I was going to say: Not every psychopath/sociopath wants to torture or kill people. Psychopaths aren’t categorized by their desires (to kill, torture, rape etc) but by their lack of conscience, morals, ethics, integrity and scruples.
I was using the term generally – i.e. to mean someone with psychopathic tendencies. Whether it’s congenital, environmental or learned doesn’t really matter nor does it matter if someone is diagnosed as a psychopath, sociopath or narcissistic. What matters is their lack of conscience.
I reiterate that this system can only have been created by psycho/sociopaths because all we have to do is look at the world around us to find evidence. Constant wars, environmental devastation, the poor getting poorer, the rich getting richer and more and more power being funnelled into fewer hands while those who control the system, laugh all the way to the bank
A politician who lies about WMD then sends his countrymen to be killed and maimed in the process of slaughtering a million Iraqi’s has to have psychopathic tendencies. The fact that he joked about not finding WMD later just emphasise it but he gets voted in again.
A CEO who sacks thousands and moves the plant overseas is rewarded by the rise in share price.
A lawyer who routinely gets criminals off the charges by arguing technicalities is rewarded by higher fees.
A company which lies about the risks of their product (cigarettes, pharmaceuticals) can reap enormous profits on lies
Our world is a world of lies and liars. To be able to lie like this and sleep at night is a sign that someone has a) no conscience or b) has tricked him/herself into justifying it. In the end, justifications expand and become more heartless. In the end justifications enter his/her personal life and he becomes fully programmed by the system.
Or, to use some other hypothetical case, one political faction twists and omits the facts surrounding a war to make a president they don't like APPEAR to be a psychopath using deliberate mis-statements similar to the above, and people already disinclined to support that president or his party jump on it unquestioningly as the truth because a life where people who disagree with you are cartoon villains is easier than a life where the people who disagree with you are just as earnest and reasonable as you are.
Then the fact that they get elected again makes you think, "Maybe we don't have 1 psychopath, maybe we have 150 million of them" or "Maybe we have 150 million fools". That's what I've been saying at heart- the whole "Let's make sure our presidents aren't psychopaths" thing introduces "Because maybe some of them are" as a concern when the fact is, there's absolutely no prior reason to think so, and it worsens the problems of polarization we already face.
It's putting all the blame on everybody but yourself- 'the world is full of lies and liars, what does this say about the world' isn't the starting point. The starting point is "I think the world is full of lies and liars, what does this say about me?'. Isn't it possible that your own pre-existent cynicism towards certain kinds of institutions and relations is playing a role in how you interpret the secret thoughts and motivations of complete strangers?
This wasn’t a question; it put words in my mouth that I never said; and was entirely based on your assumption of how I must feel, since I’m what you call a ‘liberal progressive.’ You want to know something? I knew nothing about the AFP commercial until you brought it up. I hadn’t even read about any of the controversy surrounding it until I googled it!
Now, then, money has been a part of politics since politics began. There’s no getting around that and we both know it; however, I’ve viewed this thread as a kind of ‘think tank’–tossing around ideas about the ‘problems’ confronting the people of a nation when faced with a capitalist democracy and suggesting ways by which they could be solved.
Those of us who aren’t billionaires have invested the few billionaires with a great deal of power and influence. In some sort of self-fulling prophecy, we are responsible for our condition. Personally, I don’t like an oligarchy; as I’ve said, I don’t think of myself as a herd animal. These are my personal feelings; I don’t proselytize my personal feelings, usually.
But I disagree with the Citizens United decision by SCOTUS giving corporations ‘personhood.’ I believe it to be a misinterpretation of the XIV Amendment, even though I understand that there’s a basis for that decision in US case law. I don’t believe the US should have any kind of state religion, although I’m semi-religious myself. I’ve been very up-front about my thoughts throughout this thread. I’m not challenging your beliefs, ucci, nor am I trying to change them.
I’d appreciate a return of that favor.
Liz
PS I don’t consider the rest of your post worth answering since my answer would be nothing more than what I’ve already said.
Ok, there’s several things wrong with this: first, going to war or harming the environment, or the poor getting poorer are not signs of psychopathy. It’s entirely possible for a well-meaning politician to decide on war with another country because he/she feels it will have positive benefits for all in the long run. Bush may have thought this in his war with Iraq (I doubt it, but it’s possible)–he was wrong (as we are now seeing in the news) but this is called stupidity, not psychopathy. Destruction of the environment is another case: what makes you so sure that the answer is so simple? Just clean up the environment, just shut down the air polluting factories and get rid of all automobiles. Yeah, that won’t upset the economy or people’s lives.
