A Cambridge professor, Simon Baron-Cohen, has written Zero Degrees of Empathy: A new theory of human cruelty. In this review, the author explains the professor’s ideas.
Read Why a lack of empathy is the root of all evil, on Independent.co.uk.
Link supplied by a Lovefraud reader.
((((((((( One J ))))))))
I”m glad the meds are helping and you seem to be handling it responsibly. I know what a difference it can make, but it’s really more than that……….it’s just a “booster shot” for what was already within. You can handle things better and that’s the good news.
Be patient with yourself, you’re doing GREAT One J.
Sounds YUMMY! If I was there, I would have invited myself to dinner.
And as I say that, my son has cooked us a wonderful spaghetti dinner and we have to finish watching the royal wedding. It sure was beautiful of what I’ve seen so far.
But at the same time, my heart is heavy for friends who live in the south, are okay, but have been, in one way or another touched by the tornado marathon the other day.
Hens, Ox, glad yo’ure okay too.
Blessings, One. You[‘re going to be okay! I BELIEVE it!
LL
LL- i feel that it is just a ‘booster shot’, and i would like to smack the docs for not helping me before now.
the buddhists say: ‘there is suffering’. and its true. there is happiness and suffering; and if we are lucky we make it to joy – that steadiness beyond happiness and suffering.
i never ever conceived that i could be without work/ or half decent paying work in my life. it has been a real eye opener. I have most often lived below the ‘poverty line’ (although i wasn’t aware of it.) I did have a chance in my 30’s to put some money aside, and i didn’t. stupid me. i was sick with fibro,CF and a resultant depression and had a very hard time working. i had some money, so i lived off it. but there was never a shortage of work, i just couldn’t. It wasn’t until i hit my 40’s that meditation (not medication!) pulled me out of that pain. I traveled a lot and WOKE UP. Then i came back and moved across the country, started a business, took care of my mom – then i injured myself, and started to struggle again. then i got these damn environmental sensitivities and the effing spath…and the struggle became chronic.
and now…I am starting to recognize that i am standing in a steaming pile of poo – but i bought new rubber boots today….so that’s a BIG step in getting out of the doo!
have a yummy meal over there also!
🙂
One joy. You are going to be a writer some day. And when you become famous, I want royalties from your first book, because, you know, I predicted it and all. lol
One J,
You could have written my story with the chronic illness shiat.
It’s what I”m dealing with now. Looking into meditation.
MY son is a buddhist. He suggests I learn from them.
Maybe!
LL
Eva, I liked your analogy to polishing our personalities. It’s perfect. Just perfect.
I’ll explain why I think that.
every spath I’ve ever met, tells me how smart he is and how smart he HAS ALWAYS BEEN. They are convinced that they haven’t changed since infancy. It’s like they think they were born omniscient. I’m talking about their own words to me. My exP told me he hasn’t changed at all since he was a child.
The spaths think they don’t need to polish/ improve their thinking, since it’s perfect the way it is.
I’m convinced that allowing a child to think he’s smarter or better than other people, is what makes them spaths. just a theory based on the spaths I’ve observed.
star – have a great time out snake sneaking!
not sure what the first book will be. not sure at all. i know i have to have some peace in my life to start to write (as in ‘home’ and a bit more health…just a bit.)
LL – i beleive that the the fibro and cfs were triggered by being in a chemically toxic environment (art school and the old house i moved into after art school), exhaustion and a couple of wicked flus in one summer (complete with hallucinations!) I was in my early 30’s. I worked long and hard on reversing the fibro and CF, starting with acupuncture (for the cfs – i worked with a world class acupuncturist, and he broke the main fatigue in about 6 months).
