Spent a long time trying to analyze what it was that causes people to act in deviant, subversive and harmful ways.
What I came up w/? People are like animals. When an animal falls on its head or comes out wrong or something is flipped a little in its head, it runs around and bangs into shit and shrieks and makes a mess of its surroundings. That's what humans are like, too. We are all just animals. Some are well adjusted and some are shrieky. Growly. Dangerous. Predatory. Cognitive dissonance wraps around their heads like razorwire nets. Slice, slice. People don't necessarily have the awarenesses, or can cope with those awarenesses, to recognize that what they do impacts others on an emotional level. The empathy button is broken. Lights are on, no one is home.
What causes people to stab one another in the face with screwdrivers and live in piles of their own shit and squirt ketchup on their shirt to dip fried chicken in because they can't be arsed to get up and make a meal? Or systemically tear down their own families, their own communities? Or bang coke through their feet, or rape small children? Or beat their wives with metal wrenches, or tie people down and dig out their nerves with knives? What causes that? What causes it? What causes it?
The owl's walking with its head sideways. Everything is a little topsy turvy. Some people just come out f*cked up. Born like that. Made like that. Damaged. Damaged people have these little points inside that are burnt out. No connections. Now multiply that by a billion and you have the world. It's not easy, it's not simple, it's not fine-tuned. Damaged people go on and damage new people and those people build houses made of damage and villages and towns and cities and countries, and they shovel shit piles into skyscrapers with precise diligence, and wonder why no one ever goes anywhere.
People act f*cked up because they get f*cked up, and not a whole lot of us are smart enough break the circle.
So, I picked criminal behavior. Because that's what it was. But could I narrow down why they did what they did, what that context was? No. To build a f*cked up trauma-pie from scratch, you must first create the shit-universe.