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Are Enlightenment Ideals Unequivocal Goods?
Empirical knowledge is knowledge based on what we observe through our senses or tools that extend our senses. Empirical knowledge, in its purity, is only knowledge which we have ourselves observed. Reason is the ability to change our thinking when provided new information by use of logic.
Both of these are hailed as the hallmark of the Enlightenment and are used to discredit Tradition and Faith.
They limit truth to only what is newly or recently observed via new technologies.
Religion, especially Christianity, is full of empirical truth, as experiential – but it is gleaned over thousands of years of many (or One’s) experiences – far longer than any one person can live or observe. Tradition also follows this long term experience by relying on the wisdom of ancestors to guide our path today (G.K. Chesterton would agree).
Hyper-individualism (another byproduct of the enlightenment) also prefers what is best or favored by one individual and rejects all impact on society as a whole. It is true that one individual will not cause long-term, societal repercussions, but many embracing the same pattern of behavior result in long-term consequences at a societal level that can affect generations as demonstrated by history. This may add weight to the idea of an individual’s Christian faith needing a community. These are effects that we, ourselves, cannot observe and are not based in reason’s new information. Here, reason and empiricism fail us.
It has long been my belief that the Bible, as a blueprint for living well, is a cosmic pattern for long term survival of the human race and civilization where honoring your father and mother (so you might live long upon the earth) is the micro version. Parents know better the long-term consequences of a child’s choices than the child does – as does the ultimate parent, our Eternal Father in Heaven, know better the trajectory of humankind.
For the inheritors of the enlightenment, history begins with Locke.
Published in General
Your first example is about SSM, and I’m not going to touch that because there is ample evidence that there is no more certain way to derail a Ricochet conversation than to get into that particular disagreement. But your second example – what you call “nomadism” – seems very strange to me, for two reasons.
First, the fact that people respond to economic incentives is not a “policy” that one can “adopt.” It’s just a fact. Almost a law of nature. If the major employer in your town made buggy whips, and then the automobile comes along and the plant closes, then a lot of people will either move or be unemployed. You can blame the Enlightenment for this if you want – no Enlightenment would mean no automobiles – but I’ll keep my car, thank you very much.
Second, this is a very strange argument for someone who has been touting the benefits of respecting tradition, because what you call nomadism has been the tradition throughout the history of this country. Massive migration from rural agricultural areas to the cities due to the industrial revolution. Migration from the East coast to the Mid-West and the West by many successive generations pushing back the frontier. Migration of blacks from the South to the rest of the country following the Civil War. Migration from the Rust Belt to the Sun Belt (in 1960 my parents packed me into the back of their Pontiac and off we went from Chicago to Los Angeles; thank God – the weather in Chicago is unfit for human habitation). Migration to follow economic opportunity may be the most defining characteristic of American life throughout our history. You want to abandon that? What a strange example, coming from you.
There are trade-offs involved in economic policy. If someone works at a nearby factory and that factory is near bankruptcy, the government could step in a bail the factory out to keep the factory operational so that the employees of the factory don’t have to move to another location in order to find a job.
But there is a significant disadvantage to such a policy. The taxpayer would be forced to pay to keep the factory operational even though the factory is not self-sustaining.
This requires the ability to persuade people of the benefits of thinking long term. People often are willing to make short term sacrifices for long term well being. People are willing to spend lots of money and time attending medical school in order to end up better off in the end. Not everyone is capable of taking the long view. But persuasion can influence people sometimes.
With same sex marriage it seems we have to compare the advantages of same sex marriage with the disadvantages and then decide whether same sex marriage will improve or harm society. Similarly with no-fault divorce, legalization of pre-marital sex, legalized birth control and so on.
I agree.
I’m not sure it is possible for a human being to rely entirely on pure reason. All human beings are, to some extent, limited by their personal nature and human nature generally.
There is variety among the human population in terms of how much it bothers a person when he or she harms another. A psychopath is not bothered by harming another. But a large majority of people feel guilty when they harm another.
