Psychopaths and the critter torturing connection, is it really that solid?

Boys should be kept busy. And yes bugs caught particular hell, and I slaughtered birds with a daisy pump. Boys may well be psychopaths for all I know. But then again, it may merely be that they lack good judgement. I wonder what percentage of the people mutilating others began without first practicing on animals?

There is a documented connection between animal cruelty and Anti Social Personality (ASP) disorder. It does not mean that a child who abuses a cat is going to grow into another Ted Bundy, but there is a demonstrated link to aggressive behavior.

The most violent offenders, those who are convicted of violent crimes and continue to be violent in prison, tend to have a history of ongoing abuse of animals.

A single instance of torturing a dog or cat is not an indicator of future violence; but repeated cruel behavior to animals is very concerning as indicative of being unable to process aggressive behavior in a healthy non violent manner.

Most psychopaths torture animals before humans, that doesn’t mean the converse has to be true (that most people who torture animals turn out to be psychopaths).

It’s like a “gateway drug” so to speak, most people who end up using heroin probably smoked weed first but that doesn’t mean most people who smoke weed are gonna end up using heroin.

Think of it in terms of a circle of empathy. You feel empathy towards beings that you see as similar enough to you that you can relate to their feelings. For some people, that’s a big circle that encompasses a wide spectrum of beings; for others, it’s a small circle around their immediate social cohort. For psychopaths, there’s no circle at all.

Where the boundary of one’s circle of empathy lies is something that one determines over time, with social input and through observation. Kids typically have a very nebulous and incoherent sense of who should be included in their circle of empathy. Some of the abuses kids perpetrate on animals may actually be attempts to clarify where to draw the line.

There were certainly things that I did to animals as a kid that resulted in just that kind of clarification for me: I experienced first-hand the blow-back of causing sentient beings to suffer. Those are among my most painful and persistent memories. My circle of empathy was shaped by that.

One can have a circle of empathy that encompasses the human race, but ends there. Such a person may not give a shit about animals, but have some measure of fellow feeling for other humans. Someone like this isn’t a psychopath; they do have a circle of empathy, just a strictly delimited one.

I think it’s a wiring thing, and my reason for saying this is that thinking back, I can’t recall a single instance of a group of girls deliberately torturing animals.

What @zenvelo and @Mariah wrote.

In my experience too, many young boys may do various levels of attack on animals and certainly on bugs, but they eventually “grow out of it” and/or experience compassion from it, and stop at some point. Of all the boys I knew growing up, I don’t think any of them are psychopaths, and I don’t expect many still mistreat animals. (Not including hunting, killing mosquitoes, etc.)

I think the actual psychopath condition (absence of conscience) precedes animal abuse. I don’t think animal abuse causes it, even if psychopaths tend to escalate their abuses and abuse animals before humans.

But there are also humans who kill animals (hunters) and humans (soldiers) and cause torment to animals (certain scientists & farmers etc) and humans (torturers and in some places, prison guards) who are considered to be sane law-abiding citizens.

It is certainly also possible for humans with conscience to become desensitized to violence and brutality and killing and causing pain to others, though I think parts of them have to shut down for that. So I suppose it’s possible that a non-disturbed child could end up becoming a psychopath through escalating unchecked practice on animals. I imagine though it would be due to shocking themselves and instead of stopping, having their conscience hide.

I think there is a large difference between the levels of animal/insect abuse HC and I described, and the level of animal abuse that leads up to torturing and killing animals and humans. What @thorninmud just wrote about circles of empathy I think also applies (mine extends to animals, fish and birds but only some insects). Others, especially those raised on a meat farm, for example, generally need to be ok with killing animals for food. There’s teasing the cat, being mean to the cat, terrifying the cat, hurting the cat, seriously hurting the cat, seriously torturing the cat, maiming the cat, killing the cat. I think most kids would get major feedback from their own conscience somewhere at the mean/terrifying level, and would tend to stop and not do that again. Psychopaths keep going, and it doesn’t bug them, even as they escalate to humans.

