Lack of Empathy is a Symptom of Brain Damage.
Did you read this story?
Empathy is hard-wired into the mind, study finds
People with a certain type of brain damage showed less aversion to hurting others.
By Denise Gellene, LA Times Staff Writer.
My take away on the article? People with healthy brains have empathy. Empathy is the normal response in certain moral situations that involving others.
Let that sink in.
So if you have NO empathy or little empathy you are not normal. In fact, it could be a sign of brain damage.
I read a story in one of the lad mags a while ago about the methods they use to turn people into fighting machines and killers. They found that they had to work very hard and had to redesign their training to defeat the NORMAL human empathy in someone's brain before they would consistently kill someone. In computer terms, they had to erase the normal empathy program and put a new killing program in place. There are only a tiny percentage of people who they didn't have to work with to overcome their aversion to killing others.
I'll repeat it again: The default normal health brain is the one with empathy. The brain that lacks empathy for others is the sick brain.
Seven Questions About Empathy To Ask Yourself
Now think about these people who demonstrate, through their words and actions, this profound lack of empathy for other humans.
How have we been convinced that these people are normal?
Who's job is it to train the public to overcome their aversion to killing others?
Maybe some people are overdue for brain scans.
Empathy is hard-wired into the mind, study finds
People with a certain type of brain damage showed less aversion to hurting others.
By Denise Gellene, LA Times Staff Writer.
My take away on the article? People with healthy brains have empathy. Empathy is the normal response in certain moral situations that involving others.
Let that sink in.
So if you have NO empathy or little empathy you are not normal. In fact, it could be a sign of brain damage.
I read a story in one of the lad mags a while ago about the methods they use to turn people into fighting machines and killers. They found that they had to work very hard and had to redesign their training to defeat the NORMAL human empathy in someone's brain before they would consistently kill someone. In computer terms, they had to erase the normal empathy program and put a new killing program in place. There are only a tiny percentage of people who they didn't have to work with to overcome their aversion to killing others.
The study, funded by the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation and private sources, suggests that an aversion to hurting others is hard-wired into the brain.
I'll repeat it again: The default normal health brain is the one with empathy. The brain that lacks empathy for others is the sick brain.
"It's a hell of a thing, killing a man."
--Will Munny (Clint Eastwood) The Unforgiven
Seven Questions About Empathy To Ask Yourself
- Which political party represents a lack of empathy for others?
- Which group of people in public promote their lack of empathy for others?
- Who mocks empathy?
- Who sees empathy as a "weakness" instead of the normal state of a healthy brain?
- Which people not only don't have an aversion to hurting others, but encourage hurting people and joke about people who are hurt?
Now think about these people who demonstrate, through their words and actions, this profound lack of empathy for other humans.
How have we been convinced that these people are normal?
Who's job is it to train the public to overcome their aversion to killing others?
Maybe some people are overdue for brain scans.
12 Comments:
Is it possible to kill your own soul?
The problem is that the more a person practices a lack of compassion for others the more damaged they become. If this deficiency is reinforced with daily hate sessions on the radio or television the faster the result - a damaged human being incapable of reasonable thought or compassion.
Carl Jung mentioned "psychic epidemics" as the "supreme danger" to individuals and states. He stated "The greatest danger of all comes from the masses, in whom the effects of the unconscious pile up cumulatively and reasonableness of the conscious mind is stifled." (CW18, PAR. 1358)
Jung's warning came in the twentieth century during the rise of Nazism and Stalinism. What has been revealed by this new data is a microcosm of the current wave of "psychic epidemics" we now face.
Another question: can this problem be controlled by modern medicine?
Will we someday invent a sort of "prozac" that helps people to restore their lost sense of empathy?
Check out http://killology.com/index.htm
The Army has succeeded in breaking down the inhibitions to killing since WW2.
Uh, Spocko...
