Spirituality is a force that you can't see, feel or hear!
That is 'lack of spirituality'. Keep trying though, this might be holding the loco collective back mire than a little bit. The term God causes all sorts of denial in the loco collective while Satan gets rave reviews, that is not spirituality as the goal is to kill and main as many people as possible. (then complain there are serial killers running around)
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/09/130924174331.htm
Neurological basis for lack of empathy in psychopaths
Summary:When individuals with psychopathy imagine others in pain, brain areas necessary for feeling empathy and concern for others fail to become active and be connected to other important regions involved in affective processing and decision-making, reports a new study. When individuals with psychopathy imagine others in pain, brain areas necessary for feeling empathy and concern for others fail to become active and be connected to other important regions involved in affective processing and decision-making, reports a study published in the open-access journal
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience.
Psychopathy is a personality disorder characterized by a lack of empathy and remorse, shallow affect, glibness, manipulation and callousness. Previous research indicates that the rate of psychopathy in prisons is around 23%, greater than the average population which is around 1%.
To better understand the neurological basis of empathy dysfunction in psychopaths, neuroscientists used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) on the brains of 121 inmates of a medium-security prison in the USA.
Participants were shown visual scenarios illustrating physical pain, such as a finger caught between a door, or a toe caught under a heavy object. They were by turns invited to imagine that this accident happened to themselves, or somebody else. They were also shown control images that did not depict any painful situation, for example a hand on a doorknob.
Participants were assessed with the widely used PCL-R, a diagnostic tool to identify their degree of psychopathic tendencies. Based on this assessment, the participants were then divided in three groups of approximately 40 individuals each: highly, moderately, and weakly psychopathic.
When highly psychopathic participants imagined pain to themselves, they showed a typical neural response within the brain regions involved in empathy for pain, including the anterior insula, the anterior midcingulate cortex, somatosensory cortex, and the right amygdala. The increase in brain activity in these regions was unusually pronounced, suggesting that psychopathic people are sensitive to the thought of pain.
But when participants imagined pain to others, these regions failed to become active in high psychopaths. Moreover, psychopaths showed an increased response in the ventral striatum, an area known to be involved in pleasure, when imagining others in pain.
This atypical activation combined with a negative functional connectivity between the insula and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex may suggest that individuals with high scores on psychopathy actually enjoyed imagining pain inflicted on others and did not care for them. The ventromedial prefrontal cortex is a region that plays a critical role in empathetic decision-making, such as caring for the wellbeing of others.
Taken together, this atypical pattern of activation and effective connectivity associated with perspective taking manipulations may inform intervention programs in a domain where therapeutic pessimism is more the rule than the exception. Altered connectivity may constitute novel targets for intervention. Imagining oneself in pain or in distress may trigger a stronger affective reaction than imagining what another person would feel, and this could be used with some psychopaths in cognitive-behavior therapies as a kick-starting technique, write the authors.
https://www.quora.com/Can-a-psychopath-be-spiritual
Can a psychopath be spiritual?
No, a psychopath can’t be spiritual any more than a crocodile can be spiritual. Psychopaths have been compared to machines, crocodiles, snakes, lizards and spiders by professionals who’ve dedicated their lives to studying them
(Cleckley, Łobaczewski, Babiak, Hare). And yes, I can provide the quotes if need be. Note that the common theme is coldness and fairly reflex behaviours (even for high-functionioning psychopaths).
That doesn’t mean that psychopaths have strictly reptilian brains. But an extremely good way to get our heads round the concept of psychopathy is to imagine a psychopath as an articulate crocodile in clothes, with a fake-friendly smile and crocodile tears. With such a visualisation it becomes fairly obvious that a psychopath can’t be ‘good’ any more than a crocodile can be good, and that a ‘relationship’ with a psychopath is fake from the start.
Though they can’t be spiritual they can fake spirituality. It becomes a highly efficient way for a psychopath to enter a group of spiritual seekers and to fleece them.
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“On Sunday he prayed on his knees. On Monday he preyed on his fellow man.” —Caption from the Vancouver Sun, May 20, 2000
Many Christian groups, for example, readily open their hearts to any newcomer; especially those who profess to have “found Christ.” Unfortunately, these groups often also open their wallets, unwitting players in what is known as affinity fraud ....
Affinity groups—religious, political, or social groups in which all members share common values or beliefs—are particularly attractive to psychopaths because of the collective trust that members of these groups have in one another. .....
As long as the psychopath can accurately espouse these beliefs while in the presence of group members … readily assume that those who join them hold similar beliefs and values....
While most people join affinity groups to associate with those who share their values, beliefs, and interests, psychopaths join to take advantage of them by hiding within a well-defined set of personal expectations.
‘Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work’ Paperback – 7 Jun 2007 by Paul Babiak, Robert D. Hare.
This book gives ground-breaking insights into high-functioning psychopaths in the workplace. Nearly 4% of top clinical personnel are psychopaths (‘Corporate psychopathy: talking the walk’, Babiak, Neumann and Hare, 2010)
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Psychopaths present themselves as open, truthful and honest (a 'mask') until we trust themand our defences are down. They then mix in lies and subtle disinformation, drip by drip. They are now manipulating us. They also create confusion until no one knows who to believe and the psychopath seems as believable as the honest person, and they try to undermine and discredit those who could help or educate us and those whom they wish to destroy (the ‘smear campaign’.)
