I’ve been spending some time thinking about what makes
someone evil. Not just an ignorant,
insensitive person but someone who is capable of causing deliberate pain to
another person. I’d also separate
between those whose goal is to cause pain and those who are following along
with a dominant personality. The
followers don’t get a free pass in my book, but if they had found someone else
to follow, they could have become devoted stamp collectors or something else
harmless. They are attracted to the
psychopath’s charisma, confidence and apparent power, not necessarily the
violence. Their willingness to venture
down the dark path and inability to stand up for their own values makes them dangerous
but I don’t know whether they would take the first steps on their own.
But I’m talking about something else. The psychopaths of the world. There’s some evidence that not all
psychopaths are violent but all of them see people as objects to use as needed. Often they believe the end justifies the
means. They also tend to believe that
everyone sees the world the same way, which means they inhabit a terrifying
world where no one can be trusted or relied on and you have to be constantly on
guard against attack.
I’ve been reading some of Dr. Perry’s work on empathy and
it’s been quite interesting. In one
chapter of his book Born to Love, he
gives us the case study of a wealthy, privileged boy who convinced his friends
to gang rape a developmentally delayed girl in their school. When caught, he honestly appeared to believe
the whole thing amounted to a prank and told the police that the girl should be
grateful since she was never going to have anyone better than him touch
her. Needless to say, quite frightening
and sickening. And, I have to say,
frustrating.
Here is someone with every advantage our world has to offer
and he uses his status as a weapon against others, threatening and intimidating
with his perceived position. He displays
no compassion or respect for authority.
Now, Dr. Perry goes into his early infancy and suggests that some of the
boy’s lack of empathy came from a revolving door round of short-term
nannies. The nannies never had time to
learn the boy’s cries and needs before they were replaced, thus teaching him
that no one cared about him and his needs would never be met unless he took
care of them himself.
It’s an interesting theory but I think there are some people
out there who were just born wrong and twisted.
There’s another scientific study which makes more sense to
me. The doctor has studied psychopaths
and career criminals extensively and he found a certain MRI pattern of low
activity in impulse control to be common among them. But he found other people who weren’t
criminals (including himself) had similar scans. He also discovered he had a fair number of
serial killers and murderers in his family tree.
He describes his theory with this metaphor: genetics load
the gun, creating a predisposition; environment removes the safety, explaining
the almost universal experience of neglect and abuse for psychopaths; and the
individual chooses the target, in effect, pulling the trigger. He doesn’t believe his theory absolves these
people of their actions but rather sees it as a way to create programs which
would prevent them from becoming psychopaths in the first place.
I don’t buy into “genes made me do it” or “culture made me
do it” as a reason to let someone go after they’ve committed a violent
crime. If you weren’t in control (blame
God, genes, the devil, patriarchy, whoever you want), then clearly you need to
be locked up because you can’t guarantee it won’t happen again.
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