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Hopalong:
I don't know.

But if I had only those two choices, I think I'd pick this one:


--- Quote ---...an organic development in itself and constitutes a very real and flawed personality that rightly fears discovery by others
--- End quote ---

I think I believe this because it seems so intractable.

And because of the enormous variability within animal personalities within species in nature. The "flaw" in the personality is only in relation to the pain that personality causes others. By itself, on a moonscape, or in a world populated only by other alpha-hyenas (or whatever fits) ... it would just be, what is. Who people are.

But because love and empathy and sensitivity DO exist, it's like a shock -- to encounter (much less get to know well) a person who looks like any other person, and then you realize ... different.

I think going waaaaaaaay back, the very real and flawed personality -- is largely genetic. And that takes a lot of the (blaming, judging) fun out of it. How angry can one be at genes? At nature expressing itself?

Once I finally began to see it that way, I developed compassion for Ns. Not trust. (Who trusts a tiger?) But compassion.

Hops

mudpuppy:
  Hops,
  Even if one grants it is wholly genetic, something I profoundly doubt, the question of free will remains.
  Clearly these people know right from wrong because they go to insane lengths to cover up and/or justify their misdeeds. And when caught in the light of day will often act treacly sweet, in front of strangers and others, to people they ordinarily abuse.
  So if they know what is right and can do the right thing when it suits them but choose not to when it doesn't,  I still have very little compassion for them.
 They may not have chosen how they are but they consciously choose to harm others in a futile attempt to protect themselves from non existent threats.

 PR,
 I wasn't intentionally defining two ends of one spectrum. My question was posed about one hypothetical individual; is he either "a" or "b"?
 There may be something to what you say especially in this sense; what starts out in adolescence as merely a cover for insecurities eventually morphs into the core of their inner being.

  If that is what happens it raises another question I've always wondered about; is there a point, presumably in late adolescence where traits usually begin to appear in earnest, before which these people can alter the course of their lives and become "normal" and after which they are inevitably cast as nuts or is it baked in from early childhood/birth?

mud

Hopalong:
I understand, Mud.

For me, compassion in no way means I'd therefore hold anyone with this "condition" less accountable -- morally, legally, ethically.

I am a person who could lock up somebody awful and throw away the key. Compassion for them is a separate choice.

I learned from some Buddhists (a week I spent unexpectedly in the course of my job with the Dalai Lama and some monks, way back before he was trendy) that this was a real emotion with a different kind of power than the notions of love I'd always recognized. It affected me in an unexpected way because I experienced it (in a powerful form) and I had literally never seen/felt such a huge, concentrated wave of compassion before. I knew what it meant, but had never encountered such a massive "amount" of it, if that makes sense. (It's hard to describe.)

I never "ate" the theology or became anything particular--but the presence of that compassion had a life-changing impact. In that moment I recognized I was feeling something new to me -- in its (how do I describe it) mass and volume and actuality -- and while it was clearly real, it was also different from any "feeling" I'd been around before (not saying I hadn't been loved, but that this huge compassion wave thing was NEW) and that it was being specifically emanated by the strange people I was with.

So, now I know what it feels like. I liked it. I emit my own little inconsistent dribble of it, and like myself better when I do. Pretty simple, really.

Don't gotta LIKE 'em. (The Ns.) Don't gotta APPROVE of them. And if one needs to JUDGE them, have at it. I don't think that affects them (but probably affects you).

love,
Hops

lighter:
I think that the basic truth is that all humans do what they need to do to feel OK. 

In performing our daily ablutions of self soothing and coping strategies.......

 individual strategies are what they are. 

Can we select, pick and choose what works for us, any more than we can select our sexual preference?

COULD we/you change our sexual preferences if the norms of society dictated it, and if we could, would it carry the same difficulty as giving up whatever strategy we depend on to feel good?

In a way, we're all asked to conform to society's norms, but it's dreadful apparent that people aren't wired to strictly conform. 

What gets you off, gets you off.

Yogi must eat,and all that.

Even though society has consequences for failure to comply, our prisons are bursting (don't we have the highest rate of imprisonment in the world?)

It's not hard to imagine that destructive N's are going to do what makes them feel good, and I think we're lucky if what makes us feel good is what society considers acceptable.


This is where being a people pleasing, nice guy with an aversion to conflict comes in particularly handy, IME.  It might not suit us to be that, but it doesn't land us in prison, or require we assume a different identity to be OK, or have to fear being found out should our well honed mask of assertiveness "slip."

