The role of pyschopathy in modern society.

Um, ok. So if thats truly the problem... Then whats the solution?

Sorry, getting a little tired of all the talk about whats wrong, without anyone acctually saying how to fix it.

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The solution concept is mentioned in the Truancy thread, but if you want more and specific details, just ask.

Solving this problem has been the lifes work of a lot of folk, so there's plenty of info to be had, so much of it that you need to refine your questions so I can provide the most relevant.

-F

It cannot be said enough, those who do not learn from history, are doomed to endlessly repeat it

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I think as a species what we are seeing is the clash between our evolution and our invention.

Referring back to Jane Goodalls's inadvertent chimp experiment: in order to get a look at chimps (who, up to that point had been frustratingly hiding in the jungle) she enticed them into her clearing with a large pile of fruit. And she spent about a year documenting all sorts of dominance behavior where the largest and most aggressive males would viciously fight to corner the pile. Meanwhile the females, juveniles and more timid chimps cowered in the background. Some tried to cage favor of whomever they thought might win, or might like them, with subservient, appeasing grimaces and cowering behavior; some to thieve errant pieces; and the rest just tried to avoid the widespread fray and protect themselves and their young from random attacks.

Sounds all to human, doesn't it ?

But then she had the good sense to realize that it was abnormal behavior caused by a singular abnormal condition - the highly prized pile of riches in one "easily dominated" (her words) place. Realizing that this was unlike anything found in nature, where fruit is sparse and scattered, she spread the fruit around. And the abnormal behavior disappeared.


Agriculture and subsequent economies are like that pile of fruit. They create an abundance concentrated in one easily dominated pile.

If there was no abundance there would be no problem. If that abundance was scattered there'd be no problem - everyone would have equal access and be replete and happy. But agriculture changed it all, and later agriculturally-based economies are simply following the original model.


We are simply chimps who've created a highly abnormal situation and are now living in it. And it will take at least a few tens of thousands of years for natural selection to solve the problem for us by giving us new mental tools to respond to that pile (or humans will crash and burn before then, and probably carry most of the planet with us).


And here is where the sociopath comes in. Though you can make a sociopath out of some people, not all sociopaths (authoritarians - manipulators) are made - some are born. And though you can make a henchman, not all henchmen (authoritarians - followers) are made - some are born. You can see this in the chimp observations.

What our tasty-pile economies are doing is fostering, rewarding and enforcing abnormal behavior.



But all is not lost.

And I refer to SignyM's recounting of the baboon troop where all the nastiest most aggressive baboons cornered the food dump which contained tainted meat - caught TB from it - and died.

It was a society reborn.

The death rate of females and juveniles dropped dramatically. While males competed with each other they no longer took their aggression out on the helpless and weak. And furthermore, new baboons - even highly aggressive males from other troops - learned that things were done differently in that group, and tempered their behavior accordingly. Even more remarkable, this new society has been passed down generation to generation. As baboon societies go, it's a baboon paradise.

As SignyM has mentioned, societies are sensitive to large non-personal conditions. And they can be remade by reframing those conditions.

Sometimes it happens by revolution. Sometimes by evolution. And I'll leave it to everyone else to come up with the conditions they think might benefit humanity as a whole. (I have some ideas of my own, which I haven't yet concluded - they are an ongoing process.)


But for the history buffs out there - I'd like to test-drive my ideas about modern democracy in the grand scheme of things. My impression is that Canada and the European democracies are much more, well, democratic than the US. I used to think it was b/c they had parliaments which kept the governments on their toes at all times. And, by having actual power over their governments, people were more involved, leading to better democracy ... and so on. I still think that might be a consideration. But I now wond

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Good post, Rue.

Interesting article, especially about the insanity of the military, and how our "civilization" promotes some pretty scary behavior. The thing that worries me is how it makes a clean separation between those who are righteous and those who must be stopped, as if there aren't enough of these divisions in the world! The article even seems to suggest tests. Witch hunt much?

I picture something like Scientology's e-meter. You measure less than 3.6 on the psychopath scale and we'll cut your head off! But who's giving the test? And who do you suppose is going to figure out how to beat it?