This something inside them is human nature. Human beings are social by nature (except for psychopaths).
So, our ideas about morality are influenced by our individual, personal nature and also by our social surroundings. Our behavior is heavily influenced by the behavior of our peers. We want to get along and so we go along. (Generally speaking. There are exceptional people who don’t follow the flock.)
I don’t think revelations or nothing are our only sources.
We can reflect on past actions, not only of ourselves, but of others.
Take the United States experience with chattel slavery. The US tried to manage slavery, letting each state decide whether slavery would be allowed or not allowed. But eventually bitter experience, events leading up to the Civil War and the Civil War itself, motivated many people who had previously tolerated slavery to support the abolition of slavery.
A revelation is very powerful for the person who receives the revelation. But for others it’s not always clear.
Most of us, if we heard a voice, as if coming from God, telling us to kill everyone in our town, would use reason and determine that this wasn’t a voice from God or even if it was a voice from God, that this voice should be rejected.
That’s what I see as the problem with obtaining morality from God.
[1] We have to determine if God exists.
[2] We have to determine what God’s moral commandments are.
[3] We have to determine if God’s moral commandments deserve to be obeyed, if some of God’s commandments should be obeyed all the time, some of the time or none of the time.
HW, we seem to have more common ground than I thought.
I don’t think that you’re correct about this. In order to reflect on past actions, we need to have moral criteria as the basis of such reflection. Reason does not provide such criteria. So, in order to reflect, you must also rely on revelation.
The revelation may be your inner revelation, sometimes called a moral intuition. I agree that people have such moral intuitions. The advocates of Enlightenment and a reason-based morality generally rely on such intuitions, though they often seem not to recognize — and sometimes to actively deny — that they are doing so.
My experience is that my inner moral intuition is unreliable. I reach this conclusion for two reasons: (1) I personally have different moral intuitions about substantially identical issues at different times; (2) I observe that other people who I admire and respect often have different moral intuitions.
I find that the central teaching of Christianity addresses this problem in an extraordinarily sophisticated and helpful way. It provides frame of mind that helps us both discover and then follow our internal moral intuitions, when they are right, and reject them when they are wrong. This is called something like being “led by the Spirit” or having the “mind of Christ.” I do not find this sophistication in any other moral or religious teaching.
Judaism comes closest, for obvious reasons, but is prone to legalism (the idea of following a long list of rules in minute detail). Islam seems similar to Judaism in this respect, though more violent. Buddhism seems to recognize the problem of good and evil, but concludes that detachment is the appropriate response. This Buddhist view seems similar to the yin-yang concept in Chinese cosmology and to the somewhat trinitarian concept in Hinduism (the term used is Trimurti) for Brahma the creator, Vishnu the preserver, and Shiva the destroyer. The historically Persian dualist religions (Zoroastrianism and Manichaeism) seem similar to the Buddhist and Chinese view.
To me, it appears that the major divide between the Eastern (Hindu-Buddhist-Chinese-Dualist) view and the Western (Christian-Muslim-Jewish) view is that the Eastern approach considers evil to be an aspect of God or the Divine, which we misunderstand, while the Western approach considers evil to be the enemy of God or the Divine.
Zoroastrianism may belong in the middle of this divide. It posits a good deity and an evil deity, but seems to prefer the good over the evil, though it appears to posit that the evil deity is an eternal, rather than a created, entity. I confess the my understanding of Zoroastrianism is limited, so I may be misunderstanding its cosmology.
I think you’re mistaken about this, AP. First, I know many people who can and do reflect on moral issues, without reliance on revelation. You are suggesting that revelation is the only possible source of morality, and yet the experience of life contradicts that assertion at every turn.
