Karen Matthews

[poliphilo]

It's remarkable how we all went out of our way not to notice the squalor and fecklessness of Karen Matthew's life- the five kids by different fathers, the stinky house, the rat-like, younger boyfriend (or partner as we respectfully called him). What we saw on screen was a sorry slob, what we pretended to see was a grieving earth mother. There was an unspoken conspiracy to lend her dignity

We just don't know how to relate to the poor- by which I mean the truly poor, the underclass, the ones who are not just short of cash, but short of everything else- culture, education, motivation, ambition. Our merciful, Christian Socialist state should have educated, welfared, social-cared these people off the face of the earth decades ago. But here they still are- an intractable mass- the unlovely proles- the poor who- in the annoyingly prophetic words of the New Testament- we "have always with us."

They're an offence and an embarrassment and we're afraid of sliding down hill and winding up among them. We're also afraid of appearing snobbish- uncaring; it's a terrible quandary they put us in. We get round the problem of looking them in the eye by mythologising them.  They're not to be held to the sort of standards we impose on ourselves because they're either demons- hoodies, gangbangers, pramfaces- or icons of suffering nobility, blameless victims.   And because we turn so squirmingly soft in their presence a halfway cunning lowlife like Karen Matthews is able to con us rotten. 

We should have trusted to first impressions. She seemed to be selfish, stupid, squalid, amoral- and that's just what she is.  And the ratlike "partner" turned out to have kiddieporn on his computer.

Comments

[idahoswede.livejournal.com]

Everything has to have an excuse nowdays and it irritates the **** out of me. A 14-year-old stabs another to death - oh, poor guy, his father used to beat him. Everybody blames everybody else for everything. As an aside, did you see that article about the 50-something woman who had never worked, been on benefits all her adult life, living with her 2 grown children, also non-workers, also on benefits, when asked about her work history she said, "I just somehow never got around to it." Weird. It's a whole cultural thing that I just do NOT understand.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

The "undeserving poor" have always been with us. The Victorians put them in the workhouse. Elizabeth I had them whipped. I think we have to face up to the fact that some people are just intrinsically lazy, irresponsible, self-pitying, dishonest and squalid- and there's nothing we can do about it.

[(Anonymous)]

Some people are lazy, irresponsible etc. but don't you think that's *usually* because their parents are? Children, after all, learn by example.

If you take a child early on from one of these families, and place it in a more affluent, caring and nurturing environment the chances are they will grow to achieve a lot more.

The question then is how do you break the cycle of chav begets chav, ad infinitum?
Tom F

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I don't think the cycle can be broken.

We are intelligent monkeys and we still behave like monkeys much of the time.

The only thing that will sort us is evolution.

[ideealisme.livejournal.com]

Nothing to add, but great post!

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Thanks.

[veronica-milvus.livejournal.com]

I didn't know much about Matthews' background until after the verdict - I wonder whether that was a deliberate legal injunction to the press, or just that I don't read the red-top papers.

The question is, how did she get the way she is? Was it her brain biochemistry that failed her from birth or did society and her own upbringing fail her? You might say that nobody "in their right mind" would choose to live the way she did and treat her children the way she did. In many criminal cases it seems that there is no plausible reason for people behaving in the way they do other than simple-mindedness, unhelped and unchecked.

It comes down to the old distinction between madness and evil. One of them excuses a criminal, the other condemns her. We are not in a position to judge her state of mind, although a psychologist somewhere should be, but it surely isn't "normal" by society's standards. I guess she is being (rightly) condemned for that.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

The policeman called her "pure evil"- which was silly, unless, that is, you equate evil with banality. I don't know what her background is. I think there may have been an abusive father. Whatever.

I think life is a kind of an obstacle course. Some people clear the jumps, others don't. Having a shitty parent may lead to you become a shit yourself, but not necessarily. I remember a woman who had been abused by her mother saying, "Yes, I could have been trapped in the cycle and abused my own child, but I chose not to."

[veronica-milvus.livejournal.com]

...I chose not to...

In order to make that choice you have to be self-aware enough to understand your own motivation and conditioning. I bet Ms Matthews does not fall into that category. My mother certainly didn't and she had some sort of intelligence.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

And how do you legislate for self-awareness?

