Morality pill

My friend sent me a link to this NY Times op-ed titled "Are we ready for a morality pill?" with the instruction "let your followers discuss their impending extermination through pills."  Apart from the obvious Clockwork Orange implications, I thought this was the most controversial part


Why are some people prepared to risk their lives to help a stranger when others won’t even stop to dial an emergency number?


Scientists have been exploring questions like this for decades. In the 1960s and early ’70s, famous experiments by Stanley Milgram and Philip Zimbardo suggested that most of us would, under specific circumstances, voluntarily do great harm to innocent people. During the same period, John Darley and C. Daniel Batson showed that even some seminary students on their way to give a lecture about the parable of the Good Samaritan would, if told that they were running late, walk past a stranger lying moaning beside the path. More recent research has told us a lot about what happens in the brain when people make moral decisions. But are we getting any closer to understanding what drives our moral behavior?


Researchers there took two rats who shared a cage and trapped one of them in a tube that could be opened only from the outside. The free rat usually tried to open the door, eventually succeeding. Even when the free rats could eat up all of a quantity of chocolate before freeing the trapped rat, they mostly preferred to free their cage-mate. The experimenters interpret their findings as demonstrating empathy in rats. But if that is the case, they have also demonstrated that individual rats vary, for only 23 of 30 rats freed their trapped companions.


The causes of the difference in their behavior must lie in the rats themselves. It seems plausible that humans, like rats, are spread along a continuum of readiness to help others. There has been considerable research on abnormal people, like psychopaths, but we need to know more about relatively stable differences (perhaps rooted in our genes) in the great majority of people as well.

Must it?  This may just be an issue of semantics, but I don't think that this is necessarily a question of morality (big surprise).  I think that the fact that there are some very moral people who sometimes do bad things (i.e. Milgram subjects or the Good Samaritan preachers) suggests that it is not really an issue of morality at all, but perhaps of attention.  Sometimes our attention is directed at a "good" behavior and we have an impulse to act. Sometimes we are distracted or our attention is never caught or there is not the impulse. Under my theory, generally moral people are on the lookout for moral things and are willing to act (unless they get distracted or get conflicting cues, like in an experimental setting trying to make them look amoral).  Is this too behavioralist?  Has that all been refuted since I took psychology at university?

And what about mental state?  One thing that most criminal laws and religions have in common is a distinction between a good/bad act and a good/bad mental state.  For instance, many religious people believe that if you do good things and don't have good intentions that is not moral and vice versa.  Similarly, many crimes require a particular bad intent or are mitigated by the lack of a bad intent.

I understand the rationale behind wanting to test morality by observing people's objective actions rather than subjective mental state (not just a "walk the talk" argument but an ease, consistency, and accuracy of measurement motivation), but I think (if my understanding of morality is at all accurate) that a person's level of morality is not merely a sum of a person's actions.  I hope that's not true, at least.

Crying

This is going to date me (and possibly make me sound like I have terrible taste in movies), but I remember watching City of Angels when it came out.  (Actually I had seen the sequel to the original first, and was very confused.  Film depictions of fallen angels always remind me of sociopaths, a la the Meet Joe Black angel of death -- to complete the bad 90s romantic comedies references.)  But in the City of Angels version, the fallen angel asks the Meg Ryan character about crying:

Seth: Why do people cry? 
Maggie: What do you mean? 
Seth: I mean, what happens physically? 
Maggie: Well... umm... tear ducts operate on a normal basis to lubricate and protect the eye and when you have an emotion they overact and create tears. 
Seth: Why? Why do they overact? 
Maggie: [pause] I don't know. 
Seth: Maybe... maybe emotion becomes so intense your body just can't contain it. Your mind and your feelings become too powerful, and your body weeps.  

Here's what a sociopath reader wrote about it:


I think I can recognize it, but I do honestly get confused when a person cries. My sister is always crying during a movie called animal farm. I assume she is sad because I personally know she loves animals, and in that movie a lot of animals are tortured, killed. If I was not aware of her liking animals, I would be a little confused to her crying, because people cry when they laugh, and when they are angry. I always figured she was pissed at the movie, and thus cried. If she did not love animals as obsessively as she did (as in I didn't know her on a personal level), that would be my first conclusion. That makes more sense to me, to be so frustrated or angry, that she would cry. I've seen people so pissed that they cry. I was so frustrated once that I cried, part of it was forced, but I cried nonetheless. Vanessa cried all the time, but I'm not exactly sure why now that I think about it. It may have been anger. People cry due to pain right? Sadness is a form of pain? I think that's what you were saying.

When I watched Passion of the Christ (hilarious movie, also tedious and somewhat redundant), I chuckled, and smiled, and wanted to laugh. Those around me were crying. I heard the sniffles, saw the wiping at their eyes, and naturally I knew they were upset. It did confuse me, I didn't know specifically why they were crying, but they were. It grew annoying very quickly. One time in church when I was visiting family in the east coast the preacher was preaching his bull, and people around me started to convulse, and cry. This confused me more than any other experience of people crying (I was a child btw when this happened). I still can't come to a rational explanation of their crying other than it was fake, and these people didn't want to be the out casts. That's why I did it. I did cry that day, but only after everyone else was at it for a while. I watched my mother, who was crying, I watched those fainting around me, I watched my sister, who was crying. Then I studied her, hard, and tried to think of something that could make me cry. I tried to think of a time that I cried, and all I was able to come up with was when I was in physical pain. So I hurt myself. When no one was paying attention I used the bottom of my palm and pushed harshly upward right underneath my nose, which caused me to tear up. Then I thought of how my sister looks when she cries, looked at everyone else's expression when they were crying, and did that, mixed with the tears I produced because I hit myself. Once everyone stopped, and settled down, I put off the act, and once we left, I was confused, disturbed. I just, in general, don't like church scenarios. The fact that a mass of people can use mob mentality and conform to emotions that I don't think any are actually feeling is beyond me. I remember asking my mother why everyone was crying, and she told me they were feeling the spirit. How? How can you feel something that isn't there? A spirit meant nothing to me because it was not a solid physicality, existing (as in I can see it) thing, so how can you feel for something that isn't there?

