J.F.: Well, Rob, in talking to two of the psychiatrists about going through, you know, this is recently while I was writing the book, about what counts. What's...obviously a lot of normal people have these, these psychopathic traits to one degree or another and I said, what are the hardcore ones? They went through and they said, well nothing gets to you. You don't show any stress, nobody knows when you're mad, you never get mad. They said, well what do you do? I said, well actually some people get me furious but I never show it. They don't know I'm mad and I'll hold it for as long as it takes until the time is right and I'll get even with them. It could be years later and I try to go back in a fair way. I never go back with more than I thought the offense was to begin with that they provided and I always get even and I do it surgically and I do it really without emotion at the time, but I get them every time. And they said that is psychopathic and that was one they said that normal people don't do. I mean, a lot of people can be glib and be cold and all this stuff, but that is a particular thing. It shows a predatory behavior on people emotionally and it just, they said you don't have to get even in other ways. You can destroy people very subtly.
R.K.: Yeah, I just watched "Philomena," a new movie that just came out with Judi Dench and at one point she forgives some horrible behaviors. How are you with forgiveness?
J.F.: Well, little things don't get to me, first of all. In terms of forgiveness, I have always thought because I was hyper-religious growing up and I... fairness, instead of forgiveness, fairness was always extremely important to me and it still is in my politics, in the way I treat people. Fairness"even though I fall short many times. In terms of forgiveness, I don't think I really forgive.
R.K.: Okay.
J.F.: I always thought I did and you're the first person who has asked me that directly and my first gut response is that I don't really forgive and the next minute, or two, I am going to think about it while we're talking to see if I'm jumping to a conclusion here that maybe not-
R.K.: That's-
J.F.: That's my gut response.
R.K.: Fair enough. And I want to take a step back again and tell you a little bit about some of the reasons I wanted to interview you. Somewhere I saw that you are a libertarian and it's clear to me that you think about what causes you to do what you do and I'm interested in your ideas on how the brain and genetics tie in with libertarianism and I know you've either written about it or talked about it because you mention it in your book a little bit. So I'd like to hear a little bit about that. The other thing is I call my show Bottom Up Radio Show. It started out as a kind of a lefty political show and then I got very interested in this idea that we're in a transition from a top-down to a more bottom-up culture. I have become very interested in indigenous tribal cultures. There are still a couple thousand of them existing now that haven't been destroyed by contact with modern culture and most of the world was indigenous tribal culture five or six hundred years ago, even though civilization started about twelve thousand years ago with the onset of farming and cities. So, in the back of your mind, keep that in mind because I wonder where that fits in. I pointed out things like billionaires which I believe should not be allowed to exist, I think they're too dangerous and have too much power which I know that just pushes all your buttons as a libertarian. I'm smiling as I say it. But I believe that before civilization when there were indigenous tribal cultures that anybody who acted like a billionaire would have been treated as insane and either killed or thrown out. So, I haven't seen anything in your last chapter you write why do psychopaths exist and you start to touch on some evolutionary ideas and I'm curious about, and you talk about how they've always existed, and I'm curious about how you think they would have functioned and how they still function in indigenous tribal cultures.
Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
3
2
2
