Does wealth contribute to lack of Empathy? I think that it causes one to feel superior to the lowly who are regarded as things and not as people. The more money that krazynov, bezos, musk and fuckerman accumulate the less they care about anyone else. It's a disease. The cure is taxation of the rich, a kind of rehab program for them. That would be us showing empathy.
Maybe, but I don't believe that Gates, Soros, and a lot of other rich people have it.
I prosecuted in juvenile court and later was court appointed in juvie cases. 2 categories: 1. delinquent. 2. dependent. I was a master in some cases and later helped write the child standards for Social Security, and was a judge there for 10 years. A lot of it is due to mental impairments. Once upon a time I also represented school districts, and was "parlimentarian" in discipline cases.
I was also court appointed in abuse and even murder cases. Mostly the same population.
My wife was a vounteer for abused kids via our Guardian Ad Lirtem program in the '80s. The kids came from all backgrounds.
Believe me, poor people can be mean. Crosses all incomes.
I'm a big believer of the MMPI. Antisocial Personality Disorder (ASPD) can be diagnosed, combined with clinical evaluations. We didn't have testing untill the Handicapped Act of 1973, now IDEA, where a lot of kids, and thus their parents are evaluated.
I'm sure there's data to confirm Thom's discussion on empathy.
Here are the state of the art tests.
Instruments Specifically Designed to Measure Empathy:
Empathy Quotient (EQ):
This is a 60-item questionnaire (or a shorter 40-item version) designed to measure empathy in adults.
Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI):
This is a popular measure of trait empathy, consisting of 28 items divided into four subscales.
Jefferson Scale of Empathy (JSE):
Developed specifically to measure empathy in the context of health professions education and patient care.
Basic Empathy Scale (BES):
Consists of 20 items, divided into cognitive and affective empathy factors.
Empathy Measure (EM):
A combination of questions from the California Psychological Inventory (CPI) and the MMPI.
Hogan's Cognitive Empathy Scale:
Consists of 64 questions selected from psychological personality tests like the MMPI and CPI.
In criminal defence, these may tie in with tests to determine whether a defendant can form a mens rea (intent) to commit a specific crime.
Of course my post was a gross overstatement. But the bell shaped curve of empathy by wealthy people is severely skewed towards lack of empathy. Likewise there are assholes among the less fortunate but I suspect that they are more empathetic.
If I were doing a study I would have the impact of each individual weighted by their wealth. Musk would be over the top. But this is obvious.
Which brings up the point- no matter if they use their money for good or bad, why should they be the ones to decide social issues? What's going on in Wisconsin right now is cause for concern. Wait, that sounds like a Chuck Schumer comment. We should be fucking pissed and that asshole should be arrested! That's better.
Mr. Solomon, great comment. On behalf of all readers of this blog I thank you. Very informative. I was involved in research with the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory [MMPI] years ago. Obviously, as a magistrate, it was necessary for you to delve deeply into social psychological measuring instruments.
Perhaps you should explain the difference between actus reus and mens rea, as well as their importance in litigation.
Would you consider Ayn Rand's characters legally insane?
This is the answer to my question as to why people can do the things they do. Oh, I knew it in my gut but this is a great explanation of the sickness we are now fighting.
My question to all of these all-knowing oligarchs is just who is going to do all the work that you require to be in your vaulted position? Since your killing us by gutting safety nets just how do you propose that enough workers will survive to do your bidding!
You know, Elon's auto workers or SpaceX workers What if they get sick & die. I wonder do they know that worldwide epidemics kill rich people too, especially when they cut back on the aid that is keeping people healthy enough to prevent these diseases from mutating into something that will become untreatable, you know like the Black Death? Survival of the fittest doesn't mean survival of the richest, you do know that don't you, Elon & friends, trump & sycophants!
I'm pretty sure they don't. If they think they can control humans surely they can control a little microbe. On the other hand~~~!?!
