Determined, page 53
The emergence of third party punishment: K. Panchanathan and R. Boyd, “Indirect Reciprocity Can Stabilize Cooperation without the Second-Order Free Rider Problem,” Nature 432 (2004): 499.
Features of third party punishment among hunter-gatherers: C. Boehm, Hierarchy in the Forest: The Evolution of Egalitarian Behavior (Harvard University Press, 1999).
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 23
T. Kuntz, “Tightening the Nuts and Bolts of Death by Electric Chair,” New York Times, August 3, 1997.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 24
For sober coverage of Bundy’s life, trial, and execution, see: J. Nordheimer, “All-American Boy on Trial,” New York Times, December 10, 1978; J. Nordheimer, “Bundy Is Put to Death in Florida after Admitting Trail of Killings,” New York Times, January 25, 1989. Also see: B. Bearak, “Bundy Electrocuted after Night of Weeping, Praying: 500 Cheer Death of Murderer,” Los Angeles Times, January 24, 1989; G. Bruney, “Here’s What Happened to Ted Bundy after the Story Portrayed in Extremely Wicked Ended,” Esquire, May 4, 2019, esquire.com/entertainment/a27363554/ted-bundy-extremely-wicked-execution/. For additional photos of celebrations related to his execution, visit gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/sign-at-music-instrument-store-announcing-sale-on-electric-news-photo/72431549?adppopup=true and gettyimages.ie/detail/news-photo/sign-of-naked-lady-saloon-celebrating-the-execution-of-news-photo/72431550?adppopup=true and see M. Hodge, “THE DAY A MONSTER FRIED: How Ted Bundy’s Electric Chair Execution Was Celebrated by Hundreds Shouting ‘Burn, Bundy, Burn’ Outside Serial Killer’s Death Chamber,” Sun (UK), January 16, 2019, thesun.co.uk/news/8202022/ted-bundy-execution-electric-chair-netflix-conversation-with-a-killer/.
For a memoir of someone who worked beside him throughout his murderous period, see A. Rule, The Stranger Beside Me (Norton, 1980). For an analysis by a pioneer in the psychological study of psychopathy, see R. Hare, Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopath among Us (Guildford Press, 1999). For a truly insightful analysis of our obsession with serial murderers, see S. Marshall, “Violent Delights,” Believer, December 22, 2022.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 25
N. Mendes et al., “Preschool Children and Chimpanzees Incur Costs to Watch Punishment of Antisocial Others,” Nature Human Behaviour 2 (2018): 45. Also see: M. Cant et al., “Policing of Reproduction by Hidden Threats in a Cooperative Mammal,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 111 (2014): 326; T. Clutton-Brock and G. Parker, “Punishment in Animal Societies,” Nature 373 (1995): 209.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 26
Footnote: R. Deaner, A. Khera, and M. Platt, “Monkeys Pay per View: Adaptive Valuation of Social Images by Rhesus Macaques,” Current Biology 15 (2005): 543; K. Watson et al., “Visual Preferences for Sex and Status in Female Rhesus Macaques,” Animal Cognition 15 (2012): 401; A. Lacreuse et al., “Effects of the Menstrual Cycle on Looking Preferences for Faces in Female Rhesus Monkeys,” Animal Cognition 10 (2007): 105.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 27
Y. Wu et al., “Neural Correlates of Decision Making after Unfair Treatment,” Frontiers of Human Neuroscience 9 (2015): 123; E. Du and S. Chang, “Neural Components of Altruistic Punishment,” Frontiers of Neuroscience 9 (2015): 26; A. Sanfey et al., “Neuroeconomics: Cross-Currents in Research on Decision-Making,” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 10 (2006): 108; M. Haruno and C. Frith, “Activity in the Amygdala Elicited by Unfair Divisions Predicts Social Value Orientation,” Nature Neuroscience 13 (2010): 160; T. Burnham, “High-Testosterone Men Reject Low Ultimatum Game Offers,” Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 274 (2007): 2327.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 28
G. Bellucci et al., “The Emerging Neuroscience of Social Punishment: Meta-analytic Evidence,” Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews 113 (2020): 426; H. Ouyang et al., “Empathy-Based Tolerance towards Poor Norm Violators in Third-Party Punishment,” Experimental Brain Research 239 (2021): 2171.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 29
D. de Quervain et al., “The Neural Basis of Altruistic Punishment,” Science 305 (2004): 1254; B. Knutson, “Behavior. Sweet Revenge?,” Science 305 (2004): 1246; D. Chester and C. DeWall, “The Pleasure of Revenge: Retaliatory Aggression Arises from a Neural Imbalance towards Reward,” Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience 11 (2016): 1173; Y. Hu, S. Strang, and B. Weber, “Helping or Punishing Strangers: Neural Correlates of Altruistic Decisions as Third-Party and of Its Relation to Empathic Concern,” Frontiers of Behavioral Neuroscience 9 (2015): 24; Baumgartner et al., “Who Initiates Punishment, Who Joins Punishment?”; G. Holstege et al., “Brain Activation during Human Male Ejaculation,” Journal of Neuroscience 23 (2003): 9185.
