Thanks! If more people had a better understanding understanding of psychopathy, a lot less of the current insanity would have been accepted and perhaps more psychopaths in government would either have been prevented from getting there or bunged out/arrested for their crimes.
It could have been very different, all along if we, generally, could have recognised psychopaths and keep them out of public offices/positions of influence, or have had them removed as soon as indications of callousness/psychopathy/corruption/ showed, and been able to do this all along.
Who guards the guards? Maybe the MRI pushers are the psychopaths. After all, they are taking away bodily autonomy, just as in the COVID era. Not a good thing.
My other issue would be that there is not always a brain lesion to be found. Narcissitic Personality Disorder can blend into the same presentation as Psychopathy, and is not caused by a physical fault.
I would like to ask a super noob question, if I may, please.
But first, thank you for the interview and its transcription.
My question is about this passage:
"
We can place theories of human evil on something of a continuum. On one extreme you have the complete denial of human evil. Here we find a couple varieties, from the naive idea that everyone is good at heart (“underneath it all”) to the moral relativist belief that simply denies the category of evil altogether.
Somewhere in the middle we find an acknowledgment of the reality of human evil, but the causes range from social determinism to strict heredity. Social determinism is compatible with the “good at heart” theory, positing that people only “break bad” because of poor childhoods or other environmental influences—the basic substratum of all humans is presumed to be similar with no substantial qualitative variations. Strict heredity denies social influence altogether, and may be paired with class- or race-based arguments that posit, for example, the inherent superiority of a hereditary aristocracy.
At another extreme I would place the supernatural theories, which may be paired with any number of the previous ones. For instance, evil may be ascribed to demonic possession in a manner similar to social determinism. Alternately, strict heredity may hide a supernatural taint of the bloodline.
Lobaczewski’s perspective is based on a realistic acceptance of human variation, and a multi-pathway genesis of human evil. He posits variations on the genetic, qualitative level, as well as “environmental” pathways that can cause reversible or irreversible changes to a person’s personality and character. He calls the genetic causes “psychopathies” and the environmental causes “characteropathies” (the result of certain brain injuries and “bad childhoods”).
"
And so, it's about sorting out variables, fitting some complexity of various variables such as psychopathy, normal people and characteropathies - and the quote highlights the idea of an objective world view (or at least what is not one).
My mind is quite limited and I wasn't able to exactly pinpoint if the above means that the most objective world view was located "at the other end of the spectrum" - namely at the level of "supernatural theories" - or if it would be located as the last paragraph states it, something akin to "those are complex & tangled waters etc etc", meaning that it's more a in the middle.
Still, I am not that sure that the latter case is the one you tried to convey, as being the correct world view, because a bit later in the interview, you state:
"
Personally, I think a metaphysics of evil is necessary for the same reason I think metaphysics itself is necessary. Like the psychological worldview, bad metaphysics cannot provide a proper map for navigating reality.
"
This places the emphasis of a world view insisting on metaphysic evil - and as the first quote highlighted a bold emphasis on evil ("supernatural evil"), I was wondering if you meant that the supernatural evil's end of the spectrum would be the more objective view.
I hope that my question is clear! Thank you for any answer if possible, please!
I wasn’t thinking in terms of objective and not, but looking back on it, I suppose that is a good way of looking at it. You have a spectrum from denying evil (false) to scientific acceptance (better) to metaphysical acceptance (best).
"But out of everyone I think Josh Slocum has gone the farthest in presenting a ponerological perspective on modern American politics and culture. And he didn’t need to read the book in order to do so. He lived it for himself and saw the connections as a result, so I consider him one of those remarkable people who has independently discovered many of the things Lobaczewski and his colleagues did."
Josh Slocum was not the only one to have taken the lived-patterns he grew up with, and then began recognizing the same patterns in modern society. Without the book. People often mistake those who have gone public in podcasts as the only ones to have seen this. As they did with the observations of Mattias Desmet....nice fellow too, but he was the first only in terms of publicly articulating his observation. A number of others had long known what he knew, and certainly others had recognized the COVID Psy-Op early in the game.
Thanks! If more people had a better understanding understanding of psychopathy, a lot less of the current insanity would have been accepted and perhaps more psychopaths in government would either have been prevented from getting there or bunged out/arrested for their crimes.
It could have been very different, all along if we, generally, could have recognised psychopaths and keep them out of public offices/positions of influence, or have had them removed as soon as indications of callousness/psychopathy/corruption/ showed, and been able to do this all along.
