Forward Boldly — Devil in the City of Angels

An LA cop's encounters with evil.

Jesse Romero was a sheriff in Los Angeles for 20 years — a career that took him to dark and disturbing places. It was his frightening encounters with the preternatural that kick-started his Catholic faith.

Feel free to write Christine with your topic suggestions, feedback, questions, tips, or concerns anytime at forwardboldly at churchmilitant dot com.

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@adam-l

I'm sure many neurotypicals can do that, no problem. You don't need psychopaths for that.

This is not the case.

Note that in this case, I do not say "I think you are incorrect." or "I disagree." I am willing to be more dogmatic. The facts are in on this one. The historical evidence is there, the research is there. For a full overview, I refer to you to Grossman's classic work, "On Killing", particularly chapter 3, "Why Can't Johnny Kill?"

Of course, I do not subscribe to the false belief that everything in the human genome is adaptive, or that the presence of a trait in the human genome is sufficient evidence that it serves a useful purpose.

However, in the case of psychopathy, or the "warrior personality", I do, making the following observations:

• Having the ability to wage war and kill the enemy is demonstrably profitable, and sometimes vitally necessary, for cultures and tribal groups.

• A vanishingly small percentage of the human population is willing to kill a stranger without extensive psychological conditioning, or able to do so without extensive psychological trauma.

Allow me to present you with the default neurotypical response even to the socially sanctioned and legally justified killing of another human being:

youtu.be/z6bjtmtspge?t=104

Also consider the sheer level of effort that societies have gone to psychologically condition their members out of empathy for an enemy society... elaborate dehumanization propaganda doesn't exist for funsies. It exists as a way of combating the default reaction of human being towards other human beings, which is empathy.

The closer the proximity, the greater the visibility and audibility, and the greater the similarity to oneself, the more difficult it is for neurotypical human beings to kill a target.

This is precisely what is both so dangerous and so useful about psychopaths... the ability to go from zero to kill without the need to nerve themselves up first, or dehumanize the target. A psychopath is capable of killing another human being while remaining fully aware of this victim's humanity, and of his fear and pain. This is also how we know that history's greatest atrocities and genocides were not committed by psychopaths. The nazis, for example, were self-evidently not an organization of psychopaths, because they needed years of elaborate propaganda convincing them the jews were evil and subhuman before they were willing to get around to killing them (and even then there was a great deal of resistance).

The saying goes that anyone who make you believe an absurdity can make you commit an atrocity, and for certain atrocities this is true. However, psychopaths do not need to believe an absurdity, or indeed anything at all, before killing. They simply need to believe that it is in their best interests to do so, and that they will be relatively safe from repercussion. For state-sanctioned, or tribe-sanctioned, killing, this is obviously the case.

Of course, none of this is conclusive. It is known that only psychopaths are readily willing to kill, and that state-sanctioned killing can benefit a society. It is also known that evolution has not rooted out the psychopath.

But A, then B is not the same as A causes B.

However, it this case, I believe that A causes B, and even though it is not completely proven, it is still a reasonable alternative hypothesis to the suggestion that psychopathy is selected for via social parasitism benefiting the individual at the expense of the group.

This is especially so since pre-human groups appear to have existed in groups of Dunbar's number or less, and psychopathic hucksters, grifters, and parasites appear to need the anonymity of larger groups to work their schemes most effectively. When there's only about 150 people in your social universe, it's very difficult for such a person to remain undetected. Much easier to thrive when your distinguishing traits serve a purpose that is acknowledged to valuable.

@Whisper

tribes and hominid groups need members who can bash an enemy's skull in, and be able to sleep soundly at night afterwards.

I'm sure many neurotypicals can do that, no problem. You don't need psychopaths for that.

Then, maybe you need them for the extra-rationality? Not really, bacause you have Aspies, who do that more consistently.

Does nature "need" them for something else? No, not really, because nature doesn't "need" anything.

It's quite obvious, though, that psychopathy has flourished in extended societies, and these societies have taken over the world and we live in them right now.

My view is that psychopathy is a parasitic mode, evolved on the one hand because it favored survival in extreme conditions and on the other as pure parasitism (there is obviously a niche for that in groups of organisms).

There's no question that psychopathy that manages to remain functional is "adaptive" in today's society. Another way to say that is that our society is psychopathic. No wonder female parasitism has flourished, also.

Then, the degree one perceives psychopathy as "positive" must be correlated with the degree he thinks he "owns" society. Thus, for lower-middle class men, psychopathy and the institutiona that facilitate it is a thing to fight against. E.g. we need stricter penalties for scamming CEOs, abolition of alimony, introduction of timeouts to break positive reinforcement for pupils with conduct disorder in schools, etc.

@destraht

Yes, but what you're talking about here (the American cultural mandate to appear selfless and kind all the time) is, in and of itself, a social more. Thus, neurotypicals internalize it, and for psychopaths, it remains external, but the high-functioning ones learn to follow it, at least sometimes, in order to be socially accepted.

Personally, while I'm not about to announce the great linguistic crusade, I think that the term "psychopath" is, in and of itself, a very western spin on a personality type which serves a useful purpose in tribes.

The typical American is horrified at the idea of someone who doesn't feel great remorse at hurting someone's feelings with a "microaggression" or whatever, but tribes and hominid groups need members who can bash an enemy's skull in, and be able to sleep soundly at night afterwards.

I think in many cases, the term "psychopath" is an othering and pathologizing way of dealing with (or not dealing with) the warrior personality, because blue-state Americans have a social culture which demands everyone be gentle bonobos rather than assertive chimps.

Take this far enough, and you get a culture which is unable to channel its natural assortment of warrior personalities into prosocial roles where their ruthlessness can be helpful to their tribe and culture, and allow them to earn respect, love, and admiration.

Ultimately, societies need both those who can soothe crying children, and those who can punch grizzly bears.