--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "curtisdeltablues" <curtisdeltabl...@...> wrote: > > Rick said: > > I think personalities are multifaceted. Je-Ru is both a nice > > guy and a con man. We're all many things. > > That raises an interesting philosophical question Rick. Although > I am usually a fan of the "see the best in people" philosophy, > I practice that within a range of behaviors only. > > My "many things" doesn't includes willfully ruining people's > lives. If you throw in the perspective of Pete's sociopath, > then your analysis is not technically accurate be misapplied. > Sociopaths don't have the human capacity to be "nice guys." > They imitate human emotions they study around them to > manipulate people.
So do "normal" people. You and me and all of us here. I'm going to pursue the "philosophical question" because I do not buy into what appears to be an assumption in your post -- that sociopaths 1) have no capacity to do good, and 2) that they can't change. I don't think that either is true. Sociopaths *can* do good; it's just that it's mixed in with bad. I've seen some people who I sincerely consider sociopaths do considerable good in the world. Yeah, they turned around the next day and did some bad in the world, but the day after that they did good again. In this sense, I don't see them as all that different than you and me. And, as someone who still believes to some extent in the notion of enlightenment or realization, I pretty much have to believe that *anyone* can change. Look at Milarepa, one of the high-belt-rank saints of Tibet. In his youth the dude definitely did some bad -- he wasted an entire village using siddhis because they dissed his mom. The dude had a short fuse, and was a few cans short of a six-pack of True Ethics. But he "got better." He did the work, and the rest of his life seems to have been dedicated to doing good. Yeah, I'm not convinced that this Je-Ru guy will ever snap out of it and do any good in the world, and I'm certainly not convinced that Ted Bundy will. But theo- retically, I have to give them a chance. If I don't, what chance do I give myself? I don't know about you, but I definitely haven't done "all good" in my life. And while I don't think that I ever did anything to anyone that falls into the cat- egory of "deliberate harm," I'm open to the possibility that some in my life disagree with me. The Frederick Lenz - Rama version of "We're all bozos on this bus" was "We're all assholes on this bus." He included not only all of his students but himself in this definition. And he was definitely, no question about it, an asshole. No, strike that. He was an Asshole, capital A. But he *also* did some things that in my opinion were not only good, but were *damned* good, among the goodest things that can be done on this blue-green ball in black space. He occasionally *wailed* on doing good. It's just that sometimes the lesser side of him won out and he wound up doing lesser things. And then other times, the better side of him won out, and he wound up doing better things. A lot like me. And, maybe, you.
