SI Chronicles the Sad Saga of James Hardy

[billrooter]

4 minutes ago, Boyst62 said:

wow, sarcasm, that's so witty.  it's like you're saying something but it's like totally the opposite.

this reminds me of a thought i had later in the day and i hope everyone gets a chance to realize this.

 

ya know those times where a guy goes and kills someone in rage or has some ***** go down where he ***** people up then offs himself and ya think, jeez, if only that dude would have just sought help or just ended his life without victims then things would be a better option?

 

kind of feel this at the moment.  the guy had assaulted people in the last year, had shown violence and mental health issues and did not respond to help nor want it.  probably better off that he didn't hurt anyone and ended up this way than anything else.

 

but yeah, suicide is just ***** terrible.  seen enoguh first hand not to need to see it again.

Wasn't trying to be witty,  just figured your self righteous ass needed to hear that.

[Beast]

I remember that story about him pulling a gun on his dad shortly after we drafted him.

 

Outside of that catch in J’ville, I don’t remember much else about him to include his injury.

 

Hopefully his child does well. Sounds like he at least has a good mother.

[NoSaint]

6 hours ago, HomeskillitMoorman said:

While it's sad...I have to agree that it's tougher to have empathy for someone who would physically/mentally abuse their spouse and baby. Life is hard sometimes, most of us have had some dark times at some point or another. That will never be an excuse to treat other people like that though. 

 

But then there is the aspect of mental illness, and I guess we'll never know if that was a part of what he did to his wife and baby. 

 

Therein is the rub— we all carry stuff but we have no idea what his stuff is.

 

dude was 230 pounds of chemical reactions effected by infinite factors. Nothing going on excuses assualting someone else but you look at this guys story and wonder what was really going on in there.

[BillsFan130]

Oh wow. I didn’t even know he died

[boyst]

37 minutes ago, billrooter said:

Wasn't trying to be witty,  just figured your self righteous ass needed to hear that.

It wont resonate. I'm too arrogant

40 minutes ago, PetermanThrew5Picks said:

Relax man lol. It's an article about a dead dude not Boyst's virtuousity.

I have known enough good honest men who have suffered from mental health issues to commit suicide that someone like James Hardy is just a joke when compared to the likes of others.

[billrooter]

5 minutes ago, Boyst62 said:

It wont resonate. I'm too arrogant

I have known enough good honest men who have suffered from mental health issues to commit suicide that someone like James Hardy is just a joke when compared to the likes of others.

Wow such a great quality, at last you admit it I guess.

[LSHMEAB]

16 minutes ago, NoSaint said:

 

Therein is the rub— we all carry stuff but we have no idea what his stuff is.

 

dude was 230 pounds of chemical reactions effected by infinite factors. Nothing going on excuses assualting someone else but you look at this guys story and wonder what was really going on in there.

People seem to have a hard time understanding that you can have empathy for someone without excusing their behavior. While he clearly did horrible things requiring consequence, there was something going on internally that nobody can fully comprehend. 

 

The guy drowned himself in a cold ***** river. I would say he paid his debt to society and then some.

[Mr. WEO]

8 hours ago, Boyst62 said:

You wasted all that fingering 

 

 

How many times has Melania told Donald that?

[stuvian]

We make Gods out of the men who play this game yet they struggle with their lives as do we. We attribute superhuman confidence and ability to those who perform athletic feats in front of thousands not knowing about the gaps and emptiness they might carry around with them.

 

It sounds to me like sports was the one and only thing that ever worked for James Hardy and when it was taken away from him he had nothing left to stand on. Such a hard, sad fall.

11 hours ago, Shaw66 said:

No, Colin.  The truth that he made bad decisions is only a small party of the story.   

 

The whole truth, which is only hinted at in the story, is that this child spent the first fifteen years of his life, the years when just about all of his intellectual and emotional development takes place, effectively homeless.  His father was in prison and his mother often wasn't around.    He might have known where he would sleep tonight, but he had no idea where he would be sleeping in  a year.  He was poor.  It's a good bet the world he saw was filled with drugs, alcohol and violence.   

