People had more morals before WWII

Kadongy

Psychiatrists became interested in narcissism shortly after World War II (1939–45), when the older practitioners in the field noticed that their patient population had changed. Instead of seeing patients who suffered from obsessions and compulsions related to a harsh and punishing superego (the part of the psyche that internalizes the standards and moral demands of one's parents and culture), the psychiatrists were treating more patients with character disorders related to a weak sense of self. Instead of having a judgmental and overactive conscience, these patients had a weak or nonexistent code of morals. They were very different from the patients that Freud had treated, described, and analyzed. The younger generation of psychiatrists then began to interpret their patients' character disorders in terms of narcissism.

http://www.minddisorders.com/Kau-Nu/Narcissistic-personality-disorder.html

That's very interesting, no? Why do you think it is?

Social/cultural changes is a straightforward and valid explanation. Maybe people without morals survived WWII better too though? Maybe society in general often favours people with fewer morals to reproduce more..?

TrollHammaren

Kadongy wrote: »

http://www.minddisorders.com/Kau-Nu/Narcissistic-personality-disorder.html

That's very interesting, no? Why do you think it is?

Social/cultural changes is a straightforward and valid explanation. Maybe people without morals survived WWII better too though? Maybe society in general often favours people with fewer morals to reproduce more..?

Why "more morals"? I'd be cautious when reading into this sort of thing, because back then psychology/psychiatry wasn't what it is today, and even today you'll find academic papers coming up with implications that are beyond what their design would allow for. A prime example is aggression related to video games. I haven't got the article to hand, but it's one of the most cited anti-video games study about - it basically claims to demonstrate that adolescents that play video games become more aggressive, but despite the longitudinal design and high participant population, it primarily employs self-report measures with a loose definition of "aggressive behaviour".

Let's not forget, "moral" is a subjective term. I doubt people had more morals pre-WWII, I just reckon they had very different morals, in the same way that countries and even regions have their own morals.

Kadongy

TrollHammaren wrote: »

Why "more morals"? I'd be cautious when reading into this sort of thing, because back then psychology/psychiatry wasn't what it is today, and even today you'll find academic papers coming up with implications that are beyond what their design would allow for. A prime example is aggression related to video games. I haven't got the article to hand, but it's one of the most cited anti-video games study about - it basically claims to demonstrate that adolescents that play video games become more aggressive, but despite the longitudinal design and high participant population, it primarily employs self-report measures with a loose definition of "aggressive behaviour".

Let's not forget, "moral" is a subjective term. I doubt people had more morals pre-WWII, I just reckon they had very different morals, in the same way that countries and even regions have their own morals.

The premise is that psychiatric patients before then typically had a crushingly powerful conscience. Since WW2 they typically don't have a strong sense of self and don't take responsibility at all.

I agree that morals can be very different in different people and cultures. It's not really relevant though since the argument is about the way the mind is wired.

TrollHammaren

Kadongy wrote: »

The premise is that psychiatric patients before then typically had a crushingly powerful conscience. Since WW2 they typically don't have a strong sense of self and don't take responsibility at all.

I agree that morals can be very different in different people and cultures. It's not really relevant though since the argument is about the way the mind is wired.

I take that sort of thing with much skepticism until I can see actual data, and what they were basing these ascertations on, what sort of designs did they used etc.

Kadongy

Good point. Would be very interested to know the source myself.

krd

Kadongy wrote: »

Social/cultural changes is a straightforward and valid explanation. Maybe people without morals survived WWII better too though? Maybe society in general often favours people with fewer morals to reproduce more..?

WWII wouldn't have been cataclysmic enough to alter our genetic make up.

There is more selfishness and narcissism than there was before - or it seems that way. But we've always had terribly selfish people and narcissism.

We tend to have a distorted view of the past, as we do of foreign countries, and funny foreign people. When news crews are in places like Bangladesh, they'll try to keep modern looking buildings out of shot, and focus instead on the exotic looking and sounding people. We then create narratives to explain the way they live, and what's happening to them. One thing we do, is imagine they have different moralities to us - as this closes the gaps for us, in understanding their customs, etc. It doesn't - we just decide the bits we can't decipher or understand are down to a different system of values and morals alien to us and beyond our understanding - or we pretend to understand them by packaging them in a box labelled "different". On closer examination the reasoning behind many strange and absurd looking customs from foreign countries and the past, can be far more banal than they seem on the surface. And of course there will be absurdity for the sake of absurdity, just like we have right here, right now.

