bobzilla77 said:

Our whole society now is more paranoid than I ever remember seeing it before. It does seem like people are more willing to view others with opposing views as a Problem that needs to be solved by eradicating it.

I saw an interesting TED talk about the three assumptions we often make when faced with people who disagree with us.

The first: they are ignorant, if they only knew the truth they would agree with me.

When it turns out that those people do know the facts and still disagree, we say, well they're not that bright. If they only understood what they were seeing, we would agree.

Then when it turns out those people are in fact pretty smart, we say, they are EVIL - they know the truth and are concealing it deliberately.

Well pretty clearly, this is a disatrous way to go through the world. We can't get everyone in town to agree about ANY issue. But nobody is willing to concede that they might be wrong. We're ALL believed to be evil by somebody.

Guns I know that's not the kind of "evil" you are talking about. Harris and Klebold are nuts. Whether they were born that way, made that way, or chose to become that way is impossible to determine. But I do think this way of looking at things leads to a society where it's more possible for people to form a belief that other people are not worthy of life. And we're seeing the evidence of it in these mass shootings that are now commonplace. Unless lots and lots of people decide to go in a new more compassionate direction en masse, then we are just going to have to learn to live with mass shootings and more dehumanization.

I agree. Do you remember what TED talk that was?

I would love to see it.

XxAxX said:

the actual wiring of the brain of a sociopath/psychopath is physically different from 'normal' people. that is, some people are born without the physical capacity to feel empathy.

from:http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/09/130924174331.htm?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=neurological-basis-for-lack-of-empathy-in-psychopaths

Psychopathy is a personality disorder characterized by a lack of empathy and remorse, shallow affect, glibness, manipulation and callousness. Previous research indicates that the rate of psychopathy in prisons is around 23%, greater than the average population which is around 1%.

To better understand the neurological basis of empathy dysfunction in psychopaths, neuroscientists used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) on the brains of 121 inmates of a medium-security prison in the USA.

Participants were shown visual scenarios illustrating physical pain, such as a finger caught between a door, or a toe caught under a heavy object. They were by turns invited to imagine that this accident happened to themselves, or somebody else. They were also shown control images that did not depict any painful situation, for example a hand on a doorknob.

Participants were assessed with the widely used PCL-R, a diagnostic tool to identify their degree of psychopathic tendencies. Based on this assessment, the participants were then divided in three groups of approximately 40 individuals each: highly, moderately, and weakly psychopathic.

When highly psychopathic participants imagined pain to themselves, they showed a typical neural response within the brain regions involved in empathy for pain, including the anterior insula, the anterior midcingulate cortex, somatosensory cortex, and the right amygdala. The increase in brain activity in these regions was unusually pronounced, suggesting that psychopathic people are sensitive to the thought of pain.

But when participants imagined pain to others, these regions failed to become active in high psychopaths. Moreover, psychopaths showed an increased response in the ventral striatum, an area known to be involved in pleasure, when imagining others in pain.

This atypical activation combined with a negative functional connectivity between the insula and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex may suggest that individuals with high scores on psychopathy actually enjoyed imagining pain inflicted on others and did not care for them. The ventromedial prefrontal cortex is a region that plays a critical role in empathetic decision-making, such as caring for the wellbeing of others.

Taken together, this atypical pattern of activation and effective connectivity associated with perspective taking manipulations may inform intervention programs in a domain where therapeutic pessimism is more the rule than the exception. Altered connectivity may constitute novel targets for intervention. Imagining oneself in pain or in distress may trigger a stronger affective reaction than imagining what another person would feel, and this could be used with some psychopaths in cognitive-behavior therapies as a kick-starting technique, write the authors.

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Story Source:

The above story is based on materials provided by Frontiers. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

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Journal Reference:

1. Jean Decety, Chenyi Chen, Carla Harenski and Kent A. Kiehl. An fMRI study of affective perspective taking in individuals with psychopathy: imagining another in pain does not evoke empathy. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 2013 DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2013.00489

Isn't there a huge bias in these studies?


