Alliance

Individuals come together, make alliances, for all sorts of purposes.  It's reasonable for people to strive to work together for a purpose.  When one person can't accomplish something alone, it makes sense to join forces with others who believe in the same thing.  The particularly interesting aspect of this, to me at least, is what happens when the purpose is worse than questionable, when it is downright bad.

The example that comes to mind is murderers.  How do such individuals come together?  You can't exactly go up to someone you're friends with and say "I really hate that guy, want to head over Friday night and kill him?"  Well, I guess you technically can.  But then you'll get a lot of confused looks, a couple of people asking if you're alright, and possibly one very worried individual recommending you get professional help.  The thing is, nobody is going to say "yeah, sure...you want to use a gun or a knife?"

So how do these people get together?  How can people become part of a team of murderers, something that is so rejected by society?  How is it possible to be so open as to admit wanting to kill individuals and mean it?  You can tell I've been watching too much Criminal Minds lately.  That is, after all, where these questions originated, so I felt it was only right to include this here.  That and I'm fairly certain that if I didn't mention that, I'd have at least one concerned individual asking me if I'm certain I'm alright, and if I need to talk to anyone about these thoughts...

The show mentions (I'm not sure with what factual certainty, although it makes sense) that most criminals who work together have known each other since childhood, oftentimes grown up together, coming to hate the same things.  I guess if you're that close to someone and have shared enough terrible, terrible experiences with them, it might make sense to me.  But people who met and happened to have similarly messed up minds, similar desires to kill...that never made sense to me.  

How do acquaintances come to share such information, even if they do both have twisted minds?  The closest thing I can imagine is that first you start talking about your mutual dislikes.  And then you progress to how much you wish certain people (in the case of murderers at least) would just...go away.  And maybe you go hunting together, or explore some other violent activity.  And the idea comes up by pure chance that you want to kill, and somehow, because you are both twisted, it ends up happening after a while.

That's still hard to imagine though.  It also relies on a lot of circumstantial good luck and fortune.  But then again, teams of murderers don't really come around that often.  So I guess that makes sense.  The psychology involved in becoming part of such a team is absolutely fascinating to me.