For a genius, it's surprising how few times I've actually thought thoroughly about a topic like this. I guess everyone thinks about it after the first couple months working at the BAU, it's unavoidable, after looking at the results of human actions. It brings feelings of disgust and horror, and many others that are hard to name. It's a plethora of heavy feelings that never really leave you. They will always hang over your soul like a shadow, or a storm cloud. Eventually it consumes you. That's why this job, once you're in it, is hard to leave, and hard to stay with. Everyone has to leave eventually, the stress becomes to much, the shadows become to long.

It came back to me, though, when I overheard Prentiss asking Morgan about it on the plane ride back from solving a case that involved two brothers who kidnapped people from a highway and then hunted them in a gigantic forested mountain range. Hunting fellow humans like animals? How sick could you get? It really made you think why, how.

Everyone thinks differently, that's what logic says to explain the happenings of the life around us. In truth, humans as a whole don't think all that different, we, in a sense, all think the same. That's preposterous, you may say, how could you liken yourself to the thoughts of a murderer? Well, they think the same way as us, in a general view, but they act on different impulses, on different points of anger or release. We may think the same, but everyone has different reasons, lives, and emotions. Victims of such evils, like murder, abuse, and some things much worse always ask why. Why would someone do something like this? How could they bring themselves to do such awful, stomach-wrenching things?

They don't think like us, that might be the answer.

It's not entirely true. Culprits of such acts, they think very much like you and me. But they've gone through something, their emotions have turned somehow, they are different from us, yes. But they think very much the same.

Something as simple as getting fired could set off a range of emotions and turmoil, and drive someone to commit heinous crimes. It's an outlet, as they see it. We all need outlets for energy, for emotions and such, but criminal's outlets are different from ours.

No, it's not a magical transformation. There were probably always dark thoughts in their heads, thoughts that might make others cringe. They saw things in a different light, reacted differently to situations. It might be hard to think about, and even harder to grasp, but criminals are very much like us.
We don't want to liken ourselves to them, we don't want to think of them as people, as humans.

But they are. They are humans. And so are we. We who haven't committed crimes, who haven't ever thought of carrying out some disdainful act don't realize, or maybe don't want to accept this. We don't consider criminals humans because we can't believe how people like us could ever do something so grotesque, but then, look at war. If there is one thing humans are good at it is killing each other, that hasn't changed for centuries, and most likely never will.