The weird, suicidal behavior Mr. Harkins is describing here is called "pathological altruism" in psychiatry. There is a very good book on it that was recommended to me by Jared Taylor. I bought it and read it but cannot remember the title of it.
The article from The NY Times is slightly incorrect, I think, when it says that Aristotle pioneered the concept "Nothing in excess" or, as it is often translated, "Moderation in all things."
I think that the original maxim came from one of a group of ancient Greeks called the Seven Sages of Greece who were each asked to submit a wise maxim to be inscribed on the Altar of Apollo at Delphi. It is the most famous of the maxims, the 2nd best known being almost as wise which said "The perfect is the enemy of the good." This 2nd maxim requires more thought but it is absolutely correct and is certainly true in our times. Fanatics/idealogues seek perfection. In so doing they become enemies of the good.
A feature of the behavior of pathological altruists is that they are not satisfied merely with excessive indulgence toward and sympathy with pathetic people. They also seem to need to hate successful, decent people.
I have a member of my family who exhibits this trait. He is a charming, handsome, likeable fellow but he has grown into a liberal fanatic. He basically is a Marxist. He would furiously deny it but in fact he is a Communist. He is a character type I call "a Communist but doesn't know it." He would have been a natural to fall in with Lenin in the Russian Revolution.
This type of liberal now seems to be the norm.
It is very difficult to talk with him about political matters because he believes that he and others like him have a monopoly on benevolent motives and those who disagree are per se full of hate and have malevolent motives. He becomes very angry when confronted with a different opinion.
So, on the rare occasions when I meet him, I usually try to stifle my own ideas and avoid provoking him by expressing disagreement.
Every once in a while, he becomes relatively lucid and on such occasions sometimes I dare to express my opinion to him. This usually does not turn out well so I do it less and less.
On one such occasion I told him:
"Hypothetically, let's presume that there's a family in which there are 2 sons.
1 of the sons is a boy scout...literally and figuratively. He does his homework. He studies. He gets a paper route. He wins a scholarship and works his way through college. When he graduates from college, he's accepted to med school. He becomes a doctor. He gets married and has 3 nice children. He drives his boys to Little League. He takes his girl to ballet lessons. He pays the mortgage on the house where he and his family live. He paints the picket fence on the weekend.
"The other son takes a different route in life. He makes the decision to start drinking and doing drugs in high school. He drops out of school where he has made deplorable grades. At age 17 he robs the 7/11. He shoots the cashier and leaves her in a wheelchair for the rest of her life. By his 30s he has been convicted of 5 felonies and spent several years in jail. He has become an alcoholic and a drug addict. He's down at the soup kitchen vomiting his guts out from last night's drinking binge.
"Your attitude is that the 2nd son is somehow morally superior to the 1st one. The doctor son in some strange way is morally responsible for all the misdeeds and bad decisions of the drug addict son. The doctor son's achievements to your way of thinking are the results of his somehow exploiting the dope addict one.
"This seems like a strange upside way of looking at things. To my mind the morally superior son is the one who went to med school, made something of himself and is acting like a good father. I can understand feeling sympathy for the foolish boy who has wrecked his life but I can't grasp why his successful brother is a bad guy and morally inferior to the failed one."
My conception of the relative virtues of the 2 hypothetical boys was deeply offensive to my relative.
That's how these people are.
And they are dangerous and their numbers are skyrocketing. The school system is dedicated to fostering their weird inverted value system.
Pathological altruists are poised to commit the kind of horrors perpetrated by Lenin and his Bolsheviks by which they slaughtered the class of people who had bred the Pushkins, the Tchaikovskies and the Tolstoys, purportedly so as to help the proletarians and poor parents.
I'm nearing 80. I don't like a lot of things about old age but I am glad that I will not be here when the proverbial guano hits the fan.