Yep, as @zenvelo said, there is a strong and proven connection of animal abuse in many instances of sociopathology. Not a one time situation, a kid that kills a bird or other animal and then feels remorse for doing so, but a child/teen that has a history of animal cruelty,/torture, absolutely.

Wellll…I’m a girl. And we fried ants with a magnifying glass. However, when we were finally successful I was sufficiently horrified at the puff of smoke and the writhing ant not to do it again. Then I tried it on my arm. You know, it works.

I think those psychopaths do more than throw bugs in spider webs. from what I’ve heard they actually torture, prolonged torture, animals. They disembowel cats and stuff.

Beyond the YouTube/Netflix mocumentaries on Psychopaths, and the boogie man identity hype that sells ads by luring viewers in with modern horror stories… There actually is some truth about the disease available… And it doesn’t say anything at all about animals or torture.

Psychopathy (/saɪˈkɒpəθi/), also known as—though sometimes differentiated from—sociopathy (/soʊsiˈɒpəθi/), is traditionally defined as a personality disorder characterized by enduring antisocial behavior, diminished empathy and remorse, and disinhibited or bold behavior.

Lengthy Wikipedia page about Psychopathy never mentions the word “torture” in a word search. It mentions the word “animal” twice, but only in reference to animal studies of their brains and interpersonal traits.

@RealEyesRealizeRealLies It is documented that many serial killers started their killing careers with animals and animal abuse/torture is a major red flag amongst disturbed children.

Here ya go.

www.psychologytoday.com/blog/why-the-wild-things-are/201302/do-mass-killers-start-out-harming-pets

@RealEyesRealizeRealLies There is also this paper.

@zenvelo There is a documented connection between animal cruelty and Anti Social Personality (ASP) disorder. It does not mean that a child who abuses a cat is going to grow into another Ted Bundy, but there is a demonstrated link to aggressive behavior.
The most violent offenders, those who are convicted of violent crimes and continue to be violent in prison, tend to have a history of ongoing abuse of animals.
I was thinking more on the future predictability over the aftermath conclusion. Some of the already established serial killers and such have been found to take the torture and kill animal route. To some that would be a road map that any person appearing to be on that road is or will be another Ted Bundy or Green River Killer. I believe as many have gone down that road to some degree, they grow out of it. But because of the statistics, some kid seemingly having great glee out of frying ants with a magnifying glass or plinking cats with a pellet gun, will get carted off to have some serious talks with a shrink as if they are a monster in the making, predicated of the statistics.

@Zaku But there are also humans who kill animals (hunters) and humans (soldiers) and cause torment to animals (certain scientists & farmers etc) and humans (torturers and in some places, prison guards) who are considered to be sane law-abiding citizens.
That could bring up and interesting tangent, those who kill animals in greater numbers than any serial killer in the making has ever done, but because they did it for sport, science, or profit if the killing overall is viewed differently, or that the outcome did not end in human deaths. Military snipers, whose job is to kill other humans, be it that who they are killing they believe will kill them or their fellow soldiers, but does that truly make the killing more justified? For the most time when a sniper pops someone they were a quarter of a mile away and never engaged the sniper directly, just in the wrong place in the wrong crosshairs. Or those in numerous situations where someone from the military or secret police purposely tortures someone, inflicting intentional suffering. Because they did so under an official banner of a government of law enforcement agency was the suffering they inflicted less heinous then the serial killer because it often is not unto death? What if they actually enjoyed their work, even though intentional death was not the order unless an execution was the end product after they were tortured and any possible information extracted from them.

@Coloma and @zenvelo. You guys might want to read your links again to see if they are really saying what you think they are. Your papers also correlate animal cruelty with domestic violence, alcohol abuse, substance abuse, and other personality disorders.

