william.scherk

No, that's not it. It is several things. Some of us do not enjoy discussing things with you -- since you are all-too-often tetchy, defensive, self-blind and not in a discussion mode. Indeed, some of us (me) do not think you know how to discuss or how to show good faith in discussion, nor how to make your own little tests attractive to non-imprisoned torture victims-in-waiting. In this case, Ghs put it best: you first .... and then he will hop in. That is me, too. You go first, then I will happily hop in. This would show good faith in two ways ... you would step down from the podium or Master of Ceremonies role, and you would put your money where your mouth is (as that c**t Ellen Stuttle put it once): It does not serve you to always insist that You Are On Top. You are not on Top. Let me put it this way, Phil: one of the impediments to me giving more than superficial attention to your blandishments is that you seem to refuse to leave the Teacher's Podium. If you could put aside your rather fiendish obsession with Standing In Front Of The Class, controlling all activity in the classroom, things could be fun. Think about it: In this thread, as usual, you are at the Lectern. You are asking The Class to do something (for you, or Humanity or the best value Spread, for themselves, for Glory, for the Gipper), but you do not get down to the activity yourself. You want to be the one with the whistle, the red flag, the scorecard, the referee stripes, the cudgel, the marking book. This seems insanely deluded and self-thwarting to me. This posturing as Teacher, Leader, Class Invigilator, Proposer of Activities -- it is a tiresome bore, friend. If you would get your high, tight and hard ass off the saddle of Chief, if you could take off the garb of Elder, Churchwarden, Ecclesiastical Authority, Miss Grundy, if you could simply pitch your interest to PEERS, you would win this game a lot more often.

Wow, Otherizing. It slows down, but it never stops. Phil, as one sometime writer to another, here is some unsolicited advice: please try to De-Otherize your posts, as this will make your communications more effective. Please also examine your post for weak or passive constructions ª. Please try to grasp that your usual Theme (the Other fails to do right) is not always the best way to introduce a topic In addition, if your subject is, as proposed, On Getting Off of One's Butt, then I do believe your post would be much much stronger if you gave examples of your own off-butt activities, and if you fairly featured those off-butt activities of Others that strike you as significant.** All in all, if you or me or anyone wants to discuss Doing (instead of Musing), we can do it best by featuring stories of folks that got off their flabby-ass butts -- even if we ourselves are still losers and third-rate also-rans in comparison. Our own stories, of course, are the ones we know best. I bet that one of the things that triggered your fit of keyboard pounding was your own life and actions. You may have asked yourself things like this: "Why do so many Objective-ish people sit on their big fat asses and tell other people what to do?" "If I have a superior knowledge of Objectivism, why is it that I have never published any of this knowledge beyond fifth-rate shitholes like OL†?" "When I move to a town (as I did to East Elderly Gated Holding Pen), I seek out Objectivists, reach out to interesting people, and even start clubs ‡ Here, Phil, I am going to De-Otherize your post once more. I am going to do it in two stages. First, I will strike all the weak, unfocused, rambling and incoherent passages. I will also strike whiny, Otherized pontificating. I strike or note by colourizing unattributed quotations and unusual and unnecessary formatting ². I will in some cases add in possible de-Otherized illustrative phrasing, and may include bracketed URLs that you have left out ³. I will return to deliver my fully De-Otherized revamp. I should mention that the IDEA of the post is I think, very very good for the list community. Examples of "getting off one's ass" are great. We can compare them to our own sorry efforts, we can contrast them to our own value hierarchies, we can be encouraged to put forth our own. Stress 'encouraged,' mind, since there is little in your initial post that encourages self-disclosure from others: the lurking subtext of MASTERFUL PHIL, POOR FAILED OTHERS stinks up the place too badly to be attractive (though Ba'al, gawd bless his social deficits, gets to it quickly). I mean, Phil, let me be unkind and personal in my remarks here -- in an excellent, self-revealing post you spoke of your ground-breaking work on the solution to the problem of induction: I had the solution. It was complicated. I wrote page after page, addressing all the quandaries associated with induction and how my theory solved them. I went back to Peikoff's class with my head in the clouds, ready to show him the paper... Well, Phil, how big was your butt then, and how big is your butt now? Did you ever get anything done with your paper? Did you show it to anyone else but Peikoff? Did you fall back into depression, self-thwarting excuse-making, blaming the Other? Did you ever since rise above your crushing by Peikoff -- I mean, have you ever forgiven him (or yourself) for essentially choking your progress? Moreover, my friend, did that experience cause you to pull back from any test of your superior understanding, from collaboration, from positive engagements? It just seems to me -- and I hope I am wrong -- that that episode wrecked you somehow. You still appear to fully believe that you have gifts of inestimable value, in your mind, yet nothing has squeezed out of the cheeks, so to speak. Diana, bless her ChurchLady soul, does her picnics and her measles parties and her videos and her exercise tips and her morality-of-feeding wackaloon posturing, and occasionally (though not this year) manages to get a letter to the editor published in suburban coupon-weeklies. She gets to fool herself and her other Church people that she is in the Vanguard and not merely another crazed windbag. She gets to make unbelievably boring, trite, graceless and horrifyingly righteous Youtube videos. She gives 'advice' on how to do everything the Objectivist Way (including cooking yams and whether to eat pickles stem first or not or how to deal with the Evul of Vegetables), but at the same time she lives off her husband's earnings and flails about trying to find a job. Her readership (at Noodlefood) has plunged; the comments have dried up, she gets uglier and more insulated from criticism every week. Please, please do not compare your self to Diana (or Paul), because it is only going to make you feel like a big fat useless failure the way you are doing it. Compare yourself to yourself, brother. Compare yourself now, and your projects and your life-satisfaction to what you once imagined yourself to be. YOU get off your butt often enough, I am sure. You run, you exercize, you take care of an elderly parent. You fall in love. You write pithy comments to five-hundred-and-counting followups to New York Times blogs. You hector people online. You go on dates. You get laid. You fall in love. You give to your favourite charity (People with Huge Inactive Butts Sprawling over the Squashed Lips of their Scooter Seats). You get to save your half-drank cups of coffee (or tea) and mix them up to a refreshing froth later. You get to drive to Tampa once in a while to visit your girlfriend at the detention centre. You get to go in the garage once in a while to contemplate your Seven Metric Tonnes of Notes. _________________________________ ** Diana is a member of the Church of Objectivism, and her maniacal efforts on behalf of Right Thinking, Right Dieting, Right Friending, Right Churchiness and all-round Objective-ish Rectitude and Righteousness are by no means interesting and attractive and significant to all. On the other hand, there is George H Smith. He is self-plundering his own writings and publishing essays at CATO. As we speak, Phil! Oddly, this probably does not even require him getting off his (no doubt taut and toned) behind to do so. In any case, my bottom line is: has YOUR off-butting resulted in a notably sleeker gluteal area? Has your pounding the pavements for Jayzuss Rand put you nearer YOUR dreams of a high, hard, firm, round, smooth and fully-packed Behind region? ‡ Seriously, the clubs you have attended, started or officered are a great topic of a story or two, or even seven (depending on the number of clubs). When you put aside the tired passive voice and passive construction, when you set aside the rampant Otherizing and finger-wagging and pursing of lips, when you simply tell the story of your life (episodes), truth and passion and humanity and struggle and everything interesting and signal about your life shines through, in my opinion. Your tales of emotional struggles in NYC, your troubled relationship with Peikoff, your experiences with Objectivist psychotherapists Lonnie Leonard & Edith Packer, your latter experiences with TAS/TOC conferences, your personal observations of your own attempts to understand self and others -- in my mind, these are your most effective works. They do not wag fingers. They do not presume Authority. They tell a story as it happened and as it occured to you. ª Here is a simple rule-of-thumb for strengthening prose constructions. Ask "Who is doing what in this sentence?" If there is no somebody or somebodies named, if the subject of the sentence is a murky THEM, then fix it. Make something happen in the sentence. Similarly, examine a whole paragraph to see if there is any Action. † -- yes, of all the places on Earth that Phil Coates could publish his wit, he chooses OL. Not Solopassion, not Rebirth of Reason, not ObjectivismOnline, not in a monograph. Not in Journal of Ayn Rand Studies. Not on his own blog or website. Not in forums of or under the banner of CATO. Not in a leaflet distributed to the elderly widder ladies in his Library Reading Club. Not on the Bulletin Board of said library. Not scrawled in shaving foam on the roof of the Senior's Centre. Not in a sign to hang off the back of all those who ride with the Huge Fat Florida People Who Ride Scooters To Walmart And Back club ... ² -- for some reason you have italicized two lines. We do not know why. Are they your own words? If so, then great! -- you have restated a truism in a pallid, boneless manner. You might make some extra money writing those 'fun' apothegms that old folks sometimes put in their motor homes. If these are not your own words, whose are they? ³ -- Universal Resource Indicators/Universal Resource Locators (URI/URLs) ought to be used when excerpting direct quotes in an online forum (this is standard); these are REFERENCES (as you may recall, you will FAIL your course and have your college essay FRANKED if you misuse or otherwise slop around references. URI/URLs are the equivalent of MLA inline citations (Shithead 666) plus works cited -- or APA (ShitforBrains, 1923) inline citations with references. The entire point of such citations is to get the reader to the information cited as easily as possible. So, although you cited Paul Hsieh, you failed to give an adequate reference. Now, you certainly do not need to use APA, MLA, Chicago or any other particular convention. Nor do you need to use a URL -- you can easily refer to Hsieh's post as I have at the bottom -- since you could write the reference conversationally: "On Noodlefood blog, Paul Hsieh posted the following on January 13th of this year." But, Phil, my sweet little teacher with the hard buttocks and springlike stride, a URL can get the reader to the cited work with a simple CLICK: 2011 Front Range Objectivism Media Output Believe it or not, OL does not need you to write HTML code to include a link/URI/URL, although you may. You can either click the little 'link' icon in the editing page and follow instructions, or you can simply paste the URL, as here: http://blog.dianahsi...vism-media.html -- in the second case, OL's forum scripts add the URL for you automatically, truncated and 'hot'-linked. Phil, I think you should get in the habit of copying URI/URLs ... that way, when you paste an excerpt from somewhere, you can quickly paste in the locator. It will give you access to the site, as well as give access to the cited words to those of us who are not in a coma or on Rage Ward after reading your Big Flabby Butt Wobbles. þ -- Phil, what the fuck are the little strings of commas all about? Eg., ,,,,,,,, What the hell does this signify? This makes me think of the kookiepants Spock Guy who larded his posts with underlining, odd punctuation and curly brackets, tildes and whatnot. He seemed demented, orthographically, and not able to write without such fussing and frills. Is this what you are emulating with your unique and stupid style? Please say no. ______________________________________ Here are the examples of references in APA and MLA style. Note that the MLA style is much more forgiving to someone like you. Hsieh, P. (2012, January 13). 2011 Front Range Objectivism media output [Web log posting]. Retrieved from http://blog.dianahsi...vism-media.html or Hsieh, Paul. "2011 Front Range Objectivism Media Output." Noodlefood. Diana Hsieh PhD, 13 Jan 2012. Web. 18 Jan 2012. <http://blog.dianahsieh.com/2012/01/2011-front-range-objectivism-media.html>.