The fibro and associated depression were broken by vajrayana meditation practice (a very special retreat on conscious dying), being in the hot climate of Spain, and a lot of sex for the first time in 18 years (so happy hormone overload). I cam back truly changed from that trip. the depression was gone, the fibro was decreased by about 80% and the fatigue dropped by another 10%.
the fibro flared again, badly, in the last year. toxins – enviro and spath. equally damaging to the adrenal system.
i have a number of ongoing problems with my tendons and joints (bit of arthritis also). if i injure myself things don’t really heal.
over time i have come to believe that sleep and reducing stressors are two of the most important natural things we can do to heal fibro. we heal when we sleep. and if i had known how important good sleep (which is almost impossible with firbro) is to healing i would have focused on it more. knowing this is why i am so angered and freaked out about the db upstairs – i know that my healing curve is precarious, and i need to protect it.
it’s hard to accept how much of my life must be given over to getting healthy – you should see my vitamin and mineral regime. i have a shelf that makes it look like a 90 year lives here! my life is so limited by all of this. i made a list of all the things that i can’t do because of my reactions to chemical and environmental toxins and it was sobering, and well, validating.
all for now. they are mowing the lawn here with a gas mower and i gotta get out of the apt. case in point. 😉
Skylar, One joy, LL, thanks. Though i was not refering to pure psychopaths but to the narcissits. Pathological narcissits are very fixed personalities that not only don’t change but seems they tend to become worse in their traits.
I think just personalities free from pathological narcissism have the ability to polish their faults truly. The narcissists just pay attention to the external, are not interested in the internal.
I’m realizing pathological narcissists are dangerous and regrettably too numerous, and i find them much more dangerous than the pure psychopaths. I think psychopaths without the support of those pathological narcissists would be almost harmless.
And i think narcissim comes from mistreatment in infancy. Mistreatment by lack of real nurturing. Lack of affection, lack of a real education in solid moral values. Because of treat children as if they were toys. And yes because of showing the child he’s the best when he’s a good toy but also for letting him/her know s/he is not loved when the child is not pleasant or good narcissistic supply to his/her narcissistic parents. I think that’s maltreatment, that’s to create insecurity in the child about what love is, so later they can’t learn it. I think there are too many parents that do not love their children. And the poor children learn wrong patterns that take with them, often their whole lifes.
One/J—you are right that SLEEP IS IMPORTANT—-and no injury really ever “heals” 100%—we are a combination of all the injuries both physical and mental that have happened to us throughout our lives…stress changes our brains physically as well as chemically, and stress changes our bodies physically and chemically—and CHRONIC STRESS which exposes us to hormones that are good in the short term, saving in the short term, but TOXIC in the long term is a BIGGIE.
I didn’t really realize that I had apparently lived in HIGH STRESS MODE MOST IF NOT ALL OF MY LIFE….until I finally started to get it down to a “reasonable” level…..and that time I accidently ran into my egg donor in the store (couple of years or more ago) and went from LOW STRESS to HIGH STRESS 0 TO 60 IN 0.000001 SECONDS and literally got ILL on the spot and stayed that way for about 18 hours….I realized then that the HIGH STRESS, HYPER ALERT STATE I LIVED IN HAD BEEN LIFE LONG and I had felt that way ALL the time…..but had SLOWLY come down from the effects of it all the time…..and I also realize that when I allow myself to get stressed out, it takes a toll on me.
Holmes and Rahe did some research on stress and the effects…..I do not doubt that MANY IF NOT MOST illnesses are mitigated by or totally caused by the effects of stress + environmental exposures. H and R proved that mice who were injected with toxins got sick if they had been stressed, but not if they were not stressed because their immune systems fought off the toxic bacteria and kept them healthy if they weren’t chronically stressed….lots of research has been done since H & R did theirs but their research still stands as valid.
One of my high prioirities is keeping my stress low, and to keep focusing on what causes stress in me, WHO causes stress in me. Which stresses I can avoid and which I can’t….and to minimize the effects of that I can’t avoid.
No Contact as much as possible with people who are stress inducing is so important…and if you must have contact with them, then do it on your terms and control your response (difficult but very possible)
Having a flat tire or a vehicle break down, or even something more costly than that isn’t a big stress to me, it is when someone does something to DELIBERATELY cause a problem that shouldn’t even BE a problem—so I avoid that as much as I can, and if I can’t I try to look at it in such a way to accept I can’t control it, or if I should have and could have controlled it, then to LEARN from it at the very least. (Like the picture deal with the egg donor)