By Jennifer Olivera—As we look over the events of a person's life, or certain positions held by an organization, or stances of a movement, it's easy to focus on just one or two of them. Human beings seem to be hard-wired to categorize things into little boxes of "good" or "bad." But the reality is, of course, much more complex than that, and so it's time that we recognize actions in their context, and look more holistically at these people or organizations.
As just one example, when people think of John Wayne Gacy, usually just a few things come to mind, and they usually revolve around the fact that he raped, tortured, and murdered at least 33 people. I will be the first to acknowledge that I am uncomfortable with those facts, and I by no means condone his actions. Personally, I am against murder, and cannot imagine being in a situation where I would find sadistic pleasure in strangling another person until they are dead.
However, we must remember that Gacy's rapes and murders were not the only thing that he did. Just consider that for a moment. How long would a rape and murder take? Maybe an hour or two? What that means is that the 33 murders we know about took just about 70 hours. Let's be especially liberal in our estimation and say that they took him 100 hours of his life. Gacy was 52 years old when he was executed by the electric chair, which means that he lived well over 454,272 hours in his lifetime. That means that he spent 0.0002% of his lifetime raping and murdering people.
In contrast, Gacy presumably slept for about a third of his life, or 33% of the time he was alive. That is much more than the time he spent raping and murdering people, and yet nobody hears the name John Wayne Gacy and thinks, "Oh, that's the guy who slept a lot."
My point is that Gacy was not a one-dimensional serial killer and sexual sadist. Sure, those were traits that showed his human flaws, but he did much more than just that. He was also a community figure, and a volunteer clown who went by the name of Pogo. Gacy was a family man with two children. He was a businessman and a successful fundraiser in his community, and an active member of the democratic party.
Additionally, we must not condescendingly look upon his actions through the lenses of the present. In 2019, it's easy to look back into the 1970s knowing what we know now, and from our cultural understanding and think that we know better. But you must remember that in the 1970s, serial murder was just beginning to be understood. The FBI didn't really even start carefully studying serial killing until around that time, and so I find it disingenuous to disparage his acts of cruelty and violence from our modern high horse, when we can't truly say that we would have acted differently in his shoes in his community, given the culture at the time.
I do not wish here to minimize his choices of sexually assaulting multiple unwilling victims over the course of his life. I also make no excuses for his decisions to end the lives of nearly three dozen young people. Yet, I am surprised by how quickly people condemn the man for these acts when they were such a small part of his life and character. Who among us has not stepped on an ant without a second thought? Should that be your legacy? Wouldn't you hope that at your funeral people will consider your charitable contributions, and your volunteer work with child oncology patients? Do we expect perfection of everyone? Would you cast the first stone at Gacy, or are your hands also not entirely clean?
I hope that, moving forward, we can all remember to pause before making judgement, and look at a person or corporation in their context, finding the gestalt of their actions before automatically condemning them.
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