Both links warn against making any definitive claims.

“No single factor, including animal abuse, is definitive.”

“Rather than merely using a history of animal cruelty
in a check list of items to establish a history of
earlier Conduct Disorder and present APD, clinicians
are advised to obtain a more detailed and meaningful
account of this phenomenon before attaching
diagnostic significance in individual cases.”

I wouldn’t doubt if definitive correlations are one day established. But psychopathy is a disease that has already achieved major stigmatism that only prevents those who suffer it from getting help. Mental disorders are easily cast upon those we don’t like, simply by calling someone “crazy”. The internet is rife with self proclaimed armchair psychologists pronouncing diagnosis without detailed analysis.

@RealEyesRealizeRealLies If you read what I posted above, you will see that I said that violent psychopaths with ASP are pretty well correlated to have abused animals when younger. But I also said that abuse of animals does not mean one will become a violent psychopath.

I am not saying it is predictive, just that it is concerning. Yet you seem to be stating there is no link or correlation at all.

@RealEyesRealizeRealLies There is no cure for psychopathy/sociopathic illness, period. While warning against making definitive claims the evidence for a connection is strong and well documented.

In an assessment of 1433 children between the ages of 6 and 12 Ascione found, than among abused children 60% had abused animals.

Animal abuse is often the first sign of serious disturbance among adolescent and adult killers.

70% of the most violent prisoners had serious and repeated animal abuse in their childhood histories as compared to 6% of non-aggressive prisoners in the same facilities.

We should be appropriately cautious about retrospective accounts of childhood misdeeds that can’t be independently verified, never the less there is enough evidence to consider cruelty to animals a red flag warning that a child or adolescent needs immediate help.

There is a clear link between domestic violence and animal abuse as well.

@zenvelo “I am not saying it is predictive, just that it is concerning. Yet you seem to be stating there is no link or correlation at all.”

Thanks for pointing that out. We agree that it’s not predictive. We also seem to agree it’s not definitive. But worthy of raising concern no doubt.

I simply want to warn against stigmatizing psychopathology any more than it deserves. A teen who gets caught poking a cat shouldn’t be automatically branded as a psychopath. That stigma could miss the real issue of alcohol abuse, or domestic violence within his family, which manifests itself through the animal abuse. Thereby sending mental health professionals on a wild goose chase without ever recognizing the true diagnosis the teen deserves with a more thorough analysis.

Jumping to brand someone a psychopath is dangerous. That’s the easy way to cast blame upon someone for being born a certain way. When instead there could be environmental issues that point blame away from the accused, and upon the accusers… who… suffering their own psychopathology… are inclined to divert the attention away from themselves no matter the cost.

Edited above with additional paragraph.

@RealEyesRealizeRealLies Of course, one incident does not mean someone is a psychopath, but a history of abuse almost certainly does. I knew a neighborhood kid when I was growing up that often tormented pets and took delight in catching frogs at a local park pond and blowing them up by putting lit firecrackers in their mouths. He was also a bully and tormented all the neighborhood kids. He once threw a frog with a firecracker shoved down it throat at me and a little friend and we ran in terror before the poor thing blew it’s guts all over us.

This kid WAS, no doubt, seriously disturbed.
I always wondered what became of the little psychopath.

I know this sounds weird, but I believe that labelling a person repeatedly, can often have the effect of creating the person into the label, rather than properly identifying a person with a label.

If a youth is told he is sick, bad, psycho, repeatedly, and have those labels reinforced by friends, family, and the system… then he may well live up to the label cast upon him.

@Coloma “I always wondered what became of the little psychopath.”

Have you considered the potential of rephrasing your assessment? Try saying the same sentence a different way. Try this:
“I always wondered what became of the little victim of domestic violence”.

As I understand it, psychopaths, true psychopaths, are born that way, with specific brain anomalies that can be visualized. They are not always murderers or violent. Many of them function among us every day, and contribute to society in good ways. James Fallon can explain.

