I’ve been a big fan of the band Pearl Jam for many years. And they just released a new album (which, incidentally, is the #1 album in the US as of this writing) so I’ve been listening to it a lot over the last few days. In particular, the album includes what I think is one of their best songs ever, “Sirens”. The song is about mortality and how fragile life and love are in the face of it.
So I’ve been grateful to them for connecting me to those issues and feelings through the song. But then, last night, they connected me to them in another way that is extremely relevant to ponerology.
Pearl Jam performed on “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon” last night. Well, technically, their taped performance from an earlier time was played. In fact, they played a live show in Hartford, Connecticut last night. So after watching the airing of their performance on Fallon’s show, I was just looking around on Twitter to see what people were saying about it.
Instead, I ran into this tweet from the band regarding the show in Hartford:
I was instantly hit with a mix of heartbreak for the obvious tragedy the tweet alluded to and curiosity about what the “Avie Foundation” was all about.
National Geographic Explorer is the longest-running documentary series in cable television history. In its nearly 30 years on the air, it has covered a wide range of fascinating topics and been nominated for and won many awards due to the high quality of its content and production.
I recently learned about an episode of Explorer dedicated to the topic of “the Warrior Gene.”
The episode is entitled “Born to Rage.”
It opens with a question that lies right at the heart of ponerology:
“Are some people born to be violent?”
In its very next lines it answers the question:
“An extraordinary discovery suggests they are. A single gene has been directly associated with violent behavior.”
In our in-depth piece about James Fallon’s life and work, we discussed warrior genes – genes which, when represented in certain variants, are associated with violence – as well as the version of the Monoamine Oxidase A (MAOA) gene which, because it was the first such gene discovered, is frequently referred to as “the Warrior Gene.” It seems the warrior gene idea is gaining some traction in public discussion.
One reason for this traction is the National Geographic channel’s documentary “Born to Rage,” which features musician Henry Rollins and focuses on this topic.
I recently came across another related resource regarding warrior genes. (more…)
The release of the new book The Anatomy of Violence: The Biological Roots of Crime by University of Pennsylvania neurocriminologist Adrian Raine has sparked a wave of media coverage of issues at the heart of ponerology.
Our last post focused on Raine’s essay “The Criminal Mind,” featured in the April 27, 2013 Wall Street Journal, in which he discussed how advances in our understanding of the genetic, neurological and environmental bases of violence are influencing our view of and approach to crime.
Now another large media outlet, CNN, has run not one, but two segments featuring Raine’s work. (more…)
A couple of months ago, we shared a story about a pilot episode for a CBS television show based on the work of a very intriguing professor who works on issues at the heart of ponerology. That person is Adrian Raine, professor of criminology, psychiatry and psychology at the University of Pennsylvania.
Today’s Wall Street Journal features a sizeable piece by Raine as its “Saturday Essay.”
The title of the essay is “The Criminal Mind” and underneath the title it says “Advances in genetics and neuroscience are revolutionizing our understanding of violent behavior—as well as ideas about how to prevent and punish crime.”
It doesn’t get much more relevant to ponerology than that. And it’s heartening to see Raine given a platform to share his extremely important and provocative ideas in The Wall Street Journal just in advance of the release of his book The Anatomy of Violence: The Biological Roots of Crime.
Last summer, while searching the web for ponerology-related information and people, I came across a website discussing a movie called I Am Fishead – or, cleverly, I Am <Fishead(.
It said the film is about corporate corruption and the role that psychopathy may have played in it.
The title, supposedly, refers to a Chinese saying that a “fish stinks from the head,” implying that this movie might be an exploration of how the dysfunction of our hierarchical society originates from those at the top of the pyramid.
Well, of course, I was very intrigued as I have not only dedicated a great deal of time and energy to learning about this topic, but specifically to advocating for more – and more forms of – education of the public about it.
My interest grew even stronger since I related to the background of co-director/co-producer of the film, Misha Votruba, a former psychiatrist who moved on from that career to more creative endeavors, eventually circling back to focus on a psychiatric topic – psychopathy – from a more activist perspective as a filmmaker.
The other co-director/co-producer of I Am Fishead is Vaclav Dejcmar, an economist and businessman with a lot of experience in investing and the financial markets. This background makes him an ideal complement to Misha Votruba in making this film that includes a focus on the overlap of psychiatry and our economic systems.
I finally got around to watching the film and I have quite a bit to say about it. This piece is going to get quite into depth about the film so if you’d prefer to see it first before knowing too much about what happens, you might want to watch it (I’ve embedded it below) and then continue reading this afterwards. If you don’t plan to watch it or don’t mind going into it knowing a lot of what happens, then feel free to read on.