We also tend to edit reality in how we present it. No one would agree that the representation of Ireland in Irish newspapers and on Irish television is an accurate reflection of the reality of Ireland. So much is edited out.

Morality isn't something purely subjective. It's a system of relating to others. It's the glue of the social order. Different people can have different moralities. I don't think it's genetic. I think the differences come about through experience and how the individual interacts with the world, and how the world interacts with the individual.

One of Nietzsche's ideas was Master and Slave morality. In Master Morality there is good and bad. In Slave Morality, there is good and evil. The two systems are incompatible and in constant conflict. What is good in Master Morality, can be evil in Slave Morality. And likewise, what can be good in Slave Morality can be bad in Master Morality. In Master Morality, power is good, beating your slaves is good. And it nearly goes without saying, in Slave Morality, enslaving people is evil, beating slaves is evil. They're two unreconcilable moralities. Any time they seem to be in agreement, it's for all the wrong reasons.

If you look at the world around you, and examine your own system of justice, you can see both systems of morality in operation.

To put my own twist on it. You can have a selfish anti-social morality, and an altruistic social morality. Someone with a selfish anti-social morality, will experience a deep sense of injustice, when their selfish desires are not served. Have you ever had the experience of trying to get toddlers to share toys, and sweets. A selfish child will scream the house down, with the belief that an outrageous injustice is being inflicted on them. In my experience, it's far easier to deal with a selfish child than a selfish adult. In adults, the thinking becomes more calcified - and they may have an elaborate system of fables to explain and exculpate their selfish behaviour.

Ayn Rand, and Freidrich Von Hayek, would argue that only Master/Anti-social morality is rational. And Slave/altruistic morality is irrational....and wrong. And there are plenty of people on the right who would argue that all forms of altruism are bad as they create a "moral hazard"....that it stops people from learning "personal responsibility" (the responsibility to be selfish) - so "social responsibility" is always a bad thing. It's like children and their sweets.

When sometimes you see someone do something very selfish and very evil. Often they are not doing it as an act of conscious evil. They're operating from a deeply held sense of righteousness. The more you think about it, the more conflicts you can see. A selfish person will see it as an act of injustice if you interfere in someone else's selfishness - just as a more altruistic person will see blatant selfishness and the use of power for selfish gratification at the expense of the powerless as gross injustice.

I'd be curious to know, if there are more people presenting themselves at clinics with crises of selfishness. Are the hysterics just a lot like that of children who can't get what they want, or what they think they deserve.

And hey, you could blame Freud for all this. If he hadn't given the tools to his nephew, Edward Bernays, modern marketing could have been different. L'Oreal might be selling their shampoos with the slogan "L'Oreal washes your hair and makes it really clean" instead of the potent appeal to narcissism which is "L'Oreal. Because you're worth it"

lolo62

the study of the human condition is ongoing...f****d up peoples f****d-up-ness manifests in accordance with their environment

in my opinion psychiatrists are scientists and will always be looking for ways to box things off into neat little catagories

Nolanger

Kadongy wrote: »

That's very interesting, no? Why do you think it is?

The people with real morals got killed fighting in WW2?

JuliusCaesar

Nolanger wrote: »

The people with real morals got killed fighting in WW2?

Despite the myths of Londoners all pitching in together during WW2, crime increased, theft increased, rape increased - all due to the blackout.

krd

JuliusCaesar wrote: »

Despite the myths of Londoners all pitching in together during WW2, crime increased, theft increased, rape increased - all due to the blackout.

Yes. But that may have only been part of the story. Opportunists will take advantage of opportunities. Just because there were these instances, does not dismiss the "blitz spirit" as myth.

It's more complicated. it was the best of times, it was the worst of times

Kadongy

There are logical arguments for selfish people surviving wars more than group-oriented people. They would probably be less likely to risk themselves.

I dont know about genetics and selfishness, but I have read that narsicissism is likely to breed narcissism, for example - the traits are often acquired from the parents.

