I have not yet read Simon Baron-Cohen’s book, Zero Degrees of Empathy which, for some odd reason, is entitled ‘The Science of Evil’ in the U.S. Let’s get one thing straight though. This book does not constitute comprehensive coverage of the science of evil! It is just Baron-Cohen’s view of evil. The science of evil is still being explored; there are other theories and approaches than Baron-Cohen’s.
I have, however, read “Political Ponerology” www.ponerology.com by Andrew M. Lobaczewski and colleagues, on evil and psychopathology (sociopathology.) It’s fascinating and very informative,
REVIEWS AND ENDORSEMENTS
"This is an extraordinary book," lan Pappe, author of The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine.
"Political Ponerology is fascinating, essential reading," Philip Zimbardo, author of The Lucifer Effect.
Don’t know who Zimbardo is? His work is important, go and do some research! Prof. Philip Zimbardo has been working in this area of psychology, trying to understand cruelty and non-empathy, for many decades.
It sounds to me as though Baron-Cohen implies that Zimbardo and Lobaczewski are wrong. One example Baron-Cohen gives of empathy is not scientific at all, especially given what we are now finding out about the Bilderbergers, the N.W.O. Zionists, Lizard People, the Elite – or whatever else you want to call them, who could be described as actually being a bunch of unbridled, inbred psychopaths.
'Empathy is about two people - two people meeting, getting to know each other and tuning in to what the other person is thinking and feeling.'
As an example, Baron-Cohen cites the meeting of minds between Nelson Mandela and the then South African president F W de Klerk, which helped end apartheid in the early 1990s.
'The progress that came out of just that one relationship - well, arguably, it broke through where all other methods had failed, and at far less cost in terms of human life,' he says.
Which one was the psycho then, Simon? Must be De Klerk, after all he’s the white one – right? I assume people do realise that cuddley-wuddley Grandpa Mandela didn’t go to jail for baking anti-apartheid cakes, or writing anti-apartheid poems, or wearing an anti-apartheid tee-shirt? They do know he was found guilty of actual terrorism!? Don’t they?
Was Simon Baron-Cohen present at this famous meeting? I doubt it! Has he ever met De Klerk or Mandela, has he interviewed them? I doubt it! If he did, would they open up and be honest with him? I doubt it!
Baron-Cohen states, “…We need a new theory of human cruelty…"
We already have one, Simon. It is called PONEROLOGY. http://ponerology.blogspot.com
Has Baron-Cohen referred to the scientific theory of Ponerology in” Zero Degrees of Empathy?” I have yet to find out his views on Ponerology but here is a train of thought:
Andrew M. Lobaczewski’s book “Political Ponerology,” has been very much suppressed in the past. In manuscript form, it was literally destroyed, and the writers persecuted,
“Lobaczewski was a Polish psychiatrist and one of several scientists who took part in the research and the writing of “Political Ponerology”. But he was the only one left alive by the time it was completed. Lobaczewski and his fellow scientists were victims of one of the most evil repressive regimes of world history – Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union. Lobaczewski describes the history of the manuscript for the book:
The original manuscript of this book went into the furnace minutes before a secret police raid in Communist Poland. The second copy, painfully reassembled by scientists working under impossible conditions of violence and repression, was sent via courier to the Vatican. Its receipt was never acknowledged – the manuscript and all valuable data lost. In 1984, the third and final copy was written from memory by the last survivor of the original researchers: Andrew Lobaczewski.…After half a century of suppression, this book is finally available.
Bob Altemeyer(a retired psychology professor who spent most of his life researching authoritarianism) describes in great detail what he refers to as authoritarian followers and authoritarian leaders. Both are required in order to produce what Lobaczewski refers to as a pathocracy, which he defines as a social movement, society, nation, or empire wherein a small pathological minority takes control over a society of normal people. The pathological minority habitually perpetrates evil deeds on its people and/or other people. In other words, the pathological minority rules society with an iron fist, in their interests alone – and to hell with everyone else: Wars for profit, with massive casualties; millions of refugees; massive destruction of infrastructure; torture; you name it… No price is too high to pay to attain and maintain their own wealth and power. Some people refer to such as system as tyranny. But I think that pathocracy is a more descriptive term.” http://journals.democraticunderground.com/Time%20for%20change/574
Clearly, there are people out there who do not like Lobaczewski and his co-writers’work, “Political Ponerology.” They have suppressed it before now, several times, and they wanted it to remain suppressed. They dearly want to keep these insights secret, and out of the public realm. Why? Perhaps, because “Political Ponerology” contains some very uncomfortable truths? Who might these people be? Perhaps, people identified as sociopaths in the book, or people who might possibly be identified as sociopaths in the future by this book. Perhaps it is a serious threat to them, so serious a threat that, now this book is finally in print and freely available, a second approach is needed? Could Lobaczewski and his colleagues’ work now be about to be discredited by being shown-up as flawed and untrue? If ‘evil’ can become a word of the past, if ‘evil’ is seen and demonstrated as hard to define, perhaps the theories and examples reported and covered in “Political Ponerology” could be rubbished and declared obsolete and old-fashioned, and replaced by younger, newer, more modern theories that will be accepted as the authentic, mainstream analysis, and be trumpeted as more accurate by a new use of English within different expressions (jargon), presented by ambitious, young psychologists and psychiatrists?
“People who commit atrocities tend to have low to no empathy levels and should be seen as sick, or 'disabled' rather than evil, Baron-Cohen argues.
We should seek to understand why they have such an empathy deficiency and help them replace it, he adds.
'I'm not satisfied with the term 'evil',' says Baron-Cohen, who is also one of the world's top experts in autism and developmental psychopathology…”
Hitler should have claimed disability benefit, and lain on a couch talking about memories of his childhood to a sympathetic doctor, Stalin was a poor, misunderstood lad.
Meanwhile, a very old man who, when young and impressionable, got caught up in a tough wartime regime, was shown no mercy this week and was sentenced to jail at the age of 96! Where is the empathy? Who are the real psychopaths?
www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-12321549
www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/144135
http://alfreddezayas.com/Articles/Demjanjuksehftel.shtml “...a fanatic threw acid into Yoram Sheftel's eyes….”