A psychopath is just like me, but is saddled with faulty brain. I can recognize the fact that he may be dangerous and that he may need to be treated in special ways. But I can also recognize that the fact that I am not a psychopath is sheer dumb luck and the psychopath is still a fellow human.Icarus wrote: ↑Wed Nov 11, 2020 5:43 pmI love your posts and agree with you for the most part, but at the same time not all humans are "just like me." There really are psychopaths out there. Not just anyone can be talked into murdering their own family. Ajax is cut from the same cloth that gave us Auschwitz. His hatred is palpable and I refuse to entertain the idea that we're just the same, though I know you're only speaking biologically.Res Ipsa wrote: ↑Wed Nov 11, 2020 4:27 pm
I just can't go with you on this, Schmo. What I know about brains and how they work tells me quite strongly that there is no fundamental difference between me and, for example, Ajax. We all have instincts that are wired into our brains when we are exposed to perceived danger. We all suffer from the same cognitive biases because our brains basically work in the same way. And nothing in the evolutionary process has prepared us to cope with the firehose of information that smacks us in the face every day. At bottom, we are all trying to do the best we can under impossible circumstances. And we all suffer to some degree because we want things to be other than the way they are. That's what it means to be human. And we are all, most definitely, human.
We know where it leads when groups of people start dehumanizing each other. We've had far too many historical examples not to learn from what happens. Study the Rwandan genocide. Really study it. Ask yourself how Tutsi men were persuaded to slaughter their Hutu wives and children. What drove people to think of locking people inside a church and slaughtering them? How does that happen?
The best advice any has given me in a long time is this: when someone cuts you off in traffic, or honks their horn at you, or is wearing their mask under the nose in the grocery store, or driving around in a big truck with Trump flags flying, take a deep breath and, as you exhale, think or say "just like me." Remind yourself that we are all humans with brains wired up the same way. And that, given a different personal history, we might act exactly the same way.
To dehumanize is to choose the road to madness. Let's not choose that.
I disagree with you that "not just anyone" can be talked into murdering their own family. I know I sound like a broken record, but spend some time learning about what happened in Rwanda. Those were human brains acting the way human brains behave. Auschwitz was allowed to happen by ordinary human beings who were convinced that other human beings were less than human and an existential threat. You are not an exception.
Your brain is a kludge created evolutionary development over the course of millions of years. It's not designed to be rational. It's "designed" to get your sperm to fertilize as many eggs as possible. Features that had survival value hundreds of thousands of year ago may have no value today or may even work against your survival or the survival of the species. The part of the brain where what we call "rational thought" is the most recent piece of the kludge and it is exceedingly fragile. It can be overridden by something as simple as having to remember a phone number. It is very good at both editing raw data and rationalizing behavior after the fact. It appears that a significant part of what we think of as rational decision making takes place involuntarily, with that part of the brain constructing a rationalization after the fact that we experience as before the fact.
in my opinion, what we know about how the brain works is a great sense of humility. Just as our thinking can change how we act, our actions can change how we think. And most of that happens under the hood - below our levels of conscious perception. So, when I think of Ajax as "just like me" (which I do), it is a recognition that my brain is not fundamentally different than his and that I have no idea what I would be like if I had lived his life.
I do think we all suffer, and an important source of that suffering is illusions that we cling to about ourselves. And that is am important way that we are all united by something. And discovering that we can reduce that suffering by letting go of at least part of that suffering is both empowering and liberating. That's something I wish Ajax could experience. Because I've done the clinging to unhappiness thing, and it's a truly miserable way to live.