 

Over the last twenty years, there's been a lot of study that's shown that children who grow up in that kind of environment have close to no chance of making.   Yes, as adults they make bad decisions, but they do so because it's almost impossible for children living in that kind of environment to learn to make good decisions.   Think about the one thing they do tell us - that when he was in high school he'd walk into a clothing store, take what he wanted and walk out without paying and without any consequences.   Not learning lessons about honesty and good behavior when you're a kid makes it very hard to behave as an adult as though you did learn those lessons.  

 

The truth is very few guys make it out of that kind of life to have productive lives, including athletes.   The few who make it out often get their heads straightened out in prison or in the service.  Some do it because someone takes a really serious interest in them, commits to them.   That's what Michael Oher's story is about.   Whatever the truth is exactly, it's clear that those people who took him in when he was a homeless high school freshman changed his life.   Look at Marcel Dareus.   He continues to struggle trying to recover from that kind of childhood.   From our perspective, it's easy.   In truth, it's much, much more difficult to recover from that kind of a childhood than it is to learn to put a basketball in a hoop or to catch passes at Indiana.   

 

It's a tragedy.  

I think it's much tougher than you think.   When everything around you as a kid is a disaster, when it's all poverty, drugs, unemployment, sex and violence, it's very hard to develop pitive life skills.   When your life is as chaotic as his was and you begin to have success in sports, it's not surprising that you'd put all your eggs in one basket.  It's an escape, it's the only thing that gives you gratification.   But it remains extraordinarily difficult to do the rest of things in your life successfully.   

 

I'm not advocating for anything.   I don't know how to fix the lives of people who live so dysfunctionally.   But I do know that kids growing up in that environment have a very difficult time growing into responsible, positive human beings.   That world is devastating to children.   

Shaw your post is very eloquent and well considered 

[Hapless Bills Fan]

10 hours ago, Boyst62 said:

Dude was a piece of *****.  I'm not one to talk ill of the dead...

 

Does not compute.  Contradictory.

[boyst]

32 minutes ago, Hapless Bills Fan said:

 

Does not compute.  Contradictory.

I make exceptions to things sometimes. ??‍♂️

 

Just sad to realize that this dummy gets a story wrote about him and his unfortunate life and the havoc he left.

 

 

1 hour ago, billrooter said:

Wow such a great quality, at last you admit it I guess.

I'm an *****, no doubt about it.

[RaoulDuke79]

Tough life for the guy. It's puzzling to me that you need to take several tests and a physical to get a driver's license,  but any moron can reproduce at will. 

[Troll Toll]

It’s really sad from the standpoint that it sounds like he had the brain of a small child. I’ve seen people like that and I don’t think it is necessarily a parenting thing. For whatever reason some people seem to be helplessly limited in terms of mental capacity and development.

[PUNT750]

12 hours ago, Shaw66 said:

No, Colin.  The truth that he made bad decisions is only a small party of the story.   

 

The whole truth, which is only hinted at in the story, is that this child spent the first fifteen years of his life, the years when just about all of his intellectual and emotional development takes place, effectively homeless.  His father was in prison and his mother often wasn't around.    He might have known where he would sleep tonight, but he had no idea where he would be sleeping in  a year.  He was poor.  It's a good bet the world he saw was filled with drugs, alcohol and violence.   

 

Over the last twenty years, there's been a lot of study that's shown that children who grow up in that kind of environment have close to no chance of making.   Yes, as adults they make bad decisions, but they do so because it's almost impossible for children living in that kind of environment to learn to make good decisions.   Think about the one thing they do tell us - that when he was in high school he'd walk into a clothing store, take what he wanted and walk out without paying and without any consequences.   Not learning lessons about honesty and good behavior when you're a kid makes it very hard to behave as an adult as though you did learn those lessons.  

 

The truth is very few guys make it out of that kind of life to have productive lives, including athletes.   The few who make it out often get their heads straightened out in prison or in the service.  Some do it because someone takes a really serious interest in them, commits to them.   That's what Michael Oher's story is about.   Whatever the truth is exactly, it's clear that those people who took him in when he was a homeless high school freshman changed his life.   Look at Marcel Dareus.   He continues to struggle trying to recover from that kind of childhood.   From our perspective, it's easy.   In truth, it's much, much more difficult to recover from that kind of a childhood than it is to learn to put a basketball in a hoop or to catch passes at Indiana.   