Been there, done that. I grew up in a very leftist town, attended left wing schools, and was a good Democrat for the first 30 years of my life. Then 9/11 happened, and I saw the reactions of people who I (had) thought were good people. They were offended by any mention or discussion of the threat of radical Islam, and how the real tragedy of 9/11 was the "anti-muslim backlash," and the supposed "huge increase" in anti-muslim hate crimes. So I asked, where are these peace-loving Islamics? Why do I see videos of Islamic people all around the world dancing, singing and praising the attackers who took down the twin towers, and that somehow that "did not reflect on their lovely religion." Even that block-head George W. Bush was scolding Americans for blaming the Islamic religion. That's where Gad Saad gets it right, and that is where his focus is, and why he sees Americans who buy into the Marxist dialectic of oppressor/oppressed practicing suicidal empathy. So John Hawkins is right that most leftists practice performative empathy, but I also see millions of college educated, childless cat ladies (I have a sister like this) who think Christianity is just as much of a danger to the world as Islam, and because the US is so wealthy we are somehow exploiting the rest of the world. She feels bad that we are better off, and that Christians are not for abortion on demand until the delivery, (and maybe after if they are born with severe birth defects). Gad speaks of the inversion because emotion seems to overrule logic and common sense, and it ties into the other emerging realization that the feminization of the US contributes to this problem as well. Thanks for sharing your story; I'm glad I'm not the only one who loses friends or at least rarely talks with them anymore.
Well said, John. I haven’t read Saad’s bill yet (next up on my Audible list), but from what I understand about his argument, I think you’re both right.
There’s a great depiction of the difference between the liberal brain and conservative brain where the conservative brain’s focus is close to center (family, friends) and the liberal brain’s focus is detached from center and focused on those further away (unknown people in other countries for example). El Galo Mato has posted it a few times.
I do think the typical leftist cares (or at least she believes she cares) about those various “persecuted” or “down trodden people” which “empathy” has been hijacked by leftist politicians who ride that empathy to power while constructing a system (of which USAID is the perfect example) which allows them to argue they’re helping the “downtrodden” (which creates the leftist support for that system) while funneling a portion of the money back to them.
The weird, suicidal behavior Mr. Harkins is describing here is called "pathological altruism" in psychiatry. There is a very good book on it that was recommended to me by Jared Taylor. I bought it and read it but cannot remember the title of it.
The article from The NY Times is slightly incorrect, I think, when it says that Aristotle pioneered the concept "Nothing in excess" or, as it is often translated, "Moderation in all things."
I think that the original maxim came from one of a group of ancient Greeks called the Seven Sages of Greece who were each asked to submit a wise maxim to be inscribed on the Altar of Apollo at Delphi. It is the most famous of the maxims, the 2nd best known being almost as wise which said "The perfect is the enemy of the good." This 2nd maxim requires more thought but it is absolutely correct and is certainly true in our times. Fanatics/idealogues seek perfection. In so doing they become enemies of the good.
A feature of the behavior of pathological altruists is that they are not satisfied merely with excessive indulgence toward and sympathy with pathetic people. They also seem to need to hate successful, decent people.
I have a member of my family who exhibits this trait. He is a charming, handsome, likeable fellow but he has grown into a liberal fanatic. He basically is a Marxist. He would furiously deny it but in fact he is a Communist. He is a character type I call "a Communist but doesn't know it." He would have been a natural to fall in with Lenin in the Russian Revolution.
This type of liberal now seems to be the norm.
It is very difficult to talk with him about political matters because he believes that he and others like him have a monopoly on benevolent motives and those who disagree are per se full of hate and have malevolent motives. He becomes very angry when confronted with a different opinion.
So, on the rare occasions when I meet him, I usually try to stifle my own ideas and avoid provoking him by expressing disagreement.
Every once in a while, he becomes relatively lucid and on such occasions sometimes I dare to express my opinion to him. This usually does not turn out well so I do it less and less.
On one such occasion I told him:
"Hypothetically, let's presume that there's a family in which there are 2 sons.
1 of the sons is a boy scout...literally and figuratively. He does his homework. He studies. He gets a paper route. He wins a scholarship and works his way through college. When he graduates from college, he's accepted to med school. He becomes a doctor. He gets married and has 3 nice children. He drives his boys to Little League. He takes his girl to ballet lessons. He pays the mortgage on the house where he and his family live. He paints the picket fence on the weekend.