A belief in free will can even be motivated by the desire to cite it as a justification for righteous punishment: C. Clark et al., “Free to Punish: A Motivated Account of Free Will Belief,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 106 (2014): 541. For an opposing view, see A. Monroe and D. Ysidron, “Not So Motivated after All? Three Replication Attempts and a Theoretical Challenge to a Morally Motivated Belief in Free Will,” Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 150 (2021): e1.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 30
T. Hu et al., “Helping Others, Warming Yourself: Altruistic Behaviors Increase Warmth Feelings of the Ambient Environment,” Frontiers of Psychology 7 (2016): 1359; Y. Wang et al., “Altruistic Behaviors Relieve Physical Pain,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 117 (2020): 950.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 31
For an overview of where McVeigh was coming from, see: N. McCarthy, “The Evolution of Anti-government Extremist Groups in the U.S.,” Forbes, January 18, 2021.
Some of the statistics regarding the bombing: Office for Victims of Crime, Responding to Terrorism Victims: Oklahoma City and Beyond (U.S. Department of Justice, 2000), “Chapter I: Bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building,” ovc.ojp.gov/sites/g/files/xyckuh226/files/publications/infores/respterrorism/chap1.html.
For contemporary reports about Timothy McVeigh’s terrorist act, trial, and eventual execution, see: “Eyewitness Accounts of McVeigh’s Execution,” ABC News, June 11, 2001, abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=90542&page=1; “Eyewitness Describes Execution,” Wired, June 11, 2001, wired.com/2001/06/eyewitness-describes-execution/; P. Carlson, “Witnesses for the Execution,” Washington Post, April 11, 2001, washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/2001/04/11/witnesses-for-the-execution/5b3083a2-364c-47bf-9696-1547269a6490/; J. Borger, “A Glance, a Nod, Silence and Death,” Guardian, June 11, 2001, theguardian.com/world/2001/jun/12/mcveigh.usa . . .
For an interesting take regarding the witnesses to executions, see A. Freinkel, C. Koopman, and D. Spiegel, “Dissociative Symptoms in Media Eyewitnesses of an Execution,” American Journal of Psychiatry 151 (1994): 1335.
“Invictus” is available at poetryfoundation.org/poems/51642/invictus.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 32
A. Linders, The Execution Spectacle and State Legitimacy: The Changing Nature of the American Execution Audience, 1833–1937 (Law and Society Association, 2002); R. Bennett, Capital Punishment and the Criminal Corpse in Scotland, 1740–1834 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017).
Footnote: M. Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (Vintage, 1995); C. Alford, “What Would It Matter if Everything Foucault Said about Prison Were Wrong? Discipline and Punish after Twenty Years,” Theory and Society 29 (2000): 125.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 33
S. Bandes, “Closure in the Criminal Courtroom: The Birth and Strange Career of an Emotion,” in Research Handbook on Law and Emotion, ed. S. Bandes et al. (Edward Elgar, 2021); M. Armour and M. Umbreit, “Assessing the Impact of the Ultimate Penal Sanction on Homicide Survivors: A Two State Comparison,” Marquette Law Review 96 (2012), scholarship.law.marquette.edu/mulr/vol96/iss1/3/. Also see J. Madeira, “Capital Punishment, Closure, and Media,” 2016, in Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Criminology and Criminal Justice, doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264079.013.20.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 34
“The Death Penalty and the Myth of Closure,” Death Penalty Information Center, January 19, 2021, deathpenaltyinfo.org/news/the-death-penalty-and-the-myth-of-closure.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 35
A definitive history of Anders Breivik’s life, his terrorist actions, and the aftermath can be found in A. Seierstad, One of Us: The Story of Anders Breivik and the Massacre in Norway (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015); sharpening the horror of what he had done, the book also contained mini biographies of some of his numerous victims. Just to air a parental response to them, these were all great kids—humane, progressive, intent on doing good with their lives, and very likely to achieve exactly that.