Remember, these kinds of decisions have to be taken seriously; it’s easy for you to say “war is always wrong; no one should ever harm the environment,” but that’s because you don’t bear any responsibility for the negative consequences of making decisions on these matters.
Second, have you ever seen politicians laughing to the bank? Do you imagine them sitting around a table with a pile of money on it, dipping their hands in it and letting the dollar bills poor through their fingers, going “HA! HA! HA!.. MONEY! HA! HA! HA!” Because we all know that a rich person is, by that very token, evil. Being rich = psychopathy… right?
Do you have a source for this?
You have not understood my previous post.
Ucci and Liz,
I tried to arbiter above, but I think that was a mistake, so I won’t do it again; but I want to ask a question. I’m not as informed as I could be about the specific issues you guys are arguing over, so I can’t really take sides, but am I interpreting this properly? Ucci, are you arguing that one, in these kinds of discussions, ought to recognize that both sides of the debate are equally biased and, in a relativistic manner of speaking, both are right in their own way? Because even though it’s true that both sides of the debate will usually speak from deep seeded biases and will typically only see their side of the argument and ignore the other side’s, it is not true that this means neither side is right nor wrong. It’s still possible, even if the psychology of both sides is more or less the same, that one side is right and the other wrong. And one can recognize the equality in being biased and in one-sided listening between the factions while at the same time recognize that one side is actually right and the other side actually wrong. ← I think this is Liz’s position (though I could be very wrong).
First, he said constant wars. Second, Bush got the results he wanted, or those behind him wanted. They transferred an unbelievable amount of money from taxpayers to corporations like Haliburton. The increase the privitization of the army. They set up a permanent military - now primarily private - presence in Iraq. The maintained all sorts of hostilities and increased others, and these hostilities will lead to continued shifts of taxpayer money to corporations in arms, rebuilding, security, etc. IOW friends of that administration, though, really, friends of all admins. There are other benefits, but those of some big, core, not really controversial ones. The war was a success, for those who pushed for it starting and had planned it long before 9/11. In fact the same people who covered Hussein’s ass when he used WOMD on Kurds and who help arm him. The case for cleaning up the environment is more controversial since most people seem to consider the environment a non-sentient set of playthings and resource for them, not things that have value and intelligence and awareness in themselves. To me that is sociopathic, similar to someone who does not really get that other people have feelings. Even if the solution is complicated, the lack of concern, the lack of feeling, the does not give a shit is a sign of psychopathy.
And as above, sociopathy and psychopathy at root have an utter lack of concern about how ones actions affect others. It is not simply choosing cruel solutions, though this is often the result. And these people are psychopaths.
Couldn’t quite get this point, but there is a clear pattern of quid pro quo between industry and politicians. And revolving doors in many places, perhaps especially in governmental oversight of industry.
By definition, calling it a resource creates value. Or do you hold that humans have no value, though their labor is the first resource. Environment does not have awareness, things in it do. The Earth cannot rise up and kill you, it does not have sentience. Unless you deny science, lol.
Because you started with, “to me,” I cannot argue with this. Like when someone says, To me Superman is real, it is not an argument but a statement of feelings. Your feelings are valid, even while not being scientifically accurate or important to anyone except yourself, and maybe your loved ones.
Anthropomorphization of objects and creatures is also a psychiatric disorder. Though I’m waiting for the one that is going to cover people who respond on internet boards to cover me.
Economics is about exchanging one thing for another. In life we must make hard decisions many of which there are no non-“cruel solutions.” An example, the rainforest is being cut down at xx rate (I figure we can agree on this without me looking it up), to us in the first world it is an easy option to say, “STOP,” and take actions to make them stop… But to the people living in the rainforest, many of which are relying on the lumber job to provide food for their family, this is seen as cruel. We, standing millions of miles away, don’t have to see our children go hungry because some ass holes in another country, with no connection to us, telling us we can’t make a living in the best way we know how. Choosing one thing results in harm to another all too often, and we don’t always know what the side effects are going to be. This is known as unintended side effects, and they have been happening long before you and I could see light.
Either way, making choices does not equal sociopaths, any more than drinking a beer makes an alcoholic. It takes a specific mind set.
Additionally, unless you are the psychiatrist of the people in question, you are not qualified to make such judgements. If you are a psychiatrist, you should be disbarred for saying such a thing in any public form in the first place.
It was a joke, a joke about taking a turn of phrase literally…
Some ‘other’ hypothetical case?
So Bush lying about WMD to start his war was a hypothetical case? Oh man, you really are desperate to make a point.
