Ung 1
Stephanie Ung
Joseph Dowd
Human 1BS Sem
22 February 2016
Went For the Info, Stayed for the Entertainment
Although there are many years of debate on torture and whether it is morally acceptable in certain situations or not, torture continues to occur regardless if it is legal or illegal. Torture does not only take place in high government official cases regarding terrorism, mass attacks, etc., it also takes place in every day life by every day people. The justification people make for the acts of torture are that it allows the torturer to gain important information on an issue and that attaining this information will prevent more severe acts from happening to society. However, there is debate over whether the person torturing the victim actually enjoys this act or not.
I believe that the torturer does enjoy this horrific act; They have to have some sense of satisfaction when torturing their victim because normally it is not moral nor legal to torture someone. In order for one to willingly torture and be cruel to another human being, they must think of torture not only as just doing it to gain information and “help” society before a large destructive act affects society, but as a form of entertainment in some sense, as it gives them sadistic satisfaction knowing they have this power and superiority over the tortured.
There are many psychological explanations that show why people torture and why it may even be “entertaining” to them. For instance, the torturer may have “various psychological deviations and often they derive sadistic satisfaction”(Psychology of Torture, Wikipedia). These people may mentally be ill, or just overall lack the normal emotions such as empathy and sympathy. Therefore, torturing a victim and receiving the reactions of pain, discomfort, and pleading may bring them satisfaction and a sense of higher power over them. Only someone who sees torture as entertaining would enjoy seeing another human being distressed and in pain.
Initially, a person may choose to torture someone because of a legitimate reason, one being of severe cases such as the “ticking bomb scenario”, however, the torturer may come to actually enjoy the act and see it as “torture as infotainment” -infotainment meaning “material that is intended both to entertain and inform”. I think this is true as any decent human being would not be able to willingly torture another person unless they had psychological issues or are sadists and enjoy seeing others being hurt. This being said, I believe that some people truly see torture as an act to partly gain more information on an issue and partly as a form of entertainment. Otherwise, if this was not the case, I do not think it would be possible for one to purposefully hurt another human being unless they enjoyed doing so.
Torture as infotainment is a realistic idea. Just torturing someone to get vital information from them is not enough to outweigh the cons of torture. Torturing makes an impact on both the victim and the torturer and affects both severely. It causes many mental and physical issues on both participants and can affect both in the long run as well. Consequently, it becomes clear to see that people who torture others see this act as both to gain knowledge from the victim and as a form of entertainment.
Works Cited
- Wikipedia. “Psychology of Torture”. 20 October 2015. Web. 21 February 2016. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychology_of_torture>
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