Second, reason does provide moral criteria, so long as we start with premises about what is good. If we start with the premise that human happiness and fulfillment are good, and human suffering is bad, then reason can guide us to a moral code that promotes a world of happiness and fulfillment and alleviates suffering. For my own part, I will happily accept that premise as a “self-evident truth.” And, I would note, every significant religion and school of philosophy with which I am familiar also accepts that premise. So, if we can accept that premise as a starting point, reason can tell us a great deal about morality.
I think this is the key point of confusion when people talk about morality in very abstract terms.
We need a reference point of some kind.
Human well-being is one. Glorifying God is another.
Now, I think someone who gives a neighbor assistance when the neighbor is sick because he think this action glorifies God is doing good even if I might be more skeptical about God’s existence than he is.
If someone does not take his daughter, who is sick, to see a doctor because he wants to glorify God by relying on God’s healing powers instead of a human doctor’s medical expertise, I am going to conclude that this person isn’t doing good.
Fortunately, a very large majority of Christians believe that when someone is sick, it glorifies God to [a] pray for the sick person’s health and [b] get the sick person medical attention (even if the physician is Hindu or Jewish or Atheist).
I prefer human well-being as a reference point for morality. I admit that this raises a ton of questions such as:
[a] Why should I care more about human well-being than the well-being of cockroaches?
[b] Why should I care about all human well-being instead of just the well-being of myself or my family or my immediate community or my particular social-national-ethnic-religious group?
[c] How much weight should be placed on short term well-being compared to long-term well-being? If I eat a chocolate donut, I get a short term feeling of well-being. But long-term I might be doing myself harm. This is even more true if I inject heroin into my veins or even if I drink too many beers.
So, I will admit that morality is a difficult topic. Human nature is complex.
Still, I prefer a situation where we all grapple with difficult moral issues using reason and open discussion. I’ll wager that most Christians agree and would not prefer to live in a Christian Theocracy where very intelligent and devout, but unelected, Christian theologians made the laws that we live by.
I think most Christians have this preference for open discussion and universal suffrage within a representative democracy despite their dismay at seeing Nancy Pelosi ascend to the office of Speaker of the House.
Larry, the problem is the premises that you start with. There is no rational foundation for these.
“Happiness and fulfillment good” and “suffering bad” are too vague to provide any meaningful guidance.
So, let’s use your rule. Abortion. How does this work? Is the suffering of the woman bad? What about the suffering of the baby? What about the future happiness and fulfillment of either?
You can certainly summarize morality as something like “act properly,” which will probably get near-universal agreement and be absolutely useless in practice.
I think there is a rational foundation for making the maximization of happiness and the minimization of suffering as the starting point for separating right actions from wrong actions.
But let’s say there is no rational foundation for using maximizing happiness and minimizing suffering as our starting point.
We have to compare those ideas to alternatives. We could say, “Let’s use God as our reference point.”
That gets into another set of questions like
[1] How do we even know if God exists in the first place? (Or are there multiple Gods?)
[2] How are we to learn of God’s commandments?
[3] How are we to know that God’s commandments are good commandments?
Abortion is one of many difficult moral questions. And abortion isn’t the only moral question that is difficult.
Immigration is a tough issue. Atheists are divided on immigration. Christians are divided on the issue.
So, just because we can’t definitively answer all moral questions doesn’t mean that revelation is going to provide better answers. As I mentioned, using revelation simply kicks the can down the road until one asks, “Who’s revelation? Who’s interpretation of that revelation?”
Maybe not, but there is no rational foundation for divine revelation either. The exercise of reason requires first premises. I’m perfectly happy with mine. I can’t prove that suffering is bad or happiness is good, but if you want to make the converse case feel free to try. In any event, since God appears to agree with me (Golden Rule, and all that) why don’t we just move past that?
Oh? And revelation is not vague? Huh. Coulda fooled me. Anyway, my approach provides me with lots of meaningful guidance. For example, I believe that the socialism of left is bad because, you know – Venezuela. Among many other examples. Lots of suffering, not much happiness. That’s meaningful to me. Are you going to take exception?