"The other son takes a different route in life. He makes the decision to start drinking and doing drugs in high school. He drops out of school where he has made deplorable grades. At age 17 he robs the 7/11. He shoots the cashier and leaves her in a wheelchair for the rest of her life. By his 30s he has been convicted of 5 felonies and spent several years in jail. He has become an alcoholic and a drug addict. He's down at the soup kitchen vomiting his guts out from last night's drinking binge.
"Your attitude is that the 2nd son is somehow morally superior to the 1st one. The doctor son in some strange way is morally responsible for all the misdeeds and bad decisions of the drug addict son. The doctor son's achievements to your way of thinking are the results of his somehow exploiting the dope addict one.
"This seems like a strange upside way of looking at things. To my mind the morally superior son is the one who went to med school, made something of himself and is acting like a good father. I can understand feeling sympathy for the foolish boy who has wrecked his life but I can't grasp why his successful brother is a bad guy and morally inferior to the failed one."
My conception of the relative virtues of the 2 hypothetical boys was deeply offensive to my relative.
That's how these people are.
And they are dangerous and their numbers are skyrocketing. The school system is dedicated to fostering their weird inverted value system.
Pathological altruists are poised to commit the kind of horrors perpetrated by Lenin and his Bolsheviks by which they slaughtered the class of people who had bred the Pushkins, the Tchaikovskies and the Tolstoys, purportedly so as to help the proletarians and poor parents.
I'm nearing 80. I don't like a lot of things about old age but I am glad that I will not be here when the proverbial guano hits the fan.
I don't think there's going to be a soft landing.
It isn't going to be pretty.
Been there, done that. I grew up in a very leftist town, attended left wing schools, and was a good Democrat for the first 30 years of my life. Then 9/11 happened, and I saw the reactions of people who I (had) thought were good people. They were offended by any mention or discussion of the threat of radical Islam, and how the real tragedy of 9/11 was the "anti-muslim backlash," and the supposed "huge increase" in anti-muslim hate crimes. So I asked, where are these peace-loving Islamics? Why do I see videos of Islamic people all around the world dancing, singing and praising the attackers who took down the twin towers, and that somehow that "did not reflect on their lovely religion." Even that block-head George W. Bush was scolding Americans for blaming the Islamic religion. That's where Gad Saad gets it right, and that is where his focus is, and why he sees Americans who buy into the Marxist dialectic of oppressor/oppressed practicing suicidal empathy. So John Hawkins is right that most leftists practice performative empathy, but I also see millions of college educated, childless cat ladies (I have a sister like this) who think Christianity is just as much of a danger to the world as Islam, and because the US is so wealthy we are somehow exploiting the rest of the world. She feels bad that we are better off, and that Christians are not for abortion on demand until the delivery, (and maybe after if they are born with severe birth defects). Gad speaks of the inversion because emotion seems to overrule logic and common sense, and it ties into the other emerging realization that the feminization of the US contributes to this problem as well. Thanks for sharing your story; I'm glad I'm not the only one who loses friends or at least rarely talks with them anymore.
Hawkins, dammit! Not Harkins!
Is a Tree getting in the way of the Woods ...dammit!?
Well said, John. I haven’t read Saad’s bill yet (next up on my Audible list), but from what I understand about his argument, I think you’re both right.
There’s a great depiction of the difference between the liberal brain and conservative brain where the conservative brain’s focus is close to center (family, friends) and the liberal brain’s focus is detached from center and focused on those further away (unknown people in other countries for example). El Galo Mato has posted it a few times.
I do think the typical leftist cares (or at least she believes she cares) about those various “persecuted” or “down trodden people” which “empathy” has been hijacked by leftist politicians who ride that empathy to power while constructing a system (of which USAID is the perfect example) which allows them to argue they’re helping the “downtrodden” (which creates the leftist support for that system) while funneling a portion of the money back to them.