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Well, there's the idea that you can't judge a past culture (or even a different culture) using the same values as your own. Consider perhaps coming from a cult
by justinator 11y ago
Well, there's the idea that you can't judge a past culture (or even a different culture) using the same values as your own.
Consider perhaps coming from a culture that is 100% vegan, then being transported to the US, where eating meat is not only accepted, but celebrated. Would you call those people psychopaths that have been somehow desensitized?
Certainly, there's justification to the actions (I'm hungry! Meat tastes good!), but perhaps the jump that all meat eaters are pyscopathic murderers sounds a bit suspect. I mean, I don't know: I'm in the US, and I eat meat .
Perhaps take a human rights issue. Is being homophobic psychopathic? What about owning people as property?
- jessaustin 11y agoIf all this really is a matter of perspective, then TFA is basically correct that people can learn to behave so far outside the norms of any given society as to inspire a specious label like "psychopath".
- nickpsecurity 11y agoI say we consider defining it by what most innately do with minimal coaching. Every kid experiences being wronged or hurt to some degree. A certain amount of that is unrealistic expectations and learning to tell the difference. A subset of it that most share is what we consider unethical acts. That our most primitive minds have a way to derive that suggests, at least for humans, there's a baseline that's somewhat objective. That's the nature part. There's exceptions to it clearly. Then, nature and nurture work together from there with nurture having more an impact. You gave good examples of that.