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
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.
Also, a point of note for my Hitler example. I do not think that Hitler was a monster or particularly unique. I think Hitler was a man similar to millions of people who exist on Earth today. Some of these individuals capable of what Hitler did have chosen instead to behave differently, while many who desire to emulate Hitler are unable to do so because of the state of their societies. I don’t think Hitler was a special being who single-handedly enthralled an entire nation and forced them to do things they didn’t want to do. I think there were many elements in their society which contributed to Hitler’s rise and continued support despite his absurd statements and atrocities. While we can never live in a world totally free of people like Hitler or people who want a leader like Hitler, I think a world where people like Hitler can’t access the power to do great evil is possible.
Sure, I’ll consider psychopathy as a disability rather than an illness. Regardless, it’s pathological.
I think your point about proper support and monitoring is key. Why do we have the problem of psychopaths masking their lack of empathy creating success for themselves in a way that doesn’t involve human connection? What if they didn’t have to mask their personalities or tendencies at all? If I met someone and understood they were a psychopath incapable of empathy but trying to live a peaceful stable life for their own self-interest, which includes not risking that stability by causing grave harm, I would engage with that person until such a point that they expressed a contemptible opinion or did something unsavory. This is the same metric I would use with anyone. Of course I would understand that because the psychopath lacks empathy there are bad things they might be more likely to do, but in a society which is equipped for psychopaths hopefully they would also understand the greater risks for themselves due to their pathology.
I don’t think there are natural born killers even if I do understand that some pathologies, whether inborn or trauma-induced, would make the act of killing unburdonsome to that person. Personally, I can come up with a very long list of why I shouldn’t kill a person other than that I would feel bad about it. I don’t think all people who wouldn’t feel bad about it are unaware of the myriad other consequences which come with causing such grave harm of this or other kinds. If someone truly doesn’t understand in any way why they shouldn’t kill someone and then go on to kill someone, I think that is much more of a problem of the society. That would indicate a severe lack of education and support in addition to their pathology.
To clarify, I am not anti-judgement. I think people’s behaviors should be judged good or bad regardless of whether anyone would judge that individual or their group to be good or bad. Also, I can pass character judgment on the dead because there are no longer unknown variables. I can condemn Hitler as an evil person because as he exists right now as an idea, he is pure evil. The historical human Hitler I can condemn worse because even though he was fully capable of good and fully capable of not doing what he did, he chose to do evil consistently. I condemn historical human Hitler not because I believe he was an evil being incapable of doing good, but that he was capable of both good and evil and chose to do evil. In my mind this is a harsher judgement than excusing bad behavior because of their corrupt soul or any such nonsense.