Video: https://dai.ly/k3Dpy9VzN5W75bzTJVG
This episode explores moral sadism, manipulation, double standards, religious/secular views, historical/psychological aspects, addiction ties, and unrecognized child abuse effects.
Chapters
0:00:00 Sadism: Evolution and Forms
0:02:26 Society's Definition of Evil and Individual Application of Principles
0:10:23 The Cycle of Sadism and Christianity's Understanding
0:14:17 Breaking the Cycle of Sadism and the Loss of Morality
0:20:20 Morality as a Tool for Preying on Others
0:23:34 The Functional Role of Sadism in Systems of Power
0:26:36 Understanding the Morbid Perversion of Sadistic Behavior
0:29:34 The Shift from Evil to Mental Dysfunction
0:31:54 The Concept of Moral Mania and its Implications
0:41:37 Sadists as Degenerates in Victorian Era
0:43:44 Degenerates vs. Evil: Clarifying Moral Terminology
0:43:56 The Definition of Evil and Social Norms
0:46:33 The Source of Evil: Unrecognized Child Abuse
In this episode of the podcast/show, I explore the concept of sadism and its evolution as a form of immorality. I delve into the different aspects of sadism, with a focus on moral sadism, which involves doing evil under the guise of good. I discuss examples of how this form of sadism manifests, such as the manipulation of victims into believing that harm being inflicted is justified or necessary for the greater good. Additionally, I highlight the double standards in society that define certain actions as evil when done by individuals but excuse them when carried out by those in power.
I then discuss the traditional religious perspective on sadism, particularly within Christianity, which associates it with the devil's temptation towards cruelty. I contrast this with the secular shift that has labeled sadism as a mental illness rather than an inherent evil. I argue that this dismissal of the moral dimension of suffering is a sadistic act in itself, as it denies the existence of good and evil.
We also explore the consequences of sadistic actions, noting that while they may provide short-term pleasure for the perpetrator, they ultimately cause long-lasting negative effects on the victims and society as a whole. I discuss the link between sadism and addiction, explaining how individuals who have experienced suffering or have engaged in evil acts may find themselves trapped in a cycle of dysfunction and unhappiness.
As we transition to discussing the absence of morality in secular society, I highlight the challenges in explaining destructive behavior without the concepts of God, Satan, and temptation. I argue that rejecting morality allows power-seeking individuals to manipulate and prey upon others without resistance. I discuss how this instrumental use of morality to control and exploit others is akin to a sadistic act.
Furthermore, I examine the historical perspective on sadism, referencing the works of James Cowles Pritchard, who described it as a morbid perversion of natural feelings and inclinations. I caution against pathologizing non-conformist behavior without considering the psychological factors involved.
The conversation then shifts to the relationship between evil and mental health. I emphasize that individuals can display sadistic behavior without any brain damage or insanity. I refer to the works of Pritchard, who argued that immoral behavior could stem from a perversion of natural inclinations rather than intellectual impairment. I discuss how psychiatry emerged as a distinct medical field in the 19th century, leading to a transition from priests to doctors and psychiatrists in explaining moral conduct.
We also touch upon the intersection of consent, acceptable sexual behavior, and mental health when discussing sadism. I reflect on my own approach to addressing suffering and unhappiness in callers to the show, emphasizing the importance of considering whether they have suffered or done evil. I acknowledge the limitations of existing theories on why people choose evil and refer to Pritchard's concept of moral mania as an early attempt to understand sadism from a psychiatric perspective.
Moving forward, I challenge the notion that evil is solely a result of ignorance and argue that the desire for instant gratification and the temptation of evil play significant roles in decision-making. I explore various explanations, including loyalty to the group, the influence of temptation, and the impact of dopamine. I hypothesize that exposure to evil may depress dopamine levels to prevent individuals from acting against those in power.
Next, we delve into the groundbreaking work of Richard von Kraft-Ebing in exploring human sexuality, specifically sadism. While his efforts were influential for his time, we acknowledge the limitations imposed by the moral and scientific understanding of the era. We discuss his categorization of sadism as degeneracy and the societal struggle with deviant forms of sexuality. We also analyze Kraft-Ebing's methodology, which relied on sensationalized case studies.
The conversation then delves into the challenges of categorizing human behavior and the pressure to conform to social norms. We engage in a philosophical discussion about the concept of evil and the pursuit of truth in the face of societal norms.
In conclusion, I argue that the source of evil lies in unrecognized child abuse, where victims seek comfort and sympathy from others, only to face further harm. I posit that to survive in a predatory world, individuals may feel compelled to become abusers themselves or ignore virtue. Breaking this cycle of violence requires genuine sympathy for victims of evil.
I express gratitude for the support of listeners and encourage them to contribute to the show through donations and joining the community for additional benefits.
moral sadism, evil disguised as good, manipulation, double standards, religious perspective, secular perspective, historical aspects, psychological aspects, addiction, impact of dopamine, human behavior, unrecognized child abuse
[0:00] All right, time for a sadism part five, and we are going to describe in this section, we're going to describe the evolution of a sadism is a form of immorality.
And there is, of course, many aspects of sadism. One, of course, is the direct sadism of, you know, as the Marquis de Sade did, opening up wounds in people, cutting them open and then dripping hot wax into the wounds, sort sort of physical abuse, physical violence, physical hurt.
