Tuesday, December 10, 2013

The similarities in personality disorders

I thought this was an interesting analogy about how vultures who are vultures and storks who look like vultures came to look and act so much alike:

What is perhaps most remarkable, however, is not that New and Old World vultures may not be related but that two possibly unrelated groups of birds have come to look so alike. They differ externally only in the longer and functional hind toe of the Old World vultures and the open nostrils (you can see right through from one side to the other) of the New World vultures.

This similarity is the result of a process called convergent evolution. It’s the selective pressures of the lifestyle that shape an animal, not the shape of an animal that dictates the lifestyle — given sufficient time, that is. So when different animal groups share the same ecological niche independently of one another there is a tendency for them to reinvent the wheel, finding the same solutions to the same challenges and ultimately coming to look very much alike.

Could this explain the similarities between narcissists and sociopaths too? Between borderlines and sociopaths? Could it be that sociopaths actually are on the autism spectrum but just look like vultures (personality disorders) because they've developed to react to different things?

Monday, December 9, 2013

A utilitarian view of justice?

From a reader:

I am an empath who has been reading your blog with interest. I thought I'd share with you something I read recently about the Moï (a pre-modern society), from an older British book (from the 50s) about Vietnam and Southeast Asia (the book is called "A Dragon Apparent" by Norman Lewis). What's interesting about the Moï's view of justice is that it's very utilitarian and doesn't involve any special kind of outrage at anti-social activities. It's an example of a system of justice that isn't based on morality, but on expediency. Feel free to use this in your blog, if you find it interesting as I do (keeping in mind that Lewis is a journalist and travel writer, not an anthropologist).  Here's an excerpt:

"The other aspect of the Moï way of life that seems to have created the greatest impression upon those who have studied them is that, although, by Occidental standards, crimes are few, the conceptions of right and wrong seem to be quite incomprehensible to them. In their place, and incidentally governing conduct by the most rigid standards, are the notions of what is expedient and what is not expedient. The Moï is concerned rather with policy than justice. Piety and fervour have no place in his ritual observations. Contrition is meaningless. There is no moral condemnation in Moï folklore of those who commit anti-social acts.

...

"Among the Moïs retribution is swift and terrestrial. The wicked – that is, the ritually negligent man – is quickly ruined. If he continues to pile up spiritual debts he is certain of a sudden death – the invariable sign that the ghostly creditors, becoming impatient, have claimed his soul for nonpayment.

"The thing works out in practice much better than one might expect. Crimes against the individual such as theft or violence are viewed as contravening the rites due to the plaintiff’s ancestral manes. The aggressor, however, is seen as no more than the instrument of one of the spirits who has chosen this way to punish the victim for some ritual inadequacy. The judge, therefore, reciting in verse the appropriate passage of common law, abstains from stern moralization.

...

"There is no distinction among the Moïs between civil and criminal law and no difference is made between intentional and unintentional injury. If a man strikes another in a fit of temper or shoots him accidentally while out hunting, it is all the work of the spirits and the payment to be made has already been laid down."

 Excerpted from A Dragon Apparent by Norman Lewis (first published in 1951) 

I remember there was some discussion a while back about the benefits of restorative justice over retributive justice. Despite the proven benefits of an amoral justice system over one that demands blood for blood, people insist on clinging to an idea of people as being evil and deserving of punishment for the crime yes, but particularly for the temerity to challenge the conventional moral and social order. 

Sunday, December 8, 2013

When saw we thee a stranger?

I grew up in a very welcoming church in which the primary doctrine was that we are all children of God (spirit siblings) with the divine potential to become gods ourselves. Over the recent holiday I asked my uncle how he converted to the church. He told me a story of being 17 years-old, searching for truth, and finding it in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. I asked him what were the church teachings that inspired him to make such a change. He said primarily the belief in the pre-existence -- that we had spiritual lives before this one and that we each chose to come to this planet and receive a body to have a physical existence.

After he answered my questions he turned it back on me. He had read the book and wanted to know what about the church made me keep believing, despite being the way I am. The truth is that I have always believed and never doubted. My mother thinks that is a gift of the spirit. But I've also never had reason to doubt. The teachings of the church have always felt as true to me as anything else people have told me. But I told my uncle, I have learned that everyone has their own view of any belief. There are no identical Mormons -- there are no identical political conservatives, or feminists, or humanists, or even sociopaths. Even though you can categorize people into big groups, people really are special snowflakes and they will not always fit the mold in the way that other members of that group will expect. That doesn't mean they don't belong to that group or groupings are not useful, We were never meant to be the same and we're all too complex to describe with just a few categories or characteristics. For instance, I used to fixate on the "criminal" description of criminal sociopaths, thinking that they must be the "low-functioning ones." It wasn't until I interacted with some that I realized that "criminal" didn't really mean everything I had just sort of assumed it did. Now I don't have such rigid views about how I expect people to manifest their personality disorders or other mental issues.

But bringing it back to religion, I liked this talk from a LDS Bishop about gay mormons:

Even in the Church, among brothers and sisters, we are sometimes strangers. We have a tendency to judge one another for failure to understand the gospel as we understand it or abide by the commandments as we ourselves do. In every ward there are members who speak disparagingly of those who are different, who question the devotion of their brothers and sisters on some basis, who treat them as strange.