 

It's a tragedy.  

I think it's much tougher than you think.   When everything around you as a kid is a disaster, when it's all poverty, drugs, unemployment, sex and violence, it's very hard to develop pitive life skills.   When your life is as chaotic as his was and you begin to have success in sports, it's not surprising that you'd put all your eggs in one basket.  It's an escape, it's the only thing that gives you gratification.   But it remains extraordinarily difficult to do the rest of things in your life successfully.   

 

I'm not advocating for anything.   I don't know how to fix the lives of people who live so dysfunctionally.   But I do know that kids growing up in that environment have a very difficult time growing into responsible, positive human beings.   That world is devastating to children.   

 

COME ON SHAW - you're making me cry - for no reason.  He was a lousy player and couldn't be coached.  Blame the NFL for making him a 'star' in the making for $1.4 mil.  He's so typical of the vast majority of NFL players today  - really minority people - that want the money but can't play by the rules of athletic or social conduct.

[Rc2catch]

I was a really big fan of his, and Limas Sweed. I was bummed to see them both flame out of the league. But Hardy’s story is for sure a sad one. Regardless it sucks to see young people fall so hard, and of course to leave the earth so early on 

[MrEpsYtown]

39 minutes ago, Rc2catch said:

I was a really big fan of his, and Limas Sweed. I was bummed to see them both flame out of the league. But Hardy’s story is for sure a sad one. Regardless it sucks to see young people fall so hard, and of course to leave the earth so early on 

 

I remember being so happy to get Hardy, but it became obvious rather quickly that our seventh rounder Stevie Johnson was the better prospect. It still took him awhile to get a shot. 

 

That was a weird draft for recievers. You had Hardy and Sweed, but also Devin Thomas and Malcolm Kelly. Almost every single mock draft had us taking Kelly or Thomas in the first. So many busts, but then you also had Jordy Nelson, DeSean Jackson, and Pierre Garçon (in the 6th) and Danny Amendola was an UDFA. 

[machine gun kelly]

On 11/15/2018 at 8:10 AM, MrEpsYtown said:

 

Sorry for your loss. 

 

ThNks EPS.  You’re always a class act.

[Hapless Bills Fan]

On 11/15/2018 at 8:20 PM, Boyst62 said:

I make exceptions to things sometimes. ??‍♂️

 

Fair enough

 

On 11/15/2018 at 8:20 PM, Boyst62 said:

Just sad to realize that this dummy gets a story wrote about him and his unfortunate life and the havoc he left.

 

Eh.  Writers gotta write and it's a good story, as stories go.  Sad, no doubt.

It was just the "saddest thing" I have trouble with, I kind of find my saddest emotions going to stories that are less ambiguous - like Hadiya Pendleton or the like.

https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-met-hadiya-pendleton-trial-date-20180109-story.html

 

On 11/15/2018 at 8:20 PM, Boyst62 said:

I'm an *****, no doubt about it.

 

We all have our inner *****.  I had a "Please don't make me angry. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry" moment myself over my mother's medical care yesterday.

 

-Hapless, turning green

[TBBills Fan]

As a father, I wiped a tear reading that. Gonna hug my boy real tight when i get home

[Pre1236]

On 11/15/2018 at 10:27 AM, Da webster guy said:

 

A personal stylist for $28k.   That's honestly the most ridiculous advice you could ever give a young kid. 

 

Or anyone.

 

Nice mentorship Lil Donte.    Also James had the unfortunate experience of having to listen to Chris "You Gotsta Have a Fall Guy" Carter's ghetto advice.  

How Chris Carter's career survived that embarrassment is astonishing.

[TBBills Fan]

On 11/15/2018 at 9:45 PM, PUNT750 said:

 

COME ON SHAW - you're making me cry - for no reason.  He was a lousy player and couldn't be coached.  Blame the NFL for making him a 'star' in the making for $1.4 mil.  He's so typical of the vast majority of NFL players today  - really minority people - that want the money but can't play by the rules of athletic or social conduct.

