Solipsis: Escape from the Comatorium (9 page)

“
They
ignored this question and they continued with their study and made a
supposedly landmark discovery. They found that all psychopaths share
a specific genetic marker. They shout again, a-ha! See, if all serial
killers share a certain gene, then that means whether you are a
decent person or a serial killer is largely determined long before
you were born, when your DNA was first formed. So if whether you are
evil or not is determined by your genes, then how can evil be a
choice? They publish their landmark findings and claim to have
defeated free will and shown that punishment makes no sense, we're
just products of our environments, etc.”

“
But
you have to look closer. If you take a closer look at the math,
you'll find that this gene that they say all serial killers have is
present in about four percent of the population. One in twenty-four
people have this gene, but the vast majority of those people do not
become serial killers. You don't hear them mention that too often.”

“
I
was asked by a lawyer who was defending a serial murderer to help him
prevent his client from getting the death penalty. I'm against the
death penalty as many of you know. I don't believe we should grant
any bureaucracy the right to murder. So I took my expertise and did
the best I could to save this murderer from the death penalty. The
defense attorney had a little flare for the dramatic, as many of them
do, so he had an independent neuroscientist take a set of brain scans
and made a lineup. So he puts me on the stand, in front of the jury,
and shows me ten brain scans in a lineup, explaining that I've never
looked at any of these scans before.”

“
So
I've got ten brain scans in front of me. I look them over closely,
and find that nine of ten were normal. However, one brain had every
single indication of psychopathy. That was clearly the murderer, and
I picked it from the lineup, very satisfied with myself. I explain to
the jury and the judge that subject #4 is clearly the killer since
all the other scans appear totally normal, and this one is so
drastically different, etc. So the defense attorney smiles and thanks
me and is so happy that I would be able to help save his client from
death row... Then he dramatically takes the brain scan down, to
reveal that I've picked his client's brain out of the lineup. Except
it turns out I hadn't picked out his defendant. In fact, I had just
gone on and on about how his client had a normal brain.”

“
So
if this psychopathic brain didn't belong to the killer, whose was it?
What do you do when you find out that there's a psychopath walking
freely? The lineup was set up precisely so I wouldn't have access to
the names, but maybe I have a moral obligation to find out, maybe
this guy is a serial killer, maybe we should be paying attention to
him. So that day I went and looked at the scans to figure out whose
brain that was. I'm sure many of you are thinking that it's the evil
defense attorney who fights to protect killers. But no, it wasn't the
lawyer, I know, kind of shocking.”

“
It
wasn't his secretary, it wasn't the other neuroscientist, it wasn't
even the janitor who we just picked out of the hallway because we
needed another scan for the lineup. The pscyhopathic scan belonged to
me.”

“
Now
before you run for the exits, just know that I'm not a serial killer.
That and your seats are rigged to explode if you stand up.” He
looks at his audience with a creepy grin. “Just kidding. I'm
not a serial killer, as far as you or I know, at least, I'm not a
rapist, a killer, an adulterer, or any of these things. Yet if you
show my brain scan to a neuroscientist, they'll tell you I'm likely
to be a serial killer. And even I would have agreed with them, and
did. But I know I'm not a serial killer, and in fact, the vast
majority of people who show signs of psychopathy aren't bad people at
all.”

“
I
might have been born with the genes and the brain of a psychopath, in
fact, about ten people in this room are in the same boat as me. And
yet, none of us are serial killers. Why? Because, ladies and
gentlemen, we have free will. We are not merely passengers. T
he
fact that there are good psychopaths as well as evil non-psychopaths
confirms my suspicions that the question of good or evil cannot be
answered by simple genetics or brain scanning.
Thank
you.”

Lazarus takes a bow and then
returns to his seat amid a very warm reception. The atrium seems to
have been occupied by his followers who have turned out in droves.
Nellie waits for the clapping to die down before retaking her podium.

“
It's
true that two to four percent of the population has the genetic
markers of psychopathy. But why do some of those people become serial
killers and some don't? The answer is upbringing. Those with these
genetic markers who had traumatic childhoods were complete
psychopaths. Those who had the genes but were raised in good
environments did not turn into serial killers and rapists and such.
Dr. Lazarus seems to think that the difference between these two
camps is choice, but if you examine the individuals, you find that it
has absolutely everything to do with their childhood, their
environment, and external factors. Simply having a bad environment
won't make you a serial killer, and neither will having the wrong
genes. It takes both. I didn't choose to not be a serial killer. I
wasn't born with the genetic profile, I wasn't raised in a bad
environment, and therefore I came out decent enough. Go look at the
life of any serial killer and you'll find that they were unfortunate
enough to be born in a family that both carried the psychopathic
genes and provided an awful home, a violent, abusive upbringing, and
this leads this child to end up an adult who has no empathy, who
doesn't care what happens to others, and is extremely selfish. Does
that sound like serial killers have a choice in the matter?”

“
Let's
look closer at psychopathy. Dr. Lazarus is a psychopath, as he
readily admits, and yet I'm not frightened of him, not worried he's
going to start shooting up the place. Psychopathy is just a different
form of brain function, Psychopaths often have a
n
inability to connect with others and this sometimes leads to a life
devoid of real human connection. The circuitry responsible for
feeling empathy is not fully working. We wouldn't say it's not
working 'right,' since there is no such thing as correct or incorrect
brain function. In the average person, empathy causes them to feel
some degree of suffering when they see others suffering. A fully
functioning empathy circuit won't let you do things like scam the
elderly out of their retirement funds. Take away this circuitry, or
turn it down, and suddenly you won't feel bad or guilty for taking
advantage of others. Psychopathy in small doses is kind of a super
power.”