That doesn't surprise me, but hey. Let me try to explain, and thank you for asking nicely. The point of my post is to ID "otherizing" and to invite comment. I lingered, in my chatty, run-on manner, on how I got to thinking of Otherizing. I tried to lay out the difficulty of naming in a single name something that is but a quality of approach. Read Ellen's post above. She grasped the point: Otherizing. She fleshed it out well and underlined that Otherizing isn't about Phil, but is more basic to Objectivish-ism. Now, Phil, you might disagree that Otherizing was my point of attack and my question and my musing and my inquiry and my confusion. You might even say that you do not understand what Otherizing is. That is OK. You could point out that I edited your remarks above to De-Otherize. You might ask yourself how you could Re-Otherize those edited remarks. You might, above all, do a compare and contrast, like this: Print out the original remarks Print out the edited remarks Note correspondences and additions, and where the changes were made. The primary point, then, Phil, was Otherizing. I do wonder how long it has been since someone drew you into their arms and calmed you down, who soothed your anxiety and made you feel beloved. Oh well. Yes, Phil, No -- if you do my simple little homework task of Compare and Contrast, you can see that I removed none of the numbered points from your remarks. I reworked them into sentences and pitched them back at you. Do you recognize anyone in the revised remarks? Is it not the Very Thing You Were Criticizing (and that Ellen IDs and details, the basic otherizing, the boxing out, the in-group/out-group ramparts, of derision and disengagement toward science, or inquirers of Evul Stripes, the non-attention to and Lack Of Appeal to actual practitioners. This is sometimes James H-N's line when he critiques both TAS and ARI for disengagement from cognitive science. Here is what I wrote backstage in my frustration: I cannot put my full bite on OL, but let me tell you, what I have learned about the ways of humans on OL has helped me suit up for other battles elsewhere. Ayn Rand was so much smarter and more effective than any of her also-rans. They grapple least with the real world (science, free inquiry, the growth of knowledge and the rubbishing of bad premises) when they need it most to support their arguments. Really, my friend, this one time, the point was not all about you. I wanted to engage you in the discussion and let you have some fun, so it was not about you entire. It more about all of us here and our relation to the Objective-ish project or whatever you want to call it, movement, Philosophy, its Spread ... and so on. The Lack Of Appeal to what would seem natural allies. All right? Does that make you feel less snubbed and sidelined? Let me state this in stronger terms: yes, your criticisms and observations ring true, and I tried to assemble them under the awkward rubric Otherizing (while showing you how you too Otherize), and Ellen responded to the basic underlying theme that I poorly sketched and knitted it all back together. Some gift of communication happened between my words and Ellen's mind, and she got the pith of what I was getting at, beyond my own poke at it all. Is it not telling that you say you do not get it? I suspect you do get it, very well, but you are unaccustomed to checking your own Otherizing habits and then talking about it, soothing yourself, easing yourself back into the game. Instead, the other, the dreadful enduring other, the vampire, the thing that is not like yourself, the usurper. the Them.. Okay. This is good. I want you to come back to this one you have finished your Compare and Contrast exercise. Read your remarks over again. Expose the premise. See how appealing or not your engagement with the topic of Otherizing actually is. Take Ellen up on Jung, have a wild weekend digression. Consider this the kind of advice Pollyanna might give to Anne of Green Gables. Lighten up, bitch.