I decline to discuss abortion on this site (or almost anywhere else), because the position of most people is too absolutist to be amenable to reasoning. But I will say that tough moral choices are tough precisely because they involve trade-offs between the suffering and the fulfillment of different people. For what it’s worth, I think you just asked the right questions (even if you didn’t mean them as serious questions). That doesn’t mean we will reach the same answers. But I don’t know of any system of morality (divine or secular) that guarantees that everyone will reach the same answers.
That’s not the end of the problems. What if human well-being is best served by killing off all the inferior human races and individuals so the species as a whole can improve? Seems to me that one or two of the most fearsome dictators of the 20th century did their worst work on that basis.
The experience of dealing with those dictators seems to be to be ample proof that human well-being is not best served by killing off all the “inferior” human races and individuals. How much more proof do you need?
Your example demonstrates why human reason and human empathy are important tools in discriminating between right actions and wrong actions.
David Horowitz was a Leftist radical who was raised by communist parents. Horowitz saw “socialism” as the wave of the future. But when he learned that the Black Panthers killed an acquaintance of his, he had second thoughts about his political ideology.
For the past 40 years, David Horowitz has been a staunch conservative.
Note that this was not due to any religious conversion on Horowitz’s part. Horowitz simply reflected on what he learned, empathized with the Left’s victims and changed his mind.
Oh? There are people who think that Stalin’s program did good in industrializing Russia on a fast tract, which was done by killing off all the non-cooperative elements.
If such people exist then I think we can deduce that (a) they are extremely stupid, and (b) that they don’t give a damn about human suffering and therefore are the exact opposite of what I have described. Still, I would rather try to reason with those people than with someone who believed that God wanted Stalin to kill tens of millions of people. If there was someone who actually believed that Stalinism and/or Nazism promoted human flourishing I would know how to prove them wrong (starting by introducing them to some of those poor souls who suffered under Stalin and/or Hitler). But someone who believes that Stalin and Hitler were doing what God wanted – I wouldn’t have a clue how to talk to them.
When I say that reason can help us to live moral lives, I mean the application of the human mind to actual facts and experience – not made up hypotheticals, and ludicrous hypotheticals at that. What if Hitler and Stalin were actually promoting human flourishing? What if pigs had wings? The simple answer is they didn’t, and pigs don’t. Could you have come up with a worse example?
HW and Larry:
Thanks for the discussion. I appreciate your insights.
Larry, you wrote:
I completely agree that there is no rational foundation for revelation. My point is that reason is insufficient, so we have to rely on something else. It’s hard to figure out the proper “something else,” because we can’t use reason to verify it logically. We can use reason to some extent, by assuming that bad ideas will lead to bad results, and thus – Venezuela. This is actually a part of the revelation that I accept – the whole “by their fruits ye shall know them” thing.
I still don’t think that this approach is truly based on reason, because the revelation (or moral intuition) aspect is merely hidden in the opinion that the results are bad. I certainly agree with you that the results are bad in Venezuela.
HW, I don’t see this as rational. It seems perfectly rational, to me, to focus on the maximization of my own happiness and the minimization of my own suffering. But as a matter of reason, why in the world should I care about other people? Why shouldn’t I be a psychopath, and manipulate everything to my own advantage?
I want to make it clear, Larry and HW, that I don’t remotely think that you are psychopaths. I think that you have non-rational foundations for your morality, probably based on a combination of innate moral intuition, internalization of cultural norms, and response to archetypal stories. I think that this is demonstrated in your responses regarding happiness, minimization of suffering, and the importance of empathy.
[Continued]
However, I don’t find either complete truth or much useful guidance in the ideas that we should be guided principally by empathy, or by a desire to maximize happiness, or to minimize suffering. These aren’t entirely bad ideas, but I find them both vague, uninspiring, and on the simplistic side.
I think that there is a special danger in being guided by empathy at the present moment. I think that the main tactic of the current radical Left is a weaponization of empathy and compassion, as an excuse for incompetence, misbehavior, and bad ideas. The proper response is often suspicion, which is decidedly uncompassionate. The revelation that I accept deals with this: “I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves.”
