Reddit, what's that one concept you just can't wrap your head around?

Every time I hear about a horrible crime, I can't help but think about the criminal and the chain of events that led him/her to that point in time. It always leads me down a rabbit hole of my own inability to comprehend what makes us who we are.

Kind of hard to put into words, but in a way I always tend to empathize with the criminal, no matter how terrible the crime. Certainly I empathize with the victim(s) far more, but I can't help but think why? Why would someone go on a killing spree? Why would someone rape another human being?

Then I always start thinking about the very composition of who we are. There are two main ways (from my extremely elementary understanding on the subject) how a person becomes who they are: nature and nurture. Say a man grows up and murders an innocent stranger. If the murderer was born with a defect in his brain that made him have uncontrollable aggression, does that not make you sympathetic to his plight? If he was born with some kind of chemical imbalance in his brain that "switched" and made him go crazy, isn't that extremely unfortunate for the perpetrator as well as the victim?

Then there is the issue of nature. Perhaps someone was not born with these violent tendancies engrained within them; what exactly got them to the point where they would murder an innocent person? What combination of horrific childhood tragedies and unavoidable events can lead a person to such a horrible act?

Either Hitler was born with an unavoidable and chemical urge to destroy human lives, or he was molded and coaxed that way through a series of unavoidable events in his life? Does it really matter? Aren't both tracks tragic in their own right?

I can usually wrap my head around mathematical concepts and theories, at the very least enough to know what I don't know, but the very idea of who we are and the control we have over our lives will never stop perplexing me. This always results in me immediately feeling sympathy for the "bad guy" when some heinous act is spread across the news, but hey – I can't help it; it's just who I am.

/r/AskReddit Thread