It is a commonplace that psychopaths are “fearless.” But we are easily bored. Risky, or fear-inducing behavior can be the antidote to such boredom. We can get high on fear. But is this just a psychopath thing? It seems to me that the average person can find fear enjoyable (as long as it’s under control). Why else do people flock to see horror films or go on scary rides at an amusement park? In Huxley’s Brave New World, life was so safe and predictable, they gave simulated experiences with chemicals because it was believed everyone needed a bit of trauma.
The less we experience uncalled for fear, the more we enjoy it or even long for it. There was a club I belonged to called The Suicide Club. It wasn’t for killing oneself. It was for scary and unpredictable experiences. For example, one time the members were “kidnapped” by leaders. We were blindfolded and taken in cars to an abandoned building where we had some sort of scavenger hunt. Another time we planned to go to a weekend visit with Moonies and see if we could be brainwashed. Definitely a group for the edgy. But psychopaths?
An article by Seth Augenstein, Psychopaths Feel Fear, But Not Danger, claims we do feel 
fear but can’t access threats. Of what are we then afraid, I wonder. We don’t notice, he says, “what pressing dangers there are around (us)” but we “do have the capacity, in the long-term, to feel concern and worry for (our) own safety.” I should hope so. Otherwise, I might not have made any plans for my long term security. Oh, wait! I didn’t make many plans for that. Nevertheless, I do take care of my own well being. Although I don’t always 
obey traffic lights, I also don’t step out in front of moving cars. I’m aware of danger but I don’t dwell on it, especially things that can’t be controlled. For example, I can see the possibility of Trump abolishing Social Security and my ending up in a homeless encampment. But I figure, if it happens, it happens. When I take risks, I’m mindful of danger. I guess that’s “fear.” When the worst happens, I’m calm and all about dealing with it. Fear seems to be for the unpredictable or uncontrollable. Action is the perfect antidote to fear. Maybe fear is just about the future. Staying focussed on present time, one needn’t feel fearful.
Charles Manson knew a lot about using fear for enjoyment. Describing the experience of fear when on a creepy crawly mission, he said, “Well, I go into Malibu and I pick a rich house. I don’t steal, I walk into the house and the fear hits you like waves. It’s almost like walking on waves of fear.” He clearly sought fear as a thrill to be courted.
In the UK Channel 4 show, Psychopath Night, Kevin Dutton tests a group of student volunteers and gives the two highest scoring and the two lowest scoring the opportunity to do a bungee jump. The low scorers opted out. The high scorers chose to do the jump. The highest scorer, Ikra, was visibly afraid as she rode up to where she would jump from. Nevertheless, jump, she did and she thoroughly enjoyed the experience.
Yes, fear can be a high when we are the ones who court it. Even when an unwanted threat comes into my life and I feel an undesirable threat, once I’ve overcome the threat, I feel an exhilaration the makes me feel more alive so perhaps I enjoy it retroactively, if that makes any sense. If not, I recall Manson’s words, “No sense makes sense.” Except longing for fear can really mean one is longing for the unknown.
Thomas Harris’ novel, The Red Dragon, is the precursor to Silence of the Lambs. The main character of The Red Dragon is a retired FBI detection named Will Graham. James Fallon, author of The Psychopath Inside, has written that Graham is really a pro-social psychopath. I found Fallon’s view of Graham jarring as it sharply conflicted with my own view.
The book starts out in the beach house where Graham and his wife are leading an idyllic life. Jack Crawford, the senior officer on an current case, is there to persuade Graham to come out of retirement to help him. He says he needs his help as Graham is the best. Graham’s empathy is immediately in evidence. As they sit at a picnic table,
It’s true, of course, that a psychopath can mirror other people in order to manipulate them. But to do it involuntarily with no ulterior motive seems more empathic than psychopathic.
Graham had previously been psychiatrically hospitalized for depression after he killed a perp who had been about to murder someone. Although he shot the to save a woman’s life, he still felt “there must be some way I could have handled it better.” He got so depressed over it, he stopped eating and had to be hospitalized. After he had told his step-son about it, the kid asked him, “Killing somebody, even if you have to do it, it feels that 
bad?” “Willy,” answered Graham, “it’s one of the ugliest things in the world.” Doesn’t sound like a psychopath to me.