While reading Seierstad’s book, I was also reading Masha Gessen’s The Brothers: The Road to an American Tragedy (Riverhead Books, 2015), an account of the Boston Marathon bombing carried out by the Tsarnaev brothers. The older brother, Tamerlan, was clearly the dominating force and catalyst of the two; Gessen’s profile of him paints someone who seems astonishingly similar to Breivik; as opposite of ideologies as can be found, but the same mediocrities stewing with a sense of being entitled to glory and domination, and externalizing fault when they fall far short—pointless, empty vessels waiting to be filled with some sort of poison that would finally make them someone who could not be ignored. This same point was explored by Tom Nichols in “The Narcissism of the Angry Young Men,” Atlantic, January 29, 2023: “They are man-boys who maintain a teenager’s sharp sense of self-absorbed grievance long after adolescence; they exhibit a combination of childish insecurity and lethally bold arrogance; they are sexually and socially insecure. Perhaps most dangerous, they go almost unnoticed until they explode.” The German writer Hans Magnus Enzensberger aptly call these young men “radical losers.”
An interesting analysis of the trial: B. de Graaf et al., “The Anders Breivik Trial: Performing Justice, Defending Democracy,” Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism Studies 4, no. 6 (2013), doi:10.19165/2013.1.06. Statement by Jens Stoltenberg: D. Rickman, “Norway’s Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg: We Are Crying with You after Terror Attacks,” Huffington Post, July 24, 2011, huffingtonpost.co.uk/2011/07/24/norways-prime-minister-je_n_907937.html.
Mocking of Breivik’s uniform: G. Toldnes, L. K. Lundervold, and A. Meland, “Slik skaffet han seg sin enmannshær” (in Norwegian), Dagbladet Nyheter, July 30, 2011. For more of the Norwegian response to the tragedy, see N. Jakobsson and S. Blom, “Did the 2011 Terror Attacks in Norway Change Citizens’ Attitudes towards Immigrants?,” International Journal of Public Opinion Research 26 (2014): 475. Statement of the rector of the university: “Anders Breivik accepted at Norway’s University of Oslo,” BBC, July 17, 2015, bbc.com/news/world-europe-33571929. Breivik getting to socialize with retired police officers: “Breivik saksøkte staten” (in Norwegian), NRK, October 23, 2015.
Casting light on every page of this book, Breivik’s father, Jens, apparently self-published a book entitled My Fault?
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 36
The Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church massacre: M. Schiavenza, “Hatred and Forgiveness in Charleston,” Atlantic, June 20, 2015; “Dylann Roof Told by Charleston Shooting Survivor ‘the Devil Has Come Back to Claim’ Him,” CBS News, January 11, 2017, cbsnews.com/news/dylann-roof-charleston-shooting-survivor-devil-come-back-claim-him/; “Families of Charleston Shooting Victims to Dylann Roof: We Forgive You,” Yahoo! News, June 19, 2015, yahoo.com/news/familes-of-charleston-church-shooting-victims-to-dylann-roof--we--forgive-you-185833509.html?.
The Tree of Life Synagogue massacre: K. Davis, “Not Guilty Plea Entered for Alleged Synagogue Shooter on 109 Federal Charges” San Diego Tribune, May 14, 2019, sandiegouniontribune.com/news/courts/story/2019-05-14/alleged-synagogue-shooter-pleads-not-guilty-to-109-federal-charges. The efforts made by Jewish staffers at the hospital to which the shooter was taken: D. Andone, “Jewish Hospital Staff Treated Synagogue Shooting Suspect as He Spewed Hate, Administrator Says,” CNN, November 1, 2018, cnn.com/2018/11/01/health/robert-bowers-jewish-hospital-staff/index.html. Quote by Jeff Cohen: E. Rosenberg, “ ‘I’m Dr. Cohen’: The Powerful Humanity of the Jewish Hospital Staff That Treated Robert Bowers,” Washington Post, October 30, 2018, washingtonpost.com/health/2018/10/30/im-dr-cohen-powerful-humanity-jewish-hospital-staff-that-treated-robert-bowers/.
