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

[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.