Summary
A 15-year-old boy was sentenced to life in prison for fatally stabbing a stranger, Muhammad Hassam Ali, after a brief conversation in Birmingham city center. The second boy, who stood by, was sentenced to five years in secure accommodation. Ali’s family expressed their grief, describing him as a budding engineer whose life was tragically cut short.
Now I don’t know where you’re from but around here four year olds are unsupervised in public. It’s also not about the concept, but about what is considered right and what’s wrong, and the self-control to not act on an overwhelming impulse from the unconscious. May I remind you that the frontal cortex, that which gives us the ability to pause and reconsider, is not fully developed at his age.
You have no idea what his psychology looks like, yet you’re condemning him, and thousands more, by your principles. Unseen, unheard, and yep that – unseen, unheard – is one of the possible depth-psychological reasons why kids lash out like that. Not only do you, self-righteously, condemn him, you also might have created him by the habitual way in which you regard – or rather don’t regard – people.