Carbless Happiness

I'm sure it has been like this throughout the time of Man: acts of cruelty that defy explanation. I've read so many in the news lately, and I wondered, how unhappy do you have to be to throw your four children over a bridge? How displeased with life do you have to be to drug your child to go see your mistress in the evenings while your wife is at work? How terrible does your life have to be that you will beat your thirteenth month old baby to death because it won't stop crying?

I understand it isn't a simple matter of the level of happiness that leads people to do such senseless things. However, as I read these stories, I'm starting to think that I don't know and never want to know the complete void of emotion where these people exist. I might feel a void of happiness for an hour or two, or even a day or two, but I can't fathom the depth and darkness of the void that enables a man to kill his child.

What is it? Do some people simply and slowly lose touch with reality until the day where they no longer recognize their connection to the human race? Is it, as the movie Crash suggests (a great movie that makes everyone feel a little bit dirty), a matter of how little we "touch" those around us in today's American culture, but how much we as humans have the need to touch and be touched, so that when we do touch, we crash into each other? Do we make our biggest mistakes, do we hurt those we are supposed to love, do we commit senseless acts of cruelty, because we disconnected ourselves from our feelings of what is right and wrong?

It's late at night. I don't think I'm making much sense. I'm going to bed.