Hannibal Lecter, whom Graham caught, certainly either thought Graham was a psychopath or enjoyed taunting him with that possibility. When Graham visits Lecter in prison, enlisting his help, Lecter says, “”You just came here to look at me. Just to get the old scent again, didn’t you? Why don’t you just smell yourself?”
In the course of the story, Lounds becomes a victim of the “tooth fairy” as a plan to use Graham as bait backfires on Lounds. Since Graham and Lounds had bad blood, one could speculate Graham deliberately set Lounds up. The facts are pretty scanty. The news story that they planted to draw the murderer was published in Lounds’ paper, The Tattler. It was accompanied by a photograph of Lounds and Graham. “Dr. Bloom was surprised to see Graham put a comradely hand on Lounds’s shoulder just before Crawford clicked the shutter.” Lecter accused Graham of deliberately setting the murderer on Lounds. Lecter wrote a letter to Graham…
It’s against the nature of a psychopath to “agree with any accusation.” That’s a point for “empath,” I think. So, where do we stand? Fallon and Lecter are squarely on the side of Graham being a psychopath. Thomas Harris is on the side of empath, I think. Will Graham came to a very sad end. His marriage fell apart and the murderer he might have sicked on Lounds ended up getting to him. He lived to wind up in a hospital, knowing his marriage was over. A lot of sacrifice for other people. As a “pro social” psychopath, I would not choose this outcome to save the lives of strangers.
With the advent of psychology and psychiatry, moral judgment of our fellow human beings has been replaced by an attempt to understand them. The concept of “bad” or “evil” has been discarded in favor of “sick” or “crazy.” Of course, there are obvious maniacs who are so bizarre and out of touch with reality that people have never really judged them the way they would normally do. Societies driven by religion could only try to explain insanity in terms of possession by evil spirits. They knew these people were not in control of themselves but still something evil had to be responsible. Instead of evil spirits, we now speak of schizophrenia. Psychiatry didn’t stop there. The field went on to explain other forms of bad behavior on the part of people who were obviously not crazy. Neurosis became a major catchword. The joke was, “The neurotic builds a dream house, the psychotic lives in it and the psychiatrist collects the rent.” We hardly hear the word “neurosis” much any more. But we hear about and talk about personality disorders a great deal. People with these disorders are still thought to suffer from mental 
illness. Only the rare bird tries to combine the language of medicine with the language of morality. M. Scott Peck is a medical doctor who has attempted to do just that. His book, People of the Lie, applies Christian morality to people with personality disorders. His book is subtitled, “The Hope for Healing Human Evil.” This immediately puts psychology, psychiatry and even medicine on a philosophical basis. No more could science dealing with human beings be considered “pure science,” divorced from value judgments. Perhaps that is a more honest approach. Has the science of humanity ever been value-free? There is a school of thought which debunks the whole concept of “mental illness.” Notable in this group is R. D. Laing and Thomas Szasz. This sort of 
questioning leads one perilously close to questioning the reality of even physical disease. Is “disease” merely one way to explain the distress our bodies experiences while coping with a bad diet and other poor lifestyle choices? Holistic medicine comes at least close to exploring that possibility. Nevertheless, we have chosen, as a civilization, to be patients and doctors. The patient submits to the wisdom of the healer and feels safe (or at least hopeful).
Some human behavior has been so disturbing to society that the conflict between the medical framework and a moral one has been perplexing, especially when applied to the field of criminal justice. Society has rules and people break those rules. Some infractions are not too serious while some shake our society to its foundations. Moreover, some of these people reject the idea that they are “ill.”
So, not only does the brain shape behavior, behavior and experience can shape the brain as well. It puts a whole new spin on the “hardware” vs. “software” paradigm. But regardless of the etiology of psychopathy, we know the condition of psychopathy isn’t voluntary. We don’t chose to be psychopaths. We come to know we are psychopaths. But, if the condition isn’t voluntary, what about the actions of a psychopath?
