@Birch
Birch: i also did not say every slave-owner or everyone in the society but slave-traders before or even human traffickers today. if you really don't think they are sociopaths, then i can't help you.
You do realize that all people who engage in criminal activity are not necessarily sociopathic/psychopathic. If you look at the numbers the majority of serious crime convicts do not belong to that category. So no you cannot diagnose someone based on their involvement in say trafficking.
Birch: you can't blame everything on a cultural norm when the sociopathy was started by someone or is actively perpetrating it.
You didn't understand my post. Slave ownership was a cultural social norm, the context of this forces people in a variety of ways to conform to certain modes of thinking or behavior. This is distinct from the disposition of psychopathy which is why I say you cannot diagnose a nation for example of being psychopathic in terms of the behavior of all its citizens. There were reasons why people conformed to the Khmer Rouge regime as brutal as it was. This is distinct from someone behaving counter to the norm without any provocation. Would a psychopath thrive under the Khmer Rouge? Sure. Same as they would have thrived in Nazi Germany.
Birch: also, the psychiatric community tends to like to label anything a disorder when it veers from the ideal when in reality sociopathy is not really like a definite disease such as schizophrenia or a physical disease.
I already pointed that out in post# 16 but its the psychiatric studies that point to this fact.
Birch: what is labeled sociopathy could just be a lack of emotional development just as their are people who have different iq's, there are people who are not as evolved in the emotional sphere where there empathy is less developed. this does not mean, they don't feel emotions or are not emotional it's just that it may veer more toward extreme selfishness instead of more balanced.
The study of psychopathy falls into neuroscience. So there are very real differences in the brain of a sociopath/psychopath and these are differences they are born with not something produced by the environment which is why you cannot claim all deviant behaviour sociopathic, the social and cultural context of slaver or Nazi Germany are relevant to environment and that is very distinct to what you find in the behaviour of the sociopath/psychopath. There is now strong evidence that their neural systems do not function properly.
'The amygdala is involved in aversive conditioning and instrumental learning (LeDoux, 1998). It is also involved in the response to fearful and sad facial expressions (Blair et al, 1999). The amygdala is thus involved in all the processes that, when impaired, give rise to the functional impairments shown by individuals with psychopathy. It is therefore suggested that amygdala dysfunction is one of the core neural systems implicated in the pathology of psychopathy (Patrick, 1994; Blair et al, 1999). Interestingly, two recent neuroimaging studies have confirmed that amygdala dysfunction is associated with psychopathy (Tiihonen et al, 2000; Kiehl et al, 2001). Thus, Tiihonen et al (2000) used volumetric magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to explore the relationship between amygdaloid volume and degree of psychopathy in violent offenders as measured by the PCL-R. They found that high levels of psychopathy were associated with reduced amygdaloid volume. Kiehl et al (2001) used functional MRI to examine neural responses in individuals with high (>28/40) and low (<23/40) scores on the PCL-R during an emotional memory task where the participant processed words of neutral and negative valence. Kiehl et al found a reduced amygdala response in the high-scoring group, relative to the low-scoring group, during the processing of words of negative valence. There have been suggestions that other neural systems are dysfunctional in individuals with psychopathy. Thus, on the basis of neuropsychological and neuroimaging findings for violent offenders, it has been argued that the frontal cortex could be dysfunctional (Morgan & Lilienfield, 2000; Soderstrom et al, 2000). However, all of these studies, with the exception of one by (Raine et al, 2000), have been with violent offenders rather than individuals with psychopathy. This is noteworthy as there are crucial differences between the general population of violent offenders and these individuals. Indeed, neuropsychological work with individuals with psychopathy, unlike work with individuals who are violent, has repeatedly found frontal functioning to be intact (Kandel & Freed, 1989).
http://bjp.rcpsych.org/cgi/content/full/182/1/5
Birch: ufortunately, sociopaths may enjoy the pain of others as in a primitive feedback loop, they equate the suffering of others to feel powerful. sociopaths who enjoyed and have thought up excruciating ways to torture people and with all types of devices understood very well cause and effect as well as the type of physical and emotional pain that would be the result. it's not that sociopaths don't understand emotion, they very damn well do and that's what makes them dangerous.
No one anywhere, far less myself, claimed that they don't understand emotion or that they cannot read emotion. The ability to read emotion is not the same as being able to EMPATHIZE, feel the depth of emotion. That is something else entirely.
Birch: the difference is with a sociopath they really could care less or have no sense of humanity toward others (that means they would literally do anything with no remorse or guilt) that they don't care for whereas non-sociopaths have general ethical values or sense of humanity. from what i've observed, this seems more of a choice than an 'ailment' which gets them off the hook. it's just the easier way to be a sociopath and only do the right thing so to speak when you are being watched.
Again which is a lack of empathy. All you are saying is that they lack empathy that is why they could care less. But this lack of empathy is not a choice, they literally lack the brain functioning that allows them to feel empathy.
I am not here to convince you of anything. If you choose to assess this subject by your own experience alone and not seek out new research, read the new studies, watch the documentary that highlights what they now know about this subject then fine. You are free to remain within a closed parameter of information but there is a growing expertise on this subject and the information is out there if you care to take a look at it.