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So...I very seldom experience negative feelings regarding harm that comes to others. What I call my sense of guilt, which may be different from many other people's, is a combination of faster-acting philosophical realizations involving the root-principal that I'm not so different than you and I should assist you and desire you not to suffer, and much slower...kind of...eventually leaking in more emotional realizations and empathetic impulses.
This is usually pretty beneficial. For example, every two weeks I go to movies with my uncle who has frontal lobe dementia. I can just relax and enjoy the movie perfectly easily. My father is quite impressed with my empathy. It's not so much a kind of empathy that takes much work. I just enjoy seeing the kind of action-based movies he enjoys. I haven't reacted in a seriously negative way when any relative has died or become seriously ill ever. I experienced some extreme pain when I was five when my goldfish died, and some extreme pain when my high school and middle school crushes didn't like me back...but over time I learned to see those as very shallow, pointless impulses and just shut them off.
I'm wondering if what happens with many psychopaths...who are pretty much defined by being continuous a-holes, is perhaps that they can also shut off their empathy related emotions like I can, with great ease, but perhaps something traumatic happened to them at a young age (which I fortunately avoided) which pushed them to begin shutting off those empathy-related emotions before they had the ability to develop complex social bonds, and for them to really learn the benefits of being in a society...so perhaps through shutting off their empathy-related emotions at a young age they cut themselves off from the chance of developing into a safe-to-be-around person, and perhaps they would intentionally, or instinctively, switch off those empathy-related emotions to protect themselves from some kind of trauma.
I recently made another thread about me wanting to learn how to feel more guilt (which I need to return to at some point). As a kid, I used to feel tons of guilt...probably excessive guilt in many ways. At the age of five they'd have us sit in time out on the playground, and I'd feel horribly guilty and apologize to the teachers as they passed by. If I'd do bad things at home, I'd often tell my parents about it before they found out about it, because the guilt would feel worse than any punishment.
Eventually I learned to switch all that off. One difficulty is...however...that I'm not sure how to turn it back on yet, to feel as guilty as I'd like to feel...less so than when I was very young, but if I remember correctly, guilt not only provides ideally quick responses to emergencies, but it makes reactions more automatic so the conscious mind doesn't have to slowly, tiringly, contemplate each and every empathy-related behavior.
If psychopaths and/or sociopaths are motivated to switch off their empathy-related emotions at a young age to escape from some trauma...but can't easily switch them back on, that could explain a lot of their behavior.
Another thought I had is that I'm wondering if there is no such thing as a truly empty-inside human being without any capacity for remorse at all. I wonder if it's just lesser and lesser degrees. I read a story about a psychopath who was at a party who didn't have a way back home so he pulled out a gun and stole the car from a mother with a baby. When he was confronted about this he responded, quite passionately, "How else was I supposed to get home?"
I understand how that could seem like he doesn't experience remorse...but he may actually be experiencing remorse, but simply thinking "I better think of a convincing way to get out of this real quick or I'm screwed" and tried to appeal to others' emotions. He may be experiencing remorse, but rather, various selfish-drives simply outweighed it to him. All throughout history people have done quite violent, destructive, behaviors, but gone back their families, and had friends. I'm not entirely convinced completely empty-inside people actually exist, but rather people practicing similar sorts of selective empathy as have been practiced all throughout history, and perhaps just with weaker senses of remorse and consciences.
I really have not researched this as much as I should have though.
I really liked your post, research(ed) or not. Brings to mind a show I saw on NatGeo several years back where a Californian neuroscientist (he might've been from Fremont--from the Bay Area, in any event) learned he had the 'brain of a psychopath'--the show was really interesting as he mused about how he could've turned out much differently than he did. I just googled and found out that his name is James Fallon, which sounds semi-familiar. Here's one of several articles on him; I myself don't have time to read it just now but I plan on doing so later on:
I really liked your post, research(ed) or not. Brings to mind a show I saw on NatGeo several years back where a Californian neuroscientist (he might've been from Fremont--from the Bay Area, in any event) learned he had the 'brain of a psychopath'--the show was really interesting as he mused about how he could've turned out much differently than he did. I just googled and found out that his name is James Fallon, which sounds semi-familiar. Here's one of several articles on him; I myself don't have time to read it just now but I plan on doing so later on:
Part of me wondered if I posted this primarily as a kind of confusing bid for attention that part of my brain had as a goal but wasn't telling most of my brain about, but I'll be damned...my proposed ideas may not necessarily be total crap.
So...I very seldom experience negative feelings regarding harm that comes to others. What I call my sense of guilt, which may be different from many other people's, is a combination of faster-acting philosophical realizations involving the root-principal that I'm not so different than you and I should assist you and desire you not to suffer, and much slower...kind of...eventually leaking in more emotional realizations and empathetic impulses.
....
I understand how that could seem like he doesn't experience remorse...but he may actually be experiencing remorse, but simply thinking "I better think of a convincing way to get out of this real quick or I'm screwed" and tried to appeal to others' emotions. He may be experiencing remorse, but rather, various selfish-drives simply outweighed it to him. All throughout history people have done quite violent, destructive, behaviors, but gone back their families, and had friends. I'm not entirely convinced completely empty-inside people actually exist, but rather people practicing similar sorts of selective empathy as have been practiced all throughout history, and perhaps just with weaker senses of remorse and consciences.
I really have not researched this as much as I should have though.
I think kind of like you do generally.
I'd also add that maybe except for having a trauma, sometimes it's just being unlucky and getting some sort of gene that makes it difficult for people to be, well, people.
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