“Of course, one incident does not mean someone is a psychopath, but a history of abuse almost certainly does.”

That is an abuse victim, who can be helped, cured. It does not automatically justify the label of psychopath. And that’s what I’m concerned about. It’s just so too easy to cast labels on people without ever giving them the analysis they deserve.

Doing so is called The Fundamental Attribution Error.

@RealEyesRealizeRealLies Perhaps, perhaps not, the abuse background. There are also plenty of psychopathic types that did not suffer childhood abuse and the current research shows brain abnormalities in the frontal cortex of the brain that lends much credibility to a goodly portion of risk being genetically reinforced. The inability to empathize and process emotion. The proverbial bad seed if you will.
There are also many people who suffered abuse in their childhoods that do not perpetrate violence on animals or humans as adults. Yes, the abuse factor is sad, but, quite frankly, regardless of background, these people need to be swiftly removed from society.

@Coloma ”...these people need to be swiftly removed from society.”

Watching Agents of Shield last night… yes I’m a geek… There was a scene where two leaders came together to discuss how to avoid war. Shield commander stated he needed to gather up the InHumans and document, study, separate them from society. The InHuman commander reminded him of all the times in history when one group tried to gather up, document, separate, stigmatize another group… to remove them from society swiftly.

I’d prefer we just get to know more about each other, without the stigma.

James Fallon is a psychopath. Would you like to remove him from society?

@RealEyesRealizeRealLies As always, there are degrees of everything. A non-violent psychopath that is just a self serving but non- violent criminal entity, no. A serial killer, rapist, child molester psychopath, yep, and maybe even employ the death penalty. Are you advocating allowing the above mentioned psychopathic perpetrators free range to wreak their evil on the innocent of society?

@Coloma “A serial killer, rapist, child molester psychopath, yep, and maybe even employ the death penalty. Are you advocating allowing the above mentioned psychopathic perpetrators free range to wreak their evil on the innocent of society?”

No, and you know that.

I am advocating to concentrate our attention upon “serial killer, rapist, child molester…”… rather than the label of psychopath. For since it seems we agree that “non-violent psychopath” exist, then the term psychopath is irrelevant.

We can get the point across without ever using the word psychopath.

Both terms…

“serial killer, rapist, child molester”

and

“non-violent”

get their point across without the extended label of psychopath. We simply don’t need the word to describe what the real problem or beneficial person is. The word, when used by laymen, is a stigma, to separate us from them. I don’t take it seriously unless it is used by a qualified mental health professional after conducting a thorough analysis to justify the label.

@RealEyesRealizeRealLies Well..if the psychopathic shoe fits…haha
Of course, our world is full of non-violent psychopathic types and MOST fall into this category, they may never commit violent crimes but they still wreak havoc in their personal and business relationships.
Many in politics, financial institutions, Wall St. etc. and many more, closeted violent types in law enforcement and the military. The perfect careers for such.

Using the term “psychopath” without a mental health degree can still be quite accurate in many instances and personal experience is every bit as viable as a psychology degree for many who have dealt with these types in personal relationships.
If it walks like a duck…. using that word is not a stigma, it is a fact.
If I find someone to be cold, callous, prone to lies and deception, highly manipulative and grossly self centered I’m going to pay attention to those red flags based on my knowledge of such behavioral traits and the Hare psychopathic checklist. Dr. hare set the gold standard on psychopathy diagnosis and laymen are perfectly capable of identifying traits that just scream psychopath with those they encounter in their every day lives.

I don’t need a degree in psychology to be able to identify red flag behaviors any more than I need a degree in Ornithology to be able to, accurately, identify many species of birds.

@Coloma “Using the term “psychopath” without a mental health degree can still be quite accurate in many instances and personal experience is every bit as viable as a psychology degree for many who have dealt with these types in personal relationships. If it walks like a duck…. using that word is not a stigma, it is a fact.”