This article just hits home. I am living my senior years now worried about half of my monthly income being gutted ( SS and VA widow’s annuity). Then also being worried about people I come in contact with being hard core crazy magats when I am out and about running errands, grocery shopping or just on the freeway ( road rage). These cretinous evil fascist people have altered my “retirement “ years into anger at fellow Americans. These people who support and/or voted for the rapey felon traitor, whether due to racism , indifference to reality, or being willfully ignorant of the malevolent policies of trump/musk have ushered in a collapse of the very agencies that have been developed to protect us, the people of this country. I never thought I would witness this threat to our nation from within by the malignant cancer, the super rich, in real time against Americans and people rolling over and succumbing to propaganda by right wing media the way many Americans have. These malignant billionaires hate a functioning democracy because then people would stand up for their rights. But again, it takes effort to research and fact check the “news” and too many Americans are complacent and indifferent. As Thom says, “Democracy is not a spectator sport.”
Thank you, we’re all getting mixed messages about SS but I just read on someone’s post that the muskrat criminal cabal is looking at “replacing “ the COBOL computer system with “something else “ so I have to conclude that they are going to deconstruct SS from inside the major system.
"Survival of the fittest doesn't mean survival of the richest" - great point(!) that will nonetheless not be believed by wealthy egotists.
Empathy, a social emotion that supports functional families and communities, persists because it aids in our survival. It definitely has roots in mammals that evolved earlier than humans. Some glitch in human evolution allowed some people to be more susceptible to a lack of social emotions - research shows a significant genetic component. But environment plays a big role too - if an environment is very stressful, chaotic, non-nurturing, and there is no empathic role model early on, that can spell big trouble for people with even a small genetic loading. However they got that way, our ruling oligarchs haven't a shred of empathy, and that lack has rapidly metastasized (since Trump 1.0) throughout Republicans in government. At some point in groups, a "crowd" mentality takes over and people just hop on the bandwagon.
Rand did an interview with Mike Wallace. It is available on YouTube. She expressed in so many words that SHE was the world. Trump is proving daily that he is just like her. Although they would argue they are exceptional in every way, they are common psychopaths.
These "people" with defective brains have done the most damage to our world throughout history. The list is too long to mention.
Trump has his own list working for him right now. To them we are just objects to be used, abused, and disposed of at their pleasure.
Keep teaching Thom. The rest of us have to do the same; that is why it is so important not to let them convince the people that what they are doing is NORMAL or NEEDED.
In the end she was a fraud, if she really held true to her conviction, she would have refused Social Security and Medicare thus becoming the "looter" she supposedly detested.
Excellent article .. never connected the two .. but now I see it clearly .. there’s an entire culture of people that fit this model of having now empathy. It’s scary to me how many are around me!
Thank you for reading Rand so I didn't have to. This is hard to read for an empathizer, but explains everything since the 1970's, at least. I signed up for George Conway's Anti-Psychopath PAC before the election, but clearly he was setting his sights way too low: we're now ruled by an entire host of psychotic oligarchs. Can the mice overcome?
When they convince themselves that "greed is good", they take what they want, by any means. That makes them the real looters and takers. As usual, they get everything upside down like an hourglass, and now they know their time is running out.
Lack of empathy. We've known that the cruelty of the regime was part of the plan. What I hadn't realized is that the cruelty springs from a lack of empathy. I'd be willing to bet that the perpetrators don't consider themselves to be cruel; but I'd also bet they would own up to lacking empathy (at least for anyone beyond their own inner circle). Lacking empathy is the precursor to being cruel, because cruelty is impossible if one possesses empathy.
Earlier you referenced how the Nazis located their death camps outside Germany, and how many Germans were horrified to learn what had been done in their name.
Today you referenced the half million Covid deaths attributed to Trump and MAGA. Now with the cuts to USAID internationally and NHS and CDC nationally how many more deaths globally will be attributed to Trump and the MAGA-GOP when and if their reign of terror is finally ended.
History will judge whether or not Trump will join the pantheon of death merchants such as Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, and Putin.