I’m not going to get distracted by playing left/right games, arguing over nonsensical hypotheticals or rehashing history so you can reframe it to suit your political agenda.
FYI: I don’t subscribe to left or right ideology. They are two sides of the same coin and both run by those who pay both sides to push their interests.
On a personal note, I worry about you, Ucci (cough). There’s lots in your/Bush’s bible that warns against lies like these. If you believe in your Jesus and God, as you say you do, I suggest you think about who you’re serving: the professional inveterate liars or what your God has said. I’m just trying to help. Eternity’s a long time, Ucci and, quite frankly, I couldn’t bear you in the same hell as me. That would be too much. [-o<
“No one who practices deceit shall dwell in my house; no one who utters lies shall continue before my eyes.” Psalm 101:7
“You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and has nothing to do with the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies.” John 8:44
There’s heaps more verses about how much God and Jesus hate liars. Would you like me to post them for you?
I blame myself for things I have control over. I didn’t set up this system so no blame.
What does saying this is a world of lies and liars say about me?
It says that I have been brutally awakened to how the world really operates, first hand (I wrote about this on ILO)
It says I no longer believe the lie that the world operates the way we have been programmed to see it.
It says the propaganda pumped into my mind from childhood is breaking down.
It says we are not always the goodies and the others are not always the baddies.
It says that I don’t believe Coca Cola is the ‘real thing’ or buying an Apple computer is ‘think(ing) different’
It says those who we pay to serve our interests (politicians, police, the law courts) are really there to manages us on behalf of the corporations. They are not our trustees who are working for us as we are led to believe.
It says that viewing the world’s shiny surface doesn’t mean a person can understand how the machinery operates underneath.
It says our society and the fundamental structures and institutions that run it, are not basically good with a few bad apples but designed to fuel inordinate greed and short-term self-interest at the expense of other human beings and the natural environment.
It says our economic system is not designed to increase the standard of living for the average worker. If it were, why have we gone backward the last decade while the rich get richer?
It says our economic system is really designed to siphon wealth from the lands we own and the sweat from our brow, then it funnels it to the rich in exchange for a few coloured bits of paper (better than feathers or rock I guess but nothing much more has changed).
It says our economic system is a Ponzi scheme that will inevitably collapse.
It says money should be a means of exchange not a commodity to sell.
It says the fractional reserve rule, where private banks are allowed to loan out money they don’t have, then get real money back plus interest is immoral.
it says that if a bank is too big to fail then the last thing you should do is give them trillions of tax payer money in effect rewarding those who created the crisis and allow them to buy up banks to make themselves bigger.
It says I support an economic system that’s designed to serve the people not a system where the people are educated to serve it.
It says I support an economic system that can be thrown out in order to keep workers working rather than a system where people are thrown out to keep the god called the Economy working.
It says a system should be built around the people rather than people having to make huge sacrifices to fit the system.
It says I don’t subscribe to the left/right political party model. Choosing between the brown shirts or the black shirts is not a choice. It’s just another illusion to make us feel we have control.
What does it say about me?
It says that while I may not have everything correct, I refuse to eat the propaganda shit sandwich force fed me all my life without questioning everything and holding political parasites to account.
It says I’d prefer to be 50% right than 100% wrong.
It says I’d like to do my own thinking than outsourcing my thinking to someone else or buying into a bunch of pre-packages beliefs.
LOL. Another trap, Ucci?
It’s only cynical to the ignorant. To those who have experienced the workings of the world beyond the surface (even if only a little), prefer to call it reality. The reality is: this world is organised to give those in the real seats of power, more power and to manipulate the masses to suit their needs. Again, look around you. If you think the rich becoming mega rich while the average person becomes poorer, is just an accident, then we need no communicate any longer. So, back to your question: does what I have experienced first hand play a role in my judgement? Absolutely.
Secondly, I’m not interpreting ‘secret thoughts and motivations of complete strangers’ by calling out sociopaths. I’m observing their actions (in this case, ordering the killing of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi people) and the lack of remorse, regret or conscience they feel for the horrors they’ve inflicted.
Perhaps I should ask you about your hate for Hitler or Stalin any other mass murderer? Do you think your pre-existent cynicism toward these people is playing a role about how you interpret the ‘secret thoughts and motivation of a complete stranger’? Do you see the nonsense you’re spewing here?
I judge Hitler, Stalin, Bush and Albright on their actions (killing) and their response to suffering they inflicted on others. What political ideology or what religion they adhere to is irrelevant. Their lack of conscience about the suffering they cause means they are likely to have psychopathic, sociopath or narcissistic traits to some degree or other.
