Dealing With Dangerous, Damaged People

I think I pity people who lean too far toward the “nature” side of things with humanity.

I’ve often said that while “talent” might well exist, I’ve never found the concept useful. Most of what I’ve seen from people who believe in it is “well, I didn’t have the talent, so I didn’t try.” On the other hand, people who seem to have things very easy at first often don’t develop the mental grit to deal with failure, or even the empathy to understand other human beings…or themselves.

Turn this around and look at the opposite of talent, or “innate goodness” — innate evil. Faced with predatory behavior, without honesty about their own negative aspects, they reject notions like violence stemming from fear (in most cases. I’d personally estimate that about 1% of negative behavior is really due to something innate. And rather suspect that if I could look more closely, I’d find programming/environmental/fear reactions there as well). This leads to considering criminal behavior evidence of a corrupt soul: build prisons, rather than social programs!

I would suspect that the more they really believe that, the less forgiving they can be about their own natures. Rather than saying “I behaved badly. Let me see what motivated me to do that. Let me see what beliefs, values, and emotional charges triggered THAT. I certainly don’t want that again.”

It is easy to speak in negatives. Let me directly address what I believe the case to be.