In Maurice Ogden’s prophetic poem “The Hangman “ when the hangman comes for his final victim who refuses to see his own responsibility for those whom he watched hang in silence, the hangman tells him “none has served me more than you, for I’ve done no more than you let me do,”
How many more outrageous acts of Trump and Elon are you/we going to watch before we stop these “hangman”?
Thom, this conditioned phenomenon brings me to the life of the honey badger. Honey, the sweetest of energies, and the badger, ferocious, fearless, remorseless. The honey badger has very specific genetic and adaptive traits that release its ferocity and seeming lack of empathy, as humans describe the behavior. But these animals have empathy, care for their young, defend their specific territories, and display superior learning skills to both stay alive and adapt.
The Hickman/Rand/TFG trifecta shares, IMO, only one honey badger trait - overarching fear of being killed. Fear is a defensive response to a real or imagined threat. It is driven by the sympathetic nervous system, fight/freeze/flee, in order to 'please' the needs of the parasympathetic nervous system, which demands calm, security, rest, digestion and healing.
It has been shown, in many if not all cases, that the fetus that is developing inside a female uterus is emphatically synchronized to the total reality of the pregnant female, everything in her immediate life and her own in utero/childhood/fecund age experiences. Her life is already loaded with traumas, dramas, perceived and real threats, attainment of safety, calm, rest as well as the fight/freeze/flee memories of her personal experiences.
That she can translate and project all this behavior and memory into the nervous system of her fetus is obvious. It may even go much wider than this - your insights into PUC can back this up - if experiences as memories carry across the entanglement of the QF.
All of us have experienced, at least once, the flood of adrenaline, norepinephrine, cortisol and the barrage of nutrient energies that flood a human if they succeed in beating down or eliminating a threat. It is unnervingly powerful, and instantly seductive. And it can become addictively attractive to others who have never deeply experienced a real combat situation.
Hence the constant emergence of so-called non-empathetic persons, either at birth or later in life. Wannabes covet the merciless attitudes of sadistic psychopaths, being damaged themselves but never reaching the experiential ferocity of a honey badger. The leaders of the wannabes have, in some form, often repeated, experienced the thrill of exacting cruelty and its hormonal high, and they make it their life's work to stay addicted to the vacuous state of being we call un-empathetic, cruel, harsh, brutal, selfish, savage, indifferent and loathesome.
If we had a crystal ball, I am certain it would reveal many deep fearful wounds since conception for TFG, Muck, Hegemonicseth, Homan, and many, many other psychopaths now raging about inside their teacups of unconscious fear.
"Mothering the Mother" was a common theme and practice I heard and saw across cultures in my years as a maternal/child clinical nurse specialist, from Native American to Appalchian to Spanish Migrant to inner city Black Americans. "Whatever MeeMaw is feeling," I was told, "would be felt in the cradle" (and in the womb before that). So mothers MUST be nurtured. It was only in my own white culture that I didn't hear or feel that deep truth. Instead, a pregnant lady was/is still expected to work as long as she could during her pregnancy (and open her own doors), then she was allowed a few weeks off after the birth "to recover," and if she still insisted on breastfeeding, a corner would be provided in the rest room for her to pump on her break. We grow indifference in the USA.
Yes - there was an kind of "abandonment" when his mother was hospitalized for mental illness (maybe depression). His father, himself totally lacking in compassion, did not alter his workaholic schedule to fill in. See Mary Trump's biography "Too Much and Never Enough."
Thank you for adding evidence to this 'long game' of the void of empathy. Trauma is not something easily realized outside of the being experiencing it. And the 'reaction' to it is perhaps stochastic in nature, random, and the responses to it from society can either nurture a healing or expand a damaging event into a setup for more damage, real or imagined. Damage becomes repetitious, urging its own addiction, even setting up a weird kind of Stockholm Syndrome of enjoying or identifying with drama/trauma. Then, whenever a 'low' in the nor-epinephrine cycle occurs, which is narcotic in nature, the 'need' is overwhelming to create another drama/trauma. Persons can become completely habituated to this cycle, and without it become, unbalanced to the point of nihilism.
