EVIL
AND THE TROUBLES OF HALF-BRAIN DOMINANCE: IS THERE A RELATIONSHIP?
Renato
Cocchi, a neurologist and a medical psychologist.
Summary.
Evil
exists, and, independently from its symbolic interpretation, I examined the
relationships between evil, opposite half-brain dominance and stress, for
which:
- In
condition of temporary prevalence of the opposite half-brain dominance, it may
occur the emergency of evil thought, felt as extraneous, against beloved
persons;
-
About 20% people, who are seeing as half-empty the glass filled to half, had a
prevalence of the not dominant half-brain, at least for some functions;
-
external or internal stress can elicit troubles of the half-brain dominance,
even in persons who previously had a normal half-brain dominance;
- To
do evil could find in itself its justification as a reward mechanism as it
happens in several computer virus spammers;
- It
is not sure that evil and troubles of the half-brain dominance are always
correlated. Certainly, they are so in several cases;
- In
sects of Satanist type the opposite, which seems to have become an ideological
choice, could own opposite half-brain dominance, at least for some functions,
to its ground.
It is
suggested a neuropsychological base of troubles of the half-brain dominance in
several forms of evil, as prevalence of the opposite in the couple
"good-evil".
Key
words: Evil, philosophy, reversebrain, half-brain dominance, opposite, glass
filled to half, stress, spammer, computer viruses, homicide-suicide, terrorist,
hormones, adolescence, Satanism, reward.
Theoretical
and research bases
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The
problem of evil is a great religious and human theme, from thousands of years.
It is sure that evil exists, for which we may find its place in our vision of
the world, as for its origin, its nature, and to its elimination.
By now,
religions faced it, and, according to their ground, they have tried an
explanation, different for the pantheist, dualists, or monotheists religions.
In a simplified, if not coarse way, we may say that "pantheistic religions
regard evil as ultimately unreal. Human suffering is a product of spiritual
ignorance gathered in previous lives and distributed in the present one
according to the dictates of karma. In the dualistic religions, good and evil
are two eternal and rival principles. Neither has created the other one and
each acts according to its own nature. In the monotheistic religions, evil has
a personal identity. It is a being that has fallen from an initial good status
as a result of misusing his freedom of will." (Valea, 1999-2005).
For what
concerns the philosophy, I not had the impression that somebody proposed an
exhaustive explanation, as distinct from the religious ones.
Nevertheless,
it did a distinction between the evil produced from the nature (the famous
earthquake of
An example of evil.
I will
try of referring to a type of evil where any direct or indirect emotional
relationship, between the causal agent and the victim is openly unfounded.
I have
previously mentioned the type of same explanation about the so called
"raptus" (Cocchi, 2003), but emotional and psychological variables,
always to be assumed in the relationship with the victim, could not confirm my
statement. The current example seems more suitable.
In ten
days from 7 September to 16, 2005 I received ten emails, which contained one of
the following electronic viruses: Worm.SomeFool.P; Worm.Bagle.Gen-zippwd;
W32/Netsky-P; Win32:Netsky-P [Wrm]; Worm.SomeFool.Gen-1; Worm.SomeFool.P; Win32:Netsky-P
[Wrm]; Worm.SomeFool.Gen-1; Win32:Netsky-P [Wrm]; Worm.SomeFool.P, of which
three more than once.
Fortunately
either the antivirus system of my provider, and my personal one stopped them.
Anyhow,
to dispatch of a message with a virus is surely a malevolent action, by aiming
to bring damages in the things (contents of the infected computers), in time
and money of the person or persons, who were "infected" for their
adversity. When it concerns societies, the material damages may go up even to
hundreds, if not to millions of euros.
