This is fascinating. It explains what Trump is putting our country, our citizens, through. Trump is profoundly not American. I believe in the founding fathers interpretation.
Brain scans have confirmed what Thom is saying. Psychopathy is part gray matter, but the development and genetics involved is a much deeper dive. May be decades before there are answers, Kathy.
Those that don't study it do not even understand that these disorders exist, but they experience the damage they cause! Like Thom, let's teach them.
IMHO this is a false assumption. Poor people can be just as cruel. I.E. Studies show that neglectful parents often score lower on aggressiveness scales on an MMPI compared to physically abusive parents, indicating different "types" of cruelty (omission versus commission)
Just as likely biology is involved. Biological Influences
Neurobiology: Specific brain regions (like the anterior insula and prefrontal cortex) are responsible for empathy. Deficits or birth defects in these areas can result in a lack of compassion.
Neurotransmitters: Studies suggest that low levels of serotonin can contribute to impulsive aggression and make harming others feel more pleasurable.
The study you cite compares neglectful with physically abusive parents. Is there a study that correlates empathy with wealth and power? That would be more to the point.
If you’re saying Musk can’t help it, it’s his low level of serotonin, I can’t buy that.
To clarify, my point is that power allows cruelty to come out. The 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment showed that. And wealth destroys empathy while giving power; that power breeds cruelty.
No. Virtually none of the kids we had who had obsessive oppositional disorder, bullies, tortured animals, etc were billionaires. I also represented school districts at one time.... We tested the kids... I don't think there is any correlation to wealth.
In Musk's case, it could be his Asperger's syndrome.
My wife volunteered in a guardian ad litem program and some of the kids came from wealthy families, but I don't know whether they were studied.
My experience working with folks with Aspergers Syndrome were that most were what I describe as very "thought-full" in emotional situations, analyzing feelings and genuinely trying to "know how to act" to be helpful and appropriate. Those few who, like Elon Musk, were crude and heartless were raised by cruel and heartless parents.
You can see his mindset in a small way when a man fainted on camera in the Oval Office. RFK Jr. fled the room while Trump stood back, which is reasonable as better qualified people were helping him. But rather than showing a flicker of concern he appeared mildly curious. Then he turned and stared blankly at the reporters, apparently having no idea what to do when off script. Later it said, "So we had a little bit of an interruption. Sorry for that.” That's about as insensitive as it gets.
When I heard disability cases, neurologists, psychologists and psychiatrists could identify it, substantiated by clinical notes and psychological tests. Experts said there is a maturity factor -- more typical in prepubescent males.. Many have an "emotional age" of about 12.
I’m not trained in psychology, but he does seem to be really immature. His gilt homes could be how a little kid imagines that a rich person lives. It is like being in a cartoon. Though I’ve known children who were quite sensitive to the pain of others, as discussed here some adults never learn this; and while Teddy Roosevelt was once described by the British ambassador as, “The biggest 11-year-old in the world”, he did care about the poor and tried to improve things for them. As for Trump, I would call him, “An angry 5-year-old with a box of matches.”
Perhaps I have a surfeit of empathy, as it extends to those without it. What shabby, pointless lives they lead. Acquisitional, insecure, obsessed with being #1 on the money mountain, just because, not for what that money does for them or anyone else in any meaningful sense. That we allow these psychopaths to exist, much less rule us, is an indictment of our species. It is perhaps the key reason why I believe we will ultimately, and perhaps in the not too distant future, extinguish ourselves--hopefully not all life on the planet in the process. I see no real way to stop the process--empathetic people neither crave nor have power, and lack the necessary killer instinct to root out the psychopaths, as that collides with their empathy. That gives the psychopaths the blank check they now seem to have, maybe always have had, but in the past they could not have the titanic impact they do today.
What to do? Continue to be kind, to help those in need to the best of your ability, and know that in so doing you are acting in accordance with the best of what it means to be human, not the worst. For me, disabled, old, not a plutocrat, that remains the only thing in life that has ever given me satisfaction, much less happiness, a concept alien to me since my abusive childhood. If that seems pessimistic, so be it. To me, it is also realistic. Would that it were otherwise.