I had to look it up amygdala again, even though I have a Masters Degree in nursing. Research is always discovering other functions of our human anatomy. Briefly: "almond-shaped structure located in the temporal lobe of the brain. It plays a crucial role in processing emotions, particularly fear and anxiety.
Functions of the Amygdala:
Fear and Anxiety Processing:
The amygdala is highly sensitive to potential threats and triggers the body's fight-or-flight response. It processes information from the senses and determines whether a situation is dangerous.
Emotional Learning:
The amygdala is involved in associating experiences with emotions. It helps us learn from positive and negative events and remember them for future situations.
Memory Consolidation:
The amygdala works with the hippocampus to strengthen memories that have a strong emotional component.
Social Interaction:
The amygdala plays a role in processing social cues and understanding the emotions of others.
Reward Processing:
While the amygdala is primarily known for its role in fear, it also contributes to the processing of rewards and positive emotions.
Other Functions:
The amygdala is also involved in, Regulation of aggression, Control of heart rate and blood pressure, and Decision-making.
Importance of the Amygdala:
The amygdala is essential for survival and well-being. It helps us protect ourselves from danger, learn from experiences, and form emotional connections. Dysfunction of the amygdala can lead to various mental health conditions, such as anxiety disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder, and phobias. "
Hello Daniel. There is no need to exercise your amygdala in this response. I was asking what you meant in your somewhat cryptic post, relating 'genetics' to one animal WO this brain center. MaryPat gave a textbook def. of the known features. I also knew most of that, being a biologist/ecologist myself, but are you saying that wolverines are somehow in the same category as humans with no empathy? Is having no empathy genetic, as in empathy is somehow built into DNA in all animals but wolverines? If so, what does that have to do with fascists/Nazis/psychopaths displaying a lack thereof? That was my question to you. I know you are a regular responder, and a very educated and experienced person. But even you can sometimes utter a phrase that needs further elaboration. And although I am a secular fan of the teachings of Jesus, I am not inclined to look to those teachings for why/how a human would behave without empathy. So could you clarify, because I am inclined to trust your observations as having credibility. Thank you.
On the subject of lack of empathy: the county in which I reside has been without opioid treatment for severe chronic pain for at least a week now. This has something to do with the new and improved N.I.H. I am told. So many of us are in severe pain and I can see that the object is to get us to die. NO EMPATHY HERE! I, for one, will not give in. With fractured vertebrae in my mid-spine, I will continue as long as possible and not give in to these fuckers. So many people with cancer and injured as am I are going through absolute hell. This is in a very 'blue' state and that may be why. I wish I knew of a way to help us all.
We all want the idiocy of this regime to come to an end, but I cannot imagine how difficult it must be to endure real physical pain at the hands of their cruel incompetence. Your righteous anger may be enough to propel you through this hell. Let's hope we can stop them while there is still something of our government to salvage so we can begin to repair the damage they have done.
Thom, You are publishing some of your absolutely finest work of late, and thank you , Sir, for that.
Does wealth contribute to lack of Empathy? I think that it causes one to feel superior to the lowly who are regarded as things and not as people. The more money that krazynov, bezos, musk and fuckerman accumulate the less they care about anyone else. It's a disease. The cure is taxation of the rich, a kind of rehab program for them. That would be us showing empathy.
Maybe, but I don't believe that Gates, Soros, and a lot of other rich people have it.
I prosecuted in juvenile court and later was court appointed in juvie cases. 2 categories: 1. delinquent. 2. dependent. I was a master in some cases and later helped write the child standards for Social Security, and was a judge there for 10 years. A lot of it is due to mental impairments. Once upon a time I also represented school districts, and was "parlimentarian" in discipline cases.
In sociology Jukes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jukes_family. and Kallicaks https://embryo.asu.edu/pages/kallikak-family-study-heredity-feeble-mindedness-1912-henry-herbert-goddard. I got to meet some of these folks "up close and personal." .
