We are apparently born with it.
This doesn’t surprise me at all. There are sound evolutionary reasons for us to cooperate. But these are statistical studies, and some people are clearly miswired and sociopathic. Many of them become politicians.
[Update a few minutes later]
This seems related somehow: Ace on the psychopathy of the Left:
Leftist politics, I maintain, are not a politics at all, but a psychological response to one’s shortcomings and feelings of failure. Leftist politics are, simply put, a way of getting even with a world that’s done one wrong — and most people carrying about such grievances against a world that’s done one wrong are psychologically broken.
These fairytale “politics” give them an avenue to vent their rages and turmoils about their failures and inadequacies in a way that is deemed, incorrectly, to be socially acceptable and even high-minded.
If a man were raving on the street in this fashion — about his hopes that someone would literally sh*t in a perceived “enemy’s” mouth (a perceived “enemy,” who, crucially, he’s never actually met) — most of us would shake our heads in secondary shame. Some of the more empathetic of us would call social services and attempt to have the madman brought in for psychological treatment.
But the left — Martin Bashir, Chris Matthews, Daily Kos, all of the hateful, raging, vibrating-with-resentment left — does this sort of thing in the guise of “political commentary” and no one makes the connection between this broken-souled primal screaming and mental unwellness.
All while their ratings remain in the same gutter as their political views.
Minutes after they are born, babies who are American prefer listening to English speakers… [etc.]
Babies hear in the womb so minutes after they are born isn’t that significant. What would have been is showing what I strongly suspect, that babies in the womb subjected to another language would prefer it regardless of nationality. How do you get a pregnant woman to be silent for nine months is another story.
hateful, raging, vibrating-with-resentment left … in the guise of “political commentary” and no one makes the connection between this broken-souled primal screaming and mental unwellness.
We all make the connection. We’re just dumbfounded that nothing is done about it. In a sane society, these folks would not be let anywhere near a position of power.
How do you get a pregnant woman to be silent for nine months is another story.
Wistful musings on past personal experiences?
Interesting how the author paints belonging to a group as immoral.
Nothing shocking that people are born with the capacity for good and evil and that our societies further shape those lines.
I’m reminded of C. S. Lewis’s saying :
The problem isn’t that these certain groups are amoral, but rather that they think they know best and are willing to impose that belief on others by force.
I was reading about the Ba Chuc massacre, a genocide effort by the Khmer Rouge in an invasion of Vietnam in 1978. It is a microcosm of their more famous Cambodian genocide and the casus belli for the Vietnamese invasion that finally put an end to four years of their murderous rule.
The massacre itself was typical of their notorious thoroughness. They came into the area of Ba Chuc and neighboring towns in April 18, 1978 and hunted down and slayed the inhabitants of that area (whether Vietnamese or Cambodian) for twelve days, killing over three thousand people, until they were driven out at the end of the month by Vietnamese forces. Only a handful of people survived, some by hiding out in the hills for the entire twelve days.
Now, obviously the vast majority of the Left, or any other ideology willing to impose its beliefs by force on others, isn’t going to stoop to this depth. But morality which is realigned in service of some great evil leaves no restraint on the person’s actions. And we have here an example where it became moral in someone’s twisted viewpoint to kill thousands of innocent people.
The problem isn’t that the “Left” is psychopathic, but rather that certain people have aligned their own morality so that inflicting great harm on society and punishing innocents for imaginary slights and crimes, is considered to be moral goods.
This kind of relates to an article I read online recently–I forget where or I’d provide a link. It may have been on Reason.com. The writer’s thesis is that one advantage libertarians have in arguing their position is that most people are essentially libertarians–when it comes to themselves. No one believes in aggressive force when it is directed toward them. Witness all the “liberal” media people who are otherside State-cultists but become veritable Menckens when the power of their beloved State is turned against them in attempts at censorship. But when aggressive force, or the threat of aggressive force, is applied against other people (all in “good” causes such as “the common good”), then it’s fine.
I think I’ve said here that I’m convinced there must be a strong self-loathing, sadomasochistic streak in “liberals.” What does it say about the mental health of someone who wants to be ruled by force? And what does it say about the morality of someone who wants to rule others by force (even if only vicariously, through the State)?
Like chimps, dogs and rats, humans are social animals, our instincts work to promote our own well being by steering us to promote the well being of our social group, try these experiments with solitary species, maybe leopards, and you’d see a simpler selfish gene scenario demonstrated.
“our social group” isn’t easy to define though. Who we instinctively recognise as “us” and “them” changes with each situation we are judging:
Right vs Left
kids vs parents
Americans vs foreigners
and so on.
With the puppet experiment it would have been interesting to have had the children meet and identify with the “bad” puppet first to see how long it would support the “one mans terrorist is another mans hero” theory.
I think it is a mistake to brand just those on the Left as crazy.
Everyone’s crazy.
I’m not even kidding. Every single one of us is crazy in some way. We might not even see it, but others do.
To “everyone’s cray” add the fact that by definition half the population has an IQ of 100 or less and mix in Murphy’s Law. It explains much behavior that is otherwise inexplicable.
True enough, Ed, as far as it goes. But it’s the difference between the harmless eccentric who collects his own poo, and a crazy who not only collects his own poo but forces other people to eat it.
Meh, the whole article is begging the question. It does not necessarily follow that because infants and animals exhibit moral judgment (e.g. the experimenter’s injustice tests), that moral goalposts of right and wrong are “inborn” in any literal sense.
Another condition that would be sufficient to explain the observed behavior would be that humans (and other animals) have the capability to make judgments, and that moral virtues are discernible from their nature and their interactions with the world around them (i.e. the facts of reality). Neither “Blank Slate” nor T.H. Huxley’s “Brutes” nor the “Veneer” theory.
The Darwin quote just goes to show that people can make amazing contributions to human knowledge, yet not always be right on every assertion they make. A failure of imagination (and/or a misunderstanding of self-interest which wouldn’t be a surprise given his worldview).