Post No.: 0922
Furrywisepuppy says:
Like how obesity and addiction are increasingly being understood to be less as personal failings but as unfortunate products of an individual’s genetics and past experiences, and wider surrounding environment and culture – would it be fair or right to consider everyone who does bad things as an unfortunate product of their own genetics and past experiences, and wider surrounding environment and culture, too?
Firstly, would it be right to class every ‘rude, dangerous or otherwise bad person’ as mentally ill? Well no – true mental health sufferers experience suffering, not so much cause suffering onto others. The lives of true sufferers are compromised and held back for their conditions – they don’t flourish or benefit from them. So just because someone is, say, extremely narcissistic, it doesn’t necessarily make them mentally ill or have a personality disorder if they don’t suffer from any distress or impairment from it. The key is the suffering.
The vast majority of mentally unwell people are well-meaning and well-behaved most of the time thus it’d be a stigmatising insult to just lump all cruel reprobates into the same group. Antisocial behaviour is seldom a sign of mental illness, and the mentally well behave antisocially as much as the unwell.
But if someone is regarded as, say, psychopathic, and thus has a personality disorder that’s antisocial towards others – should we have sympathy for or vilify them, or can we somehow do both?
Is it basically the case of taking each mental or personality disorder, or perhaps simply individual, on a case-by-case basis? But if so – how much weight should we place on the disorder, and how much on the individual’s own choice, control or will, when we judge their behaviours?
Some tried hard to present the narrative that, just because Vladimir Putin decided to escalate the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, he must’ve been mentally ill – rather than cold-calculating and ruthless (even though he may have calculated poorly) – possibly as a consequence of him being paranoid and isolating himself too much from the rest of the world during the pandemic.
Well if this narrative were true – should we all therefore have been more understanding and compassionate towards him? Were other world leaders culpable for not periodically asking, “How are you mate?” enough during the pandemic?
Also, if his imperialistic ambitions revealed he was mentally ill, and evil, then what shall we make of the British monarchs circa the 16th and 20th centuries?
Similar assumptions have been made about the mental health of Donald Trump and various dictators. It’s the assumption that ‘I wouldn’t have done what they’ve done so they must be mentally ill’. They must be ‘other’ because ‘I don’t understand them’ or ‘other is bad’ because ‘people like me are good’. It’s almost a way to dehumanise those we disagree with.
Hardly all aberrance or immorality is down to ill mental health but down to personality traits, egotism, blind ambition, basic selfishness and greed, prior privileged life experiences and present situational factors. The contemporary general culture defines what’s ‘deviant’ too.
And again – wouldn’t we be the ‘sick/deranged/mad monsters’ for simultaneously claiming some ‘bad person needs help for being mentally unwell’ yet not showing compassion for them? It’s like if you think someone is slow because they’re physically injured then it’d be crass to lambaste them for being tardy. Criticism might be fair if you think they’re just being lazy however.
Narcissists are detestable for their self-delusions and sense of self-superiority but they’re less likely to become depressed because they’re the direct opposite of self-critical! It’s a personality trait that survives in terms of natural selection because it’s good for the individual but bad for those around them (although this highlights that narcissism can only be sustainable in a population as a minority strategy otherwise there’d be too much ingroup disharmony, which would make such a group vulnerable to being defeated by outgroups that do cooperate well within their own groups).
Narcissistic people don’t tend to learn because they already overrate themselves, whereas self-critical people tend to be the opposite because they never think they’re good enough but they consequently become more competent people for it. (Some people who appear swaggering and braggadocious are masking private insecurities though.) It’s like some people with body dysmorphia, who don’t think they’re ever fit enough, are actually, by most people’s standards, incredibly fit – fitter than many of those who haughtily think of themselves as fit. Neither extreme is healthy of course. We need confidence but also the humility to understand that there’s always more to improve about ourselves.
Some non-pathological self-delusions can benefit our mental health – like when we rationalise, after making a mistake, that ‘we meant to do that’ to protect our self-esteem, instead of feeling guilty or stupid. Yet such delusions can irk others with our excuses or if we blame others, or we may fail to learn from our mistakes. Thus a healthier approach is self-compassion, which accepts that we made a mistake, and we didn’t mean it, but that’s okay, and we can make things better.
People who sound irrational are harder to predict, thus making outlandish claims and exaggerated threats can sometimes strategically work – if this secures one’s demands. It’s like saying, “I’m going to kill you if you steal my biscuit” – which is over-the-top! They might sound unhinged, but what if they’re deadly serious? Can we risk it and call their bluff? The so-called ‘madman theory’ is about playing up to being irrational and volatile in the hope that your opponent doesn’t risk pushing you because you don’t fear potentially dying as a result of mutual destruction.
So people can say bizarre things not because they truly believe in their own propaganda but because they hope enough others will. Calling them crazy might therefore be underestimating them.