In Romans, Paul emphasizes the importance of the saints having tolerance and charity for those who are different. To those who may make judgments about others in regard to their eating habits, for example, he says, “If a man is weak in his faith, you must accept him without attempting to settle doubtful points. For instance, one man will have faith enough to eat all kinds of food, while a weaker man eats only vegetables. The man who eats must not hold in contempt the man who does not, and he who does not eat must not pass judgement on the one who does; for God has accepted him” (14: 1-3, New English Bible; hereafter NEB). Disputations about the Sabbath day are seen in the same light. “This man regards one day more highly than another, while that man regards all days alike. On such a point everyone should have reached conviction in his own mind. He who respects the day has the Lord in mind in doing so, and he who eats meat has the Lord in mind when he eats, since he gives thanks to God. For no one of us lives, and, equally, no one of us dies, for himself alone. . . . Let us therefore cease judging one another. . . . Let us then pursue the things that make for peace and build up the common life” (14:5-7, NEB). Building that common life is our common stewardship and when we take it seriously we progress as individuals and as a Church.

I am struck by what Paul says because I think he is trying to teach a very important lesson: there are a number of things about which the Lord seems not to care, in which He gives us choice. It seems there are many issues over which we choose to be divisive, which are of no consequence to God. He doesn’t care whether we are Republican or Democrat, liberal or conservative, rich or poor, sophisticated or simple. It is probably of no concern to Him if we are vegetarians, eat white flour, have beards, wear colored shirts to Church, or the myriad other things that some of us consider important enough to judge, condemn, or spiritually disfellowship one another over.

Instead of focusing on such trivia, we should, as Paul says, “pursue the things that make for peace, and build up the common life.” Those things generally are love, understanding, tolerance, acceptance, liberality of spirit, magnanimity, and forgiveness.
***
[T]he following statements by Joseph Smith might prove instructive:

“The nearer we get to our Heavenly Father, the more we are disposed to look with compassion on perishing souls. We feel we should want to take them upon our shoulders and cast their sins behind our backs.”

“Nothing is so much calculated to lead a people to forsake sin as to take them by the hand, and watch over them with tenderness. When persons manifest the least kindness and love to me, O What power it has over my mind, while the opposite course has a tendency to harrow up all the harsh feelings and depress the human mind.”


“Our Heavenly Father is more liberal in His views, and [more] boundless in His mercies and blessings, than we are ready to believe or receive.”
***
The entire burden of Christ’s message is that we should be slow to judge and quick to forgive, that we should consider all people as ourselves, and that we should love one another without regard to our differences. The Golden Rule applies especially to all those whom we consider strange, queer, abnormal—all those whom we might see as different from or less than we are.

The truth is that despite all being special snowflakes, we have much more in common with each other than we would ever have separating us and we are interconnected in ways that we cannot comprehend.

Saturday, December 7, 2013

Beauty of destruction

I thought this went well with the post about what is enticing about cruelty or destroying things. From the Tor Blog:

Do not let Martin Klimas near your grandmother’s china cabinet. The German artist “explores the beauty that comes out of chaos” by using a strobe light and a single camera frame to photograph the moment of impact when a porcelain figure drops. He wants to “explore relationships with time, beauty and destruction,” and apparently also explore the relationship between a dragon and the floor. You can see the entire set here, and check out some of his other work here.


Friday, December 6, 2013

Oxytocin as treatment for autism?

I didn't realize that some parents were already treating their autistic children with oxytocin. The NY Times reports that this practice has been recently supported by the results of a recent study:

[T]he small study, published Monday in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that the hormone, given as an inhalant, generated increased activity in parts of the brain involved in social connection. This suggests not only that oxytocin can stimulate social brain areas, but also that in children with autism these brain regions are not irrevocably damaged but are plastic enough to be influenced.
***
“What this shows is that the brains of people with autism aren’t incapable of responding in a more typical social way.”

In the new study, conducted by the Yale Child Study Center, 17 children, ages 8 to 16, all with mild autism, got a spray of oxytocin or a placebo (researchers did not know which, and in another session each child received the other substance). The children were placed in a functional magnetic resonance imaging machine, an f.M.R.I., and given a well-established test of social-emotional perception: matching emotions to photographs of people’s eyes. They took a similar test involving objects, choosing if photos of fragments of vehicles corresponded to cars, trucks, and so on.

During the “eyes” test, brain areas involved in social functions like empathy and reward — less active in children with autism — showed more activity after taking oxytocin than after placebo. Also, during the “vehicles” tests, oxytocin decreased activity in those brain areas more than the placebo, a result that especially excited some experts.

“If you can decrease their attention to a shape or object so you can get them to pay attention to a social stimulus, that’s a big thing,” said Deborah A. Fein, a psychology professor at the University of Connecticut.

With oxytocin, the children did not do better on the social-emotional test, unlike in some other studies. But experts said that was not surprising, given the difficulty of answering challenging questions while staying still in an f.M.R.I.

“What I would look for is more evidence of looking in the eyes of parents, more attention to what parents are saying, less tendency to lecture parents on their National Geographic collection,” Dr. Fein said.

But before ya'll go running out to buy over the counter oxytocin, beware these warnings:

A study of healthy men found that oxytocin made them more biased against outsiders. And when people with borderline personality disorder took oxytocin, they became more distrustful, possibly because they were already socially hypersensitive.

I wonder what the neurodiversity thinks about the idea of curing autism by making them ore interested in people and less interested in cars, trucks, and National Geographic. Are people objectively more interesting than vehicles and well-respected science/culture magazines? Is that what we mean by autism "disorder"? And if that's true, does that mean that we should all be medicating ourselves, since some people think that we're all somewhere on the autism spectrum? And where is the sweet spot on the spectrum that we should all be trying to achieve?

Speaking of messing with people's brains to achieve random subjective results, this article on recent research suggesting that brains stimulated in a particular way appreciate art more (at least representational art).
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