I'm actually brain-damaged. I don't, in fact, have a medically "healthy" or "normal" brain. There's nothing wrong with my sense of empathy, however. In fact, I probably have a heightened sense of empathy when compared to a lot of people, who seem to have empathy right up until it crosses their "tribal" boundaries.
While I would agree that there are likely areas of the brain that one can damage that would contribute to a lack of empathy, much as the patient known as "H.M." lost his ability to form new memories entirely when his hippocampus was extracted in experimental surgery in 1953, I'm not enough of a structuralist (in fact, I'm practically living proof that brain structuralism has its limits) to suggest that empathy has a strictly location-bound origin in the brain. Most likely it's an emergent behaviour arising from the complex relationship between brain structure, the biomechanics of cognition, and the sort of social dynamics that shape our collective experience.
(I really hope that alienbenefactor was not serious in their first question, and invoking Jung here seems to be irrelevant, since the question is the biomechanical bases of cognition. Better to talk about Penfield, if we want to go back to the pioneers in the field.)
Interobang,
I was serious. It's a good question. Substitute the word psyche for soul if you are uncomfortable.
Concerning the practicing of a lack of compassion, there has been a good deal of research showing that learning actually changes the brain physically. Compassion, or the lack thereof, can be learned. So in effect you become what you learn.
Mentioning Jung's take on psychic epidemics here might not have fit with a purely physical model of cognition but was intended to present the possibility that if the number of "damaged" individuals in a society reaches some sort of tipping point dire things could be in store.
I don't subscribe to a purely physical model of human existence. There is a real danger in describing us as meat machines. There are serious implications concerning human rights and liberty if all we are gets reduced to a pile of organs. I would think that you, of all people would find some sympathy with this. The fact that you retain empathy in spite of your physical damage is revealing. Maybe you are more than the sum of your parts?
Interobang,
I was serious. It's a good question. Substitute the word psyche for soul if you are uncomfortable.
Concerning the practicing of a lack of compassion, there has been a good deal of research showing that learning actually changes the brain physically. Compassion, or the lack thereof, can be learned. So in effect you become what you learn.
Mentioning Jung's take on psychic epidemics here might not have fit with a purely physical model of cognition but was intended to present the possibility that if the number of "damaged" individuals in a society reaches some sort of tipping point dire things could be in store.
I don't subscribe to a purely physical model of human existence. There is a real danger in describing us as meat machines. There are serious implications concerning human rights and liberty if all we are gets reduced to a pile of organs. I would think that you, of all people would find some sympathy with this. The fact that you retain empathy in spite of your physical damage is revealing. Maybe you are more than the sum of your parts?
Interobang,
I was serious. It's a good question. Substitute the word psyche for soul if you are uncomfortable.
Concerning the practicing of a lack of compassion, there has been a good deal of research showing that learning actually changes the brain physically. Compassion, or the lack thereof, can be learned. So in effect you become what you learn.
Mentioning Jung's take on psychic epidemics here might not have fit with a purely physical model of cognition but was intended to present the possibility that if the number of "damaged" individuals in a society reaches some sort of tipping point dire things could be in store.
I don't subscribe to a purely physical model of human existence. There is a real danger in describing us as meat machines. There are serious implications concerning human rights and liberty if all we are gets reduced to a pile of organs. I would think that you, of all people would find some sympathy with this. The fact that you retain empathy in spite of your physical damage is revealing. Maybe you are more than the sum of your parts?
Interobang,
I was serious. It's a good question. Substitute the word psyche for soul if you are uncomfortable.
Concerning the practicing of a lack of compassion, there has been a good deal of research showing that learning actually changes the brain physically. Compassion, or the lack thereof, can be learned. So in effect you become what you learn.
Mentioning Jung's take on psychic epidemics here might not have fit with a purely physical model of cognition but was intended to present the possibility that if the number of "damaged" individuals in a society reaches some sort of tipping point dire things could be in store.