I find minimization of suffering to be a questionable goal. It is often a good thing, but not always. Should we minimize the suffering of those convicted of dreadful crimes? That might be counterproductive. Should we minimize the suffering that results from a person’s own bad choices? That might prevent them from learning the error of their ways.
Further, I’m not sure if we can find meaning without suffering. I’m not sure that we can even truly value the good without suffering. Suffering is a great teacher. Personally, I find a sense of meaning by enduring suffering, or making sacrifices, for a goal that I consider worthy. It is often the very difficulty that makes me value the goal when achieved, if only incompletely. The revelation that I accept addresses this also: “[W]e also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.”
Maximization of happiness seems a weak goal to me. There’s nothing wrong with taking the kids to Disneyland, but I don’t find that fleeting sort of happiness to be either satisfying or worthy. I’ve been thinking more and more that Jefferson led us badly astray with the “pursuit of happiness” phrase. There’s nothing wrong with enjoying moments of happiness when they come your way. But Don’t Worry, Be Happy is hardly the anthem of a hero. Wasting Away in Margaritaville is not a worthy goal. What I really need is to carry the heaviest load that I can bear, and endure the toughest pounding that I can take. I may not win, but perhaps I can go the distance. The revelation that I accept offers this as the prize: “He who overcomes will thus be clothed in white garments; and I will not erase his name from the book of life, and I will confess his name before My Father and before His angels.”
This is how I’ve been coming to see things lately — interestingly, through suffering and failure. Thanks for your thoughtful attention and responses. I am still trying to figure it all out myself.
We’ve both mentioned reason and revelation in this discussion. But we need to inject some discussion of human nature.
I think we can make generalizations about human nature even as we acknowledge that human nature varies between different people. Some people are more concerned about the well-being of others while others are more selfish. At the extremes one can point to the psychopath on the one hand to the fireman who loses his life trying to safe the lives of strangers on the other.
I will digress just a little and discuss the nature of some animals. Mother bears are at their most aggressive when they believe that their cubs are threatened. One could imagine an alternative universe where mother bears don’t care at all about the well-being of their cubs. But in reality, as opposed to my hypothetical universe, mother bears will fight to protect their cubs.
Let’s talk about human parents. Many parents will sacrifice quite a lot for their children. A parent might spend several hundred dollars on their daughter’s birthday party. Let’s say we try to tell that parent that this money would be better spent by donating it to help impoverished children in the underdeveloped world. I wouldn’t accuse the parent of being overly selfish if he or she declined to do so and threw the birthday party for their daughter instead.
I think most of us get more satisfaction and happiness from making others laugh or making others happy then we do in making others miserable, especially if we don’t think the other person deserves misery.
What I am saying is that human beings do have a moral sense. It is an imperfect moral sense. But still, human beings are not naturally “lone wolves” who feel best when we focus entirely on ourselves and don’t put any thought to the suffering or happiness of others.
We have occasionally become familiar with people who seem to enjoy making others miserable. The large majority of people usually respond by putting these people (sociopaths) in prison.
But then how do we explain Nazi Germany or Stalin’s Russia or Castro’s Cuba? I could argue that the Germans, the Russians and the Cubans are just bad people in some deterministic sense. But I think there are environmental causes.
Lack of a free press. Lack of periodic competitive, multi-party elections (though Hitler did initially rise to power within an electoral system).
I’ll continue this in a subsequent comment.
Nazi Germany, Stalin’s Russia and Castro’s Cuba and also Mao’s China do often get brought up in discussions about morality.
It’s one thing for a single serial killer to behave horribly. But an entire society?
In each of those cases many people were blinded by a destructive ideology. Nazism on the one hand. Marxism on the other.
Many of our ideas about what is right and what is wrong are influenced by the people around us. I remember in grade school hearing jokes about Polish people. I repeated them to others. But now I look back and wonder why I thought that Polish people were stupid. I had never met a Polish person until I was in 6th grade.