Sorry for the double post. Here is a bandaid on my error, two classics and two imagined allies in Objectivish things.

This is a shill for my blog. On the side of the blog Friends and Foes in my Editor view is a big long list of Tags i have applied to my posts over time. I like it! It looks like fun. I tried to be truthful and humourous. agwa Alexandria Library blather Bobby Allen boogeyman chat Chronicles de-Otherizing Death effective Egypt etiquette fantasy scriptures fiction first sentences fog foggy freedom French usage From our sister sites gawd heavy fog Help Carol&I Are Being Held Against Our Wills Horror incorrigibility islamic menace J Neil Schulman large late for class by a year and a half lost homework Madison Ave mind mist nits objectivish liturgy obscure People Like You Phil Coates Philip I Regent of Objective State picking Pod tests polls punk rock repost revolution slurs against Wael Ghonim small smallness subversion the bickersons the maggots Them They Umberto Eco Violating NIOF! why are you not writing your article. It is overdue widgets wiigging out You and your friends You assholes

Yikes is the Canadian spelling. Whoopsie in French. undefined

Such recreation to be had at OL. We have on one side the rapier of PDS, uniting the theme of the OT and unknotting pretensions in one sweep. On the other hand, the same game but played with polishers, grinders, rivets. I have noticed Phil's incredible use of pronouns. Phil's favourite pronoun of course is I, but strangely he uses They more often. In most heated exchanges, if you look, you will see that Phil rarely gets a sentence going without Them and They. This I might call Otherizing. Otherizing is an odd thing, and a bit tough to explain (as all neologisms should be, I think). We all use constructions like I think or I believe. This usually introduces that we are 'winging it,' and are ready for discussion. Discussants are invited to probe our thoughts or beliefs for reality. In contrast, an assertion drops the "I believe" or "I think." Frankly, I add back in the "I believe" and "I think" in my mind when I re-read an assertion. It doesn't make much difference in my probing questions, but, it makes me more prone to be kind to the person behind the assertion. How does this relate to Otherizing? Well, this is a case in which several things are dropped entirely beyond "I think" and "I believe". No longer do we have a thought, summary, conclusion, assertion presented plainly. No longer do we have a statement like "(I think) most people are stupid and/or degenerate," which is a good start to a discussion. We don't get "(I think) Evil people always do evil to themselves first." Instead we get things like "The bad things about Them are listed in the following List." If the word "I" comes in, it is just to introduce a bill of charges againsts Them. So, what was all that blather for? Well, I am going to de-Otherize Phil's post in which he goes on and on about Them. Source: Ayn Rand & The Prophecy of Atlas Shrugged soon in theatres?

Such recreation to be had at OL. We have on one side the rapier of PDS, uniting the theme of the OT and unknotting pretensions in one sweep. On the other hand, the same game but played with polishers, grinders, rivets. I have noticed Phil's incredible use of pronouns. Phil's favourite pronoun of course is I, but strangely he uses They more often. In most heated exchanges, if you look, you will see that Phil rarely gets a sentence going without Them and They. This I might call Otherizing. Otherizing is an odd thing, and a bit tough to explain (as all neologisms should be, I think). We all use constructions like I think or I believe. This usually introduces that we are 'winging it,' and are ready for discussion. Discussants are invited to probe our thoughts or beliefs for reality. In contrast, an assertion drops the "I believe" or "I think." Frankly, I add back in the "I believe" and "I think" in my mind when I re-read an assertion. It doesn't make much difference in my probing questions, but, it makes me more prone to be kind to the person behind the assertion. How does this relate to Otherizing? Well, this is a case in which several things are dropped entirely beyond "I think" and "I believe". No longer do we have a thought, summary, conclusion, assertion presented plainly. No longer do we have a statement like "(I think) most people are stupid and/or degenerate," which is a good start to a discussion. We don't get "(I think) Evil people always do evil to themselves first." Instead we get things like "The bad things about Them are listed in the following List." If the word "I" comes in, it is just to introduce a bill of charges againsts Them. So, what was all that blather for? Well, I am going to de-Otherize Phil's post in which he goes on and on about Them.

William, You do not wear victemhood well. Anyway, the guy who died is named Lewis. He's the one the really bad stuff just happened to. It got so bad he died dead. Michael Source: John Lewis, In Memoriam

A page of remembrance and tribute is up at Ari Armstrong's blog, including this from Paul Hsieh:

Alex Epstein penned a memoriam for John Lewis. This appeared at the website of Center of Industrial Progress.

From the Ayn Rand Institute's website.

Yes, and I appreciate both your careful consideration of and response to my post, and your gracious acceptance of my apology. As you have so kindly pointed out, I did spend an inordinate time writing about my experiences with death. For that, for the impertinence of giving context to my earlier misplaced post, in acknowledgement that my experiences are worth little but a sneer, I shall move on.