But moral sadism is by far the most prevalent, widespread, and destructive form of sadism. Moral sadism is when you do evil under the umbrella of good.
It's a form of gaslighting that you convince your victims that there's moral virtues in what you're doing, or it's good to do what you do.
It's good for them to submit. It's It's good for them to obey.
So moral sadism is really the most foundational difficulty and danger that we face.
Now, of course, I'm sort of formulating this. I think, oh, what about serial killers? They don't particularly go with morals as a whole.
And it's true, of course, but serial killers are extremely rare, and your odds of being harmed by a serial killer are virtually zero.
[1:18] Whereas you are 100% going to be harmed by moral sadism.
By moral sadism.
So moral sadism for instance is saying well if there are a set of laws that i don't want to have enforced i will portray everyone punished by those laws as an innocent victim family separation cruelty and so on whereas if there's a set of laws that i do want to have enforced then i will talk about the rule of law and morality and you get what you deserve and faff around find out you you know, that kind of stuff.
So that's a form of moral sadism, of course, to say to children that you beat, that you beat them because you want them to be good, and they bought it upon themselves through disobedience to moral laws, and you're just a, you're like gravity, you know, if they jump off a wall and hurt their leg, they don't blame gravity, they blame their own bad decisions, and you are just punishing them for moral causes, it's their fault, their responsibility, and so on.
So that's a form of moral sadism which is to add insult to injury is really the moral sadism, right?
[2:26] So, the foundational aspect of moral sadism is also in that society generally defines as evil.
[2:36] An individual's application of pre-existing social principles, right?
So, if those in power do something, that's moral and good and the price you pay to live in a civilized society and so on, and there's nationalism and the rule of law and all of these kinds of good things.
Things, whereas if an individual does what the rulers do, he's a criminal, he's evil, and this goes back to what I talked about in The Truth About Pirates, that Alexander the Great captured a pirate and punished him, and the pirate said, yeah, well, you can punish me, but you're just a bigger pirate.
Your pirate fleet is called a navy, whereas I'm just an individual, right?
The typical example, of course, which we are all aware of, is counterfeiting, right?
If If you counterfeit currency, which is the production of a currency that you have not earned or traded for, that's a crime, and you go to jail, right?
[3:30] But when the government creates currency out of nothing and prints it and hands it to their friends at full value, and it ends up robbing the poor at its most diluted value, well, that's sound fiscal monetary policy, you know, all this kind of stuff.
Like, the cops can lie to you, you can't lie to the cops, right?
Right, so lying is good when the state does it, it's bad when individuals do it.
So, when an individual attempts to reproduce what the rulers are doing, he is called immoral.
And the amount of gaslighting that goes on in society to hide this basic fact is, I mean, it's really staggering.
You know, I mean, I am fully accepting of the idea of conspiracy theories, because once you know the truth and you see how well the truth has been hidden.
[4:18] For centuries, millennia, you're like, yeah, okay, so that's a thing, right?
That's a real thing. I mean, truth isn't accidentally hidden.
It is a very sort of conscious plan and process of hiding the truth from people and punishing people for even.
And I remember talking about this way back in the day, I don't know, like 15 years ago, about the question of terrorism, that governments around the world were trying to define terrorism, But they couldn't define it in a way that didn't include their own policies.
I don't mean to laugh because it's deadly serious, but it is a horrifying, it's the darkest comedy known to man, right?
[4:53] So, sadism, moral sadism, is the most foundational aspect of things.
And it used to be that the moral aspect of sadism was well understood in a religious context.
This is sort of another example, in particular in Christianity, of Christianity being far more accurate than secularism.
Because secularism shifted sadism from evil to dysfunction, to mental illness, to madness, and so on, right?
And that took the moral dimension out of sadism, right?
So, of course, in the traditional Christian context, sadism would be the devil's impulse, right? The devil would be tempting you with cruelty to others, and you would either resist that temptation and turn to kindness.
If the devil tempts you to be cruel, then you frustrate the devil by becoming more kind, by becoming more loving, more positive, more helpful.
So the devil will tempt you with the blacker aspects of harming others and gaining power from a sort of malevolent sense, or in a malevolent sense.
You would gain power by humiliating others which is like gaining wealth by robbing others gaining sexual activity by assaulting others and so on, right?
[6:14] Gaining an inheritance by murdering someone so to take from others to have a negative sum game is sadism, right?
The sadist becomes happier but his victims become far less happy and in fact the net happiness is reduced in society, right?
It's a huge net negative in the same way that the thief becomes marginally richer but society becomes far poorer because now it has to take all these anti-theft measures, the sadist who harms his victim gains maybe an hour or two of pleasure but the victims are harmed in perpetuity right.
[6:49] The thief who steals $1,000 is happy for an hour or two, but his victim is now mistrustful and skeptical of virtue and security and safety for the rest.
I mean, the rapist gets five minutes of pleasure, but the rape victim is traumatized for the rest of her life, to some degree, right?
So it's a huge net negative, and moral sadism is really among the worst of these kinds of things.
So Christianity said it's a temptation of the devil to or the devil is using you so the argument would go something like this the devil is using you to make society unhappy because an unhappy society is more prone to evil because unhappiness becomes a weight that is so unbearable after a while that people will do almost anything to relieve it including drugs including violence including various forms of addiction, gambling, and promiscuity.