In India if you offer someone food with your left hand it is considered offensive. This isn’t the case in the United States.
Sorry, my wife called me to the dinner table and it is Valentine’s Day. Thus, the abrupt ending of my last post.
This is why it is important to consider human nature in discussions about morality and not limit the discussion to reason and revelation.
If human beings were innately oblivious to the well-being of others, human beings probably would have joined the 99 percent of species that went extinct. We, the living, are the descendants of those who had some fragment of a social conscience (with some exceptions for the 1 to 3 percent of the human population that has a genetic predisposition towards anti-social behavior).
This isn’t the first time I have witnessed a discussion about morality (especially non-religious morality) where the question is asked:
In a discussion that is very detached, abstract and hypothetical, people do ask questions like this.
But in the real world, the best response to the person who says, “Why should I care about morality?” is
So, given our human nature, people of differing religious beliefs (including people with no belief in the supernatural/divine) are fascinated by moral questions. And there are divisions within faiths.
Some Mennonite Christians interpret Jesus’s saying in Matthew 5:38-40
quite differently than other Christian denominations and some Mennonites take this “turn the other cheek” statement so far to the point where they say that they will not hurt someone who is attempting to assault and/or kill members of their family.
Other Christians are proud members of the NRA, in part to protect their family and they would pull the trigger to protect their loved ones.
So, even after we combine reason and human nature and use the best science to gather up the data, we will still be unable to reach consensus on all moral questions.
And there won’t be consensus on which revelation to accept either.
If I wanted to satisfy someone’s desire for Divine Commandments, I could write up some commandments that I subscribe to and say, “Thus sayeth the Lord” at the end. Maybe you wouldn’t junk the Bible in favor of these new commandments of mine (and God’s). But it would be a revelation.
I submit that there are two distinct questions under discussion here, and they really need to be considered separately. One is “what is good behavior?” The second is “why should I behave in a way that is good?”
On this thread I have argued that reason can help us identify good behavior if we start with a simple premise like human happiness and fulfillment are good, and human suffering is bad. I have argued that revelation is not the only way to identify good behavior. In fact, I would say that revelation is not even a particularly effective tool for identifying good behavior, because it has a tendency to convince people to do things like hijack planes and fly them into buildings for the purpose of killing infidels. Reason, however, is a powerful tool for predicting whether our actions will create happiness or cause suffering.
@heavywater has been addressing the second question. He says that people should be good, or more accurately will be good, because it is inherent in human nature to do so. Very Kantian. Although I would incorporate the human emotions of pride, guilt and shame in this category. People feel good when they do good, and feel guilt and shame when they do evil. Kant, silly fellow that he is, excludes these emotions from his idea of the will to be good – too much self-interest involved, or something like that. That’s just one reason why I always say “Kant is bunk.” Personally, I support any reason that people choose to be good.
Anyway, I agree with HeavyWater that natural inclination is one reason to engage in good behavior. But it is far from the only reason. Another reason is religion. Some people choose to be good because they believe that God is watching them. And if you want to take it a step further, because they hope for heavenly reward and/or fear divine retribution (in hell, or whatever). And unlike the role of religion in the first question about identifying the good, I think religion can be a very effective means of motivating the good after it has been identified. That’s why I am very supportive of religion, even though I am not a person of faith myself.
I will just briefly mention a couple of other motivators. A powerful one is enlightened self-interest. An honest shopkeeper will likely prosper; a crooked shopkeeper generally won’t prosper. There are exceptions, but I think it is manifestly untrue to say “Nice guys finish last.” If psychopaths are the embodiment of uncontrolled self-interest, take a look at how most psychopaths end up. Another motivator is the so-called “social compact.” People support legal and societal norms of good behavior because they recognize that if everyone does good (i.e., behaves in a way that increases happiness and minimizes suffering throughout society) then they will benefit along with everyone else. There are others, but you know – word limit.