Renee is taken aback by the last
remark.

“
How
many of you have ever been in a long term relationship, maybe you're
living together, you were married, perhaps even had kids, but were
unhappy and were thinking about ending it, getting a divorce, dumping
them etc. I've been there, and that's an incredibly difficult task. I
still think the most difficult thing I've ever done is break up with
a significant other who loved me far more than I loved her. If I had
some psychopathy in me, then I would have just said, see you later,
and totally guilt-free I could have just moved right along. I'm
better off moving on, she's better off in an equitable relationship,
this is a clear decision, it just has short term suffering, and thus
it makes it very difficult to dump someone. It's incredibly hard to
inflict that emotional pain on someone you care about. But it has to
be done. Now imagine not caring if it temporarily hurts that person's
feelings. Not so hard to dump them anymore is it? Psychopathy allows
you to skip the empathy and go right to a more objective way of
looking at things.”

“
Don't
get me wrong though, nearly all people who exhibit psychopathy, are
actually pretty good, normal, productive people,” she looks
down to the audience to measure their response.
“
Don't
believe me? Would you rather your neurosurgeon be emotionally
invested in you? Maybe a little, you would want them to care about
whether you lived or died. But would you want them to care about you
so much that they were terrified of making a mistake? Or would you
want a cold, composed, machine operating on you? Psychopaths do the
dirty work, they do the really tough jobs most people don't want to
do. They are a necessary evil. If you put the average person in the
White House and asked them if we should use the atomic bomb on Japan,
they would completely freeze up and be paralyzed, unable to make such
a decision. You put a person with some psychopathy in that seat, and
they won't panic, they weigh their options, consider possible
actions, and they make decisions, undeterred by factors that would
paralyze the ordinary man. They can make a calm decision to bomb a
city, to execute a prisoner, or to put lives at risk. Whether we like
it or not, we need these people. The fact that psychopathy exists at
all is evidence that it serves some purpose, evolutionarily speaking.
Perhaps it's a method we've stumbled onto out of a need for leaders
that can be ruthless and unemotional.”

“
There
are several examples of genes and traits that in small doses do
incredible good, but when we get too many of those genes, we get a
serious side-effect. A little psychopathy makes you into a cold,
machine-like, clever, manipulative, intelligent, decisive,
unemotional, charismatic leader. Too much psychopathy and you're a
serial killer who can't connect with anyone. There are other
examples. The African people were subjected to malaria for thousands
of years, and evolution found a solution. Their blood cells started
forming in a different way which limited the effects or made them
totally immune to malaria. Then the European explorers visit and drop
like flies. Clearly this adaptation is good right? Well, if you get
too many of those genes, today we would say you have sickle cell
anemia. A long-term study of schizophrenia was done in Sweden, a very
secular society. They noticed that the families of those with
schizophrenia were almost all religious. This is remarkable in a
country made-up mostly of atheists. So it stands to follow that there
are some genes that enable you to 'hear voices' at the appropriate
times, in church, when praying, etc. But if too many of these people
breed together and someone gets too many of these genes, they end up
hearing voices all of the time and it drives them crazy and we call
that schizophrenia. So for these religious relatives, they believe
because they really do hear voices in their heads.”

“
So
what happens when you get too many psychopathic genes? Those with
more
advanced
psychopathy are obsessed with power, not just in terms of being
presidents and dictators, but in social situations. They like to
humiliate others, they like to abuse their power, to teach people
lessons, to feel in control. Nearly all of these psychopaths exhibit
serious sexual dysfunction. They fixate on their own desires,
unchecked by empathy, they relish in sado-masochism. They derive
sexual satisfaction from either inflicting pain or having it
inflicted on them. According to Dr. Lazarus, these people are
choosing to be sado-masochistic. They chose to be aroused by pain?
Does that make any sense? We're in control of our sexual desires no
more than we are in control of what music we like, what catches our
eyes, or what nation we were born in. So don't let Dr. Lazarus fool
you. When you look very closely, you can see that serial killers are
who they are because of their genetics, their environment, and the
results that those prior causes have. You don't need to then insert
some supernatural idea of free-will that exists outside of the
physical measurable world to explain their behavior, it is all
explained by a strict scientific viewpoint.”

Nellie returns to Renee's side.
The audience claps a little more favorably for her this time. Dr
Lazarus jots several notes, delaying in taking his podium.

“
How
was that?” Nellie asks Renee.

“
You
kicked his ass,” Renee replies.

“
Yeah?”
Nellie asks.

“
Yeah,”
Renee replies enthusiastically.

Dr. Lazarus takes to the
podium.“My opponent keeps using the logical fallacy 'post hoc
ergo propter hoc.' It happened after it therefore because of it. She
says that if we can show a physical reason why someone does
something, then that means the person has no control over it.
Obviously we can't control our DNA, so how can we be responsible for
the DNA chosen for us? Well, this line of reasoning only makes sense
if you share her solely materialistic meta-physics. In other words,
she's claiming that the self, the 'I' that thinks, is just a certain
aspect of consciousness, and if this aspect of consciousness is
produced by and manipulated by physical measurable processes in the
brain, then the I isn't in control. Well, if you think of the I as
being the entire set of the brain, the energy, the consciousness, the
soul, the karma, the aura, and whatever else you might believe in,
then this argument no longer makes sense.”