7 thoughts on “Why Libertarians Aren’t Mass Murderers”
Very interesting. I was fascinated when I first read a popular account of morphogens, how their order in the genome corresponds with location on the body and what their evolutionary background was (monocellular organisms responding to different environments in order to extract nutrients efficiently). Maybe something similar will happen with bahaviour, emotions, hormones, the genes responsible for them and the mutation history of those genes. Wouldn’t it be fascination to know there were, say, three subtypes of anger, when they emerged at identifiable points in time and for what reasons?
Although I think I read once where William Lloyd Garrison once shot a man, just to watch him die.
Genetics, brain function and environmental factors… that’s quite a complicated soup. On top of that throw in reason as a moderator…
Yes, very interesting. I have my own Lizzie Borden genetic connection (not Liz, but my sociopathic half sister – inflicting 29 knife wounds according to doctors) so it does get my attention.
It seems to me it’s more than just reason that keeps some from being serial killers. Reason might actually make someone kill.
It just stresses how important it is for the population at large to have a good sense of morality. Technocracy is not enough.
For me I think the interesting connection was that he claimed abuse as a child was a key third ingredient — indeed, the only ingredient he himself lacked. I can imagine that it’s not abuse per se, but the lack of connection, particularly (as it is of intrinsically greater importance) lack of connection from the mother. After all, plenty of people have grown up with loads of what we in the modern era would call “abuse,” stuff like yelling or being spanked, and they seem to turn out OK as long as their is some strong emotional attachment and warmth that compensates.
Which makes me wonder something: serial killers seem to prefer targeting women, and the reason has always been stated as being that women are easier to kill (which I find dubious), or that the killers enjoy their supposedly greater levels of fear (which I also find doubty, as well as conflicting with the notion of the killer as lacking empathy — how do you enjoy that which you don’t understand?)
But consider the possibility of primal vengeance. Perhaps the mother who treats her son coldly and starves him emotionally breeds a variety of consuming hatred for women per se that erupts when the hormones of adolescence work their transforming magic.
So I guess if you’re a bon vivant, pranskter, and cross libertarian, thank your mother and her early affection that you’re not a serial killer, too.
Post-script: ken, I don’t think the guy was arguing reason is the primary reason (so to speak) people don’t kill. For most people, it would be empathy that prevents great harm to others. But for people who lack empathy, would-be sociopaths, there is one remaining barrier, which is the power of reason to point out to you that killing is almost never an optimum solution, given the extreme reaction society has to it.
Indeed, I’ve heard that the only known way to work with sociopaths is to appeal to their sense of reasoned self-preservation: yes, it doesn’t make sense to you why people get all worked up over your “removing” that annoying person, but the fact is, they do, and their are so many of them you can’t escape their “unreasonable” response. So you’d best think of a better plan, for your own sake.
What I find a little implausible about this part of what he said is his implication that the libertarian mindset is one that lacks empathy — and is prevented from sociopathic behaviour largely by the force of reason arguing its nonoptimality. I can imagine that is true for some people of a libertarian political persuasion, but I think very few. They’d have to be extraordinarily honest and well-disciplined, to explicitly adopt as an external creed their internal lack of concern for others.
No, in my nearly half century experience with people, it’s much more likely that the sociopathic personality picks a creed that loudly declares its concern for others. That is, they’re far more likely to be Democrats and socialists, more or less “liberal fascists” to use Goldberg’s phrase. For one thing, it gives them useful camouflage — and they know very well how peculiar and dangerous their lack of empathy seems to the rest of us — and for another it often gives them wider license for sociopathic behaviour. If you’re in the business of “caring for others,” and that’s your guiding light, well, it may be that you have to occasionally be “firm” (i.e. cruel) to a few individuals in pursuit of your large noble goals for all of humanity. Can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs, as Stalin is reputed to have said more than once.
On the other hand, my impression is that not a few people who suffer from an excess of empathy for their fellow men are driven to a libertarian perspective. In essence, such folks can’t imagine any mechanical social apparatus that comes anywhere near the usefulness and precision of the actions of a concerned individual driven by direct empathy. For the empathic person, it is madness to think an employee of the State just doing his job, according to a checklist in a binder, could possibly take better care of a man out of work, a lost child, a battered wife, a lonely spinster, than the friends, family and neighbors of such people. The empathic person has a hard time even understanding the core principle of the statist, which is that no man ever acts unselfishly except by force.
I’m not sure about how empathy fits. I do notice that sociopaths often have an abundance of charisma. Actually, bad guys in general. Obama has an odd combination of detachment and charisma (not to me, but apparently to a lot of people. I must be bitter or something.)
