That was fun. Been doing a bit of reading myself and come across many such leaps of rhetoric. Scientific research these days may not even distinguish between rhetoric and empirical method.
Being left handed, I definitely had to come read for a laugh 😂
Just the excerpts were ridiculous enough that I have to wonder how you got through reading that article before tuning it out and tossing it in the bin.
Left handedness... growing up in the late 70's/80's I encountered a teacher in 1st grade that refused to let me write with my left hand. Every time I would switch back to my left, she would scold me, take the pencil out of my left hand, and put it in my right. She caused me so much frustration that I ended up being held back a grade. In the end, I did become ambidextrous in many ways, so possibly a win? I've been told on several occasions about the rarity of left handedness and the fact that supposedly more than 50% of prison populations tend to be left handed is suspicion to deviancy. I have to wonder if their data comes from morons like the one who wrote that article.
The 'powers at be' target emotions when trying to push a worldview on the masses. If amongst us, there's people that feel none (or are completely detached from them), better portray them as the most vile creatures in existence, lest people become healthily curious about them and learn a thing or two.
Tangentially related: Lately I have been considering psychopathy from an evolutionary standpoint.
We know certain genetic traits will increase in frequency within a given population if they provide some sort of fitness advantage, which is generally answerable to the organism's environment. Genetic traits which place its carriers at a disadvantage will eventually be selected against and eliminated from the population. Genetic traits which do not influence survival one way or another are impervious to the cutting blade of natural selection.
We know psychopathy is "nature" and not "nurture" -- it is genetic. I do think one could probably make the case for it being a "neutral" trait, but to my knowledge it doesn't seem like there would be much of a compelling argument in that direction.
I think psychopathy is very clearly a fitness enhancer, but only up to a certain point. If every human were a psychopath, our species would be utterly dysfunctional. Individually, we are not very effective survivalists. Humanity's greatest trick is our (somewhat faulty, but adequate) ability to coordinate our efforts toward achieving some shared goal.
Still, one does not require much insight into the ancestral environment to realize why, on an individual level, psychopathy would be tremendously advantageous. It just so happens that the emotional bonds we form with one another, which allow us to perceive the deep personal stake we hold in each other's wellbeing without having to think about it, can also become very harmful to our survival individually. Grief, for example, is the natural consequence of bonding + loss. Grief is profoundly disorienting, and in the ancestral environment anything disorienting was a threat to survival. Therefore, humans and other social primates have developed cultural rituals to help us deal with the stress of grieving our losses. For psychopaths, this is unnecessary. The loss of in-group members does not trigger a stress response in the first place.
I think the evolutionary advantages of psychopathy become even clearer when we consider the phenomenon of human reproduction: it is massively inconvenient; children are basically worthless on their own merits to group survival and indeed were generally more of a liability in the ancestral environment (a screaming baby isn't going to hush simply because there's a hungry tiger nearby -- no, for the sake of group survival the mother under those circumstances would have been expected to hush the baby "by whatever means necessary"). Also, even today children are always, strictly speaking, a non-contributing resource drain and a significant "group investment" into its own future. Still, the prospects of the next generation probably would not have provided enough of an immediate incentive for humans to keep having babies, if not for the overwhelming power of our emotional bonds.
On the other hand, childbirth in the ancestral environment often killed the mother and the child both. For most of human history, if I remember correctly, the death rate for newborn infants hovered somewhere very close to 50%, and mothers fared far worse than they do today as well. In a subsistence culture where survival was already a daily struggle and every single in-group member played a direct role in sustaining the whole, the loss of a young, healthy adult woman of child bearing age (who had herself already cost the group significant resources to raise from childhood) could be devastating to the group in brutally practical terms, let alone emotional. Consequently, humans have long experimented with various forms of primitive birth control in order to "head off" the problem of an inconveniently timed birth. If nothing else, as a last resort, if the mother's energies or the group's resources simply could not be reasonably spared for the benefit of a single child, well...the child would simply have to go.
As I'm sure you can imagine, this reality was devastating to the mothers, who -- along with other, older women -- were generally the ones expected to "do away with" the problematic baby.
Interestingly, we sometimes see new mothers reporting, even today, a sense of detachment from their newborn infants. There are recorded cases throughout history of women who let their newborn babies die of starvation out of sheer disinterest in them.
Our culture punishes this sort of maternal negligence, but one does wonder if there is an evolutionary/survival component involved that would have made it useful in the ancestral environment.
In any case, clearly emotional detachment from others seems like a survival advantage at an individual level, especially in an environment where life was fairly cruel to humans in a non-negotiable way from beginning to end. But at the group level, I think it would be fatally harmful.
Interesting article. I had no idea that being left-handed was still taboo. I was ambidextrous as a child, but had an easier time writing with my left hand, so went with it. My cousin was not allowed to be left-handed, as my uncle had some superstitions about it.
Good grief, I had no idea. That left handedness was considered a problem only a generation ago is a huge embarrassment, but that anyone still thinks it's any kid of thing at all just beggars belief. You might be right about the research grants!
Apr 15, 2022·edited Apr 15, 2022Liked by Athena Walker
The thing I have been seeing more and more is psychopath being tossed around as a pejorative to insult political/cultural opponents. It's annoying to see some knob presenting their case that their enemies are teaching people to become psychopaths especially since a psychopath would be immune to the mind games that are being played.