The titles of Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 in the sections immediately below are those from the actual film, but names given to other segments in this synopsis/review are my own. (more…)
Last week, The Huffington Postfeatured someone whose name should always be in the mix when discussing ponerology: Philip Zimbardo, Ph.D., a man who has spent much of his life investigating the science of what makes people act in ways we might deem “good” vs. “evil.”
In our recent piece about Dr. James Fallon, we discussed the three ingredients that Fallon believes are required for the creation of a psychopathic killer.
These included:
Certain structural and functional characteristics of the brain
Certain variants of particular genes
An environment that triggers the expression of these biological predispositions
While psychopathic killers can cause great harm to a certain number of people, they are relatively rare. The greater danger, from the perspective of society at large, is the emergence of “evil” on a broader scale within systems. And, as Andrew M. Lobaczewski makes clear in Political Ponerology, for that to happen, not only must people with disorders other than psychopathy be drawn into harmful activities, but so must some percentage of biologically healthy, normal people.
Zimbardo’s work has primarily focused on investigating how this latter event occurs – how everyday, average people can end up participating in destructive events.
Zimbardo has been a psychology professor at Stanford University for over forty years. He is best known for leading the team that conducted what has come to be known as the Stanford prison experiment back in 1971. (more…)
In my original writings about ponerology, I briefly mentioned its implications for our educational systems. In addition to asserting the importance of preventing pathological people from exerting undue influence to bias curricula or personnel decisions, I said that we should decide how to include age-appropriate lessons about ponerologic material.
Apparently someone agrees.
Months ago, I was reading an article on CNN.com called “Grants Help Abused Women Start Over” by Danielle Berger. The article tells the story of Johanna Crawford, who runs a nonprofit called Web of Benefit that provides “Self-Sufficiency Grants” averaging $500 to female domestic violence survivors in Boston and Chicago to help them with the bare necessities of re-starting their lives. The “web” in the name emerges from a novel part of the program whereby, as part of the terms of their grant, recipients must “pay it forward” by performing three good works to help other survivors like themselves.
What caught my attention was a discussion that broke out in the comments section. It centered around whether the signs of abusive relationships should be taught in schools. And in the midst of this, one comment in particular jumped out at me so strongly that I immediately took a screenshot:
One of the most challenging and important questions in ponerology is whether conditions associated with reduced empathy and conscience, and thus with increased likelihood of harmful malicious and neglectful activity, are caused by nature (genes, biology, etc.) or nurture (environment, upbringing, etc.)
Most who work in the fields that study aspects of this question take the view that the answer involves some combination of the two.
But this still leaves us with another question. In what proportion do each of these factors contribute in which people?
One remarkable case offers some fascinating insight on the subject.
Dr. James Fallon
James Fallon, Ph.D. is a highly decorated neuroscientist and Professor Emeritus of Anatomy and Neurobiology at University of California, Irvine. Dr. Fallon has several areas of expertise. One is adult stem cells. Another is psychiatry. Specifically, he is interested in the relationships between brain imaging (he has served as Director of UC Irvine’s Human Brain Imaging Center), genetics and various psychiatric conditions, including schizophrenia, depression and addictions.
An Extraordinary Experiment
Aware of his specialties, for many years, Fallon’s colleagues have sent him brain images they wished to have him analyze.
At one point this interchange took the form of an experiment.
Colleagues sent him 70 MRI scans of brains belonging to people ranging from healthy to mentally ill. Included in the batch were scans of brains belonging to killers, including some notorious ones. But Fallon had no idea which scanned brain belonged to whom.
Nonetheless, he was able to identify differences in five of the scans so dramatic that he could recognize them as the markers of psychopathy. And it turned out that he was correct. The five scans on which he zeroed in actually were those from the brains of psychopathic serial killers. (more…)
One of the most useful perspectives from which to consider questions in ponerology is that of evolutionary psychology. This is the field that asks how and why certain psychological traits and characteristics came about and were selected for during our long evolutionary past. And a number of thinkers have commented on how psychopathy might be viewed through this lens.
What a profound evolutionary development the emergence of humans without conscience was
Whether psychopathy is best understood as an aberration of normal human capacities akin to blindness or deafness or, rather, as a reflection of a different type of human being practicing a different, perhaps detestable to many, but also successful survival and reproductive strategy
Why some experts view psychopaths as “intraspecies predators” or even a separate subspecies of Homo Sapiens
Recently, a debate has been raging about these very issues. (more…)
