Everyday sadists take pleasure in others' pain

[cubbex]

I almost instantly choose cleaning toilets, but after reflecting a bit about it, I sconcluded that all options, I concluded they involved all killing something, except the ice. Experiment. Even cleaning toilets involve killing microbes, I considered the ice option too!

Back to the sadists now... I think sadism is an extreme form of psychopathy because psychopaths "at least" pursue some material gain/profit when inflicting pain to others, while sadists do so solely and uniquely for their own pleasure! I personnally can't apprehend this deviation!

Haha, well I think that if that's what you think enduring ice water is in a way killing ourselves. I guess the question is pretty simple, it shows a tendency of someone towards inflicting pain but not necessarily towards sadism, because every answer may be perceived in a different way depending on the situation we imagine.

A better question question would be:

you see a black widow or a poisonous insect or animal, how would you deal with it?

a) kill it
b) call someone to kill it
c) take it out to the garden
d) ignore it and endure the pain if biten

 

[mabar]

I think that sometimes as a kid you don't really realize what you're doing until it's too late but it helps making such mistakes to grow up and start asking yourself some questions about life, death & the consequences of your actions.

That's how I understand that my little chicken couldn't stand a bath, seeing my mother washing the cloths at the laundry hand-washing tub, it was easy for me to do the same ... I still can recollect the image of the poor little chicken dead in my hands asking my mother what happend to it.

 

[Rich]

Along those lines.....(as a kid) did anyone ever take a magnifying glass to ants? salt to slugs? pull the legs/wings of crane flies?
For the record I never did, but would always feel disgusted with others who did - I'd try and stop them.

When I was a little kid I once stepped on a perfect line of walking ants because I was fascinated that after a few seconds they would go back in line but then I realized what I had done and it made me sick to my stomach.

On another occasion I was at a friend's house and he had fun cutting worms in half which I found horrifying, why would anyone do that to a harmless worm ? I never played with him again.

I think that sometimes as a kid you don't really realize what you're doing until it's too late but it helps making such mistakes to grow up and start asking yourself some questions about life, death & the consequences of your actions.

True. As a boy I didn't have much compassion for bugs, furry creatures were a different level though: I remember being traumatised when my pet gerbil 'met' our cat after I'd left his cage open. I'd only had him week but I was upset for days.

Later on, shortly after passing my driving test, I remember accidentally running over a rabbit . I felt sick to my stomach, quite upset and vividly remember how surprised I was having reacted that way, thinking that I was more 'macho' than that. - As you say Tigersoap, all part of growing up and learning.

Regarding choosing ice water, I wouldn't describe this as masochistic in all cases: I have quite a high pain threshold so when I know there will be no long term harm, experiences such as icy water give me a feeling of being alive and in touch with myself. - I get to remember I'm human and normally laugh.

 

[Sol Logos]

I almost instantly choose cleaning toilets, but after reflecting a bit about it, I sconcluded that all options, I concluded they involved all killing something, except the ice. Experiment. Even cleaning toilets involve killing microbes, I considered the ice option too!

Back to the sadists now... I think sadism is an extreme form of psychopathy because psychopaths "at least" pursue some material gain/profit when inflicting pain to others, while sadists do so solely and uniquely for their own pleasure! I personnally can't apprehend this deviation!

Haha, well I think that if that's what you think enduring ice water is in a way killing ourselves. I guess the question is pretty simple, it shows a tendency of someone towards inflicting pain but not necessarily towards sadism, because every answer may be perceived in a different way depending on the situation we imagine.

A better question question would be:

you see a black widow or a poisonous insect or animal, how would you deal with it?

a) kill it
b) call someone to kill it
c) take it out to the garden
d) ignore it and endure the pain if bitten

I would choose this order:
1) take out to the garden, if that's not feasible then
2) kill it, if that's not feasible then
3) call someone to kill it, if that's not feasible then
4) ignore and endure the pain

Basically I value the fact that say animals want to live and so I wouldn't choose to go out of my way to kill them but I also value human life (including my own) over animal and plant life. If it's in my home and a Black Widow is in it, it poses a threat of harm to me, so I'd try to move it to a different environment. If that's too dangerous, I'd kill it because it's my home and given I'm in this situation, the responsibility is no one else's but mine. If that's too dangerous for me, say I don't have the skills or equipment, I'd be OK asking for help. If those options aren't possible and I can't remove myself out of the way, say if I'm physically incapacitated, I wouldn't have other options anyway, so I'd have to bear maybe getting bitten.

Over the years, living in Australia with a few poisonous spiders around, I've got rather good at catching them, trapping them in a container against a wall then sliding a piece of cardboard on top to move them. So I've put a whole bunch of them out into the garden. That's just my preference, although I've had to kill a whole bunch as well.

 

[Thomas Alan]

I chose cleaning toilets. I clean two bathrooms every 2 weeks so it is not big problem. And it is nice to have them clean.

I sometimes find spiders on the shower floor when I go to use it. They are probably just trying to find water to drink. I take a tissue and pick them up gently, and lay the tissue in another room so that hopefully walk away. I see no need to kill them and besides they do eat bugs. :)

I hate roaches. When I was a kid I lived in a basement. It was not unusual to find water bugs in a box of corn flakes or even between the bed sheets. In the house I live in now I see one or two water bugs a year. I smash them and put out roach traps. They gotta go.