Not a fact. A common tactic for psychopaths, narcissists, borderlines, is Gaslighting. They will accuse the victim of being what they are before the victim figures out what’s actually going on. Once that label is attached to the victim, it is most difficult to disprove. A label is very damaging.

I’ll use the example most found in family court, where one parent accuses the other of being a psycho, or harmful to a child, and the other parent is immediately removed from the child’s life, and has to endure years of psychological evaluation under the confirmation bias that comes with the original accusation.

Meanwhile the real psychonarc is off on the sidelines hiding safely behind the gaslighting.

I’ve learned, that mentally stable people don’t jump to applying diagnostic labels on other people. Quite often, it is the psychonarc that makes the accusation to cover their tracks. That is incredibly harmful to the victim parent, and the child who becomes alienated from them because of the false accusation.

At timecode 14:38 on Fishhead documentary about psychopaths the mental health professional interviewed clearly states that he can’t spot a true psychopath without extended evaluation.

Please consider the Fundamental Attribution Error and Confirmation Bias before making any laymen diagnosis that could do more harm than good. Words shape perceptive reality. They can be very harmful.
____

I can’t compare psychological diagnosis with bird watching. One requires extended evaluation. The other requires binoculars.
____

Sometimes it’s easier to call someone a psycho, or narc, or borderline, than it is to come to terms with our own co-dependency issues. If I used those terms to blast away the blame upon someone else, I might do better looking within myself to discover my own disfunction of how I could be so prone to being manipulated by them so easy. Had I been healthy, I might not have succumb to the psycho tactics in the first place.

@RealEyesRealizeRealLies I am well aware of all the personality disorders and the tactics employed, and that is why everyone should educate themselves on these matters for self preservation and knowing enough to not absorb disordered peoples projections. Clearly you and I are quite savvy in these matters but many are not. I can assure you I am quite mentally and emotionally stable and my passion for these matters was hard earned living with and divorcing a highly narcissistic man years ago and spending a goodly amount of time in therapy learning the nature of the beast I had been dealing with. I experienced PAS during my divorce but was, fortunate to have a therapist who was well aware of what was happening and took measures to reinforce and validate my experiences.

Gaslighting and projections are dangerous, but knowledge of serious red flag behaviors and being able to identify such is not on the same continuum as gaslighting and projection.
Awareness and observational skill is healthy, projection is not.
A healthy, self aware and educated person can certainly make observations that are highly accurate without professional certification. Bottom line, if someone is exhibiting pathological behavior it doesn’t matter whether or not there is a certified diagnosis, all that matters is that one get the hell away from them.

I strongly advocate everyone learning about the nature of disordered personalities as so many people are victimized without knowledge of what they are experiencing. It doesn’t matter whether one is a true psychopath or just a partial psychopath, the end result is the same, they are toxic and dangerous characters to consort with and an exercise in head banging futility to attempt to understand. One just needs to move away, and swiftly.

@RealEyesRealizeRealLies +I know this sounds weird, but I believe that labelling a person repeatedly, can often have the effect of creating the person into the label,...” I so agree. That’s why I never wanted to read “Problem children reports” that some teachers left out for me when I subbed.

@Coloma ” I experienced PAS during my divorce but was, fortunate to have a therapist who was well aware of what was happening and took measures to reinforce and validate my experiences.”

What kind of therapist? Family Systems?

@Dutchess_III… yep.

@Coloma “It doesn’t matter whether one is a true psychopath or just a partial psychopath, the end result is the same, they are toxic and dangerous characters to consort with and an exercise in head banging futility to attempt to understand. One just needs to move away, and swiftly.”

It’s not always an option to move away from them if there are children or other social connections involved. I often hear that advice, to simply get away from them. But I rarely hear advice on how to cope with them on a daily basis when you absolutely have to.