You see it’s much easier for me. I don’t have any political, religious or national allegiances. I’m free to observe without bias (as much as that’s possible). You, on the other hand, are handicapped with biases, conflicts of interest and pre-packaged beliefs. You also have to try to reconcile a loving, forgiving, turn-the-other-check, love-your-enemy Jesus with the capitalistic, gun-totting, each-man-for-himself Republican mindset? Man, that’s gotta be hard. I should imagine it takes a lot of self delusion, mental gymnastics and distraction to keep that cognitive dissonance going?
Remember, these people were responsible for sanctions and a war that cost over 1.5 million lives and unimaginable suffering for millions more. While this suffering was being carried out in our name, these soulless human beings were dining in the best restaurants, playing golf and enjoying themselves as usual.
These are not ‘cartoon villains’. They don’t look like Hannibal Lecter and that’s EXACTLY the point I’m trying to make. The vast majority of successful psychopaths appear totally normal and may even appear to show empathy when called upon – but it’s fake.
Does this mean EVERY politician or CEO is psychopath? Absolutely not but we should stop expecting to see psychopaths in the movies or newspapers and look around us more. With at least 1.5% of the population as fully fledged psychopaths and up to 5 times that number if you include the milder cases and those who have leaned to ignore their conscience. The successful ones drift to wherever there’s power – politics, law enforcement, crime, corporations and religions.
There’s a field of study on this called Political Ponerology – the study of how seemingly ordinary people can do evil things when in power. The current world expert on this is a Canadian dude called Hare. I seem to recall he was the one who formalized the diagnostic method used today.
Two famous experiments that would be illegal to do today because of the traumatic psychological effects.
This is what I mean about a psychopathic system. These systems bring out the worst in people. Little by little ordinary people experience a deadening of conscience until they’re doing things that even frighten them. How did ordinary US soldiers shoot horses and dogs, fling puppies to their deaths, rape young girls, torture human beings and kill at least 37 prisoners during ‘interrogations’ in Abu Ghraib? Little by little we become souless…
First, I sincerely apologize to you and to everyone else who’s managed to read this far. Trying to respond to ucci has been extremely difficult and frustrating for me–I should never have made the attempt. Mia culpa.
What I’ve been trying to say is there is no right or wrong in the fact that people believe things–interpret things–differently. A person might say the sky is blue; another would say, no, that’s only how your eyes see the atmosphere from where you are at the moment. There is, however, a great deal of dissimulation, deceit, truth hedging, whatever anyone wants to call it, in politics. There always has been and always will be. This may be okay if it’s ‘for the good of the Republic.’ But only time can tell if it hasadvanced the Nation–been “good” for it. In the meantime, an individual should do what s/he can to sift through what’s being taught and try to separate the wheat from the chaff, to cut through the crap s/he has been told in order to find some modicum of truth.
Was President Obama’s decision to bail out financial institutions a correct one? I don’t know, but I believe the world would be in much greater straits, financially, had he not done so. Sometime in the future, someone may decide one way or another. Was his decision to enact health care reform, as Congress had changed it, a correct one? Could be. I’ve heard people say, “Thank God for Obamacare!” just not as often as I’ve heard his detractors saying it’ll never work. I don’t know–my husband and I don’t need it–but, we’ll see on that one, too.
I don’t believe it’s for the good of the Republic for huge sums of single-source money to be used to influence people’s votes. But the SCOTUS’ decision in Citizen’s United has made it possible for single-source money to be used this way. To me, that means reversing it’s decision and taking away ‘personhood’ from corporations. Would that mean it would also take ‘personhood’ away from PACs? Maybe. Would that be bad? I don’t know. I’ve seen no discussion of it.
‘Markets’ have phases. Sometimes, the market is up and sometime it’s down. Btw, I’m not talking about the stock market, I’m talking about the goods market–the consumer market. Putting outside controls on the consumer market has shown that the highs and lows may not last as long or be as disparate as they are in a ‘free’ market.
You know, there’s enough food thrown away every day in the US alone to feed the world. Or so I’ve heard and/or read. Health regulations require a lot of waste. Rather than throwing the money away, why not take the surplus (before it’s pull date) and give it away? Or why not stop slaughtering so many animals and have grocery stores run out of things. Humans are very adaptable; stores ran out of stuff before and people survived. They might even learn to eat all parts of a slaughtered animal! (Ack, ack, uhhggg!)
