Sam Harris

http://themoderatevoice.com/science/medicine/24189/brain-scan-research-bullies-like-seeing-others-pain/

This may help explain the behavior of those who bully the likes of Finkelstein, Jimmy Carter, Chomsky, Mearsheimer, Walt etc when they speak out against the immoral actions committed against the Palestinians. Bullies were often abused themselves and this is likely the case here. Those who are labeled as Zionists have often been abused by society around them for their religious beliefs and/or ethnicity. This in no way excuses the bullying or abuse by anyone but it does provide another point where changes can be made to stop this insane cycle of intolerance and violence.

Thanks for the link, Cooper. This kind of info is very relevant to much of what we discuss here.
Wasn’t GWB as a child, known for torturing animals?

From that article,

  Bullies may actually enjoy the pain they cause others, a new study using brain scans suggests.

  The part of the brain associated with reward lights up when an aggressive teen watches a video of someone hurting another person, but not when a non-aggressive youth watches the same clip, according to the University of Chicago study, published in the current Biological Psychology.

  “Aggressive adolescents showed a specific and very strong activation of the amygdala and ventral striatum (an area that responds to feeling rewarded) when watching pain inflicted on others, which suggested that they enjoyed watching pain,” researcher Jean Decety, a professor in psychology and psychiatry at the University of Chicago, said in a university news release. “Unlike the control group, the youth with conduct disorder did not activate the area of the brain involved in self-regulation (the medial prefrontal cortex and the temporoparietal junction).”

Researchers were somewhat shocked at what they had learned:

  While both groups showed activity in the brain’s pain centers, the brains of aggressive males, those with conduct disorder, also showed activity in the brain’s pleasure centers, suggesting that they may have been enjoying what they were seeing. Normal males showed no such activity.

  “It just dumbfounded us,” said Dr. Benjamin Lahey, co-author of the study and professor of epidemiology and psychiatry at the University of Chicago.

  Lahey said he expected an emotionally indifferent response to pain from subjects with conduct disorder, a mental disorder characterized by aggressive, destructive or harmful behavior towards other people and animals and can include theft, substance abuse and sexual promiscuity, according to the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.

  It turns out that the brain circuitry in people with conduct disorder is different from a neurotypical person’s when it comes to pain.

Very interesting… but not very surprising. When I did pretty extensive research on serial killers a decade or so back, I recall looking over brain scan studies done on these psychopathic miscreants which revealed much the same results: the amygdala and the limbic system, aka the “primitive” part of the brain as a whole lit up like a christmas tree when serial killers were shown acts of violence, whereas the prefrontal cortex (I like to call it the Jimminy Cricket part of the brain) remained mainly as dark as their dilating black pupils. Many of the killers they researched in this study (I’m sorry, I can’t remember the names of all the books… but one was called “Hunting Humans”) came from troubled backgrounds and oft times had experienced anywhere from one to several repeated blows to the head—the forehead region specifically.
My conclusion, after doing this research, was that serial killers have shark shit for brains. They literally are predators by virtue of their brain function, or lack thereof in the frontal and prefrontal lobes.

I’m in the midst of an article called Suffering Souls: The search for the roots of psychopathy.  It’s in the “A Reporter at Large” section of the 11/10/08 New Yorker Magazine.  Probably not online yet.  Just thought I’d mention this in light of this discussion.

eucaryote Posted: 08 November 2008 02:45 PM

Bullies may actually enjoy the pain they cause others…..

Josh - 10 November 2008 08:29 PM

eucaryote Posted: 08 November 2008 02:45 PM

Bullies may actually enjoy the pain they cause others…..

Certainly Salty has a lot of nerve calling others weird….he looks like he’s ready to start his own religion.

I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: Bruce looks just like Mr. Garrison with a beard! Is he gesturing toward Sander or hiding Mr. hand?

http://video.google.com/videosearch?client=safari&rls=en&q=South+Park+Mr+Garrison&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&um=1&sa=X&oi=video_result_group&resnum=4&ct=title#

Josh,
These men are not bullies. They are hipster funsters. You better be careful or you’ll get sent to principal KTR’s office! oh, wait… it’s the hipster funsters that he wishes he could expell… nevermind.

p.s. Aaron, sounds like an article worth checking out.