All billionaires are ruthless. As AOC has said, they do not EARN a billion dollars, they TAKE a billion dollars. Nobody needs a billion dollars, much less 100 or more billion dollars. They either are sociopaths or have developed a sociopathic worldview to compete with other sociopaths. As their wealth accrues, they are not interested in financial security or their ability to live in luxury. They derive satisfaction from the power that their wealth accrues.
Trump is well aware of this reality. He describes extortion (the primary tool of racketeers) as "the art of the deal." Billionaires accrue money and use their power to extort more wealth from people by buying their businesses, patents, and copyrights while paying employees as little as possible. This is how Microsoft was assembled. Gates is no software genius. Granted, some billionaires were visionaries willing to take reckless risks that pay off handsomely like EVs. But as David Brooks recently pointed out, their goal is never aspirational. They do not try to make the world a better place. Their goal is ambition. They strive to dominate by gaining wealth and power over others.
To acquire billions, one must begin to view the world, not with empathy, but as a battle of exploitation. Assuming that business associates are an enemy to be conquered, just like emperors viewed nations as enemies to be conquered. Otherwise, they will try to conquer you back. Like the character Cody Jarrett in the movie "White Heat," they have to keep climbing to the "top of the world." That trait explains Trump's zeal to annex Canada, Greenland, Cuba... Like all billionaires, he never has enough and always wants more, and he will lie, cheat, and steal to get more with no concern for his victims along the way.
If only 4% of us are psychopaths, unable to feel empathy or its cousin, pity, then WHY do 33% to 40% of us still think Trump is doing a good job? I mean, WTF?
If those lacking empathy completely are 1-4%, that seems like too small a number to account for the appeal of Ayn Rand and Nietzsche on the right. There are studies showing less empathy among Republicans in general, compared to Democrats. To me, that implies that empathy occurs on a continuum rather than being an all or nothing trait? While empathetic behavior can be encouraged, is there evidence that people can acquire the ability to feel empathy? Does being brutalized ensure that people will lose the ability to feel empathy? Not sure.
It is hard not to look at nihilists and overlook their apparent lack of empathy. Nihilism is a philosophical characterization that justifies ruthlessness. Nearly all of my Republican associates over the years have encouraged me to read Ayn Rand. Maybe they were trying to convert me? LOL.
I think we wind up seeing fascism erupt among voters when they notice corruption is also in the party with which they identify. The Biden dementia cover-up cost the Democrats. Trump was their punishment. Of course, Trump was like punching through walls or smashing crockery in anger, only to realize that the gesture merely amplified voter pain.
Foolishly, the DNC has never apologized for its sins. I suspect that the growing Blue Wave is merely evidence that voters have wised up and decided to clean up the mess of their own making.
Thank you. It explains the cruelty of this administration and why we as people have to find a way to revamp our entire system of two party control. That lack of empathy is apparent in both of our political parties. It is a disease driven by the lust for power.
Thom says, "During my years rostered as a psychotherapist back in the 1980s, I learned that there’s a subset of humanity—roughly 1.5 to 4 percent of the general population—who lack the neurological or psychological ability to experience empathy. These individuals, often described clinically as sociopaths or psychopaths, process others’ pain in a purely intellectual way. They recognize suffering but feel little to nothing in response. No emotional twinge, no discomfort, no moral imperative to help."
He might have seen a great deal of evidence in his training that most of this behavior, if not all, is learned behavior or is the consequence of concepts, beliefs, and hare-brained theories which have been fostered within one's experience and by abuse, neglect, trauma, or alienation, isolation, and fearfulness. The essential question is, how does someone with these disabilities or inadequacies rise to power in a democracy and lead the people on a grand scale to practices and policies which harm everyone and lead to the decimation or dissolution of the democracy? If nothing else, schools should mitigate against these tendencies and the inability of citizens to recognize the danger. The question might be put as, How can millions of people be wrong? I have tried to answer that question in the Substack article I posted minutes ago before coming to this site. The title is "All Societies Are Complex; Humans Are All Error-Prone; & Democracies MUST Always Adapt" and the subtitle is "Democracy’s Genius is in Allowing Easy and Frequent Course Corrections". We have a "toxic culture" which is in part a consequence of how we do schooling. The following is from the article:
Mass education within a society or nation is a completely unrealistic hope or expectation. Fabricating or engineering systems or paradigms will never get the job done. Education is by any standard or reasonable definition something which absolutely requires one to have sustained integral interest, motivation, endurance, attention, and emotional and physical commitment. If children and adults cannot all be made to voluntarily participate throughout their own personal and private lives with some degree of sustained enthusiasm, then some modified version of the goal must be accepted. If we know anything at all about human nature, we know that bodily and mental autonomy are essential and constitutionally (in its material human manifestation) requirements.