Oh, but then people wouldn’t have their ‘freedom of choice!’ Is freedom of choice a Constitutional ‘right?’ Does a plethora of choice lead to “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness” as it says in the US Declaration of Independence? Or does it lead to piles of trash, some of which can’t be recycled, accumulating in heaps, in pits gouged out of the earth and covered over with dirt so we don’t see how much is wasted.
But, DAMN! If you cut production, you cut jobs and you can’t do that! How about cutting the work week, then? Everyone gets the same salary they get for a 40 hr. work week, but work for 35 hrs., instead. Would that cut into manufacturing profits all that much? Or would it give more people more time to consume?
Perhaps our ‘getting time’ is done and we need to ‘lose’ a bit. Perhaps we should keep what’s good for the Republic and throw out what hasn’t worked or what has been distorted beyond recognition. Systems should be protean–they aren’t timeless and immutable.
Oh, and guys, I don’t really understand written sarcasm. I need to see the speaker’s face and listen to his tone of voice. Or, am I being sarcastic when I reply to sarcasm? Hmmm?
I agree you don’t know. I remain skeptical, as to its ability to do what no government has ever done.
Even if it is not good, attempting to stop it creates additional problems that are far worse than what the single-source does… Further, channeling the money through the government, which is what you have argued for would be a single source, with the same problems.
Agreed, markets (not the stock market which has it’s own weird aspects) have cycles. The problem continues to be, humans in ability to believe the state we are in shall change. We like to project our current problems infinitely into the future, what will we do with all this horse shit, for example. All to often in the process of attempting to fix one problem causes so many more. Its why I don’t back down from free market, a central government planning board is incapable of making all the decisions necessary.
The problem is rarely pure amounts of food, the problem is more often cost of getting the food to the people in question. It may cost more than 5 dollars to produce a hamburger, and ship it to a hungry place. It may cost 100 dollars to do so… What are you willing to give up so that another person can eat a hundred dollar hamburger? Would you sell your car, so that (assuming a $5,000 car) 50 people could eat one meal? Did that fix the problem, or are those people going to be hungry again?
Here I get angry. You decide what’s best for others? How arrogant. This shit is also why I have a problem with the Bill of Rights, YES, freedom of choice is a constitutional right, because the constitution does not give rights to the people, it gives rights to the government, who must beg for them from the people. The bill of rights is a illusion, all of the rights it spells out just throw a smoke screen over the fact that the government is not allow to step on those rights in the first place. My favorite example is a card, from a normal deck of cards.
The constitution is this ace of spades. In its simplicity, it has all the information needed to be what it is, and only what it is. The bill of rights is the equivalent of attaching a list consisting of;
This is not a 10 of diamonds;
This is not a 9 of diamonds;
This is not a 8 of diamonds;
This is not a 7 of diamonds;
This is not a 6 of diamonds;
This is not a 5 of diamonds;
This is not a 4 of diamonds;
This is not a 3 of diamonds;
This is not a 2 of diamonds;
But, because things are left of the list, it does not mean it can be argued that it is something other than an ace of spades.
Our constitution spells out the abilities of the government, not the rights of the citizens that they receive from the government.
Yes.
This requires proof that all these things are better, in every way, before I’m interested in supporting it.
sarcasm?
Not if you want people to eat regularly.
Not if you want people to eat regularly. A reduction in production, is the same as an increase in costs, jobs will go to places with less costs, at least you better hope so.
Well this be enforced by law? Will we throw the perpetrators in jail? Do you really think that charging someone with a crime, however handled for working a couple extra hours on their own business is going to convince people to work? I don’t know where people get these ideas… Stepping on someone else’s choices, that “don’t effect” anyone else, that’s the reason to support same sex marriage right?
I stand with my idea that if the homosexuals would start voting Conservative, they would get a lot more support from people who actually believe in freedom.
Yes
Who cares, it steps on the freedom of people’s right to do what they want with their lives, it creates a chance for greater disparity, it divides people more between those that already have, and those that can’t work enough to get more.
Loose all you want, but don’t take from others. Who’s to decide what has been distorted beyond recognition, you?
As Tonto said the the Lone Ranger, “What’s this we shit, white man?” Speak for yourself, I am uninterested in what is “good” for the Republic if it only means doing what someone else believes is right, especially when they promote it, without any proof.
I apologize, I’ve noted elsewhere sarcasm and tonal aspects of communication do not carry through in this form. I thought it would be obvious, it was my mistake.
Yes, there’s always some war going on in the world. Are you two saying there is one single individual responsible for this?
I was speaking hypothetically when I said “Bush may have thought this in his war with Iraq (I doubt it, but it’s possible)”–I’m trying to keep separate, on the one hand, the definition of a psychopath from those in power who make unpalatable decisions from the point of view of common citizens, and on the other, proof of corruption/psychopathy and accusations of such based on a disliking for a politician.
