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@mcjulie I mean, what I'm suggesting is more that this is an adaptive, wired-in capacity in everyone, but is primarily adaptive because it's not switched on all the time in most people. (Loosely speaking, we tend to consider a person mentally ill or "toxic" when it is.)Permalink On twitter.com
Mood -5 🙁
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@mcjulie Which, since it's a coping mechanism for stressful, under-attack conditions, suggests there exist social conditions where it'd be switched on all the time. Say, growing up in one or another form of privation: the economically dead steel town, the evangelical community..Permalink On twitter.com
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@mcjulie ... or even, maybe, living under generalized oppression could kind of erode the "switch" so you end up with people walking around with their sadism coping mechanism locked in the "on" position. How that manifests externally would vary between individuals and societies, of course.On twitter.com
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@mcjulie But fundamentally, this would be more of a systematic hack of a (relatively) universal feature in human minds. Marlantes' example: parents bragging about how their kids don't watch violent media or have gun toys—but in the backyard, kids are burning ants with a magnifying glass.Permalink On twitter.com