Blog2: Chapter 4 Summary

In chapter four, Ronson comes into contact with an influential psychologist named Bob Hare. Justice departments and parole boards have accepted Hare's belief that psychopaths are incurable and the energy spend on trying to cure them should be put into his PCL-R Checklist to root them all out. Ronson describes Hare's break through experiment and how it concluded that psychopaths lack a functioning amyglada in the  brain, making them unable to anticipate the future or feel unpleasantness. After this, Ronson attends Hare's conference where he begins honing his skills to identify psychopaths. He begins realizing his skill after reading Hare's Psychopath Checklist and watching various patients respond to a researcher in a controlled room. Ronson continues identifying psychopathic qualities through examples of various psychopaths that were thought to be able to function in society, only to end up killing someone again. Ronson ends the chapter by pondering about psychopathic CEOs and psychopathic politicians. Hare tells him that its easy to identify psychopaths in prisons, but to root out CEOs and politicians, "..could change forever the way people see the world."(Ronson, p118)

"You have to feel sorry for psychopaths, right? If it's all because of their amygdalae? It's not their fault?"
- "Why should we feel sorry for them? They don't give a shit about us."(Ronson, p110)

This quote ignited the question that I've been wondering for some time since we started this book. If psychopaths are the way they are because it's in their nature to be, is it truly their fault? In my own opinion, I don't believe it is. The fact that they are literally missing a function in their brain goes to show that they not like the rest of us. The complex problem of this however, is that unlike someone that is missing half of their brain, psychopaths are able to compensate for their dysfunction and appear perfectly normal on the outside. The matter is made more complex by asking, what do you do with someone like that? It is immoral to lock someone up for life because of the way they were born. However; this would prove the best results. Speaking theoretically, identifying psychopaths and locking all of them up would improve the world. I am not saying I am in favor of that, but in terms of raw numbers, I believe that would improve overall safety statistics and concerns. On the other hand, not only is there a whole different issue of correctly identifying psychopaths, but doing that would completely contradict all the principles of modern society. So the question stands, what do we do? Lock them all up before they cause chaos, or treat them like everyone, letting them pull the strings of the world? Based on how our society is structured today, I don't think there even is a right answer.
(ftw)