By
identifying me as the receiver, when we analyse this action, from the side of
the sender of the virus, we may point out these characteristics:
- The
sender doesn't know the receiver;
- The
sender doesn't have any reason of psychological animosity or revenge against
the receiver;
- The
sender found the email address of the receiver on internet. As for me, this
address is a public domain because it is in the indexes of my sites
<Www.stress-cocchi.net> and <www.reversebrain.net>. There are
persons or programs that pick up the addresses and cheaply sell them to
spammers, among whom, evidently, there is even who sends me viruses;
- The
sender does not wish to let me know his true identity, and not only for
possible legal problems. He used one address of the list of his future victims
as presumed sender. My address was used so, and I did get letters of persons
who complained of this malignant behaviour falsely attributed to me. Straight I
was the false sender of viruses addressed to me, which means that the true
sender did not want to lose time to prevent by anticipating a similar
incongruity;
- With an
extended list of electronic addresses, by varying the address of the presumed
sender, and the virus ("a new virus, a new life"), one can do about
tens, if not hundreds of millions sending.
- When
the virus takes its root, the receiver becomes in its turn, an unintentional
sender of such a virus to all his correspondents' addresses, as stored in the
memory of his computer: A chain letter of damages, and then of evil.
As it
precedes, it may reasonably conclude that there are persons who want to do evil
(here, to me), too not having any express reason, of any kind, for
justification of this willing of them.
Why there are persons who want do evil.
Excluding
therefore an external reason for malignant behaviour, the reason cannot be
other than an internal one.
It would
be easy to say that these persons are sadistic, but the sadism seems to need at
least of the presence or some knowledge of the victim. That is to say that it
implicates at least a relationship of visual or acoustic proximity, which
allows to see or to hear the fear, or the disappointment of the other or of the
others. According to a classical vision of the psychopathology, it would deal
perhaps with coming out of a negative all-powerful delusion? It may be so, but
this, by itself, does not explain why there is this negative delusion.
The
judgment on the half-filled glass may give us the first key of an access to the
phenomenon of negativism. So I wrote:
"This
is the more diffused and " puzzling " example about how the same
thing, a filled glass to half, as that in the photo below, can be seen as
" a half-full glass " from about the 80% of the persons asked to say
what they are seeing. To the same question, about 20% remainders, answer to see
" a half-empty glass ". Of course there is nothing of puzzling if we
agree the suggestion of the opposite engram presence, into the not dominant
half-brain.
Moreover,
we need also to agree the difficulty some people have in suppressing it, a fact
that happens in one person out of five. In this specific case the glass space,
as a container, is perceived respectively as "half-full" or
"half-empty", confirming how the prevalence of the opposite
half-brain may happen, even in not pathological conditions, linked to specific
brain areas, or structures, or functions . The difference in the perceptive
stress as for our glass, comes as attributed to the real world, bringing to
think as characteristic of the seen object, something that is only an
intra-brain event. In our example there is not any emotional connotation, even
a negative one, a fact that would more easily explain a prevalence of the not
dominant half-brain." (Cocchi, 2002).
Even before
of finding a first personal clinical case, I had done all a review of
psychopathological events or not considered as such, which might only explain
with playing of a trouble of the half-brain dominance (Cocchi, 1994).
In a
woman, previously diagnosed as affected by a schizoid-affective syndrome, I
find, for the first time, the evil as uncontrolled emergency of bad thoughts,
against her son, besides beloved, and of whom she had nothing to complain. It
was interesting, here, the fact that the same woman recognized these thoughts
as whole extraneous to her personality. In spite of that, they have been
considered instead as delusional thoughts by the psychiatrists that have taken
care of her.
Already
from the title of the article, I suggested the presence of troubles of the
half-brain dominance, because some symptoms drove in that direction ( Cocchi,
1996).
By now is
a little a habit of mine to ask, when I found again stress and of troubles of
the half-brain dominance's symptoms, if there is an uncontrolled emergency of
bad thoughts against otherwise beloved persons.
It is not
an always present event. Yet, I am finding several of them, but I did not yet
do a systematic epidemiological investigation. However, if in the first case I
observed it in a patient in psychiatric treatment, what follows is fully
different.
During
the first consultation of a patient with burden troubles of the senses of smell
and taste, with stress symptoms and troubles of the half-brain dominance, a
question in such sense provoked great surprise. I exactly wrote: "He has
bad thoughts, which he feels as extraneous, against persons to whom he is fond
of each other. This symptom is disturbing him since three years, and he tries
to fight it with the religious comfort." (Cocchi, 2004).