Having control over one's own life is crucial. We have compromised that need in childhood profoundly to our detriment.
Those who lack empathy are an exceedingly small proportion of the population, but seem to be over-represented among our leadership. Their bullying works in the short run, but eventually they all come a cropper. It's the damage they do to society in the meantime that makes it so important that we identify these traits early in life and take steps to mitigate them.
Very savvy people thought they knew the answer to my question, but we are just BEGINNING to find out.
Those are two lines from my comments yesterday.
Brain scans have confirmed what Thom is saying. Psychopathy is part gray matter, but the development and genetics involved is a much deeper dive. May be decades before there are answers.
Those that don't study it do not even understand that these disorders exist, but they experience the damage they cause! Like Thom, let's teach them. I have especially tried to explain it to young women. See you in the streets.
Captain my Captain they have no empathy and never will. They only think about themselves and the billionaires that keep on getting all the money. Nothing for the guy who needs heating to make it through winter Thom. This is not a democracy, Captain. Really.
This is fascinating. It explains what Trump is putting our country, our citizens, through. Trump is profoundly not American. I believe in the founding fathers interpretation.
Brain scans have confirmed what Thom is saying. Psychopathy is part gray matter, but the development and genetics involved is a much deeper dive. May be decades before there are answers, Kathy.
Those that don't study it do not even understand that these disorders exist, but they experience the damage they cause! Like Thom, let's teach them.
Some of us had training to be "dispassionate".
May relate to a Jungian "collective racial subconscious" that encourages the Nazi "superman" theory.
E.G. The AMA medical guides to evaluate medical impairments do not consider pain in the otheopedic category.
Too much wealth divorces most people from their humanity. When coupled with power, it produces cruelty.
IMHO this is a false assumption. Poor people can be just as cruel. I.E. Studies show that neglectful parents often score lower on aggressiveness scales on an MMPI compared to physically abusive parents, indicating different "types" of cruelty (omission versus commission)
Just as likely biology is involved. Biological Influences
Neurobiology: Specific brain regions (like the anterior insula and prefrontal cortex) are responsible for empathy. Deficits or birth defects in these areas can result in a lack of compassion.
Neurotransmitters: Studies suggest that low levels of serotonin can contribute to impulsive aggression and make harming others feel more pleasurable.
The study you cite compares neglectful with physically abusive parents. Is there a study that correlates empathy with wealth and power? That would be more to the point.
If you’re saying Musk can’t help it, it’s his low level of serotonin, I can’t buy that.
To clarify, my point is that power allows cruelty to come out. The 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment showed that. And wealth destroys empathy while giving power; that power breeds cruelty.
No. Virtually none of the kids we had who had obsessive oppositional disorder, bullies, tortured animals, etc were billionaires. I also represented school districts at one time.... We tested the kids... I don't think there is any correlation to wealth.
In Musk's case, it could be his Asperger's syndrome.
My wife volunteered in a guardian ad litem program and some of the kids came from wealthy families, but I don't know whether they were studied.
My experience working with folks with Aspergers Syndrome were that most were what I describe as very "thought-full" in emotional situations, analyzing feelings and genuinely trying to "know how to act" to be helpful and appropriate. Those few who, like Elon Musk, were crude and heartless were raised by cruel and heartless parents.
You can see his mindset in a small way when a man fainted on camera in the Oval Office. RFK Jr. fled the room while Trump stood back, which is reasonable as better qualified people were helping him. But rather than showing a flicker of concern he appeared mildly curious. Then he turned and stared blankly at the reporters, apparently having no idea what to do when off script. Later it said, "So we had a little bit of an interruption. Sorry for that.” That's about as insensitive as it gets.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHvW2kvPXuY
When I heard disability cases, neurologists, psychologists and psychiatrists could identify it, substantiated by clinical notes and psychological tests. Experts said there is a maturity factor -- more typical in prepubescent males.. Many have an "emotional age" of about 12.