You mean CEOs and surgeons? :)
Heh. I’m surprised you didn’t include lawyers. But I’ll give an example. When I was in elementary school we had a psychopath in our class. Everyone knew he was a psychopath, even at 10 years old. A few years ago I googled his name, just because I was wondering. Turns out he was in prison for assaulting his mother, and then assaulting the police officer who came to arrest him. Fine with me. That’s how it’s supposed to turn out. And often does.
I thought that went without saying (just kidding). But studies seem to show that psychopaths can do very well in society if they channel their energies right. I think there are more psychopaths than most people think. I’m guessing 10%. I’m speaking very generally. I include some anti-social sociopaths it the mix because psychopaths have been subsumed into the classification of sociopaths and can’t easily be distinguished anymore.
I’m sorry about the kid.
Psychopaths only make up a quarter of the prison population, although evidence shows they are more likely to commit crimes than other non-psychopaths, but most do not end up in prison–and more importantly psychopathic behavior seems to be mediated by some environmental influences, which make it gradated.
There is also evidence that psychopathic behavior has a genetic root, or influence at least, and studies of female attraction find that psychopathic behavior can be a boon. Given such evidence psychopathic behavior would seem to be more rewarded than punished in the context of history, otherwise the genes mediating attraction for psychopathic indicators would show no inclination towards them vs a control.
Personally, I think that three of our last four Presidents have been narcissistic sociopaths, so yeah, they can sometimes do very well. But those are the really clever ones, who have mastered the art of hiding what they are. The more rank and file sociopaths wind up in prison, or shivering on the street.
On the other hand, I suppose Hitler was doing well for a while, until he wound up dead in a bunker and arranged to have his body burned so it couldn’t be strung up like Mussolini’s. This is more the outcome I like to see.
Yeah, there are women who stay with (and event protect) men who beat them and abuse their children. I know it exists. But I don’t think a relationship like that is much of a “reward.” I think that if you look around you will find a lot more psychopaths pretending that they are normal than you will find normal people pretending that they are psychopaths. I don’t think that would be the case if society “rewarded” psychopathy.
Oh, they’re very attractive to women, it’s just that so many of the women get pushed of a cliff before they can have children, from and evolutionary perspective of course.
I assume this is a joke but I will give a response. If that were true then there should be no women who are attracted to psychopathic traits because the genes that controlled for that would not have passed on, since there would be no offspring. Yet alas we see not only psychopaths in the modern day but also women attracted to them. So whether we like it or not psychopathy has its benefits.
As mentioned in one of those linked articles psychopathic individuals report a higher number of sexual partners than other males on average. Now that could be because of their inflated ego but it has to be bearing literal fruit somewhere otherwise we wouldn’t see them.
It is to the psychopath. He gets off on his control and success in having offspring. Of course others suffer but as you mentioned the crooked are supposed to suffer. Yet we see these psychopaths succeeding and passing on their genetic code. So the wicked do seem to get what they want at times.
It was a vague truth wrapped in a silly but pointed joke. Why do girls like the bad boys?! Or, why do women like the bad men, and — to put too fine an edge on it — return to them beating after beating? On the good side, why do women like the big, strong, silent type, takes no crap and is more ready to punch someone out instead of make a third conciliatory effort with a bad guy? Truisms are generally true.
The hypothetical problem (and it may be a real problem) of psychopaths being more reproductively successful that anyone else, is that in a few generations, everybody would be a psychopath. (I exaggerate, somewhat.) So why are women, if this is true at all (and I think it is), attracted to conscienceless sometimes-violent rule-breakers? — because it works, for a while.
My main objection to the idea of psychopaths being most productive, is that it would lead to a human condition of constant or near constant warring, near constant subjugation of the weak, accumulation of wealth and power in the hands of the few, and basically the presentation of humanity as a group of beings genetically predisposed to break any law they don’t like and any rule in general. And that’s not what we see.
Come to think of it, you’re right.