Monsters.
POSTED BY: Wulfenstar
UPDATED: Wednesday, August 26, 2026 20:52
VIEWED: 14016
PAGE 20 of 25
Huh.
Okay, I see a big difference that needs explanation and prolly more thought. Guilt and forgiveness, punishment and reward, behavior and modification. They're not always tied together.
The question is: how do we modify violent criminal behavior?
Most of us are constrained by guilt and some of us are constrained by fear, but that constraint requires a number of mental processes.
1) You have to be able to put yourself in another's shoes. But if you're like my daughter, who is brain-blind to different points of view, you'll lack that capacity. (BTW- she doesn't lack sympathy. If someone is hurting, right in front of her, she responds.)
2) You have to remember the past. Some peeps don't. Nuff said.
3) You have to be able to project the future. Children younger than about five, and people who're brain-damaged (again, like my daughter) lack the capacity.
4) You have to be able to learn from pain. According to Rue, sociopaths don't. They don't even apply it to themselves.
5) You have to acknowledge a social hierarchy.
Guilt is a complex emotion. It doesn't work for many people for a variety of reasons. The MAIN reason, I believe, is that most people with PTSD... basically, people who've been abused when young and/or grew up in life-threatening circumstances... often don't even care about themselves. Its that nihilistic POV which says - when you confront a gang-banger wannabe with the horror they are creating- I don't think I'm gonna live past 25 anyway and I don't care. But, as I listed, there are many other reasons why guilt (which is self-punishment) and punishment don't work.
You'd think... wouldn't you?... that if you had to spend a week in jail, much less a year... that you'd do everything in your power not to repeat the experience! The mistake that people make is that they keep projecting themselves and their responses on others. But if you look at the recidivism rate of violent criminals, it's CLEAR that punishment doesn't work for them!
I had to take a parenting class bc my dd was so terribly ADHD when young. I had to learn that I couldn't treat her like a "normal" kid because her responses weren't "normal": ADHD kids crave attention and excitement, even punishment, if that's the only attention they get. We had to modify her behavior through reward. And yanno what??? In my experience as a parent, as a supervisor AND as an employer, reward works quite well.
Anyway, my point is that while punishment and self-punishment work for a lot of people... I daresay even most... they don't work for everybody, and if you want to modify violent criminal behavior you have to look for a new paradigm. Something not involving guilt and forgiveness
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I think perhaps you're right, and my word choice wasn't the best, so I'll explain what I meant better. You have to remember that I'm coming from the place of once having violent, psychopathic tendencies myself, and I can be harsh in my self-assessment.
What I meant by "not forgiving" myself is more I think that it's important to keep a record of behaviour so that certain patterns that might indicate relapse can be observed.
Unfortunately, in keeping this record, and notifying people close to the person in question, you also risk alienating people who have difficulty integrating in society in the first place. Their problems can also come with a potential stigma in regards to getting jobs and them rebuilding their lives.
This is a very difficult issue for a person with violent and psychopathic tendencies to discuss, because at least in some of us there's some concern about rejection. Some of us respond by deciding to not care what others think and pre-emptively becoming defensive about it, which is itself an aspect of psychopathy, while some us just try to keep it secret.
So far, I've found that the best way for a recovering psychopath to try to address this problem is to admit their past history by notifying any people they may have long-term contact with. By being willing to warn people in advance of the possibility of relapse, not as a threat, but rather out of responsibility or even concern, this helps foster trust and can also allow the person to get help if they're showing signs of relapsing before they do something bad.
Of course, there's also problems with this. Psychopathic sex offenders who move into a neighborhood I've heard are required to give a door-to-door notice. As far as I know, this is an example of where the notification is necessary, but damages the rehabilitation of the individual by alienating them further. In a better world, no one would commit sex-related offenses, because in the case of rape, it's pretty much inexcusable. Prevention also has to be a key element in the fabric here.
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DT hopefully this will catch you b4 you go on hiatus
Quote:Which is why its important to acknowledge the societies at Mohenjo-Daro, on Thera, and centered around Caral. As far as archeology can tell, none of these civilizations were violent or warlike: they lacked ramparts, armories and the like. Also, apparently, they lacked slums. And as far as archeology can determine, they lasted several hundreds of years and were NEVER overtaken by war... no charring, no mass burials etc. They were apparently felled environmental changes: river bed shifting (Mohenjo-Dar and sister cities), catastrophic volcano (Thera), and deforestation (Caral and sister cities).
1) yes, you're correct, we should design such a society... but
2) History has proven 100,000 times that peace society is fine until it meets violent society which kills it.
Any society with a better design plan will need to be able to defend itself. I just disagree that this defense will be guns in school. I don't actually see guns in my vision of the future, but I definitely do see their point.
Also, game theory suggests that once a certain threshold is reached, cooperation is self-sustaining.