I’m not trained in psychology, but he does seem to be really immature. His gilt homes could be how a little kid imagines that a rich person lives. It is like being in a cartoon. Though I’ve known children who were quite sensitive to the pain of others, as discussed here some adults never learn this; and while Teddy Roosevelt was once described by the British ambassador as, “The biggest 11-year-old in the world”, he did care about the poor and tried to improve things for them. As for Trump, I would call him, “An angry 5-year-old with a box of matches.”
Actually TR was an SOB.
Perhaps I have a surfeit of empathy, as it extends to those without it. What shabby, pointless lives they lead. Acquisitional, insecure, obsessed with being #1 on the money mountain, just because, not for what that money does for them or anyone else in any meaningful sense. That we allow these psychopaths to exist, much less rule us, is an indictment of our species. It is perhaps the key reason why I believe we will ultimately, and perhaps in the not too distant future, extinguish ourselves--hopefully not all life on the planet in the process. I see no real way to stop the process--empathetic people neither crave nor have power, and lack the necessary killer instinct to root out the psychopaths, as that collides with their empathy. That gives the psychopaths the blank check they now seem to have, maybe always have had, but in the past they could not have the titanic impact they do today.
What to do? Continue to be kind, to help those in need to the best of your ability, and know that in so doing you are acting in accordance with the best of what it means to be human, not the worst. For me, disabled, old, not a plutocrat, that remains the only thing in life that has ever given me satisfaction, much less happiness, a concept alien to me since my abusive childhood. If that seems pessimistic, so be it. To me, it is also realistic. Would that it were otherwise.
If more people had empathy, there would be less need for laws.
All billionaires are ruthless. As AOC has said, they do not EARN a billion dollars, they TAKE a billion dollars. Nobody needs a billion dollars, much less 100 or more billion dollars. They either are sociopaths or have developed a sociopathic worldview to compete with other sociopaths. As their wealth accrues, they are not interested in financial security or their ability to live in luxury. They derive satisfaction from the power that their wealth accrues.
Trump is well aware of this reality. He describes extortion (the primary tool of racketeers) as "the art of the deal." Billionaires accrue money and use their power to extort more wealth from people by buying their businesses, patents, and copyrights while paying employees as little as possible. This is how Microsoft was assembled. Gates is no software genius. Granted, some billionaires were visionaries willing to take reckless risks that pay off handsomely like EVs. But as David Brooks recently pointed out, their goal is never aspirational. They do not try to make the world a better place. Their goal is ambition. They strive to dominate by gaining wealth and power over others.
To acquire billions, one must begin to view the world, not with empathy, but as a battle of exploitation. Assuming that business associates are an enemy to be conquered, just like emperors viewed nations as enemies to be conquered. Otherwise, they will try to conquer you back. Like the character Cody Jarrett in the movie "White Heat," they have to keep climbing to the "top of the world." That trait explains Trump's zeal to annex Canada, Greenland, Cuba... Like all billionaires, he never has enough and always wants more, and he will lie, cheat, and steal to get more with no concern for his victims along the way.
Doesn't explain the Gates/Bezos ex wives' club, many others.
Where I grew up, the social gospel was the motivation for some of them. This is how I've been advocating saving the Social Security retirement fund.
Thom, please send this to the speechwriters for Bernie, Hakeem, et.al.
If only 4% of us are psychopaths, unable to feel empathy or its cousin, pity, then WHY do 33% to 40% of us still think Trump is doing a good job? I mean, WTF?
If those lacking empathy completely are 1-4%, that seems like too small a number to account for the appeal of Ayn Rand and Nietzsche on the right. There are studies showing less empathy among Republicans in general, compared to Democrats. To me, that implies that empathy occurs on a continuum rather than being an all or nothing trait? While empathetic behavior can be encouraged, is there evidence that people can acquire the ability to feel empathy? Does being brutalized ensure that people will lose the ability to feel empathy? Not sure.