I will do my best. There is a swamp of material, and I haven`t yet found the set that is restricted to our interests in this thread. But, I am on it. Here is one that does not exactly fit the bill, but is full of further references to the field: http://rstb.royalsoc...31/561.full.pdf -- you can skip down to Section 6 for a look at what the authors found in regard to sociopathy or psychopathy (which distinction is important to acknowledge). When I wrote that the field is a swamp, I should have added why I say it that way. It is because I seem to be looking for something discrete and separate like say a tennis ball. In the swamp of research, however, few things are discrete like that -- it is like an ecosystem of knowledge. It is a bit like that trope of science or other form of rational inquiry (like history) -- converging lines of evidence, mutually-supporting findings, validations, extensions, implications, corrections, and so on. It is this interconnectedness of work, the standing on the shoulders of giants, the regular and sweeping reviews of work in the broad field that gives me pause. So do not think I am lazing away coming up with references. I am looking for something really good. By way of reference to the issues at hand: consider that we are looking for work on physiological measures, and that emotion is the thing being measured, and that the person's being measured are either A) Psychopaths, B) Sociopaths C) incarcerated violent criminals, not a single diagnostic criteria. As Dennis may have been alluding to, there is overlap and a lack of fit between official diagnostic instruments such as the DSM (DSM conducts its groupings of categories by behaviour. So, anti-social personality disorder is not the same thing as Psychopathy per Hare, nor do either of these categories presume to reflect the psychology of the entire violent offender population. So, with that pre-excuse for my lack of returns so far, here is something that warrants a look, Michael. It is a web-page by a fellow who says "I am a Sociopath." Read this page here and the comments, and you can see that there is a community of people who proudly accept the diagnosis of SPD or ASD or Psychopathy. It is fascinating to discover how I Am A Sociopath describes his own life and realization and attempts at curbing and controlling his anti-social behaviour. Here is just a tease. If you have the time, I think the whole page is worth your while. [i did not manage to include the URL for the "I am a Sociopath' website. Sloppy! It is at the Experience Project. "I am a sociopath" What Causes a True Sociopath? Is There a Cure? There are other communities of self-acknowledged sociopaths, but the I Am A Sociopath pages are quite revealing and interesting.] What makes them tick is that, despite having fully conscious conceptual awareness, they don't seem to care about the harm they inflict on others. Which is another issue altogether.Before they get to inflict harm on others, they have had to inflict it on themselves, first. Evil 'begins at home'. [ ... ] If you can equate the brain, with a mind, and logic, with rationality, you may have little difficulty viewing such a person as having "a fully conscious awareness of reality". I don't. If you can equate the brain, with a mind, and logic, with rationality -- you might be missing the points some have been making about Psychopathy, about Sociopathy, about 'measuring' evil. You can indeed equate the brain with a mind and logic and rationality. But if you misunderstand the role that emotion plays in the function of the mind, you can also appreciate that this is the disfunction some believe they have found (using psychological tools of inquiry). The lack of empathy, lack of remorse in a 'true sociopath' is what logic and rationality have found. How do you deal with that news? Moreover, don't you think we have to check our statements against reality? How can you prove or disprove your notion that before they get to inflict harm on others, they (criminals or psychopaths or sociopaths or evil creatures) have to inflict it on themselves? Seriously, if this is true, then it will not be difficult to find people that fit your criteria. There should be more than one. Indeed, if your generalization is true, every single person in your group (Them) should show unmistakable evidence of your findings or your claims. Do they? This is the kind of question Dennis Hardin avoids. How do he or you know that what you say is true? How come, when challenged to deliver some evidence (from observation or the literature) Dennis faints away? If Dennis or you are confident that your assertions are true, garnering evidence and sharing it is a toddle. But that is not happening

Mark, you have been informed that this is a thread on tactics and communication and strategies to counter the dominant bad ideas and bias in our culture. This is subject enough for The Headmaster. If you mix all sorts of side topics into a thread, it loses its force. So, try to keep to the topic, which is Kicking Liberal Teeth In. Oh, maybe you are saying that the topic, Kicking In Liberal Teeth, is urepresentative of the argument put forward. That may be correct, but such corrections of Phil go into his enormous Ignore Box.

I must explain myself. I had written about Kim Jong Il. I had written that I like to shout abuse during obseques of important folks.** This was probably a mistake, but it is too late, too late to go back and fix it. I had written that I do indeed like to use eulogies or memorial occasions to discuss politics, in response to Michael's note. Argh. And now I guess I should answer all the interesting questions asked of me (I even have let Phil out of the locker for the day). OK. Moral emotions are readily evoked by the perception of moral violations; Michael, Dennis, Phil and Stephen were disgusted by what seemed like another example of graceless sniping at a freshly-dead man. And my blundering intervention merely tarred me with the taint of Westboro Baptist yeehaw ... I brought it on myself. I mentioned Kim Jong Il. I mentioned shouting at obseques. I disgusted someone whom I respect. There is no getting around that. It does not matter in the least that my Over The Top and drily ironic answer to Michael was misunderstood. I seem to have written my words above to be stumbled over, to be misunderstood. Right? Sure. But before I am taken to the gallows or the torture chambers, I would like to say that we must not be hypocrites. If we take the least pleasure in the death of some figure and ourselves have not waited until the conventional period of mourning is over to offer evalutations and even criticisms of that person's legacy, then we can empathize with those who want to cry out at funerals ("He was a monster!") if only to recognize that in one or two special circumstances, we, each of us, might do the same. At the same time, why can"t Mark at least acknowledge grief? I learned, again, that we are virtual, but we can engender real emotion in each other. Thus, yet another thread on Objectivist Living full of disgust, contempt, ludicrous hyperbole, wagging fingers and so on. Mark, gawd love you, you seem to have a limited range of tones. Nothing would have prevented you from waiting a day or two for the earth to settle. But your 'Hi There, he is dead AND and ASSHOLE' clanged. It seems crass or rather, not classy. A classy guy might have murmured some commonplaces about death about this death, realized that in the presence of grief, those who curse the dead are contemplated with disgust by those in grief -- and then opened a fresh thread topic Lewis's Legacy of Death or whatever. Mark, I tried to put this in less chiding terms, above. I should mention that I wasn't actually at the funeral of the North Korean leader. I watched in on TV and on the internet. When Nixon was buried, I shouted at the screen. When Kissinger is boxed and shipped, I will shout. Are you making a comparision between my post above and the Westboro Baptist Church campaigns? If so, regard: I like using eulogies or memorial occasions to discuss politics, though not during the processions. During the obseques of important figures, I have been known to shout at the screen (of the television). This shouting has mostly been confined to my own premises.** Um, let me look back at the kind of behaviour 'like that' you are referring to. OK, "shouting and protesting at funerals of gays and soldiers." I like using eulogies or memorial occasions to discuss politics, though not during the processions. I have been known to shout at the screen during obseques. Oh, let me tell you. When a thirty-five year friend died in 2010, I avoided all the memorials, the funeral, even the one year memoriam with family whom I was very fond of. Why? In order to be honest. I had problems with this person. She was imperfect. She harmed herself and others. She stymied her own dreams and goals. She left a lot of enemies and wasted effort. I couldn't say this at her funeral (and feel, since my father's funeral in 1975 that sometimes nothing is said in a eulogy that resembles the real dead person), so I did not go. I did not want to pretend then nor pretend a year later that the legacy was pure -- if asked, if my opinion had been solicited. I could not mask my face. I gave sincere personal condolences to her son and daughter. I did not explain myself publicly for not attending. I used Facebook to add my own statement of condolence. I simply did not want to sit around with a lot of people who blanked out a portion of reality ... Lay this against something else. When my sisters and brother and I nursed our mother till her death, we also took responsibility for every aspect of her passing. We washed her body. We dressed her. We sat with her for 24 hours and welcomed our larger family in. We said final farewells in our hearts at her cremation. We planned and executed the day when friends and family gathered. We placed a death notice. We prepared the memorial keepsakes for everyone who attended our non-institutional funeral (daffodils and perennial seeds of her favourite). We prepared the memorial books and photos. We did our public and private job. We requested of the City that reserve the park next door to mom's place for our 'funeral,' we picked music, we welcomed and embraced folks who had loved our mother. We posted signs at the park that informed the public were were holding a memorial. We posted someone at the gate. . We all also attended the funerals and get-togethers of our cousin three weeks earlier, and our Aunt three weeks later. Because you trust your gut sometimes, and because you like strong metaphors, perhaps. You like to use analogies. I just do not see a dog, nor a kick, nor me, nor any relation to me in your musings and awkward analogy. But. Just so we are straight on this -- my comments and excerpts from Lewis were unwelcome, somewhat like posting hate on a Facebook page of a recently deceased person (how one could get to post on that page without being a 'friend' I do not know)? Ah, the moralist in full finger-wagging flight of rhetoric. By implication, William, though not by direct accusation, you are charged with EQUATING John Lewis with Evil Dictators, you fuck. William, you talk about Kim Jong Il in the same breath while some people are trying to make a symbolic gesture of paying last respects. Oh, man, what can I say to this implied accusation? Should I respond -- can I respond helpfully, honestly, informatively? Compare and contrast, not equate. Comparisons are odious because they sometimes teach too much, they hurt as well as inform. This kind of thing has happened before in not-so-similar situations. I recall some heartless nutcase (perhaps Luke Setzer?) come out ugly against Nathan Hawking just after his death by painful cancer had been announced. This was, I believe, at RoR. And in this Stephen is correct, it was disgusting, it was pissing on a grave. So, it will happen again. Some people are emotionally blunted or uninterested or unlearned in the niceties. But as long as this bluntness and emotional tone-deafness abounds (in people like Mark and me), and can be expected, why not have a Memorial section on OL where originators may control the process and edit? Next time somebody dies and someone here wants to post tributes and memorialize about a particular person, then you could post your Memoriam to MSK and he could place its following comments under moderation. Be that as it may, I apologize for stinking up the outhouse. It was shitty of me to use phrases that could be easily misinterpreted. Michael, I accept that I made an error. In retrospect, considering all the death I have dealt with in my life, it would have been much much much better to have written a personal reflection on death and character, and to have utterly avoided wading into the argument over Lewis's publications. That can wait. To Stephen Boydstun, I personally apologize. As soon as I realized I appeared on the same side of the fence as Luke (or whoever the nut was), I knew I was wrong capital W. ** imagine the TV store with its window full of Kim Il Jong and his portly son grieving in mass display. Imagine a busy street of pedestrians. Imagine me shouting. Imagine yourself.