What makes me sad about this is his son, and just like he had no dad, his son is going to.carry scars and continue the legacy of.pain....its a tragedy and that child is going to be affected

[boyst]

53 minutes ago, Hapless Bills Fan said:

 

Fair enough

 

 

Eh.  Writers gotta write and it's a good story, as stories go.  Sad, no doubt.

It was just the "saddest thing" I have trouble with, I kind of find my saddest emotions going to stories that are less ambiguous - like Hadiya Pendleton or the like.

https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-met-hadiya-pendleton-trial-date-20180109-story.html

 

 

We all have our inner *****.  I had a "Please don't make me angry. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry" moment myself over my mother's medical care yesterday.

 

-Hapless, turning green

Even that is a tough story to follow because gosh, if that girl just ran with a different crowd ... Maybe she didn't know better or have a choice.  A young girl like that, easily influenced; there isn't much that can be said.

 

I can think of 10 other sadder things this week I've dealt with than a story like this scumbag.

 

When I think about how precious life is and when I read about someone saying hown unfortunate it was that Hardy killed himself, or the bad luck of this girl (she picked the wrong crowd)... I think of a story like this: https://www.google.com/amp/s/myfox8.com/2013/07/16/girl-11-fatally-electrocuted-at-brookside-swim-club/amp/

 

The inner beast in us all is one that we do not like to unleash. 

[HardyBoy]

Sounds like he was dealing with bipolar, schizophrenia, depression and likely CTE...so let me make sure I understand some of your guys' take...a man with severe mental illness, acts like a man with severe mental illness, and you call him a pos...stay classy Bills fans!

 

Also, a lot of people here need to learn about and understand synaptic pruning before they start going off on personal responsibility is situations like this...you sound ignorant.

 

When a person is a baby, they have all these potential connections. Your brain has all this potential, but is inefficient because the paths for the neurons to flow through are not yet defined. As you grow as an infant and toddler, certain pathways are used, some are not. Eventually around I believe 3 you get synaptic pruning, which is the brain removing the unused pathways...they literally go away forever.

 

Humans literally have the capacity to be feral beasts (I'm talking about during the ice age), or extremely civilized (not sure we've attained this yet)...it's because of synaptic pruning of unused neural pathways. Children who have tough upbringings, specifically lack of stability and the ability to have control over getting the world to give them what they need (ex. baby cries and gets fed quickly) have different pathways that get reinforced compared to someone who has all their needs met.

 

Are people from tough upbringings lost? Of course not, it could be a strength in many ways, but you can't go through that early childhood and then get that sort of reinforcement as a teenager; it will lead to this situation lot more than average.

 

As a society we must help children from ages 0-3. This is both a moral responsibility issue and a fiscal responsibility issue...costs a heck of a lot less to provide effective interventions to babies than it is to fund the consequences (people not entering the labor force, criminal justice, etc.)

 

By the way, has anyone heard about Diaper Poverty befoe? I just did a few months ago, it's wild, look it up. 

[ColoradoBills]

10 hours ago, TBBills Fan said:

As a father, I wiped a tear reading that. Gonna hug my boy real tight when i get home

 

Then I would say the story had a positive effect and was worth telling despite what some others may say.

[PlayoffsPlease]

On 11/15/2018 at 9:45 PM, PUNT750 said:

 

COME ON SHAW - you're making me cry - for no reason.  He was a lousy player and couldn't be coached.  Blame the NFL for making him a 'star' in the making for $1.4 mil.  He's so typical of the vast majority of NFL players today  - really minority people - that want the money but can't play by the rules of athletic or social conduct.

Young man ends up dead.  Something went wrong.  Even if the wounds were all self inflicted normal human beings with an ounce of charity in their souls should feel bad for the guy. 

[Hapless Bills Fan]

57 minutes ago, PlayoffsPlease said:

Young man ends up dead.  Something went wrong.  Even if the wounds were all self inflicted normal human beings with an ounce of charity in their souls should feel bad for the guy. 