[7:46] It's sort of like if you've ever had to carry something heavy for a long time or a long way, at some point you'll just do almost anything to get rid of the burden.
So the traditional theological perspective would be, the devil wants to spread dysfunction, so what he tempts you to do is to seize happiness at the expense of others, to seize a temporary happiness at the expense or with the exchange of permanent unhappiness to others.
So you get your orgasm, you get your wealth, you get all of these things, and that gives you a temporary happiness followed by unhappiness, right?
The guilt and the shame and the alienation and the horror and all of that.
Or just the deep emotional void and emptiness, the numbness.
I mean, you know, if you've ever had that thing where you get a filling and they numb you, and you can't feel anything.
Well, imagine that spreads to your whole body, your whole soul.
You can't feel anything.
[8:45] That's desperately unhappy. So the devil says...
[8:48] Take your temporary pleasure, and the taking of that temporary pleasure leads to more and more misery in society, as people mistrust, and have to doubt, and have to be skeptical, and have to put bars on their windows, and can't walk at night, and have to have rape whistles, right?
So you take your temporary pleasure, and then society becomes more and more unhappy, which means more and more people are susceptible to the temptation of temporary pleasure at the expense of general social unhappiness and society just becomes more and more miserable i mean the people who run the central banks are probably quite excited about their ability to control the money supply and interest rates and so on and they probably get quite a high at having that power but that high doesn't last but the misery they inflict on everyone else through inflation and the general theft of people's savings is far there's far more misery than so so i want you to sort of think of of sadism as a lever that increases sadism in society so the sadist is unhappy he gains temporary relief from that unhappiness by being cruel to others but that cruelty causes unhappiness and others it's it's a virus which spreads right and ends up with a net negative and when you make people progressively more unhappy and then they end up acting out negatively against others right I mean, the typical example would be siblings, right?
So, the sibling is rendered unhappy, as I talked about in part two.
The sibling is rendered unhappy by the abuse of the parents or teachers or priests or something like that.
[10:16] And so, the sibling then acts in a cruel manner towards the younger sibling.
[10:23] And then the elder sibling has a bad conscience, which means he's now in a kind of death spiral.
Like, he has to be more cruel to relieve himself from his bad conscience, but his cruelty makes his bad conscience even more harsh upon him so he has to this is where people fall into the spiral and this again is very much understood by christianity right very much understood by christianity christianity was born in a sense out of sadism right the sadism of the ruling authorities the sadism of the crucifixion and the crown of thorns so christianity was born out of sadism so it would have i think of most religions it would have the deepest understanding of sadism it's the furnace in which the religion was was formed in many ways so it would say look the devil is going to tempt you to do bad and he's going to tempt you with good things temporary happiness in order to feel better and rather than work on the root of your misery, you can just be cruel you can just take things right like this is the temptation of Satan with Jesus in the wilderness right in the desert where he takes Jesus to the roof of the world and says all of this can be yours just serve me follow me now of course, the world is not the devil's to give right it's actually property rights right so but the devil will offer you.
[11:46] Things that will relieve you of your unhappiness, your anxiety, your depression, and so on, right?
And this is what everybody who's famous says, you know, I wanted to become famous so I'd feel happier, and it turns out that wasn't the solution.
I mean, Jim Carrey said, I wish everyone could experience fame and wealth to realize that it doesn't make you happy, and it doesn't, of course.
In fact, it can mask your unhappiness.
[12:06] Now, the modern equivalent of this, right, Now, psychologically, I believe, this is just, of course, my amateur opinion, but psychologically, I believe that people are unhappy in particular because they have either experienced or done evil.
That is the root of most dysfunction and unhappiness, and I think sometimes even madness.
You have either suffered evil or you have done evil, and therefore you are unhappy.
[12:38] And so the path out of this in the Christian context text is repentance and forgiveness right so forgiveness is if you have been a victim of evil then you forgive the evildoer and that gets you out of the misery if you are the evildoer then, you repent you make amends and so on and that gets you out of the cycle you can see this of course in the 12-step programs for addiction that addiction is the flailing for dopamine after after having suffered or done evil.
Initially, the addict is an addict because he suffers evil, but then the addiction generally seals over him, and he can't escape it because he then does evil, right?
So you think of the guy who's raised in an abusive household, and he gets married or becomes an addict, gets married, has kids or whatever, and then abandons his family, destroys his finances, harms his children.
So he goes from a victim of evil to an evildoer himself, that he's breaking his marriage vows.
Put no other person before you, or person means, so if you're an alcoholic, the bartender goes ahead of your wife, which means you're breaking your vows. So it's a fraud, right?
[13:48] So Christianity, I think, again, I'm no theologian, this is my understanding.
Christianity says, look, if you've suffered evil, you're going to be unhappy, and the way out of that unhappiness is forgiveness.
And if you have done evil, the way out of that unhappiness is repentance, amends.
And again, the same thing happens, as I mentioned, with the 12-step programs, that you forgive those who've harmed you, and you ask forgiveness from those you have harmed.
And that's a way of trying to break the cycle of sadism.
[14:18] That you've experienced sadism, and therefore you're more likely to be a sadist, which is going to spread sadism, and when sadism spreads enough, you get societal collapse, you get wars, right? You get...