I don't subscribe to a purely physical model of human existence. There is a real danger in describing us as meat machines. There are serious implications concerning human rights and liberty if all we are gets reduced to a pile of organs. I would think that you, of all people would find some sympathy with this. The fact that you retain empathy in spite of your physical damage is revealing. Maybe you are more than the sum of your parts?
This post has been removed by the author.
Oh Alienbenfactor, blogger is acting up I'll remove you extra posts.
Interrobang. Well I have brain damage too, (taking it out of my body and putting it back in wasn't a perfect process, I would raise my hand instead of crossing my legs for weeks after Dr. McCoy put me back together wrong. Luckily with the neuroplasticity of my mind I was able to retrain new neural pathways to cross my leg again. Like a stroke victim who has to regain the power of speech. It's easier for kids, but it is possible.)
The thoughts that fire together, wire together.
And as alienbenefactor says, the process of thinking DOES change the physical structure of the brain. Memories are based on some sort of chemical interaction in the brain. Using FMRI we are starting to see where the brain stores information and it STILL isn't a perfect process, for example they have the whole issue of very very tiny quantum flux at the synapse level. Where we need to look at processes using quantum physics and not simple mechanical meat machine processes.
And I think about an issue that got brought up in the book on the neuroplacticity of the brain. Is there a quantum part of our "mind" (not brain) that exists in a space that is not simply contained in our brain? (Soul?)
And as we know from quantum entanglement studies that things at the quantum level don't have the same problems with transmission over great distances. So when you are depressed in Canada, I can feel it in San Francisco if we have quantum entangled brain functions. And the connection doesn't degrade over distance like other transmission methods do (unless they use amplifiers an other methods)
I'm not an expert on this topic. But I think that one point I wanted to make about this study is that the neocon mind set, is not only WRONG, but it may in fact be wrong because of a physical structural defect. And it may also be wrong because of learning as alienbenfactor points out. But I want people to have evidence that Empathy, rather than being a bizarre thing only existing in a few people is in fact a very common thing. And the neocons who have no empathy are messed up, whether or not it is because of being influenced by others or by brain damage.
In fact the ones who CHOSE to have empathy because they are given "Permission" to be free of it by the people like Rush, are really sad.
And the army, as Rich points out, knows how to do this to people. Rush Limbaugh knows that giving people permission to bring out their inner asshole is a powerful tool.
It doesn't take a lot to encourage children to be selfish, and if most people's default is empathy, neocons have to work to overcome that by appealing to something else, like their selfishness.
They give people permission to bring out their inner Archie Bunker and work to make that asshole Normal and acceptable. And since they want to appeal to the men in the audience, they also tie being an asshole to being a STRONG man.
One thing that is especially painful is that often times the neocons coopt the civilizing effect of society by ignoring the best examples of major religious beliefs. Instead they team up with extremists in religion who care more for power than for peace, more for hate than healing, more for "the law" than for love. And the sickest part is they call themselves Christians.
Cannabis helps restore neuroplasticity, this is also why it is more effective than prescription drugs for treating diseases of aging like Alzheimer's.
"Will we someday invent a sort of "prozac" that helps people to restore their lost sense of empathy?"--Shrimplate
The simple answer to this question is no.Lack of empathy and compassion are characteristics of the pathology of the personality disorder that causes the patient to maintain an apathetic state of mind as far as humanity is involved.
In other words if a human is in conflict with one who exhibits strong traits, which for our purpose we will call a sociopath,or psychopath,that person could be in grave danger unless he/she is willing to negotiate his/her position, even reverse it.Many of these folks have been known to operate from very high levels in all three branches of our government.
When conflict arises the sociopath has little tolerance for the truth,and the person in conflict may be smeared,scapegoated, family threatened,job threatened,or a number of other violent events could occur.Some of the favorites include staged suicide,often without a note or any meaningful reason,an unexplained airplane crash that seems not to get a thorough investigation by NTSB,and sometimes a good old fashioned murder by unsub unknown.
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