From Craig Biddle at The Objectivist Standard

I had to read this topic, so I had to let Phil out of my ignore box. A pretty good topic it promised to be: Kicking Liberal's Teeth In This is just great. The author surely knows his audience, and its interest in kickboxing. A well-placed kick to the face can indeed kick teeth into a mouth, and repeated kicks to the face can smash up a lot of teeth. Of course, in kick-boxing, champions do not really get a chance to kick every last tooth out, with things like rules and referees ... Which leads to the promise of a no-rules kind of kicking. Which is also great. In this kind of contest, the face to be kicked belongs to Them (Liberals), the acknowledged enemy of every right-thinking person here. The face to be kicked, the teeth to be kicked in, they are Liberal teeth. This promises a lot of action, and conjures up images of excellent mayhem: if the Liberal was on the ground, then the kicking is even more thrilling.** But, the article that follows this enticing headline is, alas, not about kicking any teeth in. It is about political reporting and Philip Coates's efforts to counter liberal claptrap and double-standards (he delivers his thrilling-but-metophorical shit-kicking in comment threads on online versions of New York Times stories, and also at NYT blogs such as Andy Revkin's). We don't know how many stub-toothed journalists with aching jaws exist among Phil's targets, though he belatedly realizes upon prodding that he could add thrilling detail to the kicking by providing a URL. But, we certainly now can examine, along with Phil, the opponents' behaviour before the metaphorical foot was thwacked into their faces. The Liberals are actually named at the link, and the vile, irresponsible, evul, disempathetic and all-round deserving of a kick to the mouth provocation is exposed to view. Look at this bullshit. This is what provoked Phil into balletic violence, into a well-aimed boot at evul's leering grin, into unleashing The Full Power Of Phil. Presumably the first paragraphs alone can plunge the reader into the same fury. If a piece of New York Times political reporting can be said to have a set of teeth (evul's leering grin), then certainly one can feel satisfaction, great personal satisfaction, at pushing through cowardly spectators of the evul, pushing evul to the ground, and kicking in evul's teeth. One can also empathize with Phil's feelings of exultant victory. When one of our team vanquishes the enemy, can we not feel the same surge of emotion? Full text at A Big Check, and Gingrich Gets a Big Lift ______________ ** in another thread an entirely Bizarro Superman version of the Kick To Face theme is in play. Opposite to this thread about Kicking Teeth In, it is about When Not To Kick A Dead Man In The Face -- with interesting digressions into thermonuclear war and other pressing issues.

I will do my best. There is a swamp of material, and I haven`t yet found the set that is restricted to our interests in this thread. But, I am on it. Here is one that does not exactly fit the bill, but is full of further references to the field: http://rstb.royalsoc...31/561.full.pdf -- you can skip down to Section 6 for a look at what the authors found in regard to sociopathy or psychopathy (which distinction is important to acknowledge).

