The headline for this piece from the Washington Post goes a bit too far in encouraging folks to not trust people: ‘Dangerous Instincts’: Ex-FBI profiler explains dangers of that ‘nice’ neighbor. The implication of the story at http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/dangerous-instincts-fbi-profiler-explains-the-dangers-of-that-nice-neighbor/2011/10/17/gIQAkvNCDM_story.html is that one shouldn’t trust a neighbor who appears to be nice or a pillar of the community as he will very likely turn out to be a serial killer of some sort.
Or . . . and far more likely . . . he may very well be an actual nice person.
While an FBI profiler tasked to helping agents track down serial killers would certainly be the best person for that job, the world view can become fairly narrow and violent and depressing. Most of us don’t live next door to serial killers and while there certainly do seem to be a lot of pedarist priests out there most priests are far from serial molesters or worse. Likewise, while there may seem to be a lot of serial killers out there (and while there may very well be more of ’em these days they are still pretty damned rare), most nice folks are not serial murderers or rapists or the like . . . most folks are simply that, folks, just like the rest of us. Some have more interesting backstories than others but for the most part everyone’s simply a person without the serial murders or worse.
So, while stories like this may give one pause (as they should), I do NOT reccommend living your life with the assumption that any nice person must by their very nature of appearing to be nice be a depraved mad killer. Seriously, reasonable precautions aside (locking your doors at night, garlic on the windowsills and a crucifix or few in the living room as well as a good solid bat under the bed and a wooden stake under the pillow), it’s best to live and let live and assume that most folks really are fairly similar to yourself . . . unless you are a depraved murderous madman in which case do assume most folks aren’t like you as they aren’t.
Of course, a headline that says “That Nice Neighbor Really Is Probably Rather Nice After All” won’t sell newspapers.
Just a thought.
– Brian