There are plenty of mental contagions in the culture but psychopathy isn't one of them
That was fun. Been doing a bit of reading myself and come across many such leaps of rhetoric. Scientific research these days may not even distinguish between rhetoric and empirical method.
Being left handed, I definitely had to come read for a laugh 😂
Just the excerpts were ridiculous enough that I have to wonder how you got through reading that article before tuning it out and tossing it in the bin.
Left handedness... growing up in the late 70's/80's I encountered a teacher in 1st grade that refused to let me write with my left hand. Every time I would switch back to my left, she would scold me, take the pencil out of my left hand, and put it in my right. She caused me so much frustration that I ended up being held back a grade. In the end, I did become ambidextrous in many ways, so possibly a win? I've been told on several occasions about the rarity of left handedness and the fact that supposedly more than 50% of prison populations tend to be left handed is suspicion to deviancy. I have to wonder if their data comes from morons like the one who wrote that article.
The 'powers at be' target emotions when trying to push a worldview on the masses. If amongst us, there's people that feel none (or are completely detached from them), better portray them as the most vile creatures in existence, lest people become healthily curious about them and learn a thing or two.
Tangentially related: Lately I have been considering psychopathy from an evolutionary standpoint.
We know certain genetic traits will increase in frequency within a given population if they provide some sort of fitness advantage, which is generally answerable to the organism's environment. Genetic traits which place its carriers at a disadvantage will eventually be selected against and eliminated from the population. Genetic traits which do not influence survival one way or another are impervious to the cutting blade of natural selection.
We know psychopathy is "nature" and not "nurture" -- it is genetic. I do think one could probably make the case for it being a "neutral" trait, but to my knowledge it doesn't seem like there would be much of a compelling argument in that direction.
I think psychopathy is very clearly a fitness enhancer, but only up to a certain point. If every human were a psychopath, our species would be utterly dysfunctional. Individually, we are not very effective survivalists. Humanity's greatest trick is our (somewhat faulty, but adequate) ability to coordinate our efforts toward achieving some shared goal.
Still, one does not require much insight into the ancestral environment to realize why, on an individual level, psychopathy would be tremendously advantageous. It just so happens that the emotional bonds we form with one another, which allow us to perceive the deep personal stake we hold in each other's wellbeing without having to think about it, can also become very harmful to our survival individually. Grief, for example, is the natural consequence of bonding + loss. Grief is profoundly disorienting, and in the ancestral environment anything disorienting was a threat to survival. Therefore, humans and other social primates have developed cultural rituals to help us deal with the stress of grieving our losses. For psychopaths, this is unnecessary. The loss of in-group members does not trigger a stress response in the first place.
I think the evolutionary advantages of psychopathy become even clearer when we consider the phenomenon of human reproduction: it is massively inconvenient; children are basically worthless on their own merits to group survival and indeed were generally more of a liability in the ancestral environment (a screaming baby isn't going to hush simply because there's a hungry tiger nearby -- no, for the sake of group survival the mother under those circumstances would have been expected to hush the baby "by whatever means necessary"). Also, even today children are always, strictly speaking, a non-contributing resource drain and a significant "group investment" into its own future. Still, the prospects of the next generation probably would not have provided enough of an immediate incentive for humans to keep having babies, if not for the overwhelming power of our emotional bonds.
On the other hand, childbirth in the ancestral environment often killed the mother and the child both. For most of human history, if I remember correctly, the death rate for newborn infants hovered somewhere very close to 50%, and mothers fared far worse than they do today as well. In a subsistence culture where survival was already a daily struggle and every single in-group member played a direct role in sustaining the whole, the loss of a young, healthy adult woman of child bearing age (who had herself already cost the group significant resources to raise from childhood) could be devastating to the group in brutally practical terms, let alone emotional. Consequently, humans have long experimented with various forms of primitive birth control in order to "head off" the problem of an inconveniently timed birth. If nothing else, as a last resort, if the mother's energies or the group's resources simply could not be reasonably spared for the benefit of a single child, well...the child would simply have to go.
As I'm sure you can imagine, this reality was devastating to the mothers, who -- along with other, older women -- were generally the ones expected to "do away with" the problematic baby.
Interestingly, we sometimes see new mothers reporting, even today, a sense of detachment from their newborn infants. There are recorded cases throughout history of women who let their newborn babies die of starvation out of sheer disinterest in them.
Our culture punishes this sort of maternal negligence, but one does wonder if there is an evolutionary/survival component involved that would have made it useful in the ancestral environment.
In any case, clearly emotional detachment from others seems like a survival advantage at an individual level, especially in an environment where life was fairly cruel to humans in a non-negotiable way from beginning to end. But at the group level, I think it would be fatally harmful.
Wowie zowie, thanks for writing this.
Interesting article. I had no idea that being left-handed was still taboo. I was ambidextrous as a child, but had an easier time writing with my left hand, so went with it. My cousin was not allowed to be left-handed, as my uncle had some superstitions about it.
Good grief, I had no idea. That left handedness was considered a problem only a generation ago is a huge embarrassment, but that anyone still thinks it's any kid of thing at all just beggars belief. You might be right about the research grants!
The thing I have been seeing more and more is psychopath being tossed around as a pejorative to insult political/cultural opponents. It's annoying to see some knob presenting their case that their enemies are teaching people to become psychopaths especially since a psychopath would be immune to the mind games that are being played.
There are plenty of mental contagions in the culture but psychopathy isn't one of them
My brother is left handed and he is what you call neurotypical.
Well being genetic is also said about my illnes shizophrenia.