[14:31] Violations of property rights to the point where nobody can grow any food and everybody starves to death right so that's fairly central to understanding this but the problem of course is that when good and evil were defined in a religious context then when people stopped believing in religion they also stopped believing in good and evil now when you stop believing in good and evil but there is highly destructive human behavior you have to kind of have an answer for that right you have to find some kind of answer as to how are you going to describe highly destructive human behavior if you don't have access to God and Satan, angels and devils, temptation and original sin.
So if you're religious, if you're Christian, then destructive behavior is fairly easy to comprehend and to understand.
A man fell prey to the temptation of the devil and he abandoned heaven and he's on the road to hell and this is part of original sin and willpower and so on, right?
But But when you lose good and evil because you lose God, then how do you explain destructive behavior?
And the idea that you can escape the trauma of suffering evil or the guilt of doing evil without forgiveness or repentance.
[15:47] I mean, I have a way, right? I mean, not so much for the evildoer that repentance is still required, although very, very rarely achieved.
And forgiveness is not required, unless it is earned, in which case it's just to pay it.
But if you look at people who are unhappy in the modern context, what are they told?
They're told, well, you have a biochemical imbalance and you just take this pill. Right? Just take this pill.
That the unhappiness that you're suffering has no moral dimension.
It has no moral dimension.
It is a biochemical imbalance and so on, right?
And the fact that nobody can really find this biochemical imbalance is quite instructive, as far as I understand it.
From an amateur standpoint, it's been pretty tough to find, but that's not what it's for.
Telling people who've suffered evil or done evil that their unhappiness has nothing to do with morality is, in my view, quite sadistic. Quite sadistic.
[16:48] Because you're saying that good and evil have nothing to do with happiness or suffering.
And this is tough because, of course, the challenge of religiosity is that it seeks to justify the existence of God by explaining material things.
[17:06] Like, where did the universe come from? God made it. Why are there the animals?
God designed them. Why do you have a complex? I, God, designed it.
So, the problem is that religion tries to validate the existence of God by an appeal to an explanation for material matters.
[17:27] Physical, the laws of the universe, the centrality of earth to the universe and biology and so on.
On right i mean this is sort of the famous example of you know the earth is 6 000 years old but carbon dating puts fossils at hundreds of millions of years old well that's just put there by god to test our faith and so on so when religion attempts to explain the world in terms of fundamentally in terms of physics and biology with reference to the divine and then also says that divinity is responsible for moral laws right so god is responsible for the universe and and the the creatures, and morality, right?
And the problem, of course, is that when science really begins to show that God is not responsible or necessary to explain the existence of the universe or the development of animals, right?
You've got various theories about the origins of the universe and, in general, the perpetuity of matter and energy.
Matter and energy can never be destroyed, just transferred from one form to another.
So you have the eternality of matter, and then you also have evolution to talk about the development of complex systems over billions of years, like the eye and so on.
And so you have tied morality to the explanation of God as...
[18:47] As to the origins of things and creatures. But when science shows that God is not necessary to explain the origin of things and creatures, then the problem, of course, is that you end up with people saying, well, God is not responsible for the existence of things and creatures, but God is also claimed to be responsible for the existence of morality, and since God is not responsible for things and creatures, and things and creatures evolved without God, God, then we're going to throw the baby out with the bathwater and say, if the claim was that God created things and creatures, but God didn't, then the claim that God created morality means that God did not create morality, therefore there is no morality, right?
I mean, this is the sort of famous example of one of the astronomers talking to the Pope with a model of the solar system and says, where's God?
And he says, God is not necessary to the operation, right? So this is a great temptation.
It's really a devilish temptation to say God is justified because things and creatures exist, because when science comes along and overturns that hypothesis you lose morality with it too which is of course when you see dysfunctional behavior and you can see all this mental illness and dysfunction, biochemical imbalances, there is no morality.
[20:02] Now when you no longer have morality as a fair object of philosophical discourse course, morality doesn't exist. Morality just turns sadistic.
Morality then becomes a tool by which you control others and gain their resources.
[20:20] Morality becomes a tool by which you prey upon others. To do evil under the cover of good is moral sadism and by far the most dangerous perspective of morality.
It's sort of the idea that if you outlaw guns, only outlaws will have guns.
Like if you ban guns, then only the criminals will have guns.
But if you no longer believe in morality, then only the sophists use morality.
Only the liars and the cheats and the predators use morality, right?
So, I mean, this is the typical example that the secularists don't believe in morality, which means that any argument that opposes the expansion of, say, leftist power is termed evil and bigoted and phobic and all of this kind of stuff, right?
So, if you say to to wise, intelligent, virtuous philosophers that there's no such thing as morality, you're doing the equivalent of banning guns.
Which means only the criminals have guns, you, in a sense, ban morality as a legitimate discourse of moral philosophers. You say there's no such thing as morality.
It's like saying nobody should own a gun. Well, of course, the people who want morality to be relativistic and subjectivist are the ones who want to take it over away from the moral strictures and the universal requirements of philosophy so that they can use it to prey upon the population.
[21:43] Moral sadists will tell you there's no such thing as morality so that they can deploy their cruelty without resistance from rational intellectuals in the same way that criminal organizations will work to ban guns so that they can prey upon the citizens unmolested right they don't want pushback they don't want right and and this to me it perfectly explains the modern phenomenon that when you ban morality.