I don't believe there's any solution.

We are descended from apes- and still have a lot of evolving to do.

[veronica-milvus.livejournal.com]

"Normal" people can be taught some self-awareness and shown that the way they are thinking is not the only way to see something. I guess that is how cognitive behaviour therapy works in people prone to depression.

I don't know to what extent Matthews was psychoanalysed, but I do recall hearing a comment in the coverage that she is not capable of putting her chidren's needs above her own. And she had seven of them, seemingly using them as benefit-tickets. I have heard no evidence that she loved them. Can she be held accountable for her actions? Well, if she ended up in prison rather than in a secure hospital, maybe the court thinks she can.

This woman's mindset seems to be so far from the norm, intellectually and emotionally, she must be classified as abnormal, subnormal, sociopathic in some way. So what she was doing living unsupervised and largely unwatched, is a mystery.

Years ago people like her, with seven children with several different fathers, would have been locked up for immorality in an institution and never heard of again. This case makes me wonder whether "care in the community" or lack of it, hasn't gone far too far.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Social services had done some sort of assessment- and had come to the conclusions you quote.

But should the state have the power to monkey around with people's lives in cases where no actual crime has been committed? I remember the "Satanic Abuse" scandal of not so long ago- in which a Christian social worker with a bee in her bonnet was allowed to take a whole lot of children away from their entirely innocent parents.

[red-girl-42.livejournal.com]

We are descended from apes- and still have a lot of evolving to do.

Evolution doesn't make us better people. The only thing evolution "cares" about it whether we survive long enough to reproduce and then do so.

A lot of stupid, ignorant, unethical people survive long enough to breed and then do so.

Sure, you have to have enough brains about you to keep your kids alive until they, too, can reproduce. But in today's world that's not terribly hard to do.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I suppose I'm thinking not of evolution as it operates in nature, but as it might operate under the conscious control of human beings. Up until recently consciousness hasn't been a factor in evolution, but it is now.

[mamadar.livejournal.com]

I think calling this woman "pure evil" was a bit much. She was greedy. So were the guys who ran Enron; they just dressed better and probably sent their kids to nice private schools.

The whole case illustrates for me one of my personal ethical maxims: "Sex is the scapegoat. Greed is the culprit."

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

A psychopath is a psychopath is a psychopath, no matter how much money it has.

The only difference is that the rich ones do a lot more damage.

It's like Chaplin says in M. Verdoux, "Kill one person and you're a murderer, kill a million and you're the saviour of your country."

[sovay]

It's like Chaplin says in M. Verdoux, "Kill one person and you're a murderer, kill a million and you're the saviour of your country."

I just saw that movie recently—it took forever for me to track it down. (Thank you, TCM.) Oh, nobody must have wanted to see it in 1947, but it was wonderful.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

It's one of my favourite films. Chaplin took political risks with a number of his later films. I greatly admire him for it.

[sovay]

Chaplin took political risks with a number of his later films. I greatly admire him for it.

It was the first Chaplin film I've seen since The Gold Rush (1925) in fifth grade. Evidently I need to see more.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

City Lights and Modern Times are wonderful. The Great Dictator is a very brave film- satirizing Hitler at a time when the rest of Hollywood was still sitting on the fence.

But M. Verdoux remains my favourite.

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

We could easily tidy up most if not all of these families. The problem is, we could only do it by taking away their autonomy and acting as "benevolent" dictators. One issue we'd have to face is the compulsory sterilisation of the "feckless", because otherwise if you take their babies away, they'll just have more. We'd have to break up families and farm kids out to nice middle-class parents.

But the question is, do we really have the right to do that, and if so, who decides what standards we apply? At what point is someone just a bit disorganised and when do they become dysfunctional enough to step in and deny then any control over their own lives?

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I don't think many of us would be willing to give the state that much power. After all, once they'd sorted out the riff-raff they might come gunning for us.

[(Anonymous)]

"We'd have to break up families and farm kids out to nice middle-class parents."

