Lara's questions:

Unfortunately, I don't see it this way. Frank does not elaborate on the nature of his conception of evil. He's only imaging the qualitative property of the concept. "It feels like a force", approaching, ever stronger... but what is it? The discussion is still open.. and indeed here we are 10 odd years later.

Actually I agree with the points you raise and concur that at no point in the episode is any form of explanation given for the Barbakow child and that Frank's philosophical colloquy about pre-storms and so on is a mere perceptual resume of what he senses. What led me to the conclusion I reached was more a case of what was 'not' said which is why my thoughts are admittedly transient and mootable. As both Frank and Lara are gifted psychoanalysts with an added perceptual facility and neither of these appear to afford them any resolution with regards to the causality of what is occurring here then I mused that Barbakow must be outside of any psychological theorem or framework.

As you note it's ten years or so later and issues like this are still stimulating which is a mark of the brilliance of Millennium methinks.

I do hope others jump on board here as its nice to talk shop again.

Best wishes,

Eth

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Actually I agree with the points you raise and concur that at no point in the episode is any form of explanation given for the Barbakow child and that Frank's philosophical colloquy about pre-storms and so on is a mere perceptual resume of what he senses. What led me to the conclusion I reached was more a case of what was 'not' said which is why my thoughts are admittedly transient and mootable. As both Frank and Lara are gifted psychoanalysts with an added perceptual facility and neither of these appear to afford them any resolution with regards to the causality of what is occurring here then I mused that Barbakow must be outside of any psychological theorem or framework.

As you note it's ten years or so later and issues like this are still stimulating which is a mark of the brilliance of Millennium methinks.

I do hope others jump on board here as its nice to talk shop again.

Best wishes,

Eth

Man, its great to be in the presence of such great thinkers...eth, laredo, laren, myself (LOL)...

anyway, i just wanted to quickly stop by and offer my 2 cents about this. I will not elaborate too much now, for i need sleep, but i have to say that in the time i have been here, this is by far the finest topic and discussion i can recall. I only hope it stays civil and intelligent...

anyway, i think the first thing we have to do is define what EVIL is? We all have a common knowledge of the most heinous of events and the ability to recognize their essence. The Holocaust, Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot, Stalin and the millions he had killed, Mao Zedong of China who wrought similar havoc to his people. These are the simple ones..

The devil is in the detail it is said. Now the problem becomes one of defining the "lesser" or "fringe" elements of evil. How do we do that? Excluding the obvious as aforementioned, what is evil to you? Would it be evil in my eyes as well? Or would i look at the situation completely different. We can all agree on the obvious, its in the finer details that we struggle to come to a equitable conclusion.

I dont have time to go on for now, but will continue at a later date...

until then..

4th Horseman

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evil starts with selfishness... say a box of cereal has only one more serving, so you hide it in the kitchen so YOU will get it the next day, not your wife..... seems small and maybe not all that "evil" but it is the start

of course the opposite of evil is not being selfish "love your neighbor"

call it selfishness or pride it is at the root of most evil acts

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evil starts with selfishness... say a box of cereal has only one more serving, so you hide it in the kitchen so YOU will get it the next day, not your wife..... seems small and maybe not all that "evil" but it is the start

of course the opposite of evil is not being selfish "love your neighbor"

call it selfishness or pride it is at the root of most evil acts

I dont think i would consider my wife headed for a life on the "dark side" of evil if she were to hide the last scoop of chocolate peanut butter ice cream so that only she knew where it was. There were many times before where she allowed me to have the last of something, so pray tell, where is that magical rubycon??

4th Horseman

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Evil is a two legged juggernaut that has millions of faces and twice that many tricks. But in all honesty, What do I sincerely believe that evil is more than anything else???.......It's a choice. It's a conscious decision to bring violence and pain upon your fellow human being and to choose not to consider the consequences or ramification of your actions.

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Greetings all and especially the Mighty 4th, gosh my friend it seems an age since we heard from you :hiya: ,

Gosh how it's all changed? I'm not entirely sure where we are going with this and my itchy keyboard fingers are dying to get 'keyboarding' but I'm not sure of the 'Monster' link in the current commotion of thoughts and musings. Drifter's original meditation regarded Legion mythos and whilst this evolved to be a deconstruction of the intuited malignity inherent in the 'Monster' narrative I'm getting the feeling we have moved on to an open-ended cerebration with regards to evil unmindful of its depiction within Millennium or Monster.