The new kind of patient referred to in the article weren't presenting themselves in clinics because of crises of selfishness per se. They had a poor sense of themselves, which the article links to weak morals - I think because they are unlikely to take resoponsibilty.

krd

Kadongy wrote: »

There are logical arguments for selfish people surviving wars more than group-oriented people. They would probably be less likely to risk themselves.

I remember seeing a documentary on the the Sobibor Death Camp breakout. The survivors seemed to all say the same thing. That only the escapees who looked after each other survived. Solzhenitsyn said something similar about the Gulags. Funnily, both Solzhenitsyn and the Sobibor survivors used the same word; love.

If you're sneaky, and untrustworthy, it may give you an occasional advantage. It may give you a lot of advantage. But it can really work against you. Some people will admire and help bad people - others won't.

The Ayn Rand "objectivism" is pure madness. A constant selfish strategy eventual leads to self annihilation.

I dont know about genetics and selfishness, but I have read that narsicissism is likely to breed narcissism, for example - the traits are often acquired from the parents.

Yes, but, if they inherited traits from their parents, it's not necessarily because of something being transmitted through the DNA. Children can get a lot of their traits and behaviour by mimicking the adults around them. But, they won't necessarily become selfish because they have a selfish parent - the experience might do something else to them, make them less selfish, if they've experienced suffering from it.

You can have lots of very different personalities in a single family. They would all be very closely genetically related. That reality would be hard to escape anyone's attention.

If could even be down to the way people played as children. If a child learns, and is physically capable of bullying other children. There's a likelihood they will grow up to be bullies. But that can work different ways. A fat child may become the target of bullying - which will make them more susceptible to bullying in later life. The same child may learn to use their size to their advantage and become a bully. There's so much chance to it.

The new kind of patient referred to in the article weren't presenting themselves in clinics because of crises of selfishness per se. They had a poor sense of themselves, which the article links to weak morals - I think because they are unlikely to take resoponsibilty.

I was watching a documentary the other night. Star suckers. You can watch it on documentary heaven (google it)

In the documentary, I think the guy was a psychologist, said that in the 1930s there was a psychological survey taken where one of the questions was "Are you an important person?". In the 30s, only 12% of the children answered yes to the question. The same question was asked in a survey in the 80s and over 80% of the children said yes.

It's not that children are more important now than they were in the 30s. They just think they're more important.

If someone believes they're more important than other people, than they believe their needs are more important. So, they'll do things, that from the outside look immoral - which are immoral. But, they're rationalising it - they're serving the most "important" needs. Their needs.

Do yah see.

hotspur

krd wrote: »

I remember seeing a documentary on the the Sobibor Death Camp breakout. The survivors seemed to all say the same thing. That only the escapees who looked after each other survived. Solzhenitsyn said something similar about the Gulags. Funnily, both Solzhenitsyn and the Sobibor survivors used the same word; love.

Very different from what Viktor Frankl said about the Nazi concentration camps he was in such as Auschwitz. He said that the best of them did not survive.

Kadongy

krd wrote: »

Yes, but, if they inherited traits from their parents, it's not necessarily because of something being transmitted through the DNA. Children can get a lot of their traits and behaviour by mimicking the adults around them. But, they won't necessarily become selfish because they have a selfish parent - the experience might do something else to them, make them less selfish, if they've experienced suffering from it.

You can have lots of very different personalities in a single family. They would all be very closely genetically related. That reality would be hard to escape anyone's attention.

If could even be down to the way people played as children. If a child learns, and is physically capable of bullying other children. There's a likelihood they will grow up to be bullies. But that can work different ways. A fat child may become the target of bullying - which will make them more susceptible to bullying in later life. The same child may learn to use their size to their advantage and become a bully. There's so much chance to it.

Oh I meant acquired in the sense of acquired and not hereditary. I don't think it is related to genetics either - never did. But being raised by narcissistic parents does often result in narcissism in the child. Personally I think people tend to either be one extreme or the other in how they are influenced by negative traits in the parents. For example children of alcoholics will often be very heavy drinkers, and often be tee-totallers, or very temperate. They often either copy or make sure they dont copy.

I remember seeing a documentary on the the Sobibor Death Camp breakout. The survivors seemed to all say the same thing. That only the escapees who looked after each other survived. Solzhenitsyn said something similar about the Gulags. Funnily, both Solzhenitsyn and the Sobibor survivors used the same word; love.