 

I can go with this.

 

Do you know where we can buy an ounce of charity and send it to Boyst?

 

 

 

[Dr. Who]

1 hour ago, Hapless Bills Fan said:

 

I can go with this.

 

Do you know where we can buy an ounce of charity and send it to Boyst?

 

 

 

I think you might need a pound or so to see any effect.

[PlayoffsPlease]

4 hours ago, Hapless Bills Fan said:

 

I can go with this.

 

Do you know where we can buy an ounce of charity and send it to Boyst?

 

 

 

A soul is a pre-requisite.  Please make sure one is installed first. 

[Hapless Bills Fan]

3 minutes ago, PlayoffsPlease said:

A soul is a pre-requisite.  Please make sure one is installed first. 

 

Above my pay-grade.  Though I'm told we all have 'em

[Buffalo716]

2 hours ago, Hapless Bills Fan said:

 

Above my pay-grade.  Though I'm told we all have 'em

That’s false information 

 

South Park was clear that Gingers possess no soul ?

[Alaska Darin]

19 hours ago, HardyBoy said:

Sounds like he was dealing with bipolar, schizophrenia, depression and likely CTE...so let me make sure I understand some of your guys' take...a man with severe mental illness, acts like a man with severe mental illness, and you call him a pos...stay classy Bills fans!

 

Also, a lot of people here need to learn about and understand synaptic pruning before they start going off on personal responsibility is situations like this...you sound ignorant.

 

When a person is a baby, they have all these potential connections. Your brain has all this potential, but is inefficient because the paths for the neurons to flow through are not yet defined. As you grow as an infant and toddler, certain pathways are used, some are not. Eventually around I believe 3 you get synaptic pruning, which is the brain removing the unused pathways...they literally go away forever.

 

Humans literally have the capacity to be feral beasts (I'm talking about during the ice age), or extremely civilized (not sure we've attained this yet)...it's because of synaptic pruning of unused neural pathways. Children who have tough upbringings, specifically lack of stability and the ability to have control over getting the world to give them what they need (ex. baby cries and gets fed quickly) have different pathways that get reinforced compared to someone who has all their needs met.

 

Are people from tough upbringings lost? Of course not, it could be a strength in many ways, but you can't go through that early childhood and then get that sort of reinforcement as a teenager; it will lead to this situation lot more than average.

 

As a society we must help children from ages 0-3. This is both a moral responsibility issue and a fiscal responsibility issue...costs a heck of a lot less to provide effective interventions to babies than it is to fund the consequences (people not entering the labor force, criminal justice, etc.)

 

By the way, has anyone heard about Diaper Poverty befoe? I just did a few months ago, it's wild, look it up. 

Excellent post.  At some point in the future,  we're going to find out just how much mental damage contact and combat sports are doing to athlete's brains.  Even then,  there will still be people who need to show their superiority whenever someone else fails. 

[MJS]

I hope his son doesn't meet the same fate. Hopefully he has more support around him.

[Hapless Bills Fan]

2 hours ago, Alaska Darin said:

Excellent post.  At some point in the future,  we're going to find out just how much mental damage contact and combat sports are doing to athlete's brains.  

 

You may be correct about the mental damage, but I think Hardy Boy may be talking about Reactive Attachment Disorder and Borderline Attachment Disorder.  Fundamentally the idea is that there are critical development ages in human infants/toddlers where they develop normal emotional attachments to caregivers that are needed to become healthy, mentally stable adults with an appropriate sense of empathy etc.  Infants whose needs aren’t consistently met and who don’t have someone react when they cry/seek comfort at these critical ages are at high risk for this, though it’s not clear exactly why some infants are affected and others with superficially similar care are not.

 

I didn’t see enough background in the cited article to determine if this might have been a factor for Hardy, so it’s kind of being inferred I think.  But HB could be correct.  Or not - plenty folks who had affectionate adequate care grow up with a screw or five loose.
 

https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-reactive-attachment-disorder-4136080

[Cripple Creek]

8 hours ago, PlayoffsPlease said:

A soul is a pre-requisite.  Please make sure one is installed first. 

he's just acting out for attention

[LSHMEAB]

Just so we're clear, we all understand that this man literally drowned himself in a freaking river, correct?

