RE: Extreme Altruism and the Psychopathic Brain.
Great article! I read it until the end - I don't usually do that lol. Anyway, life taught me enough how shady this world is. I couldn't trust those who take the moral high ground (altruists), imdo, I think it's still for self-preservation. Make others happy in order to make yourself happy (save youself). There seems to be a rush feeling when you help others greatly...or sacrifice yourself (hero) but who knows what people really think and feel? Even someone very close to us can possibly stab us to death, who knows? People are great in concealing their feelings, that's just survival. People are all psychopaths (investors, alpha males, heroes, villains, altruists, those pretending to be weak and fools, etc.)
We only reveal something about ourselves - to preserve a good image. To survive. People just play with it. This world is a game.
I can certainly credit your disaffection regarding society. I have seen much of what you seem to have, also. Where I grew up the Chief of Police used his kids to traffic illegal drugs. Far worse came of that, including child trafficking, murder, and every kind of corruption.
Despite that, I recall that some people do good without trumpeting it. While it is easy to suspect that folks that tell everyone about their good deeds are just as psychopathic as the worst serial killer, folks that do good and don't tell everyone exist.
You might find examples of good-hearted people who have asked nothing as reward for help they gave you, in your own life. I know I can in mine.
Is a game that causes the losers to die really a game? I think there are people that treat life like a game, but that doesn't make it a game.
This is real life.
I didn't question the existence of Good-hearted people who want to help w/o reward - to make themselves feel better. But for some reason, feeling better about ourselves seem like evil these days....
But I don't really fall for the losers idea in this game. Who knows who are the losers? There are losers posing as losers. There are those who didn't really die.
Is this about me or about you? lol that is the question. We cannot impose our kind idealism on others..what do we know about being others? We have different realities.
There are certainly people who give out of an attempt to reinforce an outward image of benevolence.
There are also people who give because it makes them feel warm and fuzzy inside.
There are also people who give because they feel it's the right thing to do.
On the other hand there are people who refuse to give because there is no personal reward, no fuzzy feeling, no self-image enhancement.
Perhaps some day they'll map out all those brain circuits as well.
Have you ever considered the real difference between humans is that some of us have a conscience and some of us don't. It makes it easy to understand the guy that can do such unspeakable things.
He doesn't care! He can not care, he is not able to care. There is no drug that can fix him, no prison that can contain him. He will commit the same acts in prison. He has not been stopped, he will never go away.
They understand each other they can tell if you are one of them.
They promote the ones they know will never tell. To tell is to expose themselves.
That is the reality and that is what makes people do justly or just do what ever they want at the moment.
Glad you brought this up. This post was a biological view of the brain circuitry involved in personal behavioral decisions and its potential impact on the rest of us. I believe that conscience represents our ability to access and interpret the neurological activity within those areas emotionally if not critically. It is our gauge of that activity or lack thereof.
Conscience is a learned phenomenon. It also reflects the morals of the society in which it was learned. One common analogy is that of an angle on one shoulder and a devil on the other and therefore it involves judgement and concepts of good and evil, which takes it far beyond the scope of my post.
Your premise is correct in that psychopaths have no feedback from that part of their brain and therefore do not experience conscience. And yes, they do recognize each other and tend to form groups that further their paranoid agendas.
On the other hand, due to the nature of conscience and its conditioning by morality that reflects both personal choices and cultural indoctrination, an extreme altruist may appear to be a psychopath on the surface but is, in fact, acting out in reaction to their conscience. The "angle of death" nurse who gives lethal injections to the terminally ill, or the Nazi eugenicist who spends his career attempting to engineer a better human are probably listening to that inner voice and believe that what they are doing is appropriate and just.
Their activities go far beyond what our society deems normal or moral, but that is a social judgement call unrelated to the functioning of the brain circuitry described in the National Geographic article. "Normal" people perform horrific acts too.
I think also there is one more fact to consider.
The ideology factor.
You know when a group of people that unite themselves with the notion that they themselves are the only real humans and the rest of us are just their cattle.
Then like a rancher culls his herd they do just that as they deem is necessary.
I don't think that takes any special brain waves or connections.
It is just the training they receive from birth and is enforced their entire life.
That they are the only humans, the rest of us are not human therefore there is no reason to feel remorse for wrong, because it is not wrong for a rancher to cull his herd.
That is a social problem and is probably the result of one charismatic psychopath and his "bright" idea. Never forget that the average person is a follower who doesn't develop critical thinking skills. It isn't his fault, but the fault of the society in which he lives. People will always fall prey to "groupthink."
Governments and their controllers do not want people to think, only comply. There is little incentive to instill critical thinking skills in the average person, so charismatic Hitlers can and do and will continue to push societies in evil directions.
Thanks for commenting.
Since both psychopathy and altruism are organic phenominon that originate within the human brain, I don't think that everybody is a psychopath, but I do believe that most people have the potential to exhibit psychopathic or altruistic tendencies. According the the N.G. article linked by @valued-customer, a true psychopath could never be an extreme altruist because these traits involve the same areas in the brain, the psychopath being unable to access them while the altruist neurologically floods them.
Healthy people balance self-interest with concern for others. Also, according to the article, in those who are not necessarily brain damaged, access or attenuation of these brain lobes can be learned. In other words, we can become more psychopathic or more altruistic depending on our intent, just as we can learn to read and to write if we practice those skills.
My intent here is to point out that our culture tends to force us in both directions. Some factions implore us to work hard to acquire and therefore surpass our fellow men for our own good, while other factions tell us that we need to give everything we've worked for away to those who are less fortunate for the good of the society.
I don't believe the average Joe, whether he wants a new car or to open the borders to immigration is the problem here. It's those who wish to further their specific control agenda who we need to recognize and resist, not blindly carry their banner forward without careful examination of their, and our own, motives.
I agree with this
But people tend to lean on the extreme side of things. Maybe it's just the society and culture that really force us in both directions.
It's only at the extremes where life gets interesting. I think it's important to test the envelope, to test the limits of acceptability, especially when you are young. That's the best way to discover what's true and what isn't. Then, when you are older, you can find your comfort zone. For me, any other path is a wasted life.
Just make sure you read the directions first, and contemplate the warnings. Walking life's path with eyes open is always better than with your eyes shut.