Differently
from the two quoted cases, where the emergency of bad thought came heartfelt as
extraneous, there is somebody who could have had only, or primarily, bad
thoughts. This happens since about his birth, or from his adolescence in then,
or following a serious stress. He could have them approved as true normalcy. In
these persons to do evil could be a "reward" action for better
functioning of a negative emotional structure of the not dominant half-brain.
There
are, however, differences to consider, and I cannot say that to be always in
opposition coincides with the desire (or the need?) to do evil.
"The "contra" or the "always against".
On June
The rate
of those people who see as half-empty the filled glass to half is about of 20%
and there is not any emotional connotation in this judgement. So it is very
curious, it isn't? One may be "against" without any need to be
against a specific thing. If there is an object, it is going better, because so
one can rationalise his non-rational contrary judgement.
The late
Lyndon Johnson said a time that anything a ruler has did, there was always been
a percentage of "contras".
The
folklore in
About
this fact we may draw to social-political deductions as probably not absurd.
But
besides the "against" as an attitude that could seem a temporary or
stable character of the personality, there are other "contras", and,
in the overwhelming majority of them, not dangerous. Nevertheless, there are
others where this condition leads them as manipulated and induced to do evil,
since they are "normally against".
"Why youngs or war-widows as suicide-terrorists in the Jihiad of
the islamic fundamentalists?
The rate
of suicide-terrorist youngs or war-widows in the Jihad of the Islamic
foundamentalists is a surprising datum.
If the
explanation had had fully to the content of the message used to indoctrinate
the future suicide-terrorists, we have to observe a less umbalanced
distribution of them within the whole population.
The
prevalence of these two population's segments introduces at least one variable
concerning them. For young or very young male people, the future heaven of
Allah could have had particular attractions. For young females and for the
widows this would not had seem an efficient motivation.
To
swerving even that the key point is a surprise-effect. It perhaps initially
ran, but now not anymore. The hostile wait suicide-terrorists recruited among
these social groups.
To
excluding besides that the possible money remuneration to their families, after
their death, may be a so selective motivation.
More probable
that within these social segments there is an increased easiness to accept a
culture of the death, which was publicly admitted as clear distinction between
the Islamic fundamentalists and the other not Muslim people. This greater
easiness could be creditable to a temporary inversion of half-brain dominance,
mainly emotional, with moving to the right half-brain, by itself more
predisposed to opposite contents: Hate, death and so on. ( See:
www.reversebrain.net)
In the
young, of both sexes, this may be caused from a hormonal poisoning of the brain
creditable to the excess of sexual hormones of the post-pubertal juvenile age.
We can remember the so frequent immotivated oppositional behaviour related to
this age.
In the
war-widows, this move could happen for the pain of the loss of the husband, and
for the desire of revenge
The
recruiters of suicide-terrorists seem well know this easiness for theit
aims." (Cocchi, 2004).
It is by
now a commonplace to say that the "suicide-terrorists" are mentally
disturbed, but this definition limits itself only by putting this people in the
category of the pathological, without trying to go across the border. To they
could have a mental trouble, it is true even in the optics of this article, but
here I try to go farther. So I point out the origin of it in troubles of the
half-brain dominance and in the emergency of the opposite thought, in several
cases of evil, as a prevailing mental content and behavioural directives.
We cannot
need to arrive to the "suicide-terrorist" as an extreme limit. This
tendency to the opposition, identified with evil, or in the Christian culture,
with the malignant Satan, has found wide developmental ground in the rock
music. So occurred or as individual choice of many rockers, or as exploitation
of a predisposed public to that, or both together. (Regimbold, 1983; Marzorati,
1993; Marzorati, 1995; Baroni, 1997).
We may
ask ourselves if practising so rhythmic music, which stimulates mainly the
not-dominant half-brain, does not make, for these artists, a self-perpetuating
pathway, with a coincidence of the starting and arrival point.
It is to
pay attention also to arising of Satanist sects, with their paraphernalia, the
right-left overthrow of words, the sex not as sin, but as communion and
ascesis, the mass for Satan, the angel of evil, and the passage to the action
with the homicide as almost ritualistic (Introvigne, 1994). This could be an
other pathway of not-rational socialised development of this need of reward as
neuropsychological compensation of the malignant negative thought.