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I'm still thinking that with Europe it has more to do with being forced to live together. The American ideal of the empowered individualist is practical because America has the resources and space to support it, the food pile is big enough if you will. Elsewhere people are forced to cooperate more than compete because the resources are not there. In the absence of abundance learning to accept a smaller garenteed share is more logical than bidding to take it all knowing that if you lose there will not be the resources for you to try again. If this is the only food pile there will ever be is it better to work with otherst to garentee you get a share (and thus not starve) or to go out on your own and risk losing everything?


Also European wars killed too many people, over time people got fed up of it. By contrast the US had only one modern war on its mainland

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Dr Kevin Barrett Muslim Non-Jew for Congress
www.barrettforcongress.us

Dr Kevin Barrett Radio Show
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Quote:

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Military institutions are tailor-made for psychopathic killers. The 5% or so of human males who feel no remorse about killing their fellow human beings make the best soldiers. And the 95% who are extremely reluctant to kill make terrible soldiers — unless they are brainwashed with highly sophisticated modern techniques that turn them (temporarily it is hoped) into functional psychopaths.

Wars are ritualized mass murders by psychopaths of non-psychopaths.

The only conspiracy that matters is the conspiracy of the psychopaths against the rest of us.

The greatest fear of any psychopath is of being found out. As George H. W. Bush said to journalist Sarah McClendon, December 1992, “If the people knew what we had done, they would chase us down the street and lynch us.”


CIA agent George Bush Sr in Dealey Plaza for another coup d'etat
www.jfkmurdersolved.com/bush2.htm

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Less than 20% of soldiers in World War 2 actually pulled a trigger to kill, even when enemy troops were were shooting bullets and killing US troops.

Not enough soldiers were hunters, butchers, boy scouts or NRA members.

Churches did too good a job brainwashing the sheeple to lay down for the psychopaths in their own govt, and censored Biblical authorization to kill in self-defense. Moses delivered the 10 Commandments, after he killed an Egyptian cop. Even Jeses told his disciples to trade their plows for swords.

So DARPA.mil got in the entertainment business...


Visit your local Psychopaths R US store in your Victim Disarmament Zone

And why DARPA made robot Reapers.


MQ-9 Reaper Hunter/Killer Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

As Dr Barrett points out, robots attacked USA on 9/11, due to a shortage of psychpaths.


British BAC 1-11 robot drone airliner

Pilotless passenger jet flown remotely by British Royal Air Force
www.mod.uk/defenceinternet/defencenews/equipmentandlogistics/pilotless
passengerjetflownremotelybyrafinworldfirst.htm
http://piratenews.org/killer-robot-jetplanes.html
http://piratenews.org/flight93.html
http://piratenews.org/911con.html

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Kids may be hardwired to 'share and share alike': study

(Until we teach them greed is good)

Quote:

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PARIS (AFP) - Humans are selfish in earliest childhood but by the age of seven or eight are keen to share equally, a developmental change so sudden that it can only be explained, at least in part, by genes, according to a study released Wednesday.

Behavioural scientists and sociologists have quarrelled for decades as to whether generosity and selfishness are inherited or result from social conditioning. But new experiments with 229 Swiss children between the ages of three and eight suggest that Homo sapiens is probably somewhere in between: humans look out for No. 1, but also express, if not outright generosity, at least an aversion to inequality. The study, published in the British journal Nature, could help explain how humans developed the ability to cooperate in large groups of individuals who are unrelated, the researchers say.

The children were asked to take part in three different games. In each game, the child was confronted with two options as to how to distribute portions of jelly beans and other small sweets. He or she was faced with another kid, shown only in a photo to avoid complications arising from face-to-face encounters.

One of the options was the same in all three games: divide the sweets equally. In the first game, the child had the alternate option of keeping a single portion of sweets for himself and giving nothing for the other child. In the second, more sweets were added, and the child had the option of giving the other child two portions and keeping one. And in the third game, the child had the choice of taking two portions and leaving the other child empty-handed.

Lead researcher Ernst Fehr of the University of Zurich said the three- and four-year-olds were consistently motivated by self-interest, with almost no regard for the well-being of the other. The next age bracket was almost as selfish.

"But if we look at the seven-to-eight year olds, a different picture emerges," Fehr told AFP.

In the first game, nearly 80 percent of the older kids made sure the other child got the same amount of sweets rather than none at all. And in the last game, more than 40 percent of them refused to let the other go away with nothing even when they had the opportunity of gaining a double portion by doing so.