I was also court appointed in abuse and even murder cases. Mostly the same population.
My wife was a vounteer for abused kids via our Guardian Ad Lirtem program in the '80s. The kids came from all backgrounds.
Believe me, poor people can be mean. Crosses all incomes.
I'm a big believer of the MMPI. Antisocial Personality Disorder (ASPD) can be diagnosed, combined with clinical evaluations. We didn't have testing untill the Handicapped Act of 1973, now IDEA, where a lot of kids, and thus their parents are evaluated.
I'm sure there's data to confirm Thom's discussion on empathy.
Here are the state of the art tests.
Instruments Specifically Designed to Measure Empathy:
Empathy Quotient (EQ):
This is a 60-item questionnaire (or a shorter 40-item version) designed to measure empathy in adults.
Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI):
This is a popular measure of trait empathy, consisting of 28 items divided into four subscales.
Jefferson Scale of Empathy (JSE):
Developed specifically to measure empathy in the context of health professions education and patient care.
Basic Empathy Scale (BES):
Consists of 20 items, divided into cognitive and affective empathy factors.
Empathy Measure (EM):
A combination of questions from the California Psychological Inventory (CPI) and the MMPI.
Hogan's Cognitive Empathy Scale:
Consists of 64 questions selected from psychological personality tests like the MMPI and CPI.
In criminal defence, these may tie in with tests to determine whether a defendant can form a mens rea (intent) to commit a specific crime.
Of course my post was a gross overstatement. But the bell shaped curve of empathy by wealthy people is severely skewed towards lack of empathy. Likewise there are assholes among the less fortunate but I suspect that they are more empathetic.
If I were doing a study I would have the impact of each individual weighted by their wealth. Musk would be over the top. But this is obvious.
The current crop is much different than those of my childhood. Mostly believed in the "social gospel." In some cases left all their money to charity.
Which brings up the point- no matter if they use their money for good or bad, why should they be the ones to decide social issues? What's going on in Wisconsin right now is cause for concern. Wait, that sounds like a Chuck Schumer comment. We should be fucking pissed and that asshole should be arrested! That's better.
Mr. Solomon, great comment. On behalf of all readers of this blog I thank you. Very informative. I was involved in research with the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory [MMPI] years ago. Obviously, as a magistrate, it was necessary for you to delve deeply into social psychological measuring instruments.
Perhaps you should explain the difference between actus reus and mens rea, as well as their importance in litigation.
Would you consider Ayn Rand's characters legally insane?
Thank you! This moved me to become an annual subscriber.
This is the answer to my question as to why people can do the things they do. Oh, I knew it in my gut but this is a great explanation of the sickness we are now fighting.
My question to all of these all-knowing oligarchs is just who is going to do all the work that you require to be in your vaulted position? Since your killing us by gutting safety nets just how do you propose that enough workers will survive to do your bidding!
You know, Elon's auto workers or SpaceX workers What if they get sick & die. I wonder do they know that worldwide epidemics kill rich people too, especially when they cut back on the aid that is keeping people healthy enough to prevent these diseases from mutating into something that will become untreatable, you know like the Black Death? Survival of the fittest doesn't mean survival of the richest, you do know that don't you, Elon & friends, trump & sycophants!
I'm pretty sure they don't. If they think they can control humans surely they can control a little microbe. On the other hand~~~!?!
This article just hits home. I am living my senior years now worried about half of my monthly income being gutted ( SS and VA widow’s annuity). Then also being worried about people I come in contact with being hard core crazy magats when I am out and about running errands, grocery shopping or just on the freeway ( road rage). These cretinous evil fascist people have altered my “retirement “ years into anger at fellow Americans. These people who support and/or voted for the rapey felon traitor, whether due to racism , indifference to reality, or being willfully ignorant of the malevolent policies of trump/musk have ushered in a collapse of the very agencies that have been developed to protect us, the people of this country. I never thought I would witness this threat to our nation from within by the malignant cancer, the super rich, in real time against Americans and people rolling over and succumbing to propaganda by right wing media the way many Americans have. These malignant billionaires hate a functioning democracy because then people would stand up for their rights. But again, it takes effort to research and fact check the “news” and too many Americans are complacent and indifferent. As Thom says, “Democracy is not a spectator sport.”