This is your statement or claim, but you have not been able to dig up one single piece of evidence to warrant your enthusiasm. This is a dodge. You have been asked to provide some support for your contentions above, but you have not provided anything. You, as a licensed (I presume) therapist in California (licensed in what capacity is not known**) claim expertise in sociopathy. I am glad you are explicit. You have had a sociopath (at least one) as a client, you claim. This is why I asked you if you had ever had need to use Hare's instruments formally. I should mention that you may have examined someone for sociopathy while being paid by another, such as an attorney at law. But I should not be surprised to learn nothing about your clinical practice, because -- unlike Nathaniel Branden PhD -- you have not published articles or books or given lectures or courses. He describes his therapy. You do not.) You know what? While you have been pontificating on matters psychological (such as your pronouncements on sociopathy) psychology -- in the guise of Robert Hare and his peers -- have been publishing and reviewing and validating a whole raft of instruments for detecting and assessing sociopathy. Maybe we will not call psychology a science for a good many centuries, but in the meantime, did you not want to have a peek at progress since your PhD? (which reminds me, we know where Nathaniel Branden, PhD got his doctorate and in what and under what supervision, and we know where John Lewis got his PhD and we know where Robert Campbell and others here on OL got their PhD. Where did you get yours?) Have you used Hare's checklist, at least? Maybe the one in his book? Doubtless you will have nothing more to say on sociopathy until such controversies are decided in the field. Meanwhile, please do not discourage Michael or I or anyone who is actually seeking to test your statements for truth and accuracy. Your point of view? Your pronouncements on sociopaths have been challenged. I and everyone else notes here that you have not brought any support for your contentions. If indeed you are Not Alone in pronouncing, it is surely not to much to ask of you that you Name Names. If you are not alone, who is with you, for heaven's sake. Why be so coy with what you know and believe. If there is something that supports your pronouncements, fork it over. Nope. You are grasping at straws trying to validate your own misapprehension. Moreover, these two things are not tied together, dude. A need for excitement is not simply nor does it always imply a need to escape emotional-self awareness. If you had been paying attention and not flattering yourself that you knew your shit, you would have grasped that disempathetic sociopaths are notably not concerned about their lack of empathy. It does not cause them anguish. It is not on their self-reported tone scale. Oh gawd. This is just more proclamation, and pretty flatulent and sloppy besides. Emotional repression is so not a part of sociopathy, brother, whether you use a stupid Freudian concept or a stupider neo-Freudian one, and Massive Repression is a weasel term right out of the Kook Workbook that I have long been familiar with. I wager that you have never properly assessed one single sociopath using the best instruments science has yet produced. I bet you have never written up your notes for possible inclusion in a case study. I bet you have no experience or reading or anything else but a notion to hold to your conception of psychopathy or sociopathy. In the trade we call this Hand-Waving. It doesn't even look like an argument. It is like watching a new skater take twenty feet to fall down. Dennis, you have made some psychological claims about sociopaths. Michael invited inquiry. You are going home to have a nap. Lurching into 'such people' are 'not genuinely happy' shows such a feeble comprehension of the usefulness of Michael's caution to you. For you to turn into an elderly snap turtle before you go for your nap is just so sad. +++++++++++++++++++++ Okay, everybody. Now that Dennis is 'resting,' we can examine the result of his validation exercise: Emotional poverty Appear Cold and Unemotional Prone to dramatic, shallow, short-lived displays of feeling. Leaves strong impression (on careful observers) of play-acting, that little emotional feeling of these displays. ... and/or Dennis's observations ... Conceal a chronic state of inner turmoil Prefer to live on an animal-like, anti-conceptual level Cut themselves off from the awareness of their suffering Retain the ability to have some limited enjoyment of immediate pleasures, such as food and sex Resist any sort of genuine therapeutic interaction. Go to therapists because they are court-ordered to do so Go to therapists because they hope that attending therapy will convnce the world they have reformed Able to enjoy mindless, range-of-the-moment "pleasures" Chronic sense of futility and self-doub Can achieve nothing remotely resembling a satisfying life. _____________ ** I should mention that I have more than a glancing familiarity with California licensing laws. In BC, I can put up a shingle announcing Psychotherapy and get to business. I do not need to register anything else but my business. I can call myself a Psychotherapist and not cross one single legal line by doing so. I have no beef with ethical, responsible and well-informed psychotherapists whether licensed or not, whether psychologists or not. So, I do not mean to harry Dennis for his credentials, just wondering if all that stuff is a secret or something, since it hasn't yet been mentioned, and is not obvious at Dennis's website. One of the people whom I drew fire from during the memory wars was Diana Napolis, MA. She was, for a time, an officer of the court charged with the best interests of children finding themselves in abuse proceedings. She was a ritual abuse nutcase, so you can guess the rest (she was the worst). She had a license as a Marriage and Family Counsellor. She ran with it and ended up like this. She ran with her initial enthusiasm and ran it into severe mental illness. She 'helped' children with their Massive Repression of satanic ritual abuse. Nathaniel Branden's PhD is one of the reasons I am not the world's biggest fan. It was from the California Graduate Institute. And in the same way Stalinist Russia was deformed by the kind of theory imposed by Lysenko in biology (which essentially was a gamble that wheat could be 'taught' to grow better), some of the autocracies of psychology are also in hope of a theory's payoff. But the autocracies are smaller, Brant, much smaller, even though they follow the same path to pitfalls as did Stalin and Lysenko. Disengaging from the (scientific) community of debate and discussion and peer-review pays no dividends. Autocratic pronouncements un-accompanied by research are shit, the same shit delivered by cranks and crackpots and solitary nuts since time began. In every field. If we do not have a way to tell the difference between the work of an autocratic crank and the work of a fair inquirer, then we are surely doomed to follow autocrats forever. The autocracies I have in mind, Brant, are more like impervious cults. And so, within the broad and broadest concept of psychology (understanding behaviour), some people wall themselves off from other people's inquiries. You have complained of his enough in Objective-ish circles to recognize it, I suppose. Anyhow, whatever brand of Psychological Lysenkoism informed the practice of psychotherapy that you paid for in New York, Brant, what made it so? Was it by paying rigorous attention to, or engaging in debates about best practice? Was it by ignoring the field or inquiry?