They define psychopathy as those in prison.


I think that results in a bias of researchpopulation, because there are many psychpaths in the business world that are succesfull by superficial standards as money.

I do think the results are valuable and valid. Despite these kind of biases.


And I've seen those who lack empathy, but what I noticed, that they feel loads and loads of empathy for themselves. They feel very sorry for themselves.
A murderer who killed his own kids still feels sorry for himself. And manages to gain the empathy of psychiatrists and nurses (true story)

ufoclub said:

With all the friends having babies and young kids these days... I definitely see a few growing Mr (or Ms) Michael Myers. All kidding aside, there is always that one kid or toddler you encounter that seems non empathetic and destructive in a dark way.

To some degree I think kids learn empathy from positive or moral narratives in cartoons (or in general creative art) or witnessing peers (other kids) go through the same thing they did.

I'm one that really does believe that we are seeing the aftermath of murder/cruelty oriented video games, art, and media exposed to very young children.

[Edited 9/4/14 10:48am]

Interesting you brought up Michael Myers.

.

I watched the original and then watched the 'remake' by Zombie

.

and I prefer the original because it gave no real reason this kid murdered his sister. He came from what seemed a normal middle class family in the suburbs. Which made it more sinister.

.

The one by Zombie I did not like because it wasn't good, but also because he felt the need to create a 'white trash' bullied exposed to things a child shouldn't be exposed to, past for Michael.

.

And I think the 1st one is just as common, that how a child formulates things and makes choices.

I don't think people are born evil.

[Edited 9/9/14 12:16pm]

I was at that 3 show Prince gig night in LA and was waiting for the club nokia show, it took awhile, when they finally started to let people in a mad rush of ppl from it seemed every restaurant came out and rushed the line n cut in etc, it pissed the ppl in line off serious me included, this chick just cut in fromt of me after an hr of waiting, I pushed her out n said dont think so, instead of bein ya i get it this chick threw her drink at me which i got nailed and then went off n i had to tackle her i was like wtf is up with this shit, she got thrown outta the area. I mean this chick was batshit. What makes a person just go off? ... for a second I wanted to beat the fuck out of her. I think ppl are fuckin insane n they just keep it in check most of the time. Lifes nuts

imo this woman was a true symbol of evil:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w...C3%A1thory

Countess Elizabeth Báthory de Ecsed (Báthory Erzsébet in Hungary; 7 August 1560 – 21 August 1614) was a countess from the renowned Bathory family of nobility in the Kingdom of Hungary. She has been labelled the most prolific female serial killer in history.

^ well kind of hard blaming her issues on social media.

We're born neutral. We become a product of our influences and environment. I don't like to believe that people are born inherently evil, things happen to us along the way. No one changes, we only become the person we are meant to become. Good and Evil are a matter of perspective.

ScarletScandal said:

We're born neutral. We become a product of our influences and environment. I don't like to believe that people are born inherently evil, things happen to us along the way. No one changes, we only become the person we are meant to become. Good and Evil are a matter of perspective.

No. Tabula Rasa is a theory from the 1950 era, and has been proved wrong, convincedly.


Neither are many people born inherently evil, or good, and yes, the development of inherent character traits vary under environmental circumstances.

But, folks who don't have a consciouss, can't develop one. They can learn the benefits of being less selfish and egoistic, but they will never feel guilt.


Good and Evil are indeed a matter of perspective.

However, I do belief humans and animals have a common, universal sense of rigth and wrong. Albeit, only those with a conscience have that.

free2bfreeda said:

imo this woman was a true symbol of evil:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w...C3%A1thory

Countess Elizabeth Báthory de Ecsed (Báthory Erzsébet in Hungary; 7 August 1560 – 21 August 1614) was a countess from the renowned Bathory family of nobility in the Kingdom of Hungary. She has been labelled the most prolific female serial killer in history.