Your comment absolutely reflects my situation and my thoughts. Isn’t Dr. Hartmann the best?
"The price of liberty is eternal vigilance."
OR
"Eternal vigilance is the price we pay for liberty."
Either works.
@ Kathy. With respect to SS check out Ed Weir. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fvpu0J0t6fw. Free. I have no relationship with him. He tracks it daily, cn answer questions.
Thank you, we’re all getting mixed messages about SS but I just read on someone’s post that the muskrat criminal cabal is looking at “replacing “ the COBOL computer system with “something else “ so I have to conclude that they are going to deconstruct SS from inside the major system.
"Survival of the fittest doesn't mean survival of the richest" - great point(!) that will nonetheless not be believed by wealthy egotists.
Empathy, a social emotion that supports functional families and communities, persists because it aids in our survival. It definitely has roots in mammals that evolved earlier than humans. Some glitch in human evolution allowed some people to be more susceptible to a lack of social emotions - research shows a significant genetic component. But environment plays a big role too - if an environment is very stressful, chaotic, non-nurturing, and there is no empathic role model early on, that can spell big trouble for people with even a small genetic loading. However they got that way, our ruling oligarchs haven't a shred of empathy, and that lack has rapidly metastasized (since Trump 1.0) throughout Republicans in government. At some point in groups, a "crowd" mentality takes over and people just hop on the bandwagon.
What an origin story!
Rand did an interview with Mike Wallace. It is available on YouTube. She expressed in so many words that SHE was the world. Trump is proving daily that he is just like her. Although they would argue they are exceptional in every way, they are common psychopaths.
These "people" with defective brains have done the most damage to our world throughout history. The list is too long to mention.
Trump has his own list working for him right now. To them we are just objects to be used, abused, and disposed of at their pleasure.
Keep teaching Thom. The rest of us have to do the same; that is why it is so important not to let them convince the people that what they are doing is NORMAL or NEEDED.
In the end she was a fraud, if she really held true to her conviction, she would have refused Social Security and Medicare thus becoming the "looter" she supposedly detested.
Excellent article .. never connected the two .. but now I see it clearly .. there’s an entire culture of people that fit this model of having now empathy. It’s scary to me how many are around me!
Yeah, don't get me started on Ayn Rand.
Many of my cohort, the Silent Generation, revered her, and to this day, I don't get it.
Brilliant. I meet too many Randians out there.
Mr Trump has a rock for a heart and that is not a nice thing to say about a rock.
Excellent piece. The bigger question is: How does America elect a sociopath to be the "leader of the free world"?
With help of Russian psy ops.
Thank you for reading Rand so I didn't have to. This is hard to read for an empathizer, but explains everything since the 1970's, at least. I signed up for George Conway's Anti-Psychopath PAC before the election, but clearly he was setting his sights way too low: we're now ruled by an entire host of psychotic oligarchs. Can the mice overcome?
A friend had an assigned mouse in psych class that couldn't learn -- he was able to allege he had a retarded mouse and still got an "A". .
When they convince themselves that "greed is good", they take what they want, by any means. That makes them the real looters and takers. As usual, they get everything upside down like an hourglass, and now they know their time is running out.
I agree with you - except that I wish it were true that their time is running out!
Even they know it's bullshit.
Don't be so sure. It's amazing what people can embrace when they feel reinforced for believing it (and get reinforced by others of that ilk).
Lack of empathy. We've known that the cruelty of the regime was part of the plan. What I hadn't realized is that the cruelty springs from a lack of empathy. I'd be willing to bet that the perpetrators don't consider themselves to be cruel; but I'd also bet they would own up to lacking empathy (at least for anyone beyond their own inner circle). Lacking empathy is the precursor to being cruel, because cruelty is impossible if one possesses empathy.