If you're sneaky, and untrustworthy, it may give you an occasional advantage. It may give you a lot of advantage. But it can really work against you. Some people will admire and help bad people - others won't.

The Ayn Rand "objectivism" is pure madness. A constant selfish strategy eventual leads to self annihilation.

That's interesting,encouraging and partially refutes my suggestion - but I wonder if the same would be true about soldiers in the field, and similar things to that. This was the context I was thinking of primarily, and my thoughts are that cowardice and selfishness might help survival where courage and self-secrifice would be mroe likely to result in literal self-sacrifice.

Latchy

JuliusCaesar wrote: »

Despite the myths of Londoners all pitching in together during WW2, crime increased, theft increased, rape increased - all due to the blackout.

Affairs were rampent among British women and American soldiers and the slogan of the time by the british male was ''overpaid ,oversexed and over here '' .

The GIs had a come-back - calling the Brits, "underpaid, undersexed and under Eisenhower";)

As one American journalist of the time put it '' we were in British eyes overdecorated, overstaffed, overmaintenanced and overbearing."

krd

hotspur wrote: »

Very different from what Viktor Frankl said about the Nazi concentration camps he was in such as Auschwitz. He said that the best of them did not survive.

Yes, I know. And often the version of events you hear is that only the nastiest survived the camps. There could be a lot of truth in that for a variety of reasons. One important thing to remember though. These camps were death camps. For most people, their chances of survival were just that; pure chance. Whether you were good, bad, or indifferent.

In certain environments and within certain systems, a really selfish and nasty strategy may be the best strategy for survival. And you don't have to go as far as the extremes of the concentration camps to see this. If you're working in a present day office environment, and your boss is a really nasty sneak. Your best strategy for survival will be to do their bidding. Stab people in the back, help get rid of threats (people more competent than your boss). Incompetent slippery bolloxes get promoted, and more wholesome people get the sack. What never fails to shock me, is the number of people I run into who have a belief that this is, the way and only way, the world works.

Everything we do in life requires collaboration. The rugged individualist, who pulls themselves up by their own bootstraps is a complete myth. There are essentially two ways you can collaborate: You can collaborate voluntarily or you can extract collaboration through duress (you need some kind of power, or system to do this - dishonesty will also work, to a point). A point about bullying. They say bullies are always cowards. I think that misses the point. Bullies always choose a situation where for one reason or another it's very difficult for their target to strike back. They use the situation as a tool of power - and maybe that's all bullying is; the pleasurable exercise of power for its' own sake.

In a different environment. Say a bunch of escaped prisoners trying to survive in a forest. Less selfish strategies may be more effective for survival. Things like sharing food. An individual may be lucky with the odd windfall - in the long run, it's better for the group to spread the each others good fortune among the group. The Cavan man eating his dinner out of a drawer, will be have to be lucky all the time to survive. Whereas a group that shares, will combine the luck of all members. And similarly, within a group, individual members who become temporarily too weak to fend for themselves will be helped by the group. When they become better, they may be in the position to return the favour. If they die, they won't be able to do that. And even, this stretches to forgiving some members of the group when they have been too selfish. If they're too selfish, they will be expelled from the group, or someone will drop a rock on their head. To be selfish all the time, you need a power advantage.

Systems where there is a hierarchy of power are inherently more evil - or have more opportunities for evil than systems where power is more equal. That's why we think democracy is a good thing. In theory the group can kick out malignant leaders. In reality the system can be captured by groups of bolloxes working in collaboration. Adolf Hitler and Bertie Ahern were both democratically elected. In democracies you also can have situations of majoritarianism. Where majorities exploit minorities. Northern Ireland was a perfect example. It's a flaw in democracy.


Something blows that the whole "are we better now, than at the time of WWII" argument to shreds, is one simple fact: The Nazis.

The Nazis movement was possibly the most evil, narcissistic and destructive episode in human history. If you want really bad guys, WWII is the place to go.

The Nazis ideology of racial superiority (and the justice in serving their superiority). How they saw themselves; the narcissistic depictions of blond and blue eyed, beautiful, super people. When we look at narcissism today - everything was there at its' most extreme. Far worse than anything we have now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bs5bnVoZK4Q