[22:10] As a rational discipline or a moral or a universal discipline or a philosophical discipline discipline you end up with a wide variety of power-seeking moral hysterias and morality then becomes used to punish people for opposing the expansion of power rather than a discipline that needs to be examined from a truly universal and rational and empirical philosophical perspective so i sort of wanted to point that out as a whole thing's really really important because we're going to talk about the transition of sadism from moral to dysfunctional right so moral is it's evil dysfunctional is it doesn't work in the long run for the individual and of course the word dysfunctional has replaced evil which dysfunctional is a morally neutral term i mean those who seek power who can convince other people that it's moral to submit to their power.
[23:08] It's hugely functional to them.
Ah, you can say, but it's not functional to society as a whole, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
But if a sadist can end up in charge of a prison camp, like some gulag in Soviet Russia or something like that, some Pol Pot Cambodian nightmare, if a sadist can create a system where he's in charge of a prison camp, a gulag, a concentration camp, then the sadist, of of course, it's perfectly functional for the sadist.
[23:34] He gets to indulge all of his sadistic tendencies and preferences with no pushback.
[23:40] So this idea that there's something funny, well, I say, ah, well, an addiction is when, you know, it harms your long-term functionality or, you know, whatever it is, right?
It's a sort of a definition of addiction that something which interferes with the success of your life as a whole.
Of course, they don't talk about this in a social context. They don't talk about this in a universal context, such as inflation, money printing, and so on.
They talk about this, well, you know, it's not a bad addiction if you don't blow your savings and get divorced, right? If you don't, it's not too bad if you just, you know, go gamble or you just drink.
It's only when you lose your job and write that. So it's functional. It becomes functional.
A practical. This is the result of amoral consequentialism. This is the result of pragmatism, utilitarianism.
Well, if drinking, you know, works for you in general, like you socialize and you have fun, but you don't drink and drive, you don't run out of money, you don't get divorced and all that kind of stuff, then it's fine. It's fine.
[24:34] Right as opposed to well drinking as a whole is is poisoning yourself and it really undermines your own capacity to enjoy your own company and the company of those around you and it tends to deaden your capacity for intelligent conversation and and so on right so there would be a self abandonment of self-rejection in the act of drinking right i'm not doing anyone any harm I can handle it. I'm a functional alcoholic.
No, you're not. So, I want to talk about early psychiatric perspectives.
This is the 19th century in particular was the transition from religion to secularism.
I mean, again, we're not talking worldwide and so on, in particular in the West.
So, in the quest to understand the darker aspects of human psychology, I mean, particularly those related to sadism, we got a look at the work of James Cowles Pritchard.
He's pioneering concepts, especially moral mania, from his work, A Treatise on Insanity and Other Disorders Affecting the Mind.
[25:36] So all of this laid the groundwork for understanding deviant behaviors, including those later classified under sadism.
So let's look at this, because it's a 19th century guy. Let's look at The Treatise on Insanity and Other Disorders Affecting the Mind.
So, if he's talking about the darker aspects of human nature, of course, Christians would say, well, this is evil and it's coming to the temptation of the devil and it's doing harm and you're taking step by step into the sulfur pits of hell.
But he says, a treatise on insanity and other disorders affecting the mind.
Disorder. Disorder is a morally neutral term. It's like chaos.
Insanity is a morally neutral term. so Pritchard's concept of moral mania was revolutionary he described it as a morbid perversion of the natural feelings affections, inclinations, temper, habits and moral dispositions without any notable lesion of the intellect or knowing and reasoning faculties and particularly without any maniacal hallucinations.
[26:36] Morbid perversion of the natural feelings affections, inclinations, temper, habits and moral dispositions without any notable lesion of the intellect or knowing and reasoning faculties and particularly without any maniacal hallucinations.
[26:48] So somebody who is cruel, mean, vindictive, sadistic, evil, what would be called evil, but there's no brain damage, there's no brain tumor, there's no brain injury, and so on, right?
And he's not completely insane because he's not having split from reality, pure psychosis, manic delusions, right?
Now how do we explain this, right? A morbid perversion.
Morbid, of course, is somewhat negative. a perversion is a deviation from a natural state but not necessarily immoral right so he recognized that individuals could have deeply distorted moral compasses without any impairment in their intellectual abilities or grasp of reality now to understand how the 19th century reframed sadism from immoral to dysfunctional pritchett's ideas are pretty essential before the term sadism was coined, behaviors that we would now classify as sadistic were often seen as manifestations of broader moral failings or insanity.
Pritchett's work suggested a more nuanced view that individuals could engage in morally repugnant behavior due to a perversion of their natural feelings and inclinations, not necessarily because they were intellectually impaired or disconnected from reality.
And of course we've all known people over the course of our lives who do immoral things or harmful things but they're clearly not insane and they don't have brain tumors or brain damage, right?
[28:12] So the 19th century psychiatric context was one where the boundaries of mental health and moral conduct were being actively explored and often blurred.
There was a growing recognition that the mind could be diseased in ways that did not manifest as overt madness.
This period saw the establishment of psychiatry as a distinct medical field and with it a shift in how society viewed and treated those with mental disorders.
So Pritchett's works therefore represented a critical junction in the evolution of psychiatric thought.
