07-12-2011, 11:04 AM
No, but if a society such as the one you envision was put in place, you might still torture and kill. You'd do what they did. Which would make you like them in that regard. And the question wasn't whether childhood trauma should play a part in their sentence, again you're twisting my words, the question was do we pity those monsters whose evil can be traced back to past abuse.
"We believe that we invent symbols. The truth is that they invent us; we are their creatures, shaped by their hard, defining edges." - Gene Wolfe