Sublime

Few scientists have done more to refute the myth of the asocial infant than Andrew Meltzoff, whose work in childhood development, psychology, and neuroscience over the past several decades has lent support to Girard’s discovery.

Of the many emerging descriptions of our social brain, for me the simplest and most elegant is the highly regarded Social Baseline Theory of Lane Beckes and James A. Coan, two researchers at the University of Virginia.

The prompt and energetic action of the officers of the law shows the great advantage of the presence on such occasions of a single vigorous and masterful mind.

But neurologically, as the biologist Robert Sapolsky has observed, the response of empathy and the response of action are two very different and distinct physiological circuits.

The psychopath, he observes, is an intelligent person, characterised by a poverty of emotions, the absence of a sense of shame, egocentricity, superficial charm, lack of guilt, lack of anxiety, immunity to punishment, unpredictability, irresponsibility, manipulativeness, and a transient interpersonal lifestyle