And episode of the TV show, Law and Order: SVU, involves a serial rapist who uses an affirmative defense, claiming he is psychologically impaired by his addiction to pornography. Defense attorneys can’t be blamed for seizing upon any way they can to defend their client. That’s their job. But can society intelligently accept a propensity to commit a crime as an excuse? I think human nature has a built-in propensity to break the rules when there is a reward involved. Understanding the cause of an action doesn’t negate the presence of free will. Of course, there’s a clear distinction between actions that are truly involuntary. Tourette’s Syndrome, sleep walking, epileptic seizures, to give a few examples, cause actions that the free will does not control. But raping someone because of a strong desire is something else again. On the other hand, there are cases like Patty Hearst’s that resulted from actual brainwashing. A better word for brainwashing is coercive persuasion. Patty Hearst broke the law because she had been made to believe that it was her only chance of surviving.
On the philosophical issue of free will vs. determinism, I am firmly on the side of free will. I think confusion results from seeing it as in either-or situation. Free will and determinism work together. Everything has a cause, including our actions. But the fact that our actions have causes doesn’t negate the fact that our choices are freely made in accordance with our will. That’s partially something I experience intuitively. I choose an action and then perform it. The reason I choose A instead of B has causes, I’m sure. But I am still in the center of my will and make the decision.
I agree with this last statement. I don’t think there is real advantage to being considered unable to control what we do. Freedom and responsibility come together. If we are held not morally responsible, we can be confined to psychiatric facilities and lose our civil rights. In England, I understand, psychopaths who commit serious crimes are placed in psychiatric prison hospitals such as 
considered more likely to re-offend. It is fortunately only applied in parole considerations. Parole isn’t a right. It’s a privilege so they can deny parole to whomever they wish. Some authorities actually wish to civilly commit convicts after they have served out their time. That is flat-out unjust. Even more sinister are the murmurs of the possibility of placing electrodes into the brains of psychopaths to change how we think. That gives me the willies. Sure, they could call it voluntary. But giving someone a choice between staying in prison or nuthouse or of getting this “treatment” and going free is making that person an offer he can’t refuse. Bad news. Psychopaths aren’t crazy. We are free. And I’d like to stay that way. Freedom is responsibility. I’m responsible for my choices. If society doesn’t like those choices, it can kiss my psychopathic ass.
On November 8th of this year, the “unthinkable” happened. Donald Trump was elected president. Although his campaign sounded more populist that free-market fundamentalist, his choices for cabinet tell a different story. Liberals and progressives and just plain poor people are deeply concerned about the future. Alternet has an article whose title spells it out: 
Many enemies of Ayn Rand’s philosophy (and there are many) like to call her a “psychopath.” Of course, many of these same people call anyone they disapprove of a “psychopath.” Is she one? Is her philosophy an expression of psychopathy, par excellence?
incompetence, of progress to stagnation — and the subordinating of all life and of all values to the claims of anyone’s suffering.” She does like “benevolence” which consists of acts of good will towards those one likes. But suffering should not entitle anyone to make demands. Only productivity entitles one to anything. Well, lack of empathy is harmonious with the refusal to considering the fact of suffering a moral imperative. Does that mean psychopaths are against the social safety nets? No. Rational recognition that life in a society with safety nets protects us as well as others can make government benefits look desirable for everyone who belongs to the 99%. Ayn Rand equated poverty with inferiority. She believed and preached that those who encounter economic hardship are “incompetent” and lacking in value. My article, 
Her enemies, in addition to denigrating her writing and philosophical strength, made much of an infatuation she had with a serial killer, William Hickman. “Other people do not exist for him, and he does not see why they should,” she wrote, continuing that he had “no regard whatsoever for all that society holds sacred, and with a consciousness all his own. He has the true, innate psychology of a Superman. He can never realize and feel ‘other people.’” The fact that he brutally murdered some little girls doesn’t enter into her description of Hickman, nor does she give any indication that she admired murder. She is said to have modeled the character, Howard Roark of The Fountainhead on Hickman but only his indifference to public opinion seems to have made it into Howard Roark’s 
description. Roark, the architect, was all about producing great buildings. Her mention of the “Superman” in the above quote is a remnant of her earlier attachment to the philosophy of Nietzsche which she had discarded during her We The Living period. There are actually two versions of the latter, one of which shows Nietzsche’s influence and the latter of which does not. Although she admired Hickman’s sublime indifference to other people’s opinions, she didn’t seem to share it.