His work opened the door to the possibility that certain forms of violent cruel and seemingly incomprehensible behavior could have a basis in mental illness rather than mean purely evil or criminal acts now purely evil is one of these challenging terms right because in religion as a whole certainly christianity evil is a step-by-step temptation and genuine mental impairment like could be the result of immorality so I mean the famous example would be that you shouldn't sleep with prostitutes you sleep with prostitutes you get syphilis and syphilis destroys your brain that's one of the theories about what happened to Nietzsche right so you would get an infection of the brain syphilis would rot your brain and turn you mad but that madness would be the result of immorality, right?
[29:34] So there's sleeping with prostitutes or sleeping around or whatever it is, right?
[29:38] So, formally, sadism would be a task for priests to deal with, that you're being tempted by the devil to add to the unhappiness of society so he can do his further dark work in the broken hearts of broken people.
But when priests lost their moral legitimacy because it was indisputable that scientists understood the nature of physical reality infinitely better than priests did, like science and biology and in particular the 19th century with darwinism right darwinism was the final key that unlocked secularism and the value of the scientific method because it explained why why we existed and why we were and why the animals existed and it explained just about everything it really has been termed one of the greatest ideas in human history if not the best idea in human history but people said well of course if priests are this wrong about reality how could they be right about morality?
Ah, right. To me, the physical explanations were used as a vehicle to deliver the moral explanations, which were true and right and accurate, although metaphorical. Metaphorical, of course, right?
[30:47] So, what do we do with evildoers? Well, before, we would ship them to the priest.
But we would no longer ship children to the priest to understand the nature of the universe. We would ship them to teachers who'd been trained in the secular arts of science and so on, right?
So that would be who we would send them to, right?
I mean, if somebody has a sort of physical illness, we don't send them to a priest anymore, right?
We don't send them to a priest. We send them to a doctor.
And this would be the case with evil, right? It's no longer evil, it's dysfunction, and we send them to a psychiatrist, not a priest.
The priests, in a sense, are the new psychiatrists, but without morality, which I think is essential to dealing with unhappiness, right?
You have to have a moral perspective in order to deal with chronic unhappiness, because chronic unhappiness is usually because you've suffered evil without sympathy, or you've inflicted evil without consequences or the need to make restitution, to apologize and make restitution.
[31:54] So you've got to be careful with this guy's ideas, especially from a modern perspective.
So the concept, his concept of moral mania, could be seen as a way of pathologizing behavior that was simply non-conformist or socially undesirable, without a deeper understanding of the underlying psychological factors.
In the context of sadism, this raises difficult questions about the nature of consent, and the boundaries of acceptable sexual behavior, and the intersection of morality and mental health.
I mean, if you've heard my call-in shows, generally what I'm asking is people who are suffering, unhappy, and so on. Generally what I'm asking is the following.
Have you suffered evil, or have you done evil? Tell me about your childhood.
Tell me about what you've done as an adult. Have you suffered evil, or have you done evil? Okay.
Doesn't mean that you're forever a victim it doesn't mean that you're bottomlessly evil but have you suffered evil or done evil and of course most people have suffered evil, and when we get to the moral clarification of that unhappiness it tends to give them some relief this is an all just theory for me i've been doing it of course for, 40 years and 18 of those publicly so just so you sort of understand right so james cowell's pritchard's concept of moral mania was a significant early step in attempting to frame behaviors like sadism from a psychiatric perspective.
It reflected and influenced the 19th century perspectives on morality and mental health, paving the way for a more nuanced understanding of deviant behavior.
[33:20] And the idea of moral mania, of trying to figure out, I mean, it's the fundamental question. Why do people choose evil? Why do people choose evil?
And there's a variety of answers to this, most of which I would consider deficient or outright false. So why do people choose evil?
[33:38] Well, of course, for a lot of the ancient Greeks people choose evil because they lack knowledge.
[33:46] Right why do children want to eat food that's bad for them and not food that's good for them why do they want candy not vegetables why well because they lack knowledge and they are driven by the senses of the moment and they lack knowledge of nutrition why do people not exercise and then complain when they get fat and arthritic and have diabetes and so on because they lack knowledge of the cause and effect fact why did people smoke i assume smoking was pleasurable and they didn't know the harmful outcomes of smoking and so why do people choose evil because they lack knowledge and therefore the goal of the philosopher is to encourage the study and knowledge of virtue so that people can make a better choices in other words everybody wants to be good everybody wants to be moral they just lack knowledge of what morality is and so you teach them what morality is and all but the insane will choose the right course of action this is false i mean this is obviously false blindingly obviously false and i can prove it to you in about 30 seconds our knowledge of nutrition our knowledge of healthy eating our knowledge of exercise has never been higher than than it is now, the means of disseminating those facts have never been greater or wider, and people's desire as a whole for health and relative thinness has never been higher, and yet people are just getting fatter and fatter and fatter.
Like, it's catastrophic.
[35:15] Obese and unhealthy people are, as a whole.
So, the idea that people just want to do the right thing, they just need more knowledge, well people can't even lose weight and keep it off, And again, I would recommend you watch the show. You can catch it on YouTube called Secret Eaters.
People claim to be living on 1,500 calories a day. Turns out they're living on 4,500 calories a day. They're just lying to themselves completely, even though they know exactly what they need to do.
