I agree, and take it further. Psychopathy is a label looking for a definition. It's defined as the opposite of any of the qualities that we associate with the root "human".
They're normal people except that they can't be humane, they can't show any humanity, they completely lack compassion and normal human emotion. They don't share our motivations, their motives are alien and disruptive. They are "other". How do we diagnose them? Each of us decides what is morally repugnant to us, then when other people don't find it repugnant, we label it as sick and speculate whether it's genetically irredeemable. Did they have a mutation in their morality gene? Or are they just the descendants of Cain?
It's 100% culturally bound. Some people think that profit is morally repugnant - does that mean we live in a world of psychopaths? If they were the majority it would.
It's an ugly, dehumanizing term, and reveals a lot of psychology as a moral system rather than a scientific one - being its equivalent of evil. Labeling a 9-year old a psychopath is part of the same cultural process that causes children to be tortured and killed as witches in Nigeria.
If the majority believed profit to be morally repugnant and the person in question didn't understand why due to a lack of empathy, then yes, perhaps they would be a psychopath. I think most anarchists would agree that it is not that the majority of the population is emotionless and uncaring, they just haven't been educated about the alternatives in an open-minded, truthful fashion.
You're making psychopath mean what you want it to mean. I've rarely heard anybody say that psychopaths don't understand emotions in other people. That would be autism.
Also, anarchists aren't the people against profit - many libertarians are anarchists.
What I wrote was that psychopaths don't experience empathy, I never said anything about not understanding emotions in others.
Also, you clearly don't know what anarchism is, libertarians (in the American sense) are not anarchists, they are capitalists. The two are mutually exclusive.
They're normal people except that they can't be humane, they can't show any humanity, they completely lack compassion and normal human emotion. They don't share our motivations, their motives are alien and disruptive. They are "other". How do we diagnose them? Each of us decides what is morally repugnant to us, then when other people don't find it repugnant, we label it as sick and speculate whether it's genetically irredeemable. Did they have a mutation in their morality gene? Or are they just the descendants of Cain?
It's 100% culturally bound. Some people think that profit is morally repugnant - does that mean we live in a world of psychopaths? If they were the majority it would.
It's an ugly, dehumanizing term, and reveals a lot of psychology as a moral system rather than a scientific one - being its equivalent of evil. Labeling a 9-year old a psychopath is part of the same cultural process that causes children to be tortured and killed as witches in Nigeria.
btw: support http://steppingstonesnigeria.org :)
btw2: this doesn't mean I believe in Xenu.