All that being said, I side with your sentiments in regards to Bush.
Depends on the goals. If the goal was to establish a democracy/ally then it is currently failing as we speak. If the goal was just to get oil, well, it is still currently failing as Iraq would have to be an allie to the US or at least a place where the US military can remain in place, which doesn’t seem will be the case for much longer.
If Bush Jr. simply wanted to finish the war Bush Sr. started, then fine.
No, that’s a belief system. We have to believe that the environment is sentient and capable of suffering before we can feel guilty about hurting it. Clinical psychopathy is based on a lack of guilt over hurting other human beings or sentient animals which is something that comes natural to most people (i.e. it doesn’t have to be taught). IOW, clinical psychopaths are special cases, those who believe the environment is not sentient are not.
A politician making a decision that harms the environment is not a sign that he doesn’t care; it may be that he foresees some worse outcome if he doesn’t make such a decision. For example, going to war against some Hitler or some terrorist group threatening to blow up the world–but war pollutes the environment.
Yes, I agree… but how can we ever be so sure there is a lack of concern?
Plus, the point I was making in my post about psychopathy as a case of moral relativism suggests that even if one shows no signs of concern still doesn’t mean he’s a psychopath in the clinical sense. Having a different morality will result in being concerned over different things. So one may not care about doing something which pollutes the environment because he believes global warming is just a conspiracy (there are still some who actually say this) and so he’s not really doing any harm to the environment. But that doesn’t mean he has no feeling about hurting others or killing people. But unless you take these things into consideration, he’s not going to be distinguishable from an actual case of clinical psychopathy.
Yes, but being put into a position of having to make tough decisions means that you’re going to be sometimes forced to make decisions that seem heartless to others and that wll make you look psychotic.
Sure, but Chakra’s point was that because there are rich people and poor people, then there must be some evil politician responsible for this, and doing it willingly and laughing about it, and he’s a psychopath. That’s an incredibly long thread to be reeling in. My discussion with Eric about sweat shops sheds a different light on this.
I am not sure what he or she meant. I assumed it was a criticism of the wars we have had for 13 years now and ones the US is involved in and seems bent on finding more to get involved in. I am not sure where the one person issue is coming from. I see a class or group of people who are interested in certain goals, not only do not dislike war, but see war as valuable - given what they can earn through it - and that these people see wars to the people who will pay for them. It’s not a coincidence that Cheney earned money from the wars he sold and worked for companies that got no bid contracts, or that Bush has connections to these types of companies as his father, who started the first gulf war did. Oh, and they happened to make money from these things. Oh, people who gave them huge amounts of money benefitted from these wars. But one Person, no. Myabe the other person blamed one person, in that case, I misread the context. I don’t. I woudl guess however that their point was more that the results of policies connect more to the direct intentions of the politicians and that he was using a symbolic individual laughing to represent this. It’s like at a certain point collateral damage has no moral superiority to people getting killed directly. I meant to kill that guy on the sidewalk and I did. Oh, we meant to bomb the factory and we are sorry that for the 800th times a thousand villagers were also killed. We are better than terrorists. People often fail to publically take responsibility for the so called ‘side effects’ that in fact do represent well the person’s actual feelings. One of the side effects of the wars was that huge amounts of money went to people the administration worked with. Not a side effect, an intended effect. A lot of Iraquis and generally poor americans were killed or maimed or traumatized. I don’t think they give a shit about that. It’s not just a necessary evil. It is not an evil to them.
And perhaps people on our side of the spectrum will tend to trust the left leaning presidents. But I don’t. They are making money also off all this. And it was Clinton, for example, who set up the legislative change that directly led to the 2008 collapses in the finance world that are still rippling outwards and damaging lives. And yes, he was supported financially and had connections to the neo cons and finance industry companies and people who benefitted from the giant shift of money upward that ultimately led to the crash that also led to more shift upward as these same people then when on buying sprees.
It was not a success for me, but for Bush. I would guess the neo cons have much more control of that oil than they did before. They have an army in place there also.
It was a belief system that darker peoples were not fully human, often that they did not feel the same types of pain other humans did. That was a sociopathic belief system caused by/causing sociopathy. Any idiot could see blacks were human, unless they had a cognitive system in place to make them sociopathic -in that case in relation to blacks. Similar things can be said about women. Some conventional sociopaths do have cognitive systems in place that justify their not giving a shit who they hurt. Others simply are that way. What having belief systems like this can do is create sociopathy.
