253. Jerks, Bonding-Disability and the One-Person-Ingroup

Jerks, Bonding-Disability and the One-Person-Ingroup
In entry 53  (Profiting from Modern Slavery), I described the coldblooded indifference of people in rich countries having a good life not only of consumption, but of wasteful consumption, while those, who produce the goods, are doomed to a life in excruciating misery.    In entry 21 I compared, how the consumers care more about their pets than about  people in poor countries.

I found this, which expresses my thoughts in an even better way and goes one step further:   
http://dangerousintersection.org/2010/10/25/that-psychopath-in-the-mirror/

"When someone in need is within our in-group, we often respond in admirable ways. When we characterize someone as outside of our in-group (when he or she is in the  “out-group”), we act as psychopaths toward that person. I’m not suggesting that we are capable of really caring for each of the more than six billion other people. We are not biologically capable of caring for that many people. We are tuned to most easily care for people we actually know, or friends."

History is full of cruelty of killing, torturing, raping, enslaving and exploiting outgroup members.   The ingroup-outgroup instinct as part of the animal urges of homo sapiens serves as a subjective justification, predominantly to men, to commit atrocities without any hesitation, restrictions or conscience, whenever they can define the victims as being distinct enough from whom they perceive as their ingroup.
  
Psychopathy is defined by the DSM as a mental disorder.  From the perspective of equality and rationality as the basis of morals, it is.  From the perspective of those people, who perceive themselves as distinct from being animals, it is.   
But what is the disorder when looking at the innate instinctive tendencies?   Is the abuse and atrocity of a psychopath really a defect in the brain, or is it a displaced expression of the outgroup instinct and a lack of selective self-control? 

• Maybe psychopaths are just unable to have an ingroup except themselves and treat everybody as outgroup.    
• Maybe by instinct, the human animals are principally psychopaths, that are considered as mentally sane, as long as they are capable to make exceptions of being caring and non-psychopathic towards a limited number of selected ingroup members.   
• Maybe by instinct, everybody is outgroup, who does not serve directly or indirectly for the purpose of the survival of the own genes.

For cannibals, the world is divided into the outgroup members, whom they eat, and the ingroup members, with whom the eat.    In modern societies, things are more subtle and more complex.   The distinction between ingroups and outgroups still is a part of the survival strategies.  
For primitive hordes under dire environmental conditions, killing, eating or enslaving outgroup members enhanced their chances to survive.    While not denying others basic human rights and decency, members of complex societies need to protect themselves from damage by being aware of differences in emotional and social closeness or distance.  
The principle is the same.   People experience a feeling of belonging to the ingroup, while they feel something separating and distinguishing them from the outgroup.   The level of trust is different, as is the behavior, that is considered as appropriate and moral.  
People belong to many ingroups, the family can be an ingroup, the village, the game-team, the department at work, the gang of criminals.    The differences between ingroup and outgroup behavior can be subtle, when the ingroup of the family denies the access to the house to strangers, or more drastic, when gang members attack the members of other gangs.   

The simple ingroup-outgroup instinct has evolved to a more complex system of belonging to several ingroups, where the behavior towards the outgroups is limited and restricted by rules and laws.  But for some and under specific circumstances like wars, there are still outgroups, where the behavior is no more restricted by law.   A soldier and a diagnosed psychopath may well do the same thing, just the circumstances are different.  



The smallest, closest and most important ingroup is the devoted, committed couple sharing trust and resources, supporting each other against the outgroup, that is the rest of the world. 

That brings me back to my thoughts about the bonding disability of men, who exploit and abuse women.  I called them jerks in several of my previous entries.    It makes no difference, if they have no conscience, because they have become narcissists by experience, if they are jerks by some innate problem of their brain, or if they are emotional morons having the delusion to be behaving morally.    (More in the entries 113 about the bonding disability and 156.)

There seems to be one general pathology with all of them:   They experience themselves as the only member of their only ingroup.   Everybody else is outgroup, also the woman, with whom they get involved, even when they marry her.   
I called it bonding disability, but I may as well call it the disability to experience the feeling of belonging to any ingroup together with another human being.  

Such a man gets involved with a woman, but she continues to be perceived and treated a part of his outgroup.    Many variations are conceivable, when he alone is his ingroup. 
1.  The emotional moron.   The man's distinction between social roles could be reduced, so that everybody but himself is just outgroup.  He has only one set of behavior with all people, with little trust and attempting to avoid detrimental consequences.   
2.  The jerk, narcissist, psychopath.   The man does distinguish between different social roles as belonging to different outgroups and he could have several sets of limited trust and differing behaviors for them.  Such a man may even be clever enough to be able to manipulate different groups to get advantages.   The woman is placed in any of these outgroups, between being a friend with benefits, an acquaintance or even a pet.
    
For a woman, who considers, perceives and treats him as her closest ingroup, this is painful, and the amount of distrust, domination, abuse and denial of commitment depends upon what outgroup she is put into.    No matter, if he only behaves as if he were still a single, or if he lies, cheats and beats her, she is not a part of his ingroup, she is treated as his instincts allows him to treat any person in the outgroup.

There is a real tragedy with these jerks.   They are too disabled to develop the feeling of belonging to the ingroup of a devoted couple.   When they mate, they make others suffer for their own troubles, while they succeed to suffer less themselves.    They have no real understanding of what they are lacking.   By applying domination and hedonism, the jerks' basic needs are met, while their victims suffer.