Earlier you referenced how the Nazis located their death camps outside Germany, and how many Germans were horrified to learn what had been done in their name.
Today you referenced the half million Covid deaths attributed to Trump and MAGA. Now with the cuts to USAID internationally and NHS and CDC nationally how many more deaths globally will be attributed to Trump and the MAGA-GOP when and if their reign of terror is finally ended.
History will judge whether or not Trump will join the pantheon of death merchants such as Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, and Putin.
In Maurice Ogden’s prophetic poem “The Hangman “ when the hangman comes for his final victim who refuses to see his own responsibility for those whom he watched hang in silence, the hangman tells him “none has served me more than you, for I’ve done no more than you let me do,”
How many more outrageous acts of Trump and Elon are you/we going to watch before we stop these “hangman”?
Thom, this conditioned phenomenon brings me to the life of the honey badger. Honey, the sweetest of energies, and the badger, ferocious, fearless, remorseless. The honey badger has very specific genetic and adaptive traits that release its ferocity and seeming lack of empathy, as humans describe the behavior. But these animals have empathy, care for their young, defend their specific territories, and display superior learning skills to both stay alive and adapt.
The Hickman/Rand/TFG trifecta shares, IMO, only one honey badger trait - overarching fear of being killed. Fear is a defensive response to a real or imagined threat. It is driven by the sympathetic nervous system, fight/freeze/flee, in order to 'please' the needs of the parasympathetic nervous system, which demands calm, security, rest, digestion and healing.
It has been shown, in many if not all cases, that the fetus that is developing inside a female uterus is emphatically synchronized to the total reality of the pregnant female, everything in her immediate life and her own in utero/childhood/fecund age experiences. Her life is already loaded with traumas, dramas, perceived and real threats, attainment of safety, calm, rest as well as the fight/freeze/flee memories of her personal experiences.
That she can translate and project all this behavior and memory into the nervous system of her fetus is obvious. It may even go much wider than this - your insights into PUC can back this up - if experiences as memories carry across the entanglement of the QF.
All of us have experienced, at least once, the flood of adrenaline, norepinephrine, cortisol and the barrage of nutrient energies that flood a human if they succeed in beating down or eliminating a threat. It is unnervingly powerful, and instantly seductive. And it can become addictively attractive to others who have never deeply experienced a real combat situation.
Hence the constant emergence of so-called non-empathetic persons, either at birth or later in life. Wannabes covet the merciless attitudes of sadistic psychopaths, being damaged themselves but never reaching the experiential ferocity of a honey badger. The leaders of the wannabes have, in some form, often repeated, experienced the thrill of exacting cruelty and its hormonal high, and they make it their life's work to stay addicted to the vacuous state of being we call un-empathetic, cruel, harsh, brutal, selfish, savage, indifferent and loathesome.
If we had a crystal ball, I am certain it would reveal many deep fearful wounds since conception for TFG, Muck, Hegemonicseth, Homan, and many, many other psychopaths now raging about inside their teacups of unconscious fear.
"Mothering the Mother" was a common theme and practice I heard and saw across cultures in my years as a maternal/child clinical nurse specialist, from Native American to Appalchian to Spanish Migrant to inner city Black Americans. "Whatever MeeMaw is feeling," I was told, "would be felt in the cradle" (and in the womb before that). So mothers MUST be nurtured. It was only in my own white culture that I didn't hear or feel that deep truth. Instead, a pregnant lady was/is still expected to work as long as she could during her pregnancy (and open her own doors), then she was allowed a few weeks off after the birth "to recover," and if she still insisted on breastfeeding, a corner would be provided in the rest room for her to pump on her break. We grow indifference in the USA.
P.S. I read somewhere that Trump's mother was ill after his birth, and he did not have consistent, loving care.
Yes - there was an kind of "abandonment" when his mother was hospitalized for mental illness (maybe depression). His father, himself totally lacking in compassion, did not alter his workaholic schedule to fill in. See Mary Trump's biography "Too Much and Never Enough."
