"When Your Child Is A Psychopath"
The Atlantic
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/06/when-your-child-is-a-psychopath/524502/
Alan: It is an inconvenient truth that we keep secrets from ourselves.
Among them is the secret that that "free will" does not exist (at least not as advertised).
However, it is important that we maintain this fiction since, without it, much of "the good" humans can do, would - out of desperation - go undone.
Our belief in free will -- like many beliefs -- is an attempt to "keep hope alive."
And keeping hope alive is a transcendent good.
Even so, we all know people (sometimes those who stare back in the mirror) who are constitutionally disposed to be mean, cruel, hostile, ornery, oppositional or just uncaring assholes, as evangelically proud of their "raised middle fingers" and "open carry assault rifles" as the near-majority of Americans who remain clamorously proud of their "truth-telling hero," Donald Trump.
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It is a disturbing fact that "free will" exists within strikingly narrow limits, a situation analogous to the fact that humans can only survive/thrive within a very narrow temperature range running from Absolute Zero (459.67°F.) at the lower end to a limitless upper end.
Without heroic technological effort, humans survive in a "temperature band" from 50 degrees below zero to 150 degrees above zero - an infinitesimal sliver of the entire temperature spectrum.
If a human suddenly finds himself outside those limits, death comes quickly.
Our physical -- and metaphysical -- lives are made possible by strictly limited conditions.
And if we are not morally conditioned to "do the right thing" -- by "well conditioned behavior in childhood" and the genetically-predicated condition of a "morally-disposed brain" -- we seldom do the right thing, and with astonishing regularity, behave like beasts. (Furthermore, we feel good about it - even evangelical about it!)
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Psychopaths and sociopaths exist. And their self-seeking malevolence is motivated by organic brain features that "make" them malevolent by leaving altruism off their radar.
When consumed by solipsism, "the other" lacks full "existence."
And in the solipsist-sociopath-psychopath's worldview, NOT to take advantage of "the shadowy other" would be so surpassingly stupid as to insult a solipsist's sense of self-respect.
It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that "doing the wrong thing" is "the right thing to do."
And in the solipsist-sociopath-psychopath's worldview, NOT to take advantage of "the shadowy other" would be so surpassingly stupid as to insult a solipsist's sense of self-respect.
It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that "doing the wrong thing" is "the right thing to do."
"A sucker is born every minute," and the Trumps of this world -- like the abundant Bundys and Mansons among us -- "have a screw loose" that obliges them to "screw anyone" whose deliberate degradation or damage can work to the perceived advantage of the moral monsters in our midst.
Wired For Altruism
(which, on the flip side of the coin, is to say "Wired For Malevolence")
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