I have empathy for everyone saddled with self destructive coping strategies, and perhaps that's a simplistic way of looking at it, but it's how I make peace with it.  I don't have to figure it out, past that, and it's a blessing not to have to.
Lighter

sKePTiKal:

--- Quote ---If that is what happens it raises another question I've always wondered about; is there a point, presumably in late adolescence where traits usually begin to appear in earnest, before which these people can alter the course of their lives and become "normal" and after which they are inevitably cast as nuts or is it baked in from early childhood/birth?
--- End quote ---

Experts used to believe that there was such a "hardening" or settling in of traits, characteristics, personality in adolescence. But then, that phase of adolescence started expanding... being flexible chronologically, at least in society's frame of reference. The shift from an agri-based society to an industrial one helped spur changes. Used to be an 8th grade education was all someone needed (and the content of that education would be more intense than todays') to have the knowledge & skills to learn a trade. Then, society expected a high school diploma from everyone. So women who might've been married at 14 or 16 weren't; young men applied themselves to book learning -- instead of apprenticing in a skill trade. Then: everyone can go to college...

well, what's happened (from one way of looking at it) is that we've kept people in that juvenile societal "status role"... without the old societal expectations of working to contribute to the household, being responsible for and to society for one's existence, and most of all (just my opinion)... developing personal integrity and what used to be known as "character". My years in education persuaded me some time ago, that we don't allow kids to be kids when they're really at that developmental stage and then, later on cushion them from taking on the adult responsibilities and challenge them enough - when they're at that natural stage, so that in their 20s/early 30s they're STILL not sure "who they are". Maybe this duration of juvenile mindset is a consequence of robbing them of the intellectual freedom to play, fantasize, pretend, dream... to be children in other words. We start pushing "educational" toys earlier & earlier... trying to instill the idea that learning is "work" and big kids go to "work" or "school". They aren't developed enough - they resist and rebel - and hang on to being "dependent"... "liked"... "popular". Belonging & acceptance are the coin of the realm of these grown-up children. More important than having a unique "self" or skills or values. That kind of feeds the garden-variety N that's rampant, I think.

Some theories of psych started working with behavior vs nature... in other words, making behavior fit society's norms while the "inner" person was whatever it grew into. Some theories started wondering if, everything was acceptable - hey, we're all only human after all - then maybe it was society's "norms" that were out of whack, obsolete, needed to change. Then, there was "flavor of the month" psych... what we remember as the pop-psych phase. Now we have DNA and Neuroscience... removing responsibility for "how we are" and then saying that yes, with enough repetitions everything about a person can be "changed" (I think there are natural limits to that). The viewpoints that the answer to your question depend on are changing a lot.

I don't think there is agreement among the experts about the answer to your question, and so that leaves us with old "yes and no; both" answer.

is there a point, presumably in late adolescence where traits usually begin to appear in earnest, before which these people can alter the course of their lives and become "normal"

I would say YES. Many kinds of interventions, incidents, situations - even the most casual one-time experiences - CAN change the course of the their lives. If they're lucky or someone "sees" and CARES. Sometimes the interventions are intentional - as in teens in therapy. A whole lot of variables need to come together just right for this to happen, unintentionally... but it probably does, more than we know and less than we'd like it to.

is it baked in from early childhood/birth?
Most of the time - NO; some of the time - YES. I have this weird idea that babies are born as a perfectly balanced intellectual/emotional being; the pattern for a lot of their likes/dislikes is already "pre-programmed" in their DNA and brains. As they respond to experience in their physical environment, post-birth... adaptation and evolution - growth - occurs in that pattern. Even introverts who prefer to hold sensation and experience out at arm's length from themselves are still impacted by their immediate environment... and can be trained as to the rules, parameters, and expectations of that environment. Whether we want to admit it or not.

But there are anomalies. People who are born with a glitch - maybe a loose screw or switch; or a plug that's loose - in the "hardware"... or the "firmware" (DNA). No matter how nurturing or firm the limitations in the environment - it's not possible to "connect" with them; they are in their own bubble of reality and the ones who try to share the contents of that reality usually scare the bejesus out of the rest of us. Whatever the "ghost in the machine" that they were born with... what is inside that bubble is MORE real to them than what's outside of it and they can't be convinced otherwise (and no, they're not letting you in - if you were fool enough to want to).

But, ya know - I only play a "thinker" on TV... and yes, I have stayed in a Holiday Inn Express... LOL!! This ramble is how I would answer your question. It's been interesting to see how differently we all come to (and where we come "from" in the old hippie-lingo) our answers.

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