Thank you for adding evidence to this 'long game' of the void of empathy. Trauma is not something easily realized outside of the being experiencing it. And the 'reaction' to it is perhaps stochastic in nature, random, and the responses to it from society can either nurture a healing or expand a damaging event into a setup for more damage, real or imagined. Damage becomes repetitious, urging its own addiction, even setting up a weird kind of Stockholm Syndrome of enjoying or identifying with drama/trauma. Then, whenever a 'low' in the nor-epinephrine cycle occurs, which is narcotic in nature, the 'need' is overwhelming to create another drama/trauma. Persons can become completely habituated to this cycle, and without it become, unbalanced to the point of nihilism.
The only animal without an amygdala is the wolverine. Genetic.
Could you explain what you mean by 'genetic' and what an amygdala has to do with empathy or a lack thereof?
I had to look it up amygdala again, even though I have a Masters Degree in nursing. Research is always discovering other functions of our human anatomy. Briefly: "almond-shaped structure located in the temporal lobe of the brain. It plays a crucial role in processing emotions, particularly fear and anxiety.
Functions of the Amygdala:
Fear and Anxiety Processing:
The amygdala is highly sensitive to potential threats and triggers the body's fight-or-flight response. It processes information from the senses and determines whether a situation is dangerous.
Emotional Learning:
The amygdala is involved in associating experiences with emotions. It helps us learn from positive and negative events and remember them for future situations.
Memory Consolidation:
The amygdala works with the hippocampus to strengthen memories that have a strong emotional component.
Social Interaction:
The amygdala plays a role in processing social cues and understanding the emotions of others.
Reward Processing:
While the amygdala is primarily known for its role in fear, it also contributes to the processing of rewards and positive emotions.
Other Functions:
The amygdala is also involved in, Regulation of aggression, Control of heart rate and blood pressure, and Decision-making.
Importance of the Amygdala:
The amygdala is essential for survival and well-being. It helps us protect ourselves from danger, learn from experiences, and form emotional connections. Dysfunction of the amygdala can lead to various mental health conditions, such as anxiety disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder, and phobias. "
Jesus. Did you have biology in school?
Hello Daniel. There is no need to exercise your amygdala in this response. I was asking what you meant in your somewhat cryptic post, relating 'genetics' to one animal WO this brain center. MaryPat gave a textbook def. of the known features. I also knew most of that, being a biologist/ecologist myself, but are you saying that wolverines are somehow in the same category as humans with no empathy? Is having no empathy genetic, as in empathy is somehow built into DNA in all animals but wolverines? If so, what does that have to do with fascists/Nazis/psychopaths displaying a lack thereof? That was my question to you. I know you are a regular responder, and a very educated and experienced person. But even you can sometimes utter a phrase that needs further elaboration. And although I am a secular fan of the teachings of Jesus, I am not inclined to look to those teachings for why/how a human would behave without empathy. So could you clarify, because I am inclined to trust your observations as having credibility. Thank you.
Mary Pat laid it out for you. Wolverines have absolugtely no fight or flight mechanism.
Some people have genetic predispositions.....
On the subject of lack of empathy: the county in which I reside has been without opioid treatment for severe chronic pain for at least a week now. This has something to do with the new and improved N.I.H. I am told. So many of us are in severe pain and I can see that the object is to get us to die. NO EMPATHY HERE! I, for one, will not give in. With fractured vertebrae in my mid-spine, I will continue as long as possible and not give in to these fuckers. So many people with cancer and injured as am I are going through absolute hell. This is in a very 'blue' state and that may be why. I wish I knew of a way to help us all.
We all want the idiocy of this regime to come to an end, but I cannot imagine how difficult it must be to endure real physical pain at the hands of their cruel incompetence. Your righteous anger may be enough to propel you through this hell. Let's hope we can stop them while there is still something of our government to salvage so we can begin to repair the damage they have done.
Thank you. Believe me that I will carry on both for myself and the others mentioned.