What you think of as "defense" I think of as "feedback". HOW do you build in sufficient feedback- both positive and negative- to make the society responsive to changing circumstances, both internal and external? Feedback can come in a number of ways... a million people taking one step, or 10,000 people going the ultimate distance. Violence is not always necessary... possibly, it is NEVER necessary.
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BYTE: Hmm... there's definitely history there... which I'm certain you don't care to share any further. But that gives me insight into your POV.
I think the idea that we're both tending towards is acknowledge and accept.
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Yes, that's a good way to put it. I think that acknowledgment of a violent history and concerned vigilance would help prevent relapses, and that acceptance is ultimately what would help rehabilitation. Alienation results in defensiveness, which can then bring psychopathic tendencies back out. Acceptance fosters trust, which comes hard to psychopaths, and also calms the feeling that one is under attack and needs to lash back out.
Violent thoughts or imaginings can't always be repressed, but the psychopath can learn how to not act on them despite how gratifying the imagined violence can feel. To be honest, I'm not sure so much if the imaginings are less an element of my psychopathy and more an element of psychosis in my case, but I decided to consider them related because they could result in a psychopathic reaction, and I prefer to treat this as the worst case scenario to cover any risks.
The important thing to remember is that not every psychopath is at the same level of progress. I never really had the psychopathic tendency to manipulate people, to consider everyone an enemy and/or a sucker to be taken advantage of, I was mostly just violent and antisocial. And over the years, I managed to develop an ability to feel regret and to empathize with other people. If I find myself imagining violence, I become disturbed because I can now recognize right and wrong and that I would be hurting people, which I don't want to do.
There are some people who still have yet to develop to this degree. I'm not sure how to help them because I'm not entirely sure how *I* snapped out of my psychopathic behaviour patterns.
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BYTE: It seems to me that you're one of the most consistently reasonable people here. I'm not sure I could put in that effort. Hell, I have a hard time controlling my snarkiness.
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Byte
A study was done many years ago on people in jail and their siblings, but sadly, never followed up on.
As I recall people were divided up into four groups - consistently violent, episodically violent, NEVER violent (as I recall, they really did mean never - never once did anyone recall that the person was violent, even as a very young child), and the fourth group - I forget, unfortunately.
The person who did the study was extremely careful to get good results - and what he did was to get hair samples and run mineral profiles on them. The four groups did completely and cleanly divide up into separate quadrants on a chart, depending on the various concentrations of minerals in their hair (lead, calcium, magnesium, sodium, potassium etc). What I recall of the chart was that there was not even a near overlap between groups. They were completely distinct.
It may be that there are people such as yourself, who are wholly capable of empathy, but who are (episodically) subject to violent reactions under particular stresses - especially ones that get interpreted as a threat to survival. And those situations are learned, so that while they may not actually BE a physical threat, the emotions react as if it was.
I'm glad to know that you got past that, and that you are working toward stability, happiness and peace.
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Silence is consent.
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I honestly used to be a lot like Wulf, at least in the wanting to take down evil and be heroic sense. I considered myself a champion of sorts, getting revenge and hurting people who hurt me or the few people who I possessively considered to be my friends. I imagined the world to be against them, and me, my violence was directionless.
When I came to my senses, it was a rather extreme shift, and there were some unusual circumstances involved.
You mentioned nihilism, I suppose I still have some of those tendencies, since I mentioned earlier that I WOULD try to run in and break up the gang. And I'd probably do so violently, rather than thinking about the gang members or that I'm hurting them, possibly even crippling them, because I can be vicious and brutal.
But now I do normally try to understand other people's perspectives. When I stop thinking as other people as people, I've learned to catch myself, and force myself to consider their perspective.
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Could be, and the minerals thing is intriguing. Was lead found to be a major component in violent behaviour? That could suggest impacts from not just the social environment, but the environment in general.
The weird thing is, I was never really had to deal with any survival situations. Sometimes I felt emotionally neglected, but never was actually really in any condition I could consider actual neglect, or a betrayal of trust, or traumatizing. When I imagine violence I'm not drawing from past experiences (though I used to get into a lot of pretty serious fights), but rather more constantly analyzing my environment for potential threats and how I would respond.
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Byte
It was so long ago that I don't remember the specifics - but yes, lead factored into it. As I recall, what the researcher did was ratio certain minerals that are known to act in opposition biochemically: lead to calcium (or the other way around); sodium : potassium; and I forget the others.
Yes, love which is WITHHELD could be a factor - children live by their ability to affect the parents - to elicit care. Children who are made to feel excluded from what COULD be available can react as if their lives are threatened.
This is opposed to families where, for example, everyone gets treated like shit. Or where no one gets love. In some ways that is easier.
***************************************************************
Silence is consent.
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