If we
want to observe a curious aspect, the decoration or the position of the front
lights, of mopeds, motorcycles and cars, from some years represents of
"bad" eyes, like almonds from its down inside to the open top, which,
when they are near, they form a "V" with a cut angle on it's down.
The
choice, widely diffused in independent brands, DID NOT HAVE BEEN casual and it
doesn't obey only to a problem of design. It wants to elicit an emotional
resonance in a public, that youth, which has greater easiness in the
identification themselves with these details, attributable symbolically to
negative, malignant beings. Evil, or some of its symbols, helps selling.
Conclusions.
Given
that the evil exists, and that its symbolic interpretation is not the task of
this article, I can conclude:
- In
condition of temporary prevalence of the opposite half-brain dominance, it may
occur the emergency of evil thought, felt as extraneous, against beloved
persons;
- About
20% people, who are seeing as half-empty the glass filled to half, had a
prevalence of the not dominant half-brain, at least for some functions;
-
external or internal stress can elicit troubles of the half-brain dominance, even
in persons who previously had a normal half-brain dominance;
- To do
evil could find in itself its justification as a reward mechanism as it happens
in several computer virus spammers;
- It is
not sure that evil and troubles of the half-brain dominance are always
correlated. Certainly, they are so in several cases;
- In
sects of Satanist type the opposite, which seems to have become an ideological
choice, could own opposite half-brain dominance, at least for some functions,
to its ground.
To
suggest a neuropsychological base in several forms of evil, is only a partial
attempt for its better understanding.
References.
Baroni P. I prěncipi del tramonto.
Satanismo, esoterismo e messaggi subliminali nella musica rock. Il Cerchio, Rimini
1997.
Cocchi
R.: Defective hemispheric dominance and cognitive behaviour: Speculative
considerations. It. J. Intellect. Impair. 1994, 7: 19-27.
Cocchi
R.: lntrusive opposite emotional thinking in a chronic
"schizoid-affective" woman. A stabilízed ínverse half-brain dominance
of a specific function? lt. J. lntellect. lmpair. 1996, 9: 163-168.
Cocchi R
. The filled glass to half. April 2002
Cocchi R. Dall'
omicidio "incomprensibile" fino al raptus: mistero o quadro di
riferimento incompleto? Lo Spallanzani, 2003, 17: 82-88. English translation
in: <www.stress-cocchi.net/Speculat6.htm>
Cocchi R. The "contra" or the "always
against". Agosto
2004. <www.reversebrain.net/News15.htm>.
Cocchi R. Why youngs or widows as suicide-terrorists
in the Jihad of the islamic fundamentalists? Settembre 2004
<www.reversebrain.net/News16.htm>.
Cocchi R. A third case of anosmia-hyperosmia with
ageusia, following stress and possible viral infection, improved with an
antistress drug therapy. (Updated June 2005) January 2004
<www.stress-cocchi.net/Other7.htm>.
Introvigne M.
Indagine sul satanismo: Mondadori, Milano 1994.
Marzorati S.
Dizionario dell'horror rock. SugarCo, Varese 1993.
Marzorati S.:
Autostrada per l'inferno. Sperling e Kupfer, Milano
1995.
Neiman S:. Evil in Modern Thought: An Alternative
History of Philosophy. Princeton University Press, 2002.
Régimbold J.P. Le Rock'n'Roll. Viol de la concience par les messages
subliminaux, Editions Saint-Raphaël, Sherbrooke 1983. (Traduzione italiana: Il
rock'n'roll. Violenza della coscienza per mezzo dei messaggi subliminali. Edizione Uomini Nuovi, Marchirolo, 1987).
Valea E. The problem of evil in world religions.
1999-2005. On line. Retrieved on September 13, 2005. (Quoted with the
author's permession).
Posted on internet on 20 September 2005. Copyright by
Renato Cocchi, 2005.
Author's
address:
dr Renato Cocchi, via Rabbeno, 3
42100 Reggio Emilia
renatococchi@libero.it
Theoretical and research
bases
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