It is hard not to look at nihilists and overlook their apparent lack of empathy. Nihilism is a philosophical characterization that justifies ruthlessness. Nearly all of my Republican associates over the years have encouraged me to read Ayn Rand. Maybe they were trying to convert me? LOL.
I think we wind up seeing fascism erupt among voters when they notice corruption is also in the party with which they identify. The Biden dementia cover-up cost the Democrats. Trump was their punishment. Of course, Trump was like punching through walls or smashing crockery in anger, only to realize that the gesture merely amplified voter pain.
Foolishly, the DNC has never apologized for its sins. I suspect that the growing Blue Wave is merely evidence that voters have wised up and decided to clean up the mess of their own making.
I still think we wuz screwed.
Always vote for the lesser of two evils.
Thank you. It explains the cruelty of this administration and why we as people have to find a way to revamp our entire system of two party control. That lack of empathy is apparent in both of our political parties. It is a disease driven by the lust for power.
Thom says, "During my years rostered as a psychotherapist back in the 1980s, I learned that there’s a subset of humanity—roughly 1.5 to 4 percent of the general population—who lack the neurological or psychological ability to experience empathy. These individuals, often described clinically as sociopaths or psychopaths, process others’ pain in a purely intellectual way. They recognize suffering but feel little to nothing in response. No emotional twinge, no discomfort, no moral imperative to help."
He might have seen a great deal of evidence in his training that most of this behavior, if not all, is learned behavior or is the consequence of concepts, beliefs, and hare-brained theories which have been fostered within one's experience and by abuse, neglect, trauma, or alienation, isolation, and fearfulness. The essential question is, how does someone with these disabilities or inadequacies rise to power in a democracy and lead the people on a grand scale to practices and policies which harm everyone and lead to the decimation or dissolution of the democracy? If nothing else, schools should mitigate against these tendencies and the inability of citizens to recognize the danger. The question might be put as, How can millions of people be wrong? I have tried to answer that question in the Substack article I posted minutes ago before coming to this site. The title is "All Societies Are Complex; Humans Are All Error-Prone; & Democracies MUST Always Adapt" and the subtitle is "Democracy’s Genius is in Allowing Easy and Frequent Course Corrections". We have a "toxic culture" which is in part a consequence of how we do schooling. The following is from the article:
Mass education within a society or nation is a completely unrealistic hope or expectation. Fabricating or engineering systems or paradigms will never get the job done. Education is by any standard or reasonable definition something which absolutely requires one to have sustained integral interest, motivation, endurance, attention, and emotional and physical commitment. If children and adults cannot all be made to voluntarily participate throughout their own personal and private lives with some degree of sustained enthusiasm, then some modified version of the goal must be accepted. If we know anything at all about human nature, we know that bodily and mental autonomy are essential and constitutionally (in its material human manifestation) requirements.
Having control over one's own life is crucial. We have compromised that need in childhood profoundly to our detriment.
In a democracy, when millions of people vote for this cruelty, this lack of compassion, what does that say about the electorate - "We the People..."?
Those who lack empathy are an exceedingly small proportion of the population, but seem to be over-represented among our leadership. Their bullying works in the short run, but eventually they all come a cropper. It's the damage they do to society in the meantime that makes it so important that we identify these traits early in life and take steps to mitigate them.
How many perverts does it take to run the world?
Very savvy people thought they knew the answer to my question, but we are just BEGINNING to find out.
Those are two lines from my comments yesterday.
Brain scans have confirmed what Thom is saying. Psychopathy is part gray matter, but the development and genetics involved is a much deeper dive. May be decades before there are answers.
Those that don't study it do not even understand that these disorders exist, but they experience the damage they cause! Like Thom, let's teach them. I have especially tried to explain it to young women. See you in the streets.
Captain my Captain they have no empathy and never will. They only think about themselves and the billionaires that keep on getting all the money. Nothing for the guy who needs heating to make it through winter Thom. This is not a democracy, Captain. Really.
Dear Thom,
What a wonderfully concise and profound explanation of what we are going through in this epoch under Trump.
As Trump implements Project 2025’s blueprint for dismantling the administrative state,...
Except for when it comes to voting.