It's not personal

The Godfather taught us that some things are just business, not personal. I've had to explain to a lot of people in the past few years that so much of what I do does not generate from any feelings of sadism or pleasure in the pain of others, but simple pragmatism/instrumentalism in which someone or something has just been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I thought this recent-ish comment described something similar:

"to sit and smalltalk with other people about weather, for no other purpose than "to do so", does not fit the average psychopath"

Well it certainly doesn't appeal to me. I love having one-to-one conversations about interesting topics but I admit it's for the purpose of deepening my understanding and widening my views.

Here's another sign of (my) socio Christmas: I never buy presents to my friends/family. I say that it's because I don't like the stress and Christmas should be about chilling out etc but really I just don't see the point and don't want to spend my money on others – except for my clients, in which case I consider it a marketing expense.

I'm not bothered about receiving presents either. I think quite often people think that sociopaths are people that want attention and gifts etc but I'm the opposite. And anyway I think people often confuse sociopaths and narcissists. I don't like giving affection and I don't want it back. I also don't like being admired and it actually sometimes really irritates me if I get those kind of vibes.

I guess I'm the type of a sociopath who doesn't feel the need for other people but I don't feel the need to hurt them either. It just sometimes happens that when people annoy me for whatever reason I ignore them or dump them or dismiss them and do something that they think is hurtful. But its never for the sake of harming others but more like the people just get on the way of what I want. This wasn't meant to sound like me giving excuses, I'm just thinking out loud.

Another thing I thought here is that maybe this is just more what a sociopathic traits look like when they manifest in a female who is also introverted?

Animal morality?

ABC News reports on a recent book, "The Bonobo and the Atheist," by Frans de Waal, who argues that other primates have at least the building blocks of morality. De Waal suggests that this proves we had inborn morality first, then came up with the idea of religion and god to make sense of those moral inclinations, rather than vice versa.

Those and other human-like characteristics, that have been clearly documented by other researchers as well, at least show they have some grasp of morality. It doesn't mean they are moral -- especially chimps, which can be very violent -- but they have the "basic building blocks" for morality, de Waal argues.

Chimps, he says, "are ready to kill their rivals. They sometimes kill humans, or bite off their face." So he says he is "reluctant to call a chimpanzee a 'moral being.'"

"There is little evidence that other animals judge the appropriateness of actions that do not directly affect themselves," he writes. Yet, "In their behavior, we recognize the same values we pursue ourselves.

"I take these hints of community concern as a sign that the building blocks of morality are older than humanity, and we don't need God to explain how we got to where we are today," he writes.

Is this right? That hints of community concern are the basis for our sense of morality? He says that there are instances of primates feeling guilt or shame:

For example, Lody, a bonobo in the Milwaukee County Zoo, bit the hand -- apparently accidentally -- of a veterinarian who was feeding him vitamin pills.

"Hearing a crunching sound, Lody looked up, seemingly surprised, and released the hand minus a digit," de Waals writes.

Days later the vet revisited the zoo and held up her bandaged left hand. Lody looked at the hand and retreated to a distant corner of the enclosure where he held his head down and wrapped his arms around himself, signs of both grief and guilt.

And here's the amazing part. About 15 years later the vet returned to the zoo and was standing among a crowd of visitors when Lody recognized her and rushed over. He tried to see her left hand, which was hidden behind the railing. The vet lifted up her incomplete hand and Lody looked at it, then at the vet's face, then back at the hand again.

Was he showing shame and grief? Or was it fear of a possible reprisal? The ape at least realized he had done something wrong, de Waal argues, showing the seeds of moral behavior.

The chimp "realized he had done something wrong," but was it a moral judgment of "wrongness"? Or do chimps keep score in their society such that if a chimp does something that another chimp doesn't like, there will be retribution. In other words, does it mean that chimps are moral, or that they hold grudges? I actually think this is a more interesting explanation -- that the urge to punish others for perceived infraction (a sense of justice) is very primitive, such that we share this trait with primates. Interesting how humans have not really modified that impulse much, despite evidence that restorative justice is actually more effective both in terms of victim satisfaction and offender accountability than retributive justice.

The articles mentions other primate behaviors, including displays of deep grief and compassion for each other, but as the article states "[w]hen an ape expresses grief or guilt or compassion he is living out the blueprint for survival in a culture that is becoming more complex, and possibly more dangerous." That is, they are not making judgments of moral right or wrong, they are just acknowledging they exist as one individual in a larger society (like the sociopaths willingness to be a team player). From the examples given, primates do seem to have a system of "values," e.g. they do cleverly use orgies to stop wars, but that seems to be a utilitarian assessment (orgies = good and war = bad), not a moral one.