I've been saying for some time we need to do an MRI scan of every public servant's brain to screen for psychopathy.
AI should make this easy.
>In before muh false positives: It's better to keep a hundred good men out of government than let in even one psychopath.
Who guards the guards? Maybe the MRI pushers are the psychopaths. After all, they are taking away bodily autonomy, just as in the COVID era. Not a good thing.
My other issue would be that there is not always a brain lesion to be found. Narcissitic Personality Disorder can blend into the same presentation as Psychopathy, and is not caused by a physical fault.
"Sick minds in power lead to sick societies.
It’s fractal."
Reminds me of the interesting analogy that Mattias Desmet made to the Sierpinski Triangle, in his recent book on Totalitarianism.
Hello,
I would like to ask a super noob question, if I may, please.
But first, thank you for the interview and its transcription.
My question is about this passage:
"
We can place theories of human evil on something of a continuum. On one extreme you have the complete denial of human evil. Here we find a couple varieties, from the naive idea that everyone is good at heart (“underneath it all”) to the moral relativist belief that simply denies the category of evil altogether.
Somewhere in the middle we find an acknowledgment of the reality of human evil, but the causes range from social determinism to strict heredity. Social determinism is compatible with the “good at heart” theory, positing that people only “break bad” because of poor childhoods or other environmental influences—the basic substratum of all humans is presumed to be similar with no substantial qualitative variations. Strict heredity denies social influence altogether, and may be paired with class- or race-based arguments that posit, for example, the inherent superiority of a hereditary aristocracy.
At another extreme I would place the supernatural theories, which may be paired with any number of the previous ones. For instance, evil may be ascribed to demonic possession in a manner similar to social determinism. Alternately, strict heredity may hide a supernatural taint of the bloodline.
Lobaczewski’s perspective is based on a realistic acceptance of human variation, and a multi-pathway genesis of human evil. He posits variations on the genetic, qualitative level, as well as “environmental” pathways that can cause reversible or irreversible changes to a person’s personality and character. He calls the genetic causes “psychopathies” and the environmental causes “characteropathies” (the result of certain brain injuries and “bad childhoods”).
"
And so, it's about sorting out variables, fitting some complexity of various variables such as psychopathy, normal people and characteropathies - and the quote highlights the idea of an objective world view (or at least what is not one).
My mind is quite limited and I wasn't able to exactly pinpoint if the above means that the most objective world view was located "at the other end of the spectrum" - namely at the level of "supernatural theories" - or if it would be located as the last paragraph states it, something akin to "those are complex & tangled waters etc etc", meaning that it's more a in the middle.
Still, I am not that sure that the latter case is the one you tried to convey, as being the correct world view, because a bit later in the interview, you state:
"
Personally, I think a metaphysics of evil is necessary for the same reason I think metaphysics itself is necessary. Like the psychological worldview, bad metaphysics cannot provide a proper map for navigating reality.
"
This places the emphasis of a world view insisting on metaphysic evil - and as the first quote highlighted a bold emphasis on evil ("supernatural evil"), I was wondering if you meant that the supernatural evil's end of the spectrum would be the more objective view.
I hope that my question is clear! Thank you for any answer if possible, please!
I wasn’t thinking in terms of objective and not, but looking back on it, I suppose that is a good way of looking at it. You have a spectrum from denying evil (false) to scientific acceptance (better) to metaphysical acceptance (best).
Thank you much for your answer which (sorry!) answers my question
If I may ask a sub-sequent one, please:
You said:
"
Like the psychological worldview, bad metaphysics cannot provide a proper map for navigating reality.
"
I am not sure, but it would mean that Lobaczewski's model is the "psychological world view" you refer to
(which would be even less exhaustive than a world view more focusing on metaphysical evil)
Thank you!
"But out of everyone I think Josh Slocum has gone the farthest in presenting a ponerological perspective on modern American politics and culture. And he didn’t need to read the book in order to do so. He lived it for himself and saw the connections as a result, so I consider him one of those remarkable people who has independently discovered many of the things Lobaczewski and his colleagues did."
Josh Slocum was not the only one to have taken the lived-patterns he grew up with, and then began recognizing the same patterns in modern society. Without the book. People often mistake those who have gone public in podcasts as the only ones to have seen this. As they did with the observations of Mattias Desmet....nice fellow too, but he was the first only in terms of publicly articulating his observation. A number of others had long known what he knew, and certainly others had recognized the COVID Psy-Op early in the game.