House of Eratosthenes

Another theory about the origins of PA is that it can be seen as the result of an excessively female brain. Women are more likely than men to be co-dependents and have eating disorders. Girls are more compliant than boys, better behaved, and more eager to please. They are better able to figure out the needs of others. They are politically more “liberal,” and more likely to think that an important function of government is to take care of people. Low levels of testosterone in the womb during fetal development is associated with higher levels of empathy in both sexes.

PA may be the mirror image of autism, which is far more common in boys than in girls, and is characterized by an inability to sense the feelings of others. One author speculates that there are probably as many female pathological altruists as there are males with autism.

There are parts of the brain that light up and signal sympathy when we see people in pain or being punished. Psychological studies have been set up in which the brains of subjects were scanned while they watched the punishment of people who had cheated in a game. The sympathy circuits in women’s brains lit up; those in men did not. Men appear to lose their instinctive sympathy for pain when they think it is deserved, whereas women remain sympathetic.

Hood adds,

Western society is so heavily feminized that redressing the balance and restoring masculine virtue is the first step to imposing any kind of political sanity. But even if that is accomplished, as Richard Spencer has said in the past, you are never going to get rid of “Right” and “Left.” Or as Jack Donovan might put it, the more masculine “Vertical” and more feminine “Horizontal” viewpoint. The necessity isn’t domination, it’s obtaining an Exit by any means necessary and using the opportunity to create a superior system.

After all, what do we have left? The more talk there is about solidarity and universal empathy, the more social trust and actual community is destroyed. When we hear someone babbling about “self-evident” truths like “human rights,” we know we are hearing a sales pitch just as cynical as any attempt to push another high interest credit card. And when you let Cat Ladies who get off on suffering run your country, you don’t end up with a Great Society filled with compassion, but a Great Slum containing only filth and failure, fit only for demolition.

One learns quickly in the blogger-world — regardless of one’s own positioning on the Autism-to-PA spectrum, I think — that stereotypes involving genders are not quite so much untrue but rather, shall we say, unprofitable. You have to keep sprinkling in these annoying disclaimers such as “of course, men do it too!” or else someone’s going to hijack the whole ensuing conversation with that very point, and the original message will have been lost. And, in fairness, you have to do that anyway because we’re living in a time in which the sexes are swapping and our men act more and more like women.

But, there is a distinct male-female split here. The low-testosterone/empathy connection is interesting, and telling, suggesting there is a semblance of scientific support for this.

The problem with PA is that it is not genuine. The examples that suggest a mental instability, all seem to involve some abbreviation-point at which the empathy is truncated. Taylor, writing earlier, points out

“Animal hoarders” are another example of PA. They fill their houses with “rescued” pets but fail to look after them. They declare their love for animals even as they step over the bodies of dogs and cats that have died of malnutrition. They often neglect their own health, living in tumble-down houses filled with animal filth. Hoarders usually started out with a strong childhood attachment to animals but were neglected or abused by their own parents. They often start hoarding after they suffer some kind of personal setback, such as a divorce or losing a job.

That, too, reflects Hood’s vision of where the country is headed, along with “Crazy Cat Lady” (CCL) syndrome and third-wave feminism. You have this streak of empathy, with its “sales pitch as cynical as a push for a credit card.” Testing it, and putting a big-reveal over it that it’s phony empathy, is not difficult. “So, proggie, should Rush Limbaugh be covered by this free and affordable health care plan?” But the phony-empathy is luminous enough to choose a path for us that otherwise could never have been chosen, and of course, it’s always necessary that there is complete commitment, it’s a one-way trip, there must be no retreat possible. Since it’s liberalism, it’s out of the question for the bold hot empathic new idea to ever be subjected to the tests that would be unquestioned if it were an initiative in a private-sector company; you can’t scope it out, phase it in, run it in a sandbox, see if it works within a tighter perimeter on something relatively expendable. Nope, out of the question — the empathy must flood everything, far and wide, from sea to shining sea.

Hillary And always always always, the empathy is engaged in a long walk off a short pier. You reach the truncation point and if you’re not unhesitatingly chowing down the whole whatever-it-is and demanding seconds, the CCLs not only have no empathy for you, they want you gone. Out of the way. They get into their “convert or die” mode — which, curiously, also seems to be an ever-present part of it all. The political movements, the animal hoarding, the fad “science,” the weird new health care laws we have to pass so you can, uh, find out what’s in ’em, the bad divorces and weird child custody/support arrangements. There’s always some matronly maven building a citadel of perfection, demanding to know whether you’re in or out, but either way no new or unwelcome ideas tolerated. You are to get on board or you are to be vanished.

But the more years I see come and go, the more I notice that’s a constant difference between winning and losing. Winners tend to think about edge cases. They tend to say things like “this will happen, of course” or “that will happen too.” They don’t build “comfort booths” unless it’s absolutely necessary, such as offering space as a business commodity or building a home office. While the losers have their cozy citadels for their own living, around-the-clock, filled with all-of-something, and more importantly, none-of-something-else. These isolated hyperbaric chambers offer them comfort, and comfort only, for there is no beauty.

And this is why we all suffer when they’re put in a position of power: The comfort is only for those who are accustomed to it. The occasional visitor is baffled, even horrified.

I’m betting it’s not coincidence that the “pathological empathy” post follows the “save the starving people” post.
- cloudbuster | 06/03/2015 @ 07:41
No, it’s coincidence. That, or an unhealthy obsession.
- mkfreeberg | 06/03/2015 @ 08:00
And this is why we all suffer when they’re put in a position of power: The comfort is only for those who are accustomed to it. The occasional visitor is baffled, even horrified.

Huh, that’s a pretty good description of File770’s comment section during the current sad-puppies events. (where they don’t even understand how nicknames work)

I think you have stumbled upon a most useful metric.
- Nate Winchester | 06/04/2015 @ 05:40

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Pathological AltruismWednesday, June 3rd, 2015

Pathological Altruism
Wednesday, June 3rd, 2015