[lit-ideas] Re: Hitler and Stalin
- From: "veronica caley" <molleo1@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 13 Aug 2009 11:53:01 -0400
"Science News" and "News Week" both had articles in the last few months showing
that disturbed personalities, such as people who seem to lack a conscience,
come from all sorts of families. Authoritarian, liberal type child raising,
all religions and all socioeconomic levels produce children like this.
Therefore, psychologists and neurobiologists are inclined to think it's genetic
or brain structure is involved.
They are also trying to see if certain interventions might mitigate the harm
people like this inflict. There is also the question of how one child out of
four or five, raised by the same parents, in basically the same environment,
produce one kid that is a sociopath, and the others are fine.
I am not persuaded that Hitler and or Stalin were psychopaths. Too many other
issues are involved. Centuries of anti-Semitism, love of power, the joy of
over powering your opponents, wealth and adulation I think somehow must play a
role I think.
Also, not all psychopaths become vicious killers and not all children who have
horrible childhoods become people who do evil things. Some do wonderful
things, as they might be more empathetic to those who suffer as they themselves
had.
Veronica
----- Original Message -----
From: Andy
To: lit-ideas
Sent: Thursday, August 13, 2009 8:24 AM
Subject: [lit-ideas] Hitler and Stalin
The History Channel recently did a show on the psychohistory of Hitler
and Stalin, comparing the two. The two are remarkably similar in their
biographies. They parallel in a number of ways, but most notable is that they
both had extremely violent fathers and 'adoring' mothers (which is to say
mothers that were way too close to them which means they were not mothers at
all). Hitler's father (nice white European father) beat him regularly and when
the boy ran away at age eight the father found him and beat him so viciously
that the child went into a coma for three days and nearly died. Stalin's
father beat his son so badly that at one point the child had blood in his urine
from a beating. I remember an unrelated show on serial killers where an FBI
agent was interviewed and said the way to stop the formation of serial killers
is for people to stop torturing their children. Why do we need an FBI agent to
tell us this? Why is it not self evident?
The no brainer conclusion is that society breeds serial killers and
mass murderers through absolute criminal behavior and criminal negligence of
its incipient humans. Child rearing is downright sneered at as 'woman's work'
when the fact is it's *creating humans*. It's strange that in all the
emotional energy that goes into hating Hitler and Stalin (among others), no
energy at all goes into mourning the two children (among others) that were so
tortured and responded by shutting down and later recreating their experience
through mass murderer, and to prevent it from happening again. All the energy
goes into more and bigger weapons as if increasing the chaos in the world is
going to improve it. Not to mention building prisons. We never have enough
prisons. If child rearing is given a thought, it's from an occupational
perspective only, resulting in greed, which, love those humans, is perversely
considered good. Greed is as good as humans know. Ironically, humans could
turn things around in one or two generations if they'd just make sure that
every child felt safe and had a real mother AND a real father. Tall, tall
order that is never going to happen.
Andy
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