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Bad person or bad brain? |
Hospital bills, paid for; health, relatively good; but you just "have to have" a bit more in your pocket. You scoop it up without a thought. The elderly man turns protesting, and you smack him so hard with your cane he lands unconscious on the pavement. A severe consequence of brain injury, you have now stepped the line from your previous injury free ethic - to evil.
Who is the victim?
When one's locus of control has been damaged - when that Xbox controller of your mind is missing one control stick to the point of calamity - you are limited in your choices. Not only can you not play the game of life the right way, but when you do, nothing seems to work. You cannot adapt, you cannot excel, and you certainly cannot avoid the potential pitfalls of ethics that everyday life presents.
Studies have shown that a history of traumatic brain injury is extraordinarily common among prisoners in jail, including in women. Is it ethical for prisoners who may have been previously functional members of society to be incarcerated for crimes that are essentially an extension of a damaged brain? In addition, could treating traumatic brain injury reduce recidivism rates and be better for society as a whole?
Perhaps this is evolution's way of protecting the species in a time of violence. However, in our more comfortable modern society such a response by a damaged brain is maladaptive, and one day it may be common policy to aide the repair of society's ill and forgotten incarcerated people. When good brains go bad, it's bad for us all.
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