 

I understand that he wasn't a saint, but there's something really creepy about berating a guy capable of that level of self destruction. Quite frankly, I WOULD have less sympathy for him if he took somebody else out. He didn't.

[Bob in STL]

The Bills drafted this guy and he had a rap sheet that was known by all teams. 

 

I remember him scoring a TD on a high pass "jump ball" play and thought maybe we found a great player. 

 

Not that I am blaming the Bills,  just thinking about how to avoid these pitfalls.  I wonder if the Bills did anything to help him get acclimated to the NFL, to life on his own, and how to handle the big pile of money that was coming his way?   I thought I read that they did.  Going back to the Marv era, I heard that they provided basic home and financial management support. 

 

Anyway sad story.  The importance of family and the need to take care of children properly is what resonates with me. 

 

Seems like a lot of the players coming out of college need this kind of help.    

 

 

[HardyBoy]

On 11/18/2018 at 8:17 PM, Hapless Bills Fan said:

 

You may be correct about the mental damage, but I think Hardy Boy may be talking about Reactive Attachment Disorder and Borderline Attachment Disorder.  Fundamentally the idea is that there are critical development ages in human infants/toddlers where they develop normal emotional attachments to caregivers that are needed to become healthy, mentally stable adults with an appropriate sense of empathy etc.  Infants whose needs aren’t consistently met and who don’t have someone react when they cry/seek comfort at these critical ages are at high risk for this, though it’s not clear exactly why some infants are affected and others with superficially similar care are not.

 

I didn’t see enough background in the cited article to determine if this might have been a factor for Hardy, so it’s kind of being inferred I think.  But HB could be correct.  Or not - plenty folks who had affectionate adequate care grow up with a screw or five loose.
 

https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-reactive-attachment-disorder-4136080

 

Didn't mean to, was just going to write a quick thing with a link or two, but this got long. Wrote it on my phone the last hour or two, so sorry for any typos. Would normally reorganize some of the flow, but maybe one day when I finally go and start that blog I've been putting off for five years, I'll do it right.

 

Hapless, thank you for listening and considering my point of view, I really really mean that. I fully agree his behaviors were awful. Not at all defending them or giving him an excuse to act that way. However, as an explanation of why he acted that way, and why, in my opinion, we should condemn his behaviors, while separately viewing his story as sad, and as a human worthy of recieving compassion, I think it was largely out of his control, even before the mental illness (I promise I give reasoning to back this thought up below).

 

Attachment disorder is interesting stuff (was actually just watching a youtube video on it yesterday). I think you're right that attachment disorder could be a great lens to see this through. Could actually be the behavioral manifestations of the consequences of synaptic pruning. 

 

Article on synaptic pruning: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3722610/ (there are less dry articles out there for sure, but once you get past the baby brain development it's really a pretty interesting read).

 

So what is synaptic pruning based on my understanding (I'm a psych major, but mostly I read a lot about things I find ingesting like this and watch a lot of youtube videos, so take my qualifications with a grain of salt, since I don't really have any, other than I have thought about it a lot):

 

When a kid is born, their brain is a tangle of potential pathways. Think of it like roads on a map, but arranged like a bowl of angel hair pasta, times a million. So their brain has all these tangled roads, which means they can basically get from almost any one spot to any other spot, but it's super inefficient and easy to get lost (they don't get a map). As they have more experiences, based on their environment, they travel between one set of points more than a different set of points, and they use certain roads more than other roads. As those roads get used more, they get bigger and wider, so they can move faster on them, but the unused roads are taking up space so they go away to make room for parking or just so they have to spend less money on maintaining roads that are not traveled.  As a side note, it's a bit funny and ironic how much of that happens before you have the ability to reason and remember, but it's probably a large part in why we can reason and remember, since without pruning things are tangled up. Also, research is pointing to issues with synaptic pruning could be at play in autism, especially regressive autism, where a kid is developing typically, but suddenly losses a bunch of skills (coincidently coincides timing wise with certain vaccines too, which has lead to a lot of correlation jumping to blaming vaccines) synaptic pruning potentially implicated in autism: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/25845529/.