A parent married to a psychonarc can’t just leave the children with the other parent. They can’t just steal the children away either, lest they reinforce the false accusations against them that they are the unstable psychonarc. It’s enough for me now, to just know what the signs are, and how to cope with them in a healthy manner.

A college student wouldn’t do well to simply drop out of class because he labels a fellow student, or the teacher, as a psycho. Learning how to relate to them, cope with them, is often more powerful than running away from them. Takes the victim role away.

@RealEyesRealizeRealLies No, I had a private therapist.

The way you cope with them is to keep contact to a bare minimum, focused only on the child ( childrens needs ) and hope for the best. In my case our daughter was almost 16 when we split and it didn’t take her long to see her dads true colors as she spent more time with him alone. I am grateful I waited until she was older to file for divorce as it would have been much worse had she still been very young with years of co-parenting to come.
Agreed, knowing how to cope is best, however, it is still best to keep them as at far of a distance as is possible.

Now at age 28 she has had many experiences with his callous and deceptive non-self and, infact, we just had a poignant conversation about him last week where she said she has seen rare glimpses of his genuine self but they are always masked by his chameleon nature. He is a shape shifter and classic Sociopathic/Narc. in the sense that he molds himself to the dynamic at hand, lies without compunction and would sell his own mother if the price was right. Oh the stories I could tell, but I am way beyond those awful years now. He is also, not uncommonly, very successful in his career as a sales manager for a large firm in Texas. Thankfully he moved out of state about 4 years ago but I had not had to deal with him since after our daughter turned 18.

Trust me, I know the nature of this beast, I could write a book myself, but the title of ” In Sheeps clothing” has already been taken as has ” Snakes in Suits.” haha

I’ll also add, that yes, sometimes co-dependence is involved, and often just being with a disordered person CREATES codependency where there was once none.

Do you think the psyonarc can change?

I am under the belief that they can.

I hope your daughter learns how to cope with her father to the degree that her presence can affect a mellowing out of his behaviors over time. Attachment Theory discourages any cutoff of any parental relationship.

@RealEyesRealizeRealLies She is coping just fine, she is aware of his issues but still loves him, just won’t forget a lot of his crap. She knows, exactly, what she can and cannot expect from him.
I think they may mellow as they get older, as some other PD types do, but no, the leopard will not change it’s spots. It may lounge in the tree tops a little more as it matures, not be as aggressive, but it is still of a predatory nature and will not miss an opportunity to pounce on unsuspecting prey there is self reward involved.

Attachment theory is viable, but better to lose an attachment to an abusive parent than to be victimized at will. As we know, biology alone does not a parent make and in some cases, the best thing is to sever those ties for the sake of the child or adult child as well.

Interesting that Attachment Theory teaches that children naturally bond to abusive parents even stronger than non abusive parents. A biological imperative, a child who is neglected or abused was forced to bond to their abuser even stronger than normal because they could not be secure with the idea of knowing that parent would protect them.

Children who rejected parents, any parent, were selectively cut out of the gene pool millions of years ago in the animal kingdom. It just doesn’t happen naturally without an external catalyst to promote the detachment.

Attachment Theory is one of our three primary human motivators, akin to hunger and sexuality. It cannot be denied without consequence.

I worked for a extreme abuse foster care home in California. My job was to photograph the children for newsletters. The abused children were literally being hidden from their parents because of the severity of the abuse they suffered. My job requirements mandated photographing the children from behind, or silhouette, never showing their faces to ensure that a family member or parent would never find them, and potentially kidnap them.

My talks with the children were revealing, and backed up all the research I can find on the matter. In asking them, what do you want for your future… the answer was always the same… I want to go home. And that meant home to the abusive parent. It is a biological imperative that must be acknowledged, surveyed, and learned to cope with in a healthy manner with appropriate firm boundaries.
_______

I also have empathy for the predators among us. First and foremost, none of us would be here right now were it not for the predator nature in every one of us. Another biological imperative that has served our species well to survive. Evolution demands it of us to one degree or another. We’ve all competed for that perfect parking space at the mall. We’re all capable of cheating to get it. The truth of comedy rings loud with depictions of two women wrestling for the last big sale item on the shelf. We all relate to this at a very primitive level.