Her excuse was that she paid into these programs so she deserved to benefit. But, if she really considered these programs a form of robbery, she must not have considered the benefits true recompense for the contributions the beneficiaries put into the program. If that were true, after all, the programs could not be compared to bank robbery at all but, instead, to withdrawing one’s own savings from from the bank. And she didn’t collect under the 
name of Ayn Rand. She used her married name, Mrs. Frank O’Connor. She didn’t want the public, including her followers, to know she collected Medicare and Social Security, just as she didn’t want them to know she got lung cancer from smoking. She had always glorified smoking. All her followers emulated her. She denied that smoking caused cancer and insisted that cancer came from a defect of character. Once she found out she had the disease, she put out her cigarette and never smoked again. But refused, when asked, to make a public statement warning others about the dangers of smoking. She probably still believed smoking came from a deficit in her character of which she was ashamed. That’s more narcissistic than psychopathic. Her classes in Objectivism which were attended by worshipful admirers provided all the narcissistic supply a narc could ever want. She became increasingly intolerant of disagreement among her friends. She discarded them one by one on grounds of even trivial differences. She ended life cut off from all but the few who were completely submissive. Expressing disgust at the collective stupidity of the masses, she fastidiously withdrew from public life, condescending only to put out a newsletter that was her unchallenged word dispensed to the faithful.
Critics of Trump are divided on whether to call him a narc or a ‘path. His ruthlessness seems psychopathic but his constant bragging and idealization of himself are very narcissistic. His candidacy didn’t focus very much on a clear-cut ideology. Instead, he urged the voters to believe in him as the solution. He would “make America great again.” Once he could do it.
Empathy, what does the word actually mean?
Empathy is hailed as a keystone of human togetherness, the cradle of human morality. Allegedly it is the typical human ability necessary to make one a functioning member of society. It’s lack is associated — if not equated — with evil and antisocial behavior.
Instead, the fact that understanding what is going on in the other person also can lead to comprehension/insight regarding his behavior and his actual life-situation, is devalued. Cognitive empathy is, by definition, not bound to emotion. It is a neutral understanding of the other person’s feelings. It is based, as the name immediately suggests, on analytical thought/mental processing.
Cognition represents the collective term for the mental vigor of humans. Cognitive science designates/indicates it the sum of all information-processing and structures of an intelligent system — in other words — intelligence itself. Bertelsmann lexicon defines cognition as an umbrella-term for all mental processes required to understand and cope with a situation.
This new level is in the realm of abstraction, where we discover our sensual experiences a second time in form of a mental thought construct — our whole world/reality for what it is — depending on what we think, know, or believe about it. Emotional empathy is a social reflex — it makes one feel literally at one with the other person, putting oneself into his shoes
And it does make sense — or, it would make sense, if, after birth, we had been brought up in a healthy sociotope, as we are shaped and stamped fundamentally throughout it in our first few years of life.
Usually the mother the mother resonates to her child in a appropriate way, she is sharing its joy, and the kid shares her compersion — so its own joy is thereby amplified.
Additionally, up until the age of three, the kid is not able to differ between the mother and itself. It experiences them as a unit, as one being. Only when it starts to address itself as I, can it have stepped out of the symbiosis and developed an individually shaped personality. But, as the child was not aware that the feeling of having been refused, or hugely stressed, had nothing to do with him — that it just came from his mother — the permanent presence of two contradictory emotions at the same time, this permanent dissonance without any given reason causes faulty circuits in the net of neurons, it is basically malfunctioning from the first step into its aware being.
Also it qualifies as prove that there is no coherence whatsoever between empathy and morality — an allegation that happens to be a keystone of the whole empathy-movement, by the way. Being a good human has nothing to do with empathy.
