WHY?

What is it that drives people to do things that they normally wouldn’t or even those that they know are not acceptable in the society that we live in – not because it’s good or bad, but because it is something not expected of us as human beings – those “exalted” living beings at the top of the food chain?

Why do men rape women? Why do they beat women up? Why do women in a fit of anger cut off their husband’s genitals?  Why do women kill their men? Why do mothers kill their children in their infancy? Why do men kill their daughters even before they’re born? Why do people stone perpetrators to death?

What is this urge that takes over human beings and causes us to behave in a most irrational, obsessive way? Why can a kleptomaniac not resist the urge to steal? Why does the need become a rising, screaming crescendo till the deed is done and only then can the kleptomaniac heave a sigh of relief? Why does a wife-beater not stop till he has drawn blood? Why does a rapist not stop till the woman is near death? Why do the pelting stones not stop till the perpetrator IS dead? 

I’m trying to wrap my head around this. All I know is that if the frontal lobe of the brain has received an injury and been damaged, that’s when we are not able to resist impulses or control urges.

Is that enough to excuse recurrent kleptomania, ignore domestic/child abuse, even justify an act as heinous as rape?