Edit: I don’t mean someone that will sacrifice their life for yours, more someone who would go out of their way to rush you to the hospital or something
Edit: I don’t mean someone that will sacrifice their life for yours, more someone who would go out of their way to rush you to the hospital or something
You’re right in that the majority of people have terrible judgement, not everyone has training to recognize personality traits and often make horrible assumptions. But at the core of it, if you strive for a society with as little conflict as possible, you require the general to care about the general.
A narcissistic psychopath is inherently, by definition, incapable of doing that naturally. They can mask and imititate but left to their own devices they will always be a detriment to society as a whole. Narcissism, lack of empathy and remorse, manipulation are all grouped as Anti-Social Personality Disorders for a reason.
They aren’t anti-social in the sense that they don’t like to party, they are anti-social in the sense that their goals do not align with a properly functioning society.
Fortunately in your example, the general can still serve the general as anti-social personality disorders will always be in the minority especially if that society functions properly for the general welfare of its people. As for doing it naturally, we naturally live in hunter-gatherer bands. Society is fully socially constructed and requires all of us to resist many aspects of our natures for it to function in a way that benefits us.
What I am arguing for is that these individuals are honestly acknowledged for their tendencies and deficits so that they can get the help they need while serving in a capacity which limits their ability to harm others due to their negligence and benefits others by utilizing their strengths. A psychopath can understand that it is in their self-interest to live in a stable friendly society. Honestly I don’t personally know to integrate a full-blown narcissist, but I expect it’s possible. I don’t think it’s possible or advisable to make any effort to remove all psychopaths and narcissists from society since eugenic thinking is responsible for many of the worst atrocities in human history.
Do you see any current day examples of how a minority of people acting with machevellianism can rise to positions of power because they are willing to trample everyone in their path with complete disregard for human life?
Yes, our system is cutrently built for that. An optimal system wouldn’t allow for it. We have obviously not discovered the optimal system yet but we can identify the fundamental issues of our present systems. Prison is another fundamentally flawed system which causes a lot of its own problems. I would prefer a victim focused restorative model to imprisoning groups of people based on diagnostic critera written by people who think you need to imprison groups of people based on diagnostic critera.
The system is built by the society, the rules they enforce. The purpose of a prison system should be to separate the bad apples from the good, rehabilitate the ones we can and keep the lost causes away from vulnerable people. I’m sure you know that this hasn’t been enforced very well, especially when it comes to the most sensitive positions of power.
I’m not saying we should try to prevent crimes that haven’t happened by locking people up right away, I’m saying we should take sociopathic tendencies a bit more seriously and address them directly with trained professionals rather than waiting for them to cause damage. That would require judging people’s character.
If you’ve ever been the innocent victim of any crimes I think you would likely say you wish someone saw the signs earlier, and if the criminal doesn’t get more than a slap on the hand you would likely agree that our society is corrupt and broken. That it would seem the end goal is not to protect the herd, but rather provide a facade for evil to hide behind.
This is where we agree. If every narcissist, sociopath, psychopath, pedophile, etc could be open about their tendencies and receive specialized assistance and accommodation before they commit a crime due to mismanaged illness it would be ideal. The only thing I disagree about is that these are not representations of internal character but are illnesses. For example, the pedophile who gets accommodation and doesn’t go near children is doing less evil and probably has a better character than a preacher who uses his position to abuse young boys because he likes the feeling of power but isn’t a pedophile (this happens).
I have indeed been the innocent victim of narcissistic abuse. It would indeed have been much better if my parents worked through their trauma before me or during my childhood rather than never. Narcissistic tendencies weren’t considered dangerous when they were young though, as evidenced by almost the entire boomer generation. If we were living in stronger communities cooperating with one another instead of competing, I think those narcissistic tendencies either never would have existed to begin with or would have been recognized and counterbalanced by other community members. I do not think I would have been better off if they were punished, but it’s likely it would have made my situation worse. At this point I’m more concerned with my own well-being than getting retribution.
I think evil behavior should be denounced and everyone should be encouraged in every way on every level to do good rather than evil to one another. I want to be clear that I am expressing that no one has the excuse of their poor internal nature to do evil things. Everyone is capable of both good and evil and everyone regardless of their condition is fully responsible for their behavior. There’s no obfuscating evil in my arguments. I am arguing that the social structure supporting instead of preventing and/or condemning these evil behaviors is the problem rather than some people being good and others being evil.
An illness can be defined as something acquired whereas chemical imbalances, brains wired differently than “average” are inherent. Think of it as diabetes type 1 and 2. One you are born with and the other is one you develope.
A pedophile who does not act on their impulses is the same as a psychopath masking their personality. They are inhibiting who they are and if not given the proper support and monitoring will cause damage to others.
Historical psychopathy is a whole other issue which we would need to discuss lead poisoning.
I’m not promoting retribution, I stated rehabilitation and professional help a couple times. I’m not arguing with you, I am trying to understand why you believe people should not be judged yet understand there are natural born killers in society.