Indeed studies have established, that during the emphatic processes admittedly similar neuronal patterns fire in both persons brains — but they activate predominantly neutrons, that are responsible for motions. That indeed motions are mirrored gets obvious in this picture of a soccer-match please note the body language of the player and the watching crowd.
empathy is the precondition for morality and altruism, while the so-called evil only can arise, when your suffer from a lack of it. There are thousands of books out there, preaching empathy in every possible context. Every human knows what is right or wrong, we do not need empathy for that.
It is a known fact, that people give for one human more than for five — only if they are shown a face and a name. Similar distorted perceptions can be triggered with mass-shootings. Mass-shootings create huge emotional responses, because media will always add a pic of a crying mother, who has lost her child on such an event.
It has been proven, that criminals will be sentenced to death the more frequently, the darker their skin color was — but independent from the crimes, they committed. Interesting is the fact, that even people who have dark colored skin themselves, judged the right person on this picture to death, not the one on the left side — that’s how deep the prejudice about black people is rooted in our emotional system.
Quite revealing is the story of Leslie Jamison, who originally was convinced, that the best doctors will have the most empathy, and vice versa. She rather put herself out for this reason in a very ambitious way — until she suddenly became severely sick and so experienced her theory suddenly as a real patient instead of just her theoretical construct about it. Her Odyssey led to a radical conversion of her disposition. She found out that she felt herself in good hands with doctors who had a complete different type of personality than she had expected. To quote Leslie: 
Tania Singer worked together with Buddhist monks on researching about moral competence and social behavior, they in fact can look back at a really long experience and data, that they collected over nearly 20 years from their work. Fifty percent of the people were trained in empathy, the usual emotional empathy, where you are told to put yourself into the others shoes, the other fifty percent were trained in Compassion instead. Compassion is defined as Empathy from some distance – so you are not emotionally involved, but you understand the problem of the other person.
Our appendix may serve for an example: Having played a central role for digestion, in times before some profound dietary change took place bin the lives of our ancestors, which led to its regression.
My friend, Lucky Otter, brought my attention to a movement I didn’t really know much about, the Positive Thinking Movement. I knew, of course, that some people try to always think positive but I had no idea it was a movement. Otter pointed out the negative side of this way of thinking. It discourages one from acknowledging, not only our own pain, but the pain of others and was, therefore, counter-empathetic. Some of these people go so far as to 
blame the unfortunate by suggesting that their misfortune was a direct result of negative thinking. Now, it is possible for negative attitudes to draw misfortune to someone. But to think all misfortune is the result of negativity or the converse, that all good fortune is the result of positive thinking is more wish than reason. It is especially absurd to see Christians indulge in such nonsense. I would suggest they re-read the Book of Job.
That said, I think there is a lot of good in choosing to be happy. Yes, happiness is, to a large extent, a choice. The proof is the demeanor of some of the most downtrodden people you could meet who still manage to be surprisingly cheerful. I have noticed something strange about wealth (and poverty). No matter how much (or little) someone has, s/he often feels poor. I have heard wealthy men bitch about how little they have, how much their kids’ private school is costing them, yada yada. And they really mean it. Because no matter how much we have, our spending and expectations expand to consume it. I worked in a rehab for drug addicts. The women there had nothing. Most were on Welfare. But they still managed to enjoy life, they would put on a tune while cleaning up the place, and show a joy that was palpable. I do think we can choose happiness most of the time.
Personally, I try to stay in a good mood. I find things to do that make me happy. My 
The pervasive attitude of society is that empathy is a wonderful thing. Those who have it are a lot more virtuous than those who don’t. Not everyone agrees. An article in the New York Times, Empathy is Actually a Choice, says “a growing chorus of critics, inspired by findings like those above, depict empathy as a source of moral failure. In the words of the psychologist Paul Bloom, empathy is a ‘parochial, narrow-minded’ emotion — one that ‘will have to yield to reason if humanity is to survive.'”
James Fallon has spoken about the ability of psychopaths to make choices that empaths are unable to. His famous 
It’s about time someone pointed out the ultimate selfishness of empathy, the self-indulgence of it. It’s a feel-good drug. But it’s the only drug that enables the addict to speak from a high moral ground. I prefer the drug of grandiosity. I may be selfish and self-indulgent but at least I’m not posing in a white hat.
CLUSTER B 