Interesting clarification, but you don’t consider such a possibility at least a potential consequence of choices? Or, that there is immense variation in affiliative capacity based on experience?

The world seems to frequently tempt me to further “limit my core affiliative capacity”. I come from a background that fits your description, continuing to struggle with severe attachment injuries, and there is probably a reason I both see it as a choice, and come from such a background.

A “perceptual-motivational-affective tendency to be extremely limited in their core affiliative capacities” seems like something one can lose from not investing in the right things. 

Constant alienation and moral outrage could put too much pressure on the relational-motivational system untill it breaks. And there are better and worse relational choices to deal with that pressure. Say, when caring gets ignored and crapped on over and over, and the culture seems Ike a giant lie, one can either become part of a solution, fight harder, care more, or care less, and become what they hate, from despair and exhaustion from impotent pain of anger reaching a break in the motivational system? 

I struggle every day just to keep what I was born with: an inclination to do no harm, and it is costly. No doubt life would have been better for me had I cared less.

Jamie 



On Wed, May 13, 2020 at 2:09 AM Henriques, Gregg - henriqgx <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Jamie,

  That is not exactly how I would conceptualize psychopaths. What you describe here is closer to anti-social personality tendencies, which is a different cluster of concerns (anti-social overlaps, but also is quite different in that there are many anti-social folks who are not psychopaths and a number of psychopaths who are not anti-social, at least in terms of actions).

 

In brief, psychopaths lack empathy/sympathy for the emotional pain of others. In the language of the Influence Matrix, they lack or are extremely limited in the affective cluster around affiliation. Affiliation means to bring in as one or be a part of. Our affiliative system is what allows us to mesh with the interests of others and bring them in as our own. And this is what is fundamentally different about the psychopath. The simply don’t care that someone else would be hurt or injured. And it is not so much at the cognitive level of not caring. That is, it isn’t a justification, whereby they learn that certain other people are not important and not warrant care (we are all capable of learning that there are “others” who we should not affiliate with).

 

Rather, this is a basic perceptual-motivational-affective tendency to be extremely limited in their core affiliative capacities. It is likely to emerge as a function of a genetic predisposition followed by serious attachment injuries during sensitive developmental periods. This is especially true of sadistic psychopaths, who do enjoy the power that their capacity to inflict pain over others brings them.


Best,
Gregg

 

From: tree of knowledge system discussion <[log in to unmask]> On Behalf Of Jamie D
Sent: Tuesday, May 12, 2020 10:50 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Freudian filter

 

 

I’m convinced people can become psychopaths, which I see as simply losing interest or faith in the simple, obvious, pragmatic good, after making seemingly innocuous choices, like being lazy, until their mind loses contact with value from lack of investment in value. 

And because everything is exponential, they drift towards entropic, less useful, less meaningful pleasures until their hearts and vision are so small, they delight in totally useless behaviors like those we call “psychopathic”.

 

 

On Tue, May 12, 2020 at 2:46 PM Henriques, Gregg - henriqgx <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

I think that would be extreme 😊. Consider, for example, there are sadistic psychopaths…

 

But we can say that the Freudian filter is deeply tied to self-deception, and that is one of the core features that allows human to “do evil” (to borrow a phrase from TOKer Steve Quackenbush).

 

From: tree of knowledge system discussion <[log in to unmask]> On Behalf Of Jamie D
Sent: Tuesday, May 12, 2020 4:30 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Freudian filter

 

Would it be extreme to say the Freudian filter is the root of all evil? Or, that lying to oneself is the first step down a slippery slope towards unconsciousness? 

 

 

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