Lady Gaga again

I was talking to one of my musician friends about what makes someone a very interesting artist, and she mentioned how Tony Bennett's most recent duet album is of note because even though his voice is shot, he collaborates with such interesting people that they're still worth listening to.  She told me that she was watching an interview with Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga about the album and is now convinced that she is in fact a sociopath.  According to her:

• "Sociopaths are like a narcissist in so many ways, but they still manage to make you feel good too.  That's how I can tell someone's a sociopath."
• "Lady Gaga was swooning over Tony Bennett and Tony Bennett was eating it up, yet everything remained about Lady Gaga and Tony Bennett seemed fine about it."
• "She was kissing his cheek and talking about him, yet somehow it was all about her."  

I tried to find the interview, but could not manage to get a full clip.  This is the best I could do:

Even in this short clip there is a reference to how she is spontaneous (impulsive) and how she changes from day to day, more than anyone he has ever met in the entertainment industry.  I'm not saying that these small things make a sociopath.  I'm just saying that she is a good example of someone famous who could be a sociopath that you wouldn't necessarily think of as being a sociopath.

(Completely off topic for you music lovers) I have a new theory that Beethoven 7 is the orchestral version of a woman's little black dress -- it is universally flattering and appropriate for any occasion.  Feel free to quote me liberally at your next cocktail party.

Sociopaths = narcissistic, not narcissists

Question from reader "R" re sociopaths vs. narcissists (edited):

Dear Sociopath:

I hope you don't mind but if you have chance I have some questions for you. I've never knowingly dealt or spoken with a sociopath before (as far as I know) and this is my first time reaching out. I've become interested in sociopaths because I recently realized through a very melodramatic relationship that I was searching out a sociopath under the guise of trying to seek a highly romanticized romantic relationship. It turned out I think that all I got was narcissist... and after he fired me (he was my boss) I realized part of my bitter disappointment was that he was only a narcissist.

I don't think a narcissist is much like a sociopath... they just operate on a lower emotional level that rules them entirely where as it seems sociopaths function without the entanglements of the regular fears and ambitions that the rest of us have? What do you think?

my response:

I think that sociopaths and narcissists are very different, although they both demonstrate a certain amount of "narcissism," which is confusing terminology for some people. There is clinical "narcissism," the disorder, and narcissism in the traits of self love, overconfidence, delusions of grandeur, etc. "Narcissism" the disorder is just a term for a bundle of traits that happens to include narcissism the trait. Narcissism isn't necessarily the dominant trait of the narcissist, although it is certainly a prominent one. Sociopaths also frequently manifest the narcissistic trait, but the sociopath would believe he has more justification for his narcissism, and with good reason. The sociopath is exceptional -- his brain is hardwired differently to think rationally all the time, to exploit, to be a predator/scavenger. I don't think this is true of narcissists. I believe narcissism is deeply based in self-deception. as Fyodor Dostoevsky said in The Brothers Karamazov:

"A man who lies to himself, and believes his own lies, becomes unable to recognize truth, either in himself or in anyone else, and he ends up losing respect for himself and for others. When he has no respect for anyone, he can no longer love, and in him, he yields to his impulses, indulges in the lowest form of pleasure, and behaves in the end like an animal in satisfying his vices. And it all comes from lying--to others and to yourself."

Empaths may think that all of this is a distinction without a difference because interactions with narcissists may seem very similar to interactions with sociopaths. Both may seem uncaring, but with the sociopath it is more because he is incapable of caring about you the same way you care about yourself, whereas with the narcissist it is more because he is too self-involved to notice you. But there is arguably more hope of a stable relationship with a sociopath because sociopaths are self-aware and manifest greater control over their behavior (i.e. ability to adapt to individual needs and preferences). That said, a relationship with a narcissist could be more stable because they are more constant (albeit constantly selfish) and have more genuine (albeit histrionic and self-involved) emotions. And narcissists too can change their behavior if they think that the change is more consistent with their deluded self-image of themselves -- a-friend-to-man, a superhero, a-good-guy, or whatever it is they are telling themselves that particular day. If you don't mind everything always being about him in a relationship, a narcissist should be fine. If you don't mind everything always being about you in a relationship, a sociopath should be fine. but I like your description, too -- that narcissists operate on a lower emotional level that rules them whereas sociopaths function without the entanglements of the regular fears and ambitions that empaths have. To the extent that means that sociopaths have much greater control over their behavior/destiny, I think that is true.

SNL Dateline

A reader sent me this very funny portrayal of creepy SNL Dateline parody Keith Morrison: "When I was four years old I saw a birthday clown drown in a pool."



"Tell me, did killing him get your rocks off?"

"No.  You know, I'm not weird like that."

"Not even a little?"

"Ah, what the heck, it got me off a little."

"Yeah..."

In the same episode, gaslighting, or a copy of the teleplay here for those that cannot watch.