Very interesting. I was fascinated when I first read a popular account of morphogens, how their order in the genome corresponds with location on the body and what their evolutionary background was (monocellular organisms responding to different environments in order to extract nutrients efficiently). Maybe something similar will happen with bahaviour, emotions, hormones, the genes responsible for them and the mutation history of those genes. Wouldn’t it be fascination to know there were, say, three subtypes of anger, when they emerged at identifiable points in time and for what reasons?
Although I think I read once where William Lloyd Garrison once shot a man, just to watch him die.
Genetics, brain function and environmental factors… that’s quite a complicated soup. On top of that throw in reason as a moderator…
Yes, very interesting. I have my own Lizzie Borden genetic connection (not Liz, but my sociopathic half sister – inflicting 29 knife wounds according to doctors) so it does get my attention.
It seems to me it’s more than just reason that keeps some from being serial killers. Reason might actually make someone kill.
It just stresses how important it is for the population at large to have a good sense of morality. Technocracy is not enough.
For me I think the interesting connection was that he claimed abuse as a child was a key third ingredient — indeed, the only ingredient he himself lacked. I can imagine that it’s not abuse per se, but the lack of connection, particularly (as it is of intrinsically greater importance) lack of connection from the mother. After all, plenty of people have grown up with loads of what we in the modern era would call “abuse,” stuff like yelling or being spanked, and they seem to turn out OK as long as their is some strong emotional attachment and warmth that compensates.
Which makes me wonder something: serial killers seem to prefer targeting women, and the reason has always been stated as being that women are easier to kill (which I find dubious), or that the killers enjoy their supposedly greater levels of fear (which I also find doubty, as well as conflicting with the notion of the killer as lacking empathy — how do you enjoy that which you don’t understand?)
But consider the possibility of primal vengeance. Perhaps the mother who treats her son coldly and starves him emotionally breeds a variety of consuming hatred for women per se that erupts when the hormones of adolescence work their transforming magic.
So I guess if you’re a bon vivant, pranskter, and cross libertarian, thank your mother and her early affection that you’re not a serial killer, too.
Post-script: ken, I don’t think the guy was arguing reason is the primary reason (so to speak) people don’t kill. For most people, it would be empathy that prevents great harm to others. But for people who lack empathy, would-be sociopaths, there is one remaining barrier, which is the power of reason to point out to you that killing is almost never an optimum solution, given the extreme reaction society has to it.
Indeed, I’ve heard that the only known way to work with sociopaths is to appeal to their sense of reasoned self-preservation: yes, it doesn’t make sense to you why people get all worked up over your “removing” that annoying person, but the fact is, they do, and their are so many of them you can’t escape their “unreasonable” response. So you’d best think of a better plan, for your own sake.
What I find a little implausible about this part of what he said is his implication that the libertarian mindset is one that lacks empathy — and is prevented from sociopathic behaviour largely by the force of reason arguing its nonoptimality. I can imagine that is true for some people of a libertarian political persuasion, but I think very few. They’d have to be extraordinarily honest and well-disciplined, to explicitly adopt as an external creed their internal lack of concern for others.
No, in my nearly half century experience with people, it’s much more likely that the sociopathic personality picks a creed that loudly declares its concern for others. That is, they’re far more likely to be Democrats and socialists, more or less “liberal fascists” to use Goldberg’s phrase. For one thing, it gives them useful camouflage — and they know very well how peculiar and dangerous their lack of empathy seems to the rest of us — and for another it often gives them wider license for sociopathic behaviour. If you’re in the business of “caring for others,” and that’s your guiding light, well, it may be that you have to occasionally be “firm” (i.e. cruel) to a few individuals in pursuit of your large noble goals for all of humanity. Can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs, as Stalin is reputed to have said more than once.
On the other hand, my impression is that not a few people who suffer from an excess of empathy for their fellow men are driven to a libertarian perspective. In essence, such folks can’t imagine any mechanical social apparatus that comes anywhere near the usefulness and precision of the actions of a concerned individual driven by direct empathy. For the empathic person, it is madness to think an employee of the State just doing his job, according to a checklist in a binder, could possibly take better care of a man out of work, a lost child, a battered wife, a lonely spinster, than the friends, family and neighbors of such people. The empathic person has a hard time even understanding the core principle of the statist, which is that no man ever acts unselfishly except by force.
I’m not sure about how empathy fits. I do notice that sociopaths often have an abundance of charisma. Actually, bad guys in general. Obama has an odd combination of detachment and charisma (not to me, but apparently to a lot of people. I must be bitter or something.)