I do, though not during the procession or speeches. During the obseques of important folks (like Kim Jong Il) I have been known to shout abuse. Similarly with deaths of controversial figures in the world of politics, law, religion, entertainment, newsmaking, or in the case of John Lewis, Objectivism. Let Mark understand or not that some people here knew Lewis personally. Let him understand or not that some people here got something profound and enriching from their encounters with or reading of or study under John Lewis. I think I understand that this cohort exists, and that some of that cohort memorialized Lewis here. And I hope I understand that when Michael says he personally grieves John Lewis, we can be as fully human as possible in the face of that grief. But let us face it. Nobody intimate in Lewis's family is here or paying attention in any way to Mark's comments. Nobody will deny that if a topic explored Lewis's legacy, his views on war within and without ARI would be subject to debate. If Mark had started a new thread devoted to that, no harm for those who think they are in a funeral procession or service here. As for Dennis Hardin, I support his right to demonize Mark and splash about great gouts of black paint and white paint. As for the quibbles about warmongering, what are you supposed to say if you believe that a great man was also a great warmonger, was irresponsible, was wrong in his famous pronouncements? If you are Mark, you just stand up and say it. Mark notes, telllingly, his entire orientation to Lewis (whom he groups under ARI Warmongers): "if the war had been handled the way ARI wanted -- something along the lines of a nuclear bomb -- the war would still have been wrong." Here is an excerpt from an article at Capitalism. From the way it is composed, it seems this is a retelling of a speech given to Ashland University (published 20 September 2001): I will be specific here. What is needed is an all-out immediate attack, nuclear if necessary, on targets chosen by the US. 24 hours notice should then be given to the governments of Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Libya, that they are to resign their political positions now or face more of the same tomorrow. Arafat must be told that the leaders of Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Islamic Jihad are to be turned over to us now, or he faces annihilation, in the form decided on by us. If destruction follows it is their fault, not ours. They started it. They evidently wish it. If babies are killed it is because they hide behind them. We didn't start this war-they did, by arming, training, protecting and sanctioning the attackers who killed innocent Americans. Further, the US should not ask permission of anyone about this. In my opinion it is actually vital that such permissions not be asked. Our actions must be unilateral. EVERY government, friend and foe, must know that an attack on America will be followed by retaliation: inevitably, always, everywhere, regardless of what they think.Our retaliation must take on the status of natural justice, as a law of nature, inescapable across time and space. Throw a stone into the air and it falls. A flash of lightning is followed by thunder. Touch a hot stove and you get burned. Touch an American, and fire falls out of the sky onto you and anyone who breathes the same air as you. Golly, I think about this, and discount the emotional walloping he had received a day or two before, but look at the actual call for war: all-out immediate attack, nuclear if necessary ... Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Libya ... face more of the same tomorrow. Arafat must be told that the leaders of Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Islamic Jihad are to be turned over to us now, or he faces annihilation. One odd thing stands out. He says Arafat (the leader of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, at the time of the writing allowed to live in the West Bank) must be told that the leaders of Hamas/Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad must be turned over. This is a bit nutty. Arafat had zero ability to 'turn over' Nasrallah. But later in the article he appends further justifications for total war on all these countries ... There has never been a revolution in a Middle-Eastern country in favor of a constitutional republic that protects the rights of its citizens. If the people lack freedom it is because their government recognizes no individual rights. Let their governments establish these principles rather than military coups. And, I'll add, if many people there do want freedom, what better can we do for them than to remove the source of their slavery? Their interests are identical with ours: the destruction of their governments, and the establishment of rights-protecting constitutional republics. This passage strikes me as obvious support for Mark's concern with warmongering. What would have been the effect had Lewis's mad bombing ultimatums been carried out? All those countries, all those 'enemy' corpses, all those countries now seeking to overthrow the very same authoritiarian states that Lewis contemplated turning into smoke and rubble.

Who cares? Who cares what some crowd of people (or portion of crowd) shouts? Is it remarkable that Americans shout at and heckle their candidates? From my point of view, in America it is okay to shout at candidates for office as they come and go from media events. It is not only a constitutional right to shout at candidates, it is a constitutional right to move along the path you have chosen (as Santorum did) freely, from your vehicle, to the sidewalk, past the microphones, smile (as Santorum did) and with handlers and agents and other suited gentlemen, calmly enter the building (as Santorum did). As for the headline: Angry mob swarms Rick Santorum -- this is BS. No 'mob,' just vocal (in parts) citizens. No swarm on Rick Santorum, just a stately procession, with smile, from car to indoor space. If he wasn't so stupid, he would have stopped in front of a microphone (well in front of the people 'swarming' him from forty feet away) and gave 'em heck. He could certainly have stood up to hecklers, or let off a good one-liner or spoke to a question or comment shouted at him. If the intent of the shouty people was to drown him out ... then an able politician would have been able to turn that to his advantage. Has OL always had this subcurrent of stupid non-reporting of non-events?

Good insight. Objectivist Living-ites like you and me and most everybody are constantly doing sets of criteria. If we are to get closer and closer to understanding both the word and the reality of evil it makes most sense to isolate evil in acts. I think that every last responsible inquirer on this thread believes that one can find evil in evil acts. We agree that there are evil acts (although we might separately disagree with the catalogue). Thus we could agree that we should look at evil acts to see if we can tease out further mutually-agreed factors in the behaviour. But first, please, add the factor of effect. Remember that we discern something negative in evil, something that throbs in every single definition of evil that we can find in all the world's dictionaries and all the world's thesauruses in all the world's languages that define something quite like evul. Harm. (and cognates, of course, each also throbbing: pain, damage, blood, suffering, terror, death, horror, torture, misery, grief) You need more than one set of eyes to properly operationalize, perhaps. Why don't you borrow the concept of 'marker,' Angela? This would be criteria collapsed into label. You want markers of evil, I think If you use this, you have the item concept: Act on one axis, markers on other, with the question uppermost: can we actually measure evil or something like it? So, perhaps something like an x reflecting ACT against the y reflecting markers like an INTENT and a SUBJECT and an OBJECT and a RESULT. These are all the things I take it we have or will have generally agreed upon, in sentence form: We can catalogue acts that intentionally bring harm to individual human beings. We can discern in that catalogue acts that are marked or inscribed as not merely harmful, not merely bad, not merely criminal, not merely cruel or horrible, but inscribed by the powerful word Evil. By separating, weighing and sorting components or factors of such evil acts, we may be able to discern evil more clearly. [Edit: Bill will try to jam in an illustrative and potentially annoying HTML table here] <table style="text-align: center; width: 744px; height: 209px;" border="1" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2"> <tbody> <tr> <td style="vertical-align: top;"><br> </td> <td style="vertical-align: top;"><br> </td> <td style="vertical-align: top;"><br> </td> <td style="vertical-align: top;"><br> </td> <td style="vertical-align: top;"><br> </td> <td colspan="3" rowspan="1" style="vertical-align: top; width: 107px;">SUFFICIENT MARKERS OF EVIL?<br> </td> </tr> <tr> <td style="vertical-align: top; width: 77px;">OBJECT<br> </td> <td style="vertical-align: top; width: 67px;">INTENT<br> </td> <td style="vertical-align: top; width: 11px;">ACT<br> </td> <td style="vertical-align: top; width: 78px;">SUBJECT<br> </td> <td style="vertical-align: top; width: 90px;">RESULT<br> </td> <td style="vertical-align: top; width: 120px;">DISEMPATHY<br> </td> <td style="vertical-align: top; width: 120px;">ITEM 2<br> </td> <td style="vertical-align: top; width: 107px;">ITEM 3<br> </td> </tr> <tr> <td style="vertical-align: top; width: 77px;">Human<br> </td> <td style="vertical-align: top; width: 67px;">?<br> </td> <td style="vertical-align: top; width: 11px;"> Killing<br> </td> <td style="vertical-align: top; width: 78px;">Human<br> </td> <td style="vertical-align: top; width: 90px;">Death<br> </td> <td style="vertical-align: top; width: 120px;">?<br> </td> <td style="vertical-align: top; width: 120px;">?<br> </td> <td style="vertical-align: top; width: 107px;">?<br> </td> </tr> <tr> <td style="vertical-align: top; width: 77px;">Human <br> </td> <td style="vertical-align: top; width: 67px;">?<br> </td> <td style="vertical-align: top; width: 11px;">Killing<br> </td> <td style="vertical-align: top; width: 78px;">Dog<br> </td> <td style="vertical-align: top; width: 90px;">Death<br> </td> <td style="vertical-align: top; width: 120px;">?<br> </td> <td style="vertical-align: top; width: 120px;">?<br> </td> <td style="vertical-align: top; width: 107px;">?<br> </td> </tr> <tr> <td style="vertical-align: top; width: 77px;">Human<br> </td> <td style="vertical-align: top; width: 67px;"><br> </td> <td style="vertical-align: top; width: 11px;"><br> </td> <td style="vertical-align: top; width: 78px;"><br> </td> <td style="vertical-align: top; width: 90px;"><br> </td> <td style="vertical-align: top; width: 120px;"><br> </td> <td style="vertical-align: top; width: 120px;"><br> </td> <td style="vertical-align: top; width: 107px;"><br> </td> </tr> <tr> <td style="vertical-align: top; width: 77px;">Human<br> </td> <td style="vertical-align: top; width: 67px;"><br> </td> <td style="vertical-align: top; width: 11px;"><br> </td> <td style="vertical-align: top; width: 78px;"><br> </td> <td style="vertical-align: top; width: 90px;"><br> </td> <td style="vertical-align: top; width: 120px;"><br> </td> <td style="vertical-align: top; width: 120px;"><br> </td> <td style="vertical-align: top; width: 107px;"><br> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> An ACT that BRINGS HARM to a HUMAN BEING by INTENT marked by egregious behaviour (without justice, without mercy, without regret, without empathy, without thought, without fully considering its consequences). ________________________ Of course, Angela, I realize we all set sail on the Subjective Sea when we go to capture Evil (Evul is much easier to net), wouldn't you agree? Like you, I think multiple perspectives and much argument leads to best results. Seeking objective answers to life's vexed questions is valid and valorous in my scheme of values, even when such seeking stumbles.

