Judging the vulnerable

Take a different example, the arsonist. Even if he or she is a child, an arsonist is easy to judge. They are responsible for burning the forest, causing mass death. A teenager, old enough to dream up this plan, may not be old enough to foresee the damage the fire will cause. So when they light the grass and an inferno ensues, how deliberate is the intention? The arsonist may know but no one else knows, unless under close questioning we can really find out all the reasoning behind such an act of destruction.
But in a million living rooms that night, how does each person think, when watching the fire on TV news. We feel the loss, we mourn the loss of bushland and the loss of life and property. We might feel impotent rage. We might want revenge. We might become judge and jury when we say out loud, “Hang the little fucker”. It is surely much rarer to think along the lines of finding out why it was done. And even rarer for anyone to admit to being thrilled at an exciting story in the news or having an excuse to get angry at someone we don’t know. It could be something that lifts our otherwise dull day, giving us pleasure in the misfortunes of the victims. But of course we keep all this well hidden. We hide it behind our judgements of the evil of it. The evening’s news fertilises the judgemental mind.
Our judgemental feelings are far closer to revenge than we’d like them to be, and usually a long way from any wish for the rehabilitation of the wayward teenage arsonist. I mention all this because it has parallels with the same bubbling up anger that many of us feel towards even our friends and family when they waste the lives of the animals they eat.