And what's wrong with that? It's called adoption, and providing the children become available for adoption before their brains are hard-wired for cruelty (about 6-12 months) it works out well for everyone. It doesn't happen in the UK at the moment. Children are left with families like this one until they are neglected, abused and traumatised for life. Adoptive parents (like I might have been) will not generally take them on, so they stay in so-called "care".

[veronica-milvus.livejournal.com]

"We'd have to break up families and farm kids out to nice middle-class parents."

And what's wrong with that? It's called adoption, and providing the children become available for adoption before their brains are hard-wired for cruelty (about 6-12 months) it works out well for everyone. It doesn't happen in the UK at the moment. Children are left with families like this one until they are neglected, abused and traumatised for life. Adoptive parents (like I might have been) will not generally take them on, so they stay in so-called "care".

[daisytells.livejournal.com]

I do not believe in excuses such as "I had an unhappy childhood, therefore that is why I am making everyone else miserable." Or: "I was abused as a child, and that is why I abuse my kids." Those are such LAME reasons for bizarre and harmful behaviors. And it really baffles me how a mother can abduct her own child and keep her a prisoner, then go on the media and plead with her "abductors" to return her. Amoral? I guess so.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Who knows what was going through Matthews' head?

Clearly the scam was "inspired" or prompted by the case of Madeline McCann. Matthews saw what was happening there and thought disappearing her own child would be a good way of getting money and attention. I don't believe she'd thought things through.

[michaeljohngrist.com (from livejournal.com)]

If we don't blame society, what else can we blame? Choice blah blah- I don't really believe in choice, nor even that much do I believe in free will. We're just incredibly complex organisms, influenced by such a myriad of million tiny bits of complexity, all of which play into our cost/benefit decisions- that we project the illusion of choice.
Or something like that. The point is- isn't our great merciful socialist state to blame for these welfare-poor, this underclass of Morlocks waiting to drag us down into their filth?
Yes, of course it is. The State gives free money- people take the free money and grow fat and lazy, hate themselves because they are such pointless bags of waste and they know it, and spiral that hatred and anger out to drag others down- so they don't feel so worthless themselves.
So can they blame society for their psychopathic stuff? Well, they can try- but any program (read- person) that knows enough to blame someone else for their actions has enough knowledge of self and world to be considered responsible.
Can we break this cycle. Of course, and yes it is evolution, but not of genetics, but of our brain-generated complexity, our ideas. Welfare is broken, bam. It's too cushy. Things should not be given for free. Ignorance and laziness should not be rewarded. Neither should they be punished outright. It's the responsibility of society to provide a ladder for these people to climb out of the slum. If they refuse to climb the ladder, well- it's our job to find a ladder they do want to climb. If we can't find any ladder for them- some way for them to contribute and connect and raise their own value, then we fail them, they fail us, and they'll end up on the streets or in jail.
We need a little more social Darwinism, and a lot less coddling.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Yes, but Morlock is a term invented by H.G. Wells- and it predates our merciful, Socialist state. It was the Industrial revolution that created the modern underclass, by concentrating thousands of desperate people in the slums of the big, new cities. Socialism was an attempt to solve an already existing problem- albeit one that has failed.

In order to carry out something like your programme we'd have to create a social welfare apparatus much bigger and very much more efficient than the one we have now. At present social work is a profession plied by young women straight out of university- many of them clueless and easily intimidated. Have you followed the case of Baby P- the young boy who was murdered by his mother and step-dad in spite of his case being repeatedly referred to the proper authorities? The system is hopelessly bureaucratic and essentially broke. So, of course, is the British state. Will anything change? I very much doubt it. We'll just keep muddling along.

[(Anonymous)]

Could we revert to feudalism? i.e. each needy family gets a plot of land in the sticks and a manual on how to grow things? If they can't be bothered to grow anything then they're buggered, but not necessarily literally.
Tom F

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

There was a political movement in the first half of the 20th century that advocated something very much like that. It was called Distributism. Writers like G.K. Chestertom and Hilaire Belloc lobbied very hard for it- and got nowhere.

Some political ideas are simply untimely. They may be excellent ideas in themselves, but the climate of the age is against them and they don't take root.