re: #48 Gus 802

I forgot when he said that. Might have been on the Merv Griffin Show.

Could be in part due to a culture of narcissism. There’s also that wild-west romance which is effectively glorifying the rampant violence of the untamed west. Then we have Cowboys and Indian — so to speak. The glorification of the slaughter that was the Civil War. The allure of the mafia during the days of prohibition. Look at the popularity of The Godfather, Goodfellas, and The Sopranos. We secretly idolize murderers.

Oh yeah. BTW, the central characteristics of sociopaths are, basically, lack of empathy and narcissism.
It’s easy to see how they tie in. Consuming self-interest prohibits the development of empathy. Sociopaths laugh at (and manipulate) the emotions of others— pity, empathy, sympathy, compassion. For the sociopath those are weaknesses to exploit and a source of contempt.

They have some other features as well, like need for excitement, compulsive rule breaking, hatred of authority (when applied to them) and simultaneously worshipping power—
The DSM IV is in revision now; the APA just proposed changes. They’re making changes to the diagnostic criteria for sociopathy and eliminating narcissism as a separate personality disorder. Link here— they’re soliciting comment.

But there’s no doubt that America and ‘American values’ encourage sociopathy and narcissism— I scare quote ‘american values’ there because it isn’t american, per se, but a kind of mindset.
And as for physical violence— yeah. We worship that. Some of it is Old West stuff, some of it is about ideas of masculinity.