I mean, everybody knows exactly what they need to do to lose weight.
Everybody knows. There's no question of that.
Eat less, exercise more, right? That's the deal, right?
[35:50] But even though everybody knows, calories are printed on just about every menu.
Everybody has the recommended things. there's countless books and videos available like on your person at all times you can take photos of your food sometimes and get the calorie count there are apps to have you count calories and yet so there is no such thing as a lack of knowledge everybody has access to every conceivable piece of information about weight management and people just getting fatter and fatter so the idea that bad or dysfunctional or negative behavior is simply the result of a lack of knowledge is false This is another factor, right?
So why do people choose evil? Well, of course, the Christians would say, well, we have a choice to choose good and to choose evil.
And people are very much tempted by evil. That's the demonic animal side of ourselves.
And Satan is constantly trying to coax us into doing evil.
This is sort of the screw tape letters theory or scenario.
And so what you need to do is resist temptation, pursue virtue, and so on.
And there are consequences so the idea that we lack knowledge and you educate people and they will gain knowledge and therefore they will become virtuous that evil is a form of ignorance is not true it's not true.
[37:14] It certainly should be true in something less volatile than good and evil, which is weight management or exercise or whatever it is, right?
So yeah, people are just making bad health decisions all the time, though we've never had better sources of knowledge and more science about what is healthy.
[37:30] So the Romans, of course, would say that people choose evil because of a lack of loyalty to the group, dishonor and pettiness and so on.
And that would be a lack lack of consideration for what's best for the community or the group or the collective as a whole.
It doesn't really explain why they would do that, but they would say that's sort of the cause and effect.
Of course, in the religious ages, it would be the devil won out and you fell prey to temptation and so on.
The 19th century, why do people choose evil?
Well, they reframed it as dysfunction and they reduced it to a sort of physical thing, which doesn't really explain anything.
Thing well you lack i mean the modern explanation would be something like well you lack dopamine, and when you pursue particular actions you get dopamine and therefore you pursue those actions because then when you start pursuing those actions your dopamine crashes even further and all this kind of stuff right but it doesn't doesn't explain why people are low on dopamine to begin with other than biochemical thing which doesn't explain much at all but why are people below on dopamine and why did they choose the easy path?
Why did they choose addiction to raise dopamine rather than something else?
So when you think you have an answer, you stop looking.
And of course my argument would be that dopamine is depressed by exposure to evil, being harmed by evil.
[38:55] Because dopamine is sort of a motivation and action aspect of our physiology, and if you're under the grip and power of evil, then you are probably a slave, you're definitely a serf, or someone who's subjugated, and therefore you want to get rid of the motivation chemical, because the motivation aspect of the human body will have you try and confront evil, which will probably get you killed.
Right so if you if you're under the power of evildoers right if you're a slave who's being beaten or a serf who's being raped or whatever then you want people in a sense to be depressed so that they don't act against those they can't win against and thus take themselves out of the gene pool or to put it another way those who were under the subjugation of evil who were full of, piss vinegar and dopamine tried to act against the evildoers and were killed so that was weeded out fairly rapidly out of the gene pool as a whole if you do evil then you have to get rid of anything that might give you empathy sympathy bonding hormones oxytocin whatever you would want to call it and therefore you have to be fairly miserable as a result and that allows you to continue to do your evil because you can't bond with people you don't have the empathy and so on right so i hope that makes some kind of sense so we'll talk i guess a little bit here about about Richard von Kraft-Ebing.
So he did a seminal work, Psychopathia Sexualis. It's a watershed moment in the history of psychiatry.
[40:22] So, okay, we're going to look at this, but his efforts, I mean, he broke new ground in many ways, also shackled by the moral limitations and scientific understanding of his time.
So Kraft-Ebing's venture into the dark alleys of human sexuality, particularly sadism, was not merely academic curiosity, it was a quest to categorize, to define, and perhaps in a way to control what was then considered the outskirts of normal human behavior.
[40:46] So the term sadism, of course, comes out of the mark we decide was popularized by Kraft-Ebing, but it's more than just a label.
It was a shift in understanding a profound aberration in human behavior from a mere moral failing to a psychological condition.
And he opened this Pandora's box of moral and ethical questions which we're still grappling with today, which, of course, I and just about everybody else who thinks about these things does as well. Well, so his methodology in his book Psychopathia Sexualis was both innovative and controversial.
He relied heavily on case studies detailing the most shocking and lurid cases of sexual deviancy.
While these accounts were instrumental in shedding light on such behaviors, they also painted a somewhat sensationalized picture of these conditions.
So there was clinical analysis, but sensationalist, morbid fascination.
Lurid. It was lurid as well.
[41:37] So his categorization of sadism as a form of degeneracy is particularly noteworthy.
In his view, sadists were not just individuals with a peculiar sexual penchant, they were degenerates, an aberration from the healthy norm of society.
Society this categorization is fraught with moral judgment and a clear sense of othering it reflects the victorian era's struggle with sexuality especially in its deviant forms the victorian era of course was dealing with the collapse of religion as both the physical and moral prop to social norms and it should of course have desperately turned to philosophy but that it just it just didn't it just didn't for reasons of course that most of the people who would have the reach and authority and access to the publishers and to the public most of the people in the victorian era who could make a real difference were part of the power elite and therefore couldn't really psychologically develop upb it had to be somebody who was an outsider to the power elite who develops upb universally preferable behavior the rational proof of secular ethics.