It may be a sign he does not care. And many of them do not care. They do not have a direct reaction to nature except in a visual sense. AS something pretty. They may have some cognitive intellectual respect for what a healthy environment does for humans. That is not empathy or direct care, that is intrumental appreciation. Most people do not have the former. Politicians are not an exception.
How can we be sure that whatever your default assessment is is the case. Because you have one. You believe some kind of likely vaguely thought out assessment of them. Perhaps with a sort of, well they are like other humans, with some range of caring, might as well give them the benefit of the doubt until further notice or specific legislation demonstrates. To me a position like that has no evidence in the sense of scientific either. That may not have been a fair exampel at all, so let me know what your position is.
I trust my intuitive and experience based assessment that these guys have little direct care. This does not make them especially evil, it is part of the culture, or cut off. Given the values a politician needs to have to be successful, I would guess they have less direct care and concern than the average person. But even if they simply have as much as the average person, it is not much.
Right and it is a good poitn. However from where I sit having a morality that creates sociopathy and being hardwired from birth or damage via abusive uppbringing matters little in functional terms. Yes, the Nazis has different values, but I see no reason not to call them sociopaths in relation to Jews, gypsies, gays, the mentally ill…
I’ve seen the footage about the Milgram experiment, but not the one about the Stanford experiment. The frightening thing about the first, to me, is that no one will ever know how s/he would react in those circumstances. Just how much faith do we have in our authority figures? I’m sure we all have more than we’re willing to admit. But–and there is a ‘but’–my nephew was in Afghanistan for 16 mo. He was the top marksman in his unit. One day he was told to shoot a “family burro” that had been hobbled in a open field. He protested, he just didn’t want to kill the little animal. But he was ordered to do it because, his CO told him, it might have been put in the field to lure the soldiers into a mine field–or it might be packed with explosives, controlled remotely, that would detonate if a soldier tried to save it. My nephew shot and killed it. Now here’s the ‘but.’ My nephew is still suffering from PTSD, not just because of the trauma of that incident, of course, but it played it’s part. And I think that’s what’s happened to a lot of our young soldiers–they follow the orders, at a tremendous cost to their mental health.
The Stanford experiment was like watching the Abu Ghraib film clips all over again–the bags over the ‘prisoners’ heads, stripping them for ‘de-lousing’, the degradation of it all. I wondered if the Abu Ghraib guards learned that or if they were specially chosen because they were bullies to start with. The one called John Wayne was very disturbing because he’s always maintained he had ‘created’ a character and was ‘playing a part.’
Police departments seem notorious for the number of disturbed bullies on the payroll. It’s even more frightening, if what I’ve read is true, if Homeland Security is selling military equipment to certain PDs and training SWAT teams as Special Forces. (Google The Militarization of American Police.)
The problem is, as has been pointed out in this thread, how do you weed out the potential psychopaths before they act psychopathically–Before they’re elected–especially when the bulk of the electorate are conditioned to bow to authority?
Thanks for sharing, Chakra. Remember Shakespeare, “The evil men do lives after them, the good is often interred with their bones.”–Julius Caesar
Ok, Moreno, if you feel you have strong evidence that these people are being drive by personal financial gain, and that this is occluding any feelings of remorse or guilt for the deaths of thousands in the wars they need in order to get this financial gain, we’ll go with the “psychopath” label. But you do understand my point, don’t you? I’m not trying to absolve these people from culpability, I’m trying to be cautious about what conclusions I arrive at and what opinions I end up buying into, and also to admonish anyone engaged in a discussion like this to do the same; I’ve been trying to recommend a few cognitive rules: for example, question whether any seemingly psychopathic behavior is the result of a real lack of concern or guilt about committing wrongs or a result of moral relativism. I feel that in the latter case, there’s still hope of reasoning with the person. In the former, the person will simply play games with your attempts to reason. I feel this is a very important distinction to make. But if you feel you have strong evidence that we’re dealing with the former case, then let’s go with that (not that it’s hard for me to imagine).
BTW, how much are you generalizing this? It sounds like your charge of psychopathy is limited to the Bush regime, but do you mean to say that all politicians are psychotic?
You may be right about the racism thing, but if you extend this to things like rocks and trees, then you’re essentially saying everyone’s a potential psychopath. It might take an idiot to not see that blacks are human beings too, capable of feeling pain and emotional hurt just as much as anyone else, but does it take an idiot to believe rocks don’t feel pain? Does the fact that I could smash a rock with a hammer without batting an eye mean that I have no conscience? And what if rocks are in a constant state of pain until they get smashed by a hammer? What if I’m guilty of negligence when I pass by a rock on the street without kicking it?