 

Anway, as certain points on the analagous brain map are traveled to more and more, they become key hubs that all the roads lead to, while the roads leading to the non-traveled spots, get pruned to make space for a highway that runs through the non-traveled to town, and there is no exit (sort of like parts of Chicago).

 

That first pruning starts early on, but higher level pruning happens into adolescence, because things like higher level emotional regulation and delaying gratification develop later on. You mix Hardy's early life, with a lack of any demands to fight through short term adversity to achieve a long term goal (he was a sports natural) in adolescence and you have a situation where it's not necessarily in his hands how he reacts, at least not without significant work with a behaviorist to apply habits that over a long time rewire his brain. It's doable as an adult to an extent, but it's damn hard and takes a lot of time and delaying gratification, things he literally might not have had the brain mechanisms to do (like someone who is blind can't see, but can learn straregies to navigate their environment super effectively).

 

Sort of like addiction in a way actually. You can identify the individual's negative behaviors, and label the behaviors as awful, and as the behaviors of an awful human being. You can also blame the addict for starting, but once the addiction gets bad, it's not a matter of reasoning with someone, or even something they choose, their neural pathways have been rewired to demand the quickest method of dopamine release possible, which is their drug of choice.

 

I know this sounds like I am saying that it isn't anyones fault for how they behave, and I truly don't believe that, but at the extremes, children who have gone through early trauma, a lack of stability in early childhood and abuse really should be looked at as victims in a lot of ways (him being treated as a god as a teenager is abuse, not saying no to a kid ever is abuse, who knows if he went through more typical types of abuse, with the lack of consistent positive adult supervision that would not at all surprise anyone).  However, that does not mean that those behaviors can, or should, be tolerated, because often those behaviors are completely unacceptable, but treating them as criminals that you cage for 10 years and let back into the world is not a good plan and it's not a cost effecticlve plan.  

 

They need therapy (assuming there isn't a personality disorder, because those don't really ever go away), but more, there needs to be real intervention and support for these babies, as babies, and changes to the educational system that inspire kids to be driven by their curiosity to drive through difficulty to learn for the sake of learning would be a heck of a step. Big picture, that probably starts with a resetting of priorities to spend money on keeping kids out of jail as adults.

 

It cost so much more money to jail even 5% of a high risk population for 30 years than to provide 3 years of somewhat intensive therapy from 0-3 with lower intesity mentoring through adolescence (the indvidual's life time of contributing to society, and the removal of the impact of their crime to society need to be weighed into the cost benefit). I'm sure there is research on this, but I have to think that the cost of one murder, where you lose the person killed's economic participation and the murder's loss of participation (they would have received support and be contributing in the alternative reality and therefore much less likely to kill someone), plus the cost of 30 years of incarceration, and the indirect ripples of kids growing up without parents.

 

I wouldn't be suprised if that added up to at least a million dollars in negative impact that you could remove, and use the money to fund services to a huge part of a city for that...all you would need to do is prevent one murder basically (this assumes the person killed is contributing).

 

In Hardy's case, and as with any baby, he was born into that situation, and it was basically completely out of his hands the whole way through. He had other friends with tough upbringings that were referenced in that story, who made it out alright, but they didn't have the super-natural athletic skill Hardy had, so they never really got that second whammy of bad fortune of no consequences and there you go.

 

This isn't an uncommon behavior pattern among pro athletes from rough childhoods either (he is in the extreme though) and makes you wonder if it could be a function of very similar environmental factors present in early age and adolescence, leading to very similar brain development. It could also be that at the 99% extreme, confident people are jerks and you almost have to be that  confident to make that level of competition, but I think there's something more fundamentally similar in terms of brain development.  Being told you're the best and having the temporary skill to back it up, when most of that is a lucky dice roll, man that's a dangerous combination...and not just in sports, look at Orson Wells.

Edited November 20, 2018 by HardyBoy