Now people with mental disorders can be fit for positions of responsibility because not all mental disorders are identical or therefore affect the ability to lead and think effectively. Some people care and think too much to the benefit of others but to the detriment of their own anxiety levels. It’s sometimes better for one’s own mental health to be ignorant for the bliss, and to not care about doing a perfect job. It’s easier on one’s own mind to just think of oneself and not assimilate what others think about you. But this won’t make one a great leader.
What if someone who mocks or bullies the mentally disordered (or anyone else for that matter) is mentally disordered themselves? Where do we draw the line between personality ‘trait’ and ‘disorder’ since no one is perfect and we all exist on various spectra and should accept neurodiversity? Well abuse towards anyone else is abuse, and any victim must be protected.
If any perpetrators plead ‘not guilty by reason of insanity’ – they must understand the consequences on their freedoms if they’re diagnosed as insane. Like for someone who isn’t mentally disordered, they must still be sentenced – but not really for punishment but with the aim of preventing recidivism and for rehabilitation until they can reintegrate back into society. They also need more empathy and forgiveness than non-sufferers.
People certainly don’t need to have a mental health disorder to hold bigoted, violent, militant or other harmful, perverted or divisive views e.g. it could be down to influences during their upbringing or within their political echo chambers. And behaving in the above ways won’t automatically make anyone mentally unwell.
But what if some kinds of mental health disorders predispose some people to more likely become racist, homophobic, biphobic, transphobic or similar? A voice inside the head of someone with psychosis could come out as bigoted due to the bigoted content their vulnerable minds are absorbing inside the culture they’re surrounded by? Or it could be a genuine paranoia of those who appear different and latching onto conspiracy theories found on social media e.g. of Jews controlling the world.
We know it’s not just about a person’s biology but the environment they’re exposed to. Therefore cultures play their part in not only influencing how many people suffer from mental health disorders but also how some of the symptoms of those disorders express. It’s like under-eating disorders are more prevalent in cultures where a slender image is more desirable, and the symptoms of these disorders will also express in different ways depending on the weight-loss ideas people are being exposed to.
Thus individuals who commit bigoted acts still need to be dealt with – but it’ll also indicate a wider cultural problem of racism, heteronormativity, etc. that needs to be dealt with too.
Overall, we can’t just automatically regard everyone we dislike or who’s dangerous or criminal as mentally unstable. Even the courts would need to factor in their mental state and perhaps grant them some clemency; maybe not in terms of their guilt but their punishment or rehabilitation. It’d be absurd of us to expect someone with fractured hands to juggle well, hence it’d be absurd of us to expect someone with, say, borderline personality disorder to manage their hypersexuality well.
Yet even our personalities are shaped by factors not in our (sole) control, like our genetics, past upbringing and present culture. We may choose our current environment, attitudes and behaviours, but these current choices were shaped by our biology and history. So if someone is, say, lazy – did they strictly choose to be so?
How much weight shall we place on somebody finding it not impossible but much harder than most to fight a predisposition, like to fight an urge towards maybe wrath? Should it be a case of ‘you should be held responsible for your actions because you ultimately could’ve acted differently’ or ‘you should not be held responsible because it’s not fair that a confluence of things were stacked more against you than some others’?
The more one learns and understands about life, people, their backgrounds, development, genetics and environmental factors – the more one understands that everyone has causal reasons for being exactly the way they are. And if they’re considered ‘bad people’ then they’ve been ‘unfortunate’, and vice-versa.
Those considered bad negatively affect others and may in turn contribute to causing others to become bad, like abusive parents raising wretched children who go on to get bullied as well as bully others. Or one group murders members of another group, who in turn murders members of the first side. These vicious cycles therefore need to be broken with compassionate acts rather than treating evil acts with similar acts.
It might be clearer if a personality change occurred after a brain trauma event. But unless you think some people are just born to be inevitably bad no matter what happens in their life (this stance isn’t scientifically supported and what’s considered ‘bad’ is culturally and contextually dependent anyway e.g. soldiers kill yet are often regarded as heroes, and some political philosophies believe that welfare is wrong because it ‘perpetuates the weak’) then everyone has experienced their own personal (mis)fortunes that made them exactly how they are today, even if it’s difficult to identify which specific life events and (missed) opportunities mattered most. It’s like some medications can suddenly increase the likelihood of weight gain. But for everyone else, it’s difficult to say which advert or ultimately calorie made one overweight, or which parental habit countered one’s risk – but it all added up.
…So, are they tragic individuals who deserve our sympathy or bad miscreants who only deserve our condemnation? Even if scientific advances gradually suggest the former – how shall we, as a society, treat those who nevertheless harm others in order to reduce the total amount of harm collectively or to protect the rights and safety of others as individuals? Should we ever intervene before those who have a predisposition to crime potentially act criminally?
Woof. These are tough conundrums, which you can weigh in on through the Twitter comment button below.
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