I am going to go all Phil on this thread. Sorry to be late to the party. The Headline is misleading. What is Citiizenship? That is a great question. The Headline had better have said: Why is Obama President if he does not fit the Constitutional citizenship criteria? A better headline would reveal multiple infelicities of thought I have Peter on a No Fly list for a reason. Why MM would respond to his uninformed rants and bigotry and slop is beyond me. What is citizenship could be reframed to be What is citizenship but designated membership in a group, granted by some power or infallible law? Peter Taylor is at his dopiest and most sloppy when he gets hung up on words like "immigrant" as if the word correctly corrals all those who have moved from place to place in the world -- missing concepts and missing data about refugees and war and shifting boundaries -- missing concepts like officially Displaced Persons, or stateless people, or those who flee for their lives from their homes. As Ba'al and the other Reality-Dwellers point out repeatedly, Obama is President, there is Zero chance of him being disqualified on any ballot in America because of 'citizenship,' and chasing after and predicting and yearning for events that cannot possibly happen is a sign of Crazy. No concept of Citizenship can take shape and do work without referent to the Object that does work, the actual entity that grants or acknowledges or restricts Citizenship. Nor can citizenship as a concept do any work without putting it to work. What does Citizenship do? What are its limits? What does it guarantee to the holder and what does it forbid? For those contributing to an endless wet trudge round the dreary cul-de-sac of Barack Obama's eligibility for office, come in, change your socks, sit down for a snack and a refreshing beverage. Have any of you people gumming this well-gummed bone considered that there are Other Important Issues?

Great point, Michael. It surprises me that a psychotherapist/author like Dennis Hardin is so categorical in his dicta. First you introduced criminals you have known without a conscience (psychopath/sociopath**). You described them. You clarified that you do not like terms that hint at "disturbance" in the sense of angst, torment, pain and suffering. You noted lack of conscience, missing moral compass, missing sense of guilt for harming others (as Angela points out, another name for lack of empathy). I remember many bits of information on OL regarding sociopathy over the years. I think someone, maybe you, may have posted neurology on the genesis of disempathetic syndromes/APD/frontal lobe abnormalities. I also recall sharply a prospective study that followed young brain injury patients. The kids went on to develop several hallmarks of sociopathy such as impulsiveness, lack of conscience, inability to feel guilt, etcetera. As I recall, that study did not measure emotions such as Dennis implies must be there, seething. But I may be wrong in my recall. Dennis did not understand your statement that simply takes issue with the implication of angst and suffering. He said, "I really don’t understand this comment." (I thought to myself of some high-grade sociopathic monsters in the news the last half-century. On the one hand, supporting Dennis, would be John Wayne Gacy, who was alternatively Bubbles the Clown for charity -- and someone who piled young male corpses downstairs till his wife complained of the stink. Gacy was quoted as saying to a friend: "I do bad things, but I do good things, too." On the other hand, supporting MSK, might be the implacable cool of Jeffrey Dahmer and Willy Picton and Ted Bundy and on and on. Did these guys suffer torments such as Dennis sketches? I think not.) Michael, by your witness you counter Dennis's suggestion that every last one of your acquaintances (who were perhaps sociopathic) were suffused with a hidden suffering that he can see from California. He said, "Why would you say that people with these deeply ingrained characteristics are not mentally disturbed?" Now, strangely, Dennis hauls out the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of mental disorders, and points to criteria that support your observations. But he does not cite anything from the DSM to support his own. Where are the necessary emotions that Dennis tells us must be there -- can he find this general observation in the DSM? Dennis claims that sociopaths as designated by DSM criteria "do a terrific job of concealing their chronic state of inner turmoil from others as well as themselves. They cut themselves off from the awareness of their suffering." How does he support this? Well, ultimately, both of you are on the side of rational inquiry into this matter, so I will go all diligent on you both, and dig up fMRI findings from the population at issue, the sociopathic cohort you are at least both describing. Is there an already staked out field of inquiry? I would say so. It isn't a new question, measuring emotion, pain, torment, mood, baseline, fear, rage. Certain emotions I believe have long be assessed physiologically without fMRI. Simple experiments were no doubt done back in Wundt's day, with galvanometers, to try to find a physiological 'signal' for emotions -- not relying on the face or gesture to compare against the results of 'scientific introspection,' and psychological instruments have most certainly advanced. What I will specifically look for are 'hallmark' physiology: the emotions that can be read by some kind of instrument reliably. If there are discrete markers in physiology for things like misery, torment, or other chronic states of inner turmoil -- great. If there are no markers for these Hardin labels I may have to choose things from either the Tone Scale or Plutchik to narrow my inquiries! This is the question posed by Michael and answered by Dennis: Are sociopaths 'disturbed' by feelings of misery, inner turmoil, suffering? Dennis says, Indubitably. Michael says, Inquire. _____________________ ** Anyone who thinks they know anything about psychopathy/sociopathy should know all about Robert Hare, his work and measures. Let me ask Dennis Hardin directly: have you even had occasion to assess someone formally using any of the Hare scales?