Jeffrey Epstein: Why?
When I look at the case of Jeffrey Epstein and try to understand why what happened happened the answer comes loud and clear: mental illness. We can blame the individual a thousand times, but the clear explanation is that that he could not help doing what he did. People become addicted to alcohold, tobacco, and other drugs. People become addicted to food. Perhaps he become addicted to under-age women and this was the only way he could get some kind of sexual and emotional gratification.
He was clever enough, intelligent enough, to amass an vast amount of wealth to have the kind of lifestyle that he enjoy with expensive residences, private jets and the luxuries of a very wealthy lifestyle, meeting people in the higher echelons of power and celebrity, but he could avoid doing what in the end led to his demise at an age when he could have had even more to enjoy and achieve. In spite of his inability or unwillingness to form lasting emotional relationships he could be generous and in fact supported various institutions. He was not a conventional individual. We cannot measure him according to our own standards or points of view.
In fact, we live in times where conflicting set of values coexist. We live in a world in which in some parts of the world drugs are legalised and in other parts of the world using drugs or trafficking drugs can get you killed. We live in a world in which in some parts of the world men can marry men and women can marry women and in which in some parts of the world men and women would be put to death because of homosexuality and bisexuality.
In the same world, there are places where sex with chiildren is a criminal offense and in other places sex with children is a custom leading to arranged marriages when families - not the individual concerned - make deals marrying their children to adults.
The word is full of contraditions and the age of consent tend to vary not just between countries, but within countries. We live in a world in which the fashion industries have sexualised children promoting a sort of lessez-faire, laissez-passer kind of attitudes.
Jeffrey Epstein was both a victim and a victimiser. Any human being is extremely complex and there are many sides of the same story. People can be many things at the same time. I am not the same man that I was yesterday or the week before or the year before. We are constantly evolving, experiencing and learning not just about the outside world, but also about ourselves, about our inner world.
For many years, we knew Michael Jackson's public personna, but most of us didn't know about Michael Jackson as a human being, about who Michael Jackson was in his own mind when dealing with his own weaknesses and emotional needs. We admired his music, his showmanship, but we didn't know Michael Jackson the human being that struggled. We knew about Vivien Leigh the movie star, the now legendary protagonist of Gone with the Wind, but we didn't know Vivien Leigh the woman that could barely cope because of mental heatlh issues.
What led Prince Andrew to get involved with the lifestyle of Jeffrey Epstein? We had the image promoted by the Royal Family and the mass media concerning the man who took part in a threatre of war, the man who was involved with several charities, the military man that served with distinction, the family man. The marriage to Sarah Fergusson was not a successful marriage despite the fact that even after the break up he maintained an amicable relatioship with his former wife. The real man was hidden behind his public image. We often forget that behind every celebrity there is real human being.