Deputy mayor of Oslo: H. Mauno, “Fikk brev fra Breivik: ‘Da jeg leste navnet ditt, fikk jeg frysninger nedover ryggen’ ” (in Norwegian), Dagsavisen, April 8, 2021.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 37
There was some outrage in the U.S. and UK about how lax the Norwegians were being in their punishment: S. Cottee, “Norway Doesn’t Understand Evil,” UnHerd, February 8, 2022, unherd.com/2022/02/norway-doesnt-understand-evil/; K. Weill, “All the Fun Things Anders Breivik Can Do in His ‘Inhumane’ Prison,” Daily Beast, April 13, 2017, thedailybeast.com/all-the-fun-things-anders-breivik-can-do-in-his-inhumane-prison; J. Kirchick, “Mocking Justice in Norway: The Breivik Trial Targets Contrarian Intellectuals,” World Affairs 175 (2012): 75; H. Gass, “Anders Breivik: Can Norway Be Too Humane to a Terrorist?,” Christian Science Monitor, April 20, 2016. For an additional, obviously relevant analysis, and the quote from “one commentator,” see S. Lucas, “Free Will and the Anders Breivik Trial,” Humanist, August 13, 2012.
The U.S.’s 9/11 tragedy and the Breivik rampage were similar, insofar as the two terrorist acts killed roughly the same percentage of the population of the country; in both cases, the head of state addressed the mourning nation in the days afterward, both giving talks roughly five minutes long. Which is where the differences are stark. Bush cited God three times, evil four; for Stoltenberg, there was one mention of evil and none of God. Bush used the words despicable, anger, and enemy. In contrast, Stoltenberg used the words compassion, dignity, and love. Bush stated that this act of terror “cannot dent the steel of American resolve.” Stoltenberg addressed the loved ones of victims, saying, “We are weeping with you.”
Though the likes of a beheading or a public hanging are things of the past in the West, they’re not all that far past—you could have taken the London subway to attend the last public hanging in the UK, in 1868; while the last guillotining was being carried out in France, you could spend your evening watching a Star Wars movie, dancing to the Bee Gees in a disco, or feeding (or not) your pet rock—1977.
For superb overviews of the focus of this entire chapter, see M. Hoffman, The Punisher’s Brain: The Evolution of Judge and Jury (Cambridge University Press, 2014), as well as P. Alces, Trialectic: The Confluence of Law, Neuroscience, and Morality (University of Chicago Press, 2023).
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 38
15. If You Die Poor
To get a sense of the world of fifty-year-olds, in effect, dying of old age, see: A. Case and A. Deaton, Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism (Princeton University Press, 2020).
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 1
M. Shermer, Heavens on Earth: The Scientific Search for the Afterlife, Immortality, and Utopia (Henry Holt, 2018); M. Quirin, J. Klackl, and E. Jonas, “Existential Neuroscience: A Review and Brain Model of Coping with Death Awareness,” in Handbook of Terror Management Theory, ed. C. Routledge and M. Vess (Elsevier, 2019).
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 2
L. Alloy and L. Abramson, “Judgment of Contingency in Depressed and Nondepressed Students: Sadder but Wiser?,” Journal of Experimental Psychology 108 (1979): 441. For a general overview, see chapter 13, “Why Is Psychological Stress Stressful?,” in R. Sapolsky, Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers: A Guide to Stress, Stress-Related Disease and Coping, 3rd ed. (Holt, 2004).
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 3
R. Trivers, Deceit and Self-Deception: Fooling Yourself to Better Fool Others (Allen Lane, 2011).
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 4
Gomes quote: G. Gomes, “The Timing of Conscious Experience: A Critical Review and Reinterpretation of Libet’s Research,” Consciousness and Cognition 7 (1998): 559. Gazzaniga quote: M. Gazzaniga, “On Determinism and Human Responsibility,” in Neuroexistentialism: Meanings, Morals and Purpose in the Age of Neuroscience, ed. G. Caruso (Oxford University Press, 2017), p. 232. Dennett quote: G. Caruso and D. Dennett, “Just Deserts,” Aeon, https://aeon.co/essays/on-free-will-daniel-dennett-and-gregg-caruso-go-head-to-head.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 5
For Dennett’s charges of neuroscientists skeptical of free will being nefarious and irresponsible, see D. Dennett, “Daniel Dennett: Stop Telling People They Don’t Have Free Will,” n.d., Big Think video, 5:33, bigthink.com/videos/daniel-dennett-on-the-nefarious-neurosurgeon/.
Footnote: Jin Park, “Harvard Orator Jin Park | Harvard Class Day 2018,” Harvard University, May 23, 2018, YouTube video, 10:23, youtube.com/watch?v=TlWgdLzTPbc.
