[kawa]

If someone tries to explain stuff based on the "human psyche", it's important to understand that people aren't the same. If someone talks about "we" or "humanity" as a whole, he/she doesn't takes this into consideration - which makes the whole argument questionable.

An estimated 2-5% of all humans are so called "psychopaths", people without the ability to feel empathy for other peoples pain. Those people are at the same time overrepresented as inmates in jails as well as in holders of executive positions. It's totally possible that most violence in human history is a result of those kind of people while the remaining 95-98% are simply victims of those people.

[coldtea]

>If someone tries to explain stuff based on the "human psyche", it's important to understand that people aren't the same.

It's also very important to understand that people are more alike than different.

The "not the same" thing I've found to be mostly based on superficial differences, whereas all the basic imperatives (sex drive, evolutionary instincts, core cultural values, etc are mostly the same wherever).

[kawa]

While people are of course more alike to each other than, for example humans and cows, there are still a lot of differences between single persons. People tend to assume that other think as they do, but that's one of the most common sources for misunderstandings.

There are people who can torture a child to death without feeling the smallest amount of guild (maybe they even find it funny or satisfying), others who could do it with the right amount of indoctrination, others who would only do it if their life is in danger (and would feel horrible afterwards) and others who would rather die than doing it.

And it's not possible to shift a person people into all of those categories, it's mostly inborn (like sexual orientation, hair color, etc).

Sure, all those people have lots of other "basic imperatives" in common, but the small difference that some could inflict as much pain as possible to others without feeling even a little bit guilty is a difference with should have quite severe consequences for society as a whole.

So if we try to understand why there is so much violence in the world, it would be quite an oversight to not take those kind of differences into account.

[XparXnoiAx]

"And it's not possible to shift a person people into all of those categories, it's mostly inborn"

You're making a helluvan assertion there. You're going to need a citation, because psychology has no clue about this.

-signed, A Psychopath

[chillacy]

Are you doubting the results of personality research or that personality is genetic? A simple google search would tell you that there is plenty of evidence that personality is partly genetic:

https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&e...

[XparXnoiAx]

I'm doubting the sentence quoted.

[tremon]

An estimated 2-5% of all humans are so called "psychopaths", people without the ability to feel empathy for other peoples pain

And another 90% have herd mentality, people that can easily mold their personality to match the dominant type in their in-group. There have been numerous studies that show that group mentality can override people's personal moral boundaries.

[viewer5]

90%? Could you please provide a citation for such a large number?

[leereeves]

Psychopathy might be a factor but I don't think the instinct for violence is limited to psychopaths.

Non-psychopaths simply dehumanize their victims to suppress that empathy.

[MawNicker]

Psychopaths have the ability to not feel other people's pain. Super important distinction. Unless you're just hate-mongering. In which case sure, they're as good a scapegoat as any.

[chillacy]

There seems to be some evidence that people who are highly psychopathic do have underlying physiological differences which give rise to reduced empathy: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090804090946.h...

I think we all have the ability to not feel another's pain. For instance, dehumanization is a classic technique in war propaganda.

[MawNicker]

My notion of these people (developmental and increasingly genetic) is that they exist as the scar tissue of humanity. I fear this new propaganda will only leave more scars than the old.