By comparison, less than nine percent of three- and four-year-olds were willing to do the same. But generosity had its limits. In the second game, the older children were reluctant to let their counterpart have twice as many as themselves.

'If I can't have more,' their actions seemed to say, 'I don't see why he or she should.'

In an e-mail exchange with AFP, Fehr said the results suggest that Nature and Nurture jointly shaped behavioural responses, although the study was not designed to calculate the share of each influence.

"I think that both genes and culture play a role," Fehr said. The results, he added, suggest that "social norms of equality can come into being even without extended forms of cultural transmission. Nobody would dispute that the sexual maturation of children is driven by biology and genes, so why should other phenotypes -- like those associated with fairness behaviour -- not also be driven by biology and genes?", he asked rhetorically.

At least one result was unexpected, said Fehr: children with no siblings were more, rather than less, generous.

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Also, I think this coincides rather interestingly with the concept of the "age of reason". (You Catholics out there would know what I'm talking about.)

---------------------------------
Any idea, no matter how much you may agree with it, can be radicalized and employed as an excuse for violence. There is no such thing as a righteous or untouchable philosophy, and when you start thinking that there is, you have become an extremist.- Finn Mac Cumhal

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Interesting, but to me, unsurprising.

You know though, isn't is *fascinating* how every time one of these studies is done by folk outside of the american Gov and Education systems, the conclusion is radically different ?

At first blush one might take that to mean americans and their kids are shitheads, which is an entirely plausible theory with a lot of empirical evidence behind it, sure...

Till you start checking into the scientific method of such "studies" and realize that there basically isn't any, IF an actual study was done at all, instead of some slackwit with a degree just quoting their prejudices.

Case in point, the Sembler-Lichfield "All children are lying manipulators" myth.

Firstly, especially amongst the very young, children have a more nebulous distinction between fantasy and reality than us adults do.

Second, the very idea of such manipulation presumes not only deceitful intent, but harmful intent, and implies the ability to remember the falsehood and remain perfectly consistent over a period of time.

And if you buy that, I got some Arizona swampland for ya, cheap.

Most "Behavioral Studies" done here in the States by Gov, Education, or Big Pharma, usually some combination of the three, have a pre-conceived conclusion and mean to damn well reach it in spite of the evidence, scientific method notwithstanding.

I mean, come on, when a "behavioral study" of "problem kids" done by an affliate of the manufacturer of Ritalin concludes that the primary thing wrong with them is that they need to be prescribed Ritalin - wouldn't YOU be a bit skeptical ?

The Swiss, on the other hand, seem to be real sticklers for proper scientific method, and even the British have done some of their own good work on this, finally realizing that, yes virginia, there IS a link between some food additives and behavioral problems in susceptible children....

Something "studies" done by the companies that make them over here say otherwise, but again, doesn't that make you a little skeptical ?

Anyhows, ranting aside, every decent study on this has pretty much gone to support the belief that "Human Nature" is actually fairly benevolent, and that it is the external influences of a society intent on warping/crushing it, and succeeding, which is causing the problem....

Although Nature has her ways too, we've started to see medication-resistant kids recently, and kinda I figured that was only a matter of time.

Quote:

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And I refer to SignyM's recounting of the baboon troop where all the nastiest most aggressive baboons cornered the food dump which contained tainted meat - caught TB from it - and died.

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The French actually actively TRIED that once, it didn't work out to well in reality, but the concept was there.

I find it ironic to be reminded of that, when I am more or less advocating we exterminate the NeoCons, which amounts to prettymuch the same thing, neh ?

On the idea of Born vs Made...

I don't accept that some children pop out fully formed and functional sociopaths, it just doesn't work like that, and anyone who says so either doesn't understand the subject or is perpetuating a false myth to avoid the hassle of early intervention, in spite of how critical we know it to be.

That's not saying that there are not children born with a predisposition toward such behavior, which is, let us be very clear - NOT the same thing.

If provided with alternatives and encouraged to make use of them, they can turn out completely different, but yes, it does take the investment of more time and effort than simply writing them off, but doing that is in my opinion a boomerang of the meanest form, cause it comes back to haunt us all, doesn't it ?

Likewise, there's been some discussion about "compensated sociopaths" who display a lot of the behaviors, but are neither completely amoral or antisocial, and I have done a bit of my own research on this, because of certain downright fascinating discoveries.

See, conventional wisdom is that these are also born that way, just not fully sucked into t

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