Yes, it requires a socially acquired thought system to suppress the guilt one would otherwise feel when treating other groups as not being worth consideration as fully human, and I suppose that would qualify one as a “conditioned” psychopath, but there are other things over which I don’t think there is any guilt to suppress, things like rocks, trees, oceans, etc., things which if damaged don’t suffer any harm or pain. If I’m wrong in this, it’s not because I’m in denial, it’s because human beings don’t naturally anthropomorphize these kinds of things.
Of course, there is an indirect human (and animal) cost to damaging the environment, and if one goes ahead and does something damaging to the environment knowing about this indirect cost, and doesn’t feel the least bit remorse or guilt, then I would qualify that as psychopathic. (Just to get the logic straight though, if that individual talked himself out of knowing that there would be these harmful indirect costs to others, and in that way eased his conscience, I’d be less inclined to call him “psychotic”–maybe a different kind of psychopath, but this is veering away from the standard definition, which, from what I understand, requires knowing full well you’re causing harm or hurting people and yet not caring at all).
I’m not interested in signs, I want to know the truth.
My position is that before we go to war and violently overthrow those in power, we better damn well know if they really are psychopaths or not. I will not slit the throat of a politician based on a feeling. What I’m concerned about is that what the common citizen sees as corruption or psychopathy is what any citizen would end up doing if he entered into politics and got elected; and I don’t mean because the system and the power he’d gain would slowly chew away at his conscience until it was gone, but because, being in that position, being informed by the details of the situations he has to face (some of which being classified information), for the first time having to take seriously the potential consequences of not going to war, not harming the environment, not bailing out large corporations, he may just end up making decisions that he never would have dreamed he’d make before entering into that position. Would it be the decisions that a psychopath would make? Oh, probably. But I don’t know that a non-psychopath would not make those same decisions.
Even if there’s a chance your country could still be a republic, it means there are those in politics, even perhaps those in power, who are there trying to do the right thing, trying to help you, and if you go to war with them, you will not only be shooting yourself in the foot, but undermining everything that’s supposed to make a democratic republic work.
Could it be this: Imagine a young politician early in his career actually caring passionately for some cause–maybe to give better working opportunities to women, or maybe to work on peaceful relations with other countries rather than war–this is before any corrupting influence can be exacted on him. He furthers his career as time goes on and he makes decisions on what’s worth the cause he’s fighting for and what’s not. Suppose, for example, that he has to lay off a few employees who are working under him in order to save money–this is bad for their careers obviously, but he feels it is worth it because of the higher moral goal (opportunities for women, peace with other nations, whatever)–so he does it. As he moves further along in his career, he may have to make bigger sacrifices for the sake of his goal–say, he has to lie or cheat, or say he has to frame someone who is opposing him, put him in jail so he’s out of the way–he may tell himself the guy’s a crook anyway (obviously, since he’s fighting against a moral goal–women, peace, whatever). Now there comes a point when he had passed the point of no return, a point at which he has sacrificed too much to just turn around and say “you know, I’ve been thinking about it and I think I was wrong. I no longer think it’s worth the goal of giving women greater working opportunities or striving for peace with other nations.” If he did that, he would be accountable for all the deplorable actions in his past. So now, a psychological twist begins to take place in his mind–he begins to exaggerate the moral worth of the goal he originally set out to fight for; now almost anything can be worth the goal. Pushed to the extreme, he might end up investing his entire moral sensibility into this one goal, meaning that for him it becomes the only moral concern there is, and that everything else must serve that single moral concern. Would this be yet another kind of psychopath? It would be an interesting kind because it would be based, not on a lack or conscience or moral compass, but a conscience or moral compass whose energies and focus have become so distorted and twisted out of wack that he is made into a crazed fanatic.
Fair enough, but I think it makes a huge difference in terms of how we treat them or go about solving the problem.
I think as long as the guy has a camera up that says “smile, you’re on camera!”, and he has the video of the guy stealing, then any case against him will go nowhere. You wouldn’t believe the way they’d trample the kid’s rights if he came to court with this case trying to sue.
JK… you must mean the law and how it’s set up to allow shop lifters to sue their victims for exposing their crime… or do you mean how the lawyer would aid a felon in suing his victim in order to make a buck?
Can’t it be both? It is a broken window policy of sorts. Things like this are the broken windows that convince people they can get away with more crap…
Though evidence points towards an increase in cops being the reason for a drop in crime, not the “broken window” policy of Giuliani… The theory holds for the analogy.
Liz