But, as I’m sure you will agree, the predator mentality, as any other dynamic, can be overindulged, and become harmful to society as a whole. Even love can be overindulged, and become possessive.

I suggest that there is nothing inherently evil about the extreme predator any more than an extreme lover can be viewed as evil. I suggest that we as the middle grounded of society should also look within, at the plank in our own eye, and concern ourselves more with how we engage with any extremist mentality. Instead of reacting, and fueling the fires, perhaps we could do better enacting and interacting with extremists, and provide them an example, a guide, a pathway towards the peace of middle ground, without hurling the weight of extra label baggage upon them. Their journey to conformity is difficult enough. Let’s not weigh them down further with armchair judgements.

@Hypocrisy_Central Yes, true, children do bond, sometimes even more closely with an abusive parent, but it is not a healthy based attachment built out of love, trust and security, quite the opposite.
Anyway, I think we have about beat this horse to death and I too have compassion for these personalities, to a degree, but the worst of the worst still need to be eliminated from society and ones personal circle unless one is a total masochist and wants to keep believing that they can somehow charm the serpent.

I may respect the rattlesnake for it’s evolutionary advantage of venom, but I am not going to fool myself into thinking I can kiss it on it’s little viper head and not risk being bitten. haha Humans are meant to be a cooperative species and while there is nothing wrong with looking out for number one, serial killer psychopaths are not merely looking out for number one, they are evil predators that need to be eliminated.
Actually, some evolutionary psychologists do see theorize anti-social behavior as an evolutionary advantage but at it’s extreme it is much more damaging than progressive.
Advantage vs. taking advantage is the bottom line, and those that pose serious threat to innocent people need to be eliminated for the greater good.

^ haha Humans are meant to be a cooperative species and while there is nothing wrong with looking out for number one, serial killer psychopaths are not merely looking out for number one, they are evil predators that need to be eliminated.
Filtered down to the basics, nearly every species have harmony among themselves, when quarrels even those leading onto death happens it is usually as a result of actions we humans would call selfish or antisocial, like fighting over a females, territory, status in the tribe, food, etc. Animals never in a sense murder another animal for trivial things as humans kill humans over.

Actually, some evolutionary psychologists do see theorize anti-social behavior as an evolutionary advantage but at it’s extreme it is much more damaging than progressive.
How that would even truly be quantified, by some logical algorithm, personal or group conjecture or opinion, some equation that can be applied? How advantageous or disadvantageous is arbitrary on who is setting the benchmark, not off anything truly concrete.

Advantage vs. taking advantage is the bottom line, and those that pose serious threat to innocent people need to be eliminated for the greater good.
In the animal kingdom there is no guilty, not guilty, user, or nonusers, it is if you can defend your harem of females against the younger buck, or whatever trying to take them from you. The animal who has the harem is not a selfish slave master and the one taking it if he can is no thief, it is just the way it is; that is the system. It is just a system that doesn’t work for humans because of so-called higher intelligence, but for every good turn, there are equal and opposite bad ones.

@Hypocrisy_Central That is an interesting tangent, isn’t it? It implies to me that the extreme disapproval our society shows for serial killers is more about the lack of legal sanction, than it is about the actions themselves.

It seems parallel to the whole “terrorists” versus military “collateral damage” – the USA has killed far more innocent civilians via collateral damage than the 9/11 terrorists did, but there is still a mainstream public story that 9/11 justifies the ongoing response. The mainstream narrative says it’s all about the horrible killing, but ignores the greater killing done supposedly as a response. But the mainstream story is just that – there are many other views, including the stories of all of the soldiers who end up committing suicide…