Not that this is a negativity, simply that I seek clarity with regard to the reflexion previously offered with regards to Monster, Barbakow and the Legion mythos.

I'm still itching to type but not sure if I should give Millennium much credence in order to continue?

Best wishes to all,

Eth

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I dont think i would consider my wife headed for a life on the "dark side" of evil if she were to hide the last scoop of chocolate peanut butter ice cream so that only she knew where it was. There were many times before where she allowed me to have the last of something, so pray tell, where is that magical rubycon??

4th Horseman

But now you are talking about grace and forgiveness! I thought you wanted an example of more sublime evil?

While we all have our selfish moments, not all of us take it to the next level. I don't know when a person goes beyond the point of no return and becomes really, darkly evil. I have no idea what goes through the mind of a little boy that likes to torture small animals. I can not understand what would make an adult think it was okay to sexually abuse a child. But I do believe it is rooted in being self centered, or self absorbed.

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But now you are talking about grace and forgiveness! I thought you wanted an example of more sublime evil?

While we all have our selfish moments, not all of us take it to the next level. I don't know when a person goes beyond the point of no return and becomes really, darkly evil. I have no idea what goes through the mind of a little boy that likes to torture small animals. I can not understand what would make an adult think it was okay to sexually abuse a child. But I do believe it is rooted in being self centered, or self absorbed.

hippyroo..i got the jest of your post. My response was a bit tounge in cheek. Its usually a case of my wife hiding the ice cream to help me stay on my diet...i dont think any of us can ever fully answer your ponderings. You know, the marks of a serial killer as identified by the FBI are of usually coming from a broken home, no father figure, etc. Yet, Dahmer had two doting, loving, adoring parents who almost worshipped the ground he walked on. Yet, it was an incident when he was 4 that foretold what he was to become, albeit the signs were obviously missed by the father...

"a malicious force growing in my son"...Legion? or just an odd combination of chemical and neurological catastrophe...

When Jeff was four, his father swept out from under their house the remains of some small animals that had been killed by civets. As his father gathered the tiny animal bones, Jeff seemed "oddly thrilled by the sound they made. His small hands dug deep into the pile of bones. I can no longer view it simply as a childish episode, a passing fascination. This same sense of something dark and shadowy, of a malicious force growing in my son, now colors almost every memory."

So you see, well before the accepted "age of recognition" between right and wrong, at 4 years old he was oddly fascinated by the sound of bones clinking against each other. Maybe eth can answer this more professionally than i can, but could that sound have triggered a chemical reaction in his brain? Our sights, sounds, smells, all trigger responses based on chemical reactions. Perhaps as when 99% of the population would find such a sound repulsive, could it be that the very same chemical, emitted as a response to the sound, have affected his brain in a reverse fashion? How is it that a 4 year old finds the sound of old bones oddly thrilling? Of course we know that as he got older, he began to decapitate dogs and hang their heads on sticks in his yard. So obviously something odd was going on inside his head all those years...

4th Horseman..

4th Horseman

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wow.....i wound up the little MillenniuM Monster Thread and now lets watch it go. Like my buddy 4thHorseman said....lets keep this civil and lets respect each others thoughts and beliefs.

Let me try and lure things back, how did Jordan hurt herself? and to spread the icing on the cake is Danielle a small gust of wind before it becomes a Hurricane?

My viewpoint tends to lean towards the notion of she has the potential to do greater harm in the world. She is a monster in the making. Her mom and dad are not able to connect to her nor does she is able to establish a relationship. I see this in my line of work with children that has Emotional Disturbances. I keep seeing the same thing over and over again....bad parenting + no love = severe dysfunction. Alot of the students i deal with see too much. They see people shooting each other, they see a parent or uncle watch pornography right in front of them. They get abused or they have no parental control over them. These kids are in a breeding ground thats developing criminals-killers and drug sellers. Alot of the kids have already been arrested several times. This is what i see: Violence breeds violence

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