The Sixth Sense

<Spoilers> With or without ESP, PSI or whatever, humans naturally synchronize neurologically. It's not paranormal, and it's not even really 'the mind blowing power of love', as the Sydney Morning Herald charmingly calls it. From the article:

Psychotherapist Alan Meara, president of Gestalt Australia & New Zealand, who was a Phd supervisor for the research, said: ''This sixth sense isn't something that is magical. It is something that the human brain is wired to do. The research shows that we do have the capacity to understand people at a deeper level than we normally do in general conversation.''

So why the hell aren't our brains working as designed lately? Are we breeding out the empathy gene? Or is it more a matter of social (de)evolution? An interesting article from the generally tabloidish Daily Mail might provide indirect clues to the nurture side of the issue. The article ends with a quote from psychology researcher Darcia Narvaez:

'There's an epidemic of anxiety among the young,' she said. 'Kids who don't get the emotional nurturing they need in early life tend to be more self-centred. They don't have the same compassion-related emotions as kids who were raised by warm, responsive families.'

Sounds obvious enough...but maybe there's a darker implication here. Is the apparent rise of rampant narcissism a snowballing cycle of increasingly bad parenting? If one thinks of emotional detachment as a form of child abuse, it's easy to compare to studies showing that the abused tend overwhelmingly toward abusing their own kids.

Imagine if we gave physically abused children a pill to mitigate their symptoms, and left it at that.

The Empathy Lobby

According to Karl Rove, 'Empathy' Is Code for Judicial Activism. A trendy buzzword; a hollow term unrelated to the way things work in the real world. This one's a gem;

There is a certain irony in a president who routinely praises America's commitment to "the rule of law" but who picks Supreme Court nominees for their readiness to discard the rule of law whenever emotion moves them.

This from a guy whose pet president attempted to use the Supreme Court to hammer out dents in the Constitution.

Unnatural Selection

It's about EMPATHY.





We're soft-wired for it. Unfortunately nurture (or lack of it) sometimes overrides nature, or the wiring shorts out because of genetic factors. Whatever the cause, some individuals are pathologically incapable of empathic response.

Those who scoff at all these disorders and syndromes, be aware that casually dismissing certain folks as ordinary egotistical assholes can lead to devastating, tragic results. Of note in the Brown case:

In 2008, he was awarded a Republican Congressional Medal of Distinction, which included a lunch with Vice President Dick Cheney and a dinner with President George W. Bush.

Yeah, those guys. The emperors of entitlement. Draft dodgers who became the Deciders. Just for fun, let's look for these NPD symptoms from the DSM in any of the following clips you choose to watch.

Symptoms of Narcissistic Personality Disorder

In order for a person to be diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) they must meet five or more of the following symptoms:

• Has a grandiose sense of self-importance (e.g., exaggerates achievements and talents, expects to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements)
• Is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love
• Believes that he or she is "special" and unique and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people (or institutions)
• Requires excessive admiration
• Has a very strong sense of entitlement, e.g., unreasonable expectations of especially favorable treatment or automatic compliance with his or her expectations
• Is exploitative of others, e.g., takes advantage of others to achieve his or her own ends
• Lacks empathy, e.g., is unwilling to recognize or identify with the feelings and needs of others
• Is often envious of others or believes that others are envious of him or her
• Regularly shows arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes

The end of the 1999 interview is astounding, when Bush makes a play for sympathy that he has to work, right after referring to his oil and gas industry fallback gig.

This last one I hadn't seen before, and it really shows the accelerating collapse of Jr's ability to tolerate interruption of his talking points. He attempts to beat comprehension of America's uncompromising generosity into her ungrateful skull.



The key moment of narcissistic dissociation is when he grudgingly reveals his personal connection to God. The prepared Biblical quote meant to soften his delusions of grandeur is so perfectly garbled that he might as well have let go with "Fuck the bible, fuck Ireland and fuck you. I know God."

Here's the actual quote, from the book of Matthew:

"Judge not, that you be not judged. For with what judgment you judge, you will be judged; and with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you. And why do you look at the speck in your brother's eye, but do not consider the plank in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, 'Let me remove the speck from your eye'; and look, a plank is in your own eye? Hypocrite! First remove the plank from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye." 

And here is Bush's citation as proof of his humility:

"I get great substance from my personal relationship [with God]. That doesn't make me think I'm a better person than you are, by the way, because one of the great admonitions in the good book is, 'Don't try to take a speck out of your eye if I got a log in my own'." 

This is not hubris, or the egotistical excesses power can bring. This is pathology, and can be identified long before it is unleashed on the functional majority of our species. Why aren't we doing that?

Hive Mind Manifesto

This page is for any soul who's tired of hearing glorified answers to unasked questions, worn out by unprovoked acts of petty vengeance, and exhausted from paying ransom for sane moments of humanity. Ever heard the parable of The Frog and the Scorpion? Does it seem that many in our society would laugh at the gullible frog and think no more of it? "No good deed goes unpunished, ha ha." Does it seem that a few would contemptuously berate the incompetent frog for his part in drowning the mighty scorpion?

I'm starting to suspect that the scorpions filling our prisons and the ones engineering brutal wars that profit a mere handful have much more in common than the frogs of the world want to believe. The difference is that the ones in prison are often able to receive psychological treatment, and studies have shown it to have more benefit than all the punishment the world can muster.

I want to turn my rage into realization, my pessimism into inspiration, and all my other coping mechanisms into working methodologies. Even if it's a fool's dream and the scorpions have dug in too deep...I will not let them go down smiling as I question the logic of their motives. I will instead contemplate this 'nature', and accept that it is indeed folly to bargain for trust. It is not a currency one can spend or acquire, and such illusory exchanges have funded the scorpions' nihilistic fantasies for too long.