It had to be somebody from outside the power structures, because when you're in the power structures, you can't condemn yourself.
[42:51] So, if you're profiting from violations of UPB, then you can't develop, psychologically, you can't develop UPB, because nobody's going to invent a system that condemns both them and their class and their families, their wives, their children, their parents, like, you're just not going to do that.
So, it had to be someone like me. It had to be somebody from outside, completely outside the power structures.
[43:12] Had a clean conscience with regards to these things so i can define upb i can promulgate upb without condemning the people in my life without condemning myself without condemning the source of my income because you know i came from massive poverty i came from nothing and so i can be objective because i'm not compromised in that kind of way so categorizing say this as degenerates now Now, degenerates, again, is not a moral term.
[43:44] See, evil is evil. I'm sorry, that's kind of tautological, but evil is just evil.
It is what it is. It can't be confused. You don't say, if you have arthritis, that my joints are evil.
[43:57] Degenerate, to degenerate, means simply to decay. It's entropy.
It's not a specifically moral term. Of course, people try to infuse this morality into it, but why can't you just say evil?
Well, then you have to define evil. and then when you define evil and you're part of the power elite, the definition of evil includes the power elite, so you can't do it.
You won't get published, you won't get promoted, you won't get accepted, you'll be kicked out of society, and then you're truly alone.
You can't join the lower classes, you're kicked out of the upper classes, where do you go? Where do you go? Can't go anywhere.
So, Kraft-Ebing's understanding of sadism was, of course, steeped in moral judgment, rich view of human sexuality, but although his book played a crucial role in bringing the term sadism into the psychiatric lexicon and shifting its perception, it also encapsulated the struggle of an era to come to terms with the more disturbing aspects of human nature.
His work, a product of its time, reminds us of the ongoing challenge in understanding and categorizing human behavior, particularly when it deviates from the social norm.
[44:58] Again, normal is another one of these words, right?
Normal, a deviation from social norms. Well, intense virtue is a deviation from social norms. Norms.
Telling the truth is a massive deviation from social norms, as we can see in this community, how we're punished for telling the truth and harmed and attacked for telling the truth.
So the social norm stuff is a collectivist social metaphysician, right?
Not what is true, but what people accept is true. And if you don't repeat what people accept is true, then you're deviating from social norms, and that's pathological or bad or negative or whatever it is, right? Well, my beliefs are giving me bad outcomes, right?
My pursuit is giving me bad outcomes, right?
So, as far as my life goes, maybe your life too, philosophy would be characterized as an addiction, bad addiction, like a dangerous addiction.
Why? Because the pursuit of philosophy arguably gives you more harm than the pursuit of a drug or the pursuit of alcohol or the pursuit of gambling to the point of really harming yourself, right?
So the pursuit of philosophy has cost me a lot.
I mean, obviously, there's great benefits in it as well, but of course, there's great benefits in drinking. Otherwise, people wouldn't do it.
[46:11] As far as the pursuit of an activity that causes harm to yourself, well, philosophy would fall into that category.
So, and you could say, oh, well, there's abstract social benefits, this, that, and the other.
Well, there are abstract social benefits to alcoholism because you're providing jobs to people who make and sell liquor.
So, it's really important.
[46:33] Now, just condemning things as evil without understanding their source, right? Why do people choose evil?
What is the source of evil? Now, in many ways, of course, the argument that I've made for many years is the source of evil is unrecognized child abuse.
You can't just say child abuse, because that's domino theory, right? That takes away free will.
Unrecognized child abuse. So the source of evil is when you are harmed as a child, you try to gain comfort and sympathy from those around you as adults, and instead they further attack and abuse you.
And what that tells you is that abusers run the world and if you want to have any chance of survival or success, you have to become an abuser, right?
Because we generally will choose to survive rather than be good, which is why threats of violence work so well, right?
[47:21] Or, again, to put it in my usual other way, those who chose truth and virtue over survival didn't survive, by definition, right?
Right so generally we would choose to survive rather than be good be honest and so when we harmed as children and then we try to talk about it and people reject us roll our eyes avoid us ostracize us for talking about the harm we've experienced then evil is a form of despair which is a recognition that society is kind of fundamentally evil in its current form and therefore for.
[47:58] Have to be evil to survive or we at least have to ignore virtue and we have to join in society's attacks upon the virtuous in order to survive within society that the price of protection, is our conscience is our virtue is our integrity is our soul we only survive the night in a world full of predators by conforming to the evils of the tribe right if we want to mate with a female male we have to conform to the evils of the tribe if we want to mate with a male we have to conform to the evils of the tribe if we want people to take care of us when we're old we have to conform to the evils of the tribe the source of evil is not child abuse the source of evil is child abuse plus continued hostility towards those victimized as children as adults which signals to everyone that evil in general runs society and you just have to survive in general right which is why why genuine sympathy for the victims of evil is the best way to break the cycle of violence.
[48:58] So, we will talk more a little bit about the development of the psychiatric model of sadism, but I hope this gives you some good understanding of, I think, a rational, philosophical, empirical, and in particular, moral approach to the question of sadism.
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