Ants appear on the kitchen counter every spring. Most of the time putting ant poison on the counter unopened and then tell them if they don't leave I will kill them and their whole family gets them to disappear.

If animals are not a danger and I don't want them for food I let them be.

I knew many sadists when I was a kid. It hurt me to see the things they did to animals to intentionally cause them pain and death. I tried not so show it in their presence. If I did it only seemed to increase their pleasure, they would laugh at my concern.

Mac

 

[Marcus-Aurelius]

I almost instantly choose cleaning toilets, but after reflecting a bit about it, I sconcluded that all options, I concluded they involved all killing something, except the ice. Experiment. Even cleaning toilets involve killing microbes, I considered the ice option too!

Back to the sadists now... I think sadism is an extreme form of psychopathy because psychopaths "at least" pursue some material gain/profit when inflicting pain to others, while sadists do so solely and uniquely for their own pleasure! I personnally can't apprehend this deviation!

Haha, well I think that if that's what you think enduring ice water is in a way killing ourselves. I guess the question is pretty simple, it shows a tendency of someone towards inflicting pain but not necessarily towards sadism, because every answer may be perceived in a different way depending on the situation we imagine.

A better question question would be:

you see a black widow or a poisonous insect or animal, how would you deal with it?

a) kill it
b) call someone to kill it
c) take it out to the garden
d) ignore it and endure the pain if biten

Yeah, sure! This was before i even read the article and note i just considered the ice option because i already choose the toilet cleaning one!

As for your question, my choice will be to take it out to the garden. Though I have in various occasions killed such bugs, but I never felt right about this.

P.S: BTW, I was dumb on my bed waiting to sleep when I wrote the post you quoited above, resulting in double words usage, part of phrase written on wrong places, "overpunctuations", etc. Intended to correct, but there was nowhere to see the edit button.

 

[Laura]

Amazing how much our experiences influence how we respond to a fairly simple question. I guess that some people have encountered really nasty toilets and others have a long history with really nasty bugs and whatever mental image is triggered by the question sort of influences the initial choice. Then, of course, after the fact justification narratives get created.

For me, "cleaning toilets" is rather civilized: not too nasty, toilet cleaner, brush, flush, presto and its done. Opposing that to killing bugs is a no-brainer since I frequently rescue certain bugs and release them outside. I expect that if the toilets were really super nasty, I'd go for the cold water shower.

Some people appear to have some pretty traumatic images in their heads about bugs and that can condition their response to some extent.

The most interesting responses are, of course, Luke Wilson's and wmu9's. Not only do they want to kill bugs, they want to make it the RIGHT choice, the moral choice which requires that they make the choice to not kill bugs, to prefer to clean toilets, wrong and bad and they've put some energy into this narrative.

Personally, I don't think the experiment is all that good of a way to weed out sadists from the population because of the focus on bugs which are generally pests to about everyone so certainly, many people are going to think "kill bugs? yes!" without further ado and without having sadistic tendencies. When they learn from the article HOW the bugs will be killed, they are turned off and change their minds. Normal, I think; especially if you have "bug trauma".

In the context of "The Work" and people who are studying awareness and so forth, it is interesting in other ways: who overthinks, who can switch into "beginner's mind", whose fundamental instincts are for service to others, whose System 2 goes into overdrive to narrate a choice? etc. For most, it seems to have been a useful question just for initiating some thinking and self-examination.

 

[Sol Logos]

Amazing how much our experiences influence how we respond to a fairly simple question. I guess that some people have encountered really nasty toilets and others have a long history with really nasty bugs and whatever mental image is triggered by the question sort of influences the initial choice. Then, of course, after the fact justification narratives get created.

For me, "cleaning toilets" is rather civilized: not too nasty, toilet cleaner, brush, flush, presto and its done. Opposing that to killing bugs is a no-brainer since I frequently rescue certain bugs and release them outside. I expect that if the toilets were really super nasty, I'd go for the cold water shower.

Some people appear to have some pretty traumatic images in their heads about bugs and that can condition their response to some extent.

The most interesting responses are, of course, Luke Wilson's and wmu9's. Not only do they want to kill bugs, they want to make it the RIGHT choice, the moral choice which requires that they make the choice to not kill bugs, to prefer to clean toilets, wrong and bad and they've put some energy into this narrative.

Personally, I don't think the experiment is all that good of a way to weed out sadists from the population because of the focus on bugs which are generally pests to about everyone so certainly, many people are going to think "kill bugs? yes!" without further ado and without having sadistic tendencies. When they learn from the article HOW the bugs will be killed, they are turned off and change their minds. Normal, I think; especially if you have "bug trauma".

In the context of "The Work" and people who are studying awareness and so forth, it is interesting in other ways: who overthinks, who can switch into "beginner's mind", whose fundamental instincts are for service to others, whose System 2 goes into overdrive to narrate a choice? etc. For most, it seems to have been a useful question just for initiating some thinking and self-examination.

Its interesting reflecting on it, for whatever reason I decided to narrate the choices above as if to justify it too. I reckon some of that stems from my Dad's extermination approach to "pests". It was traumatic for me as a child in one example seeing my father putting a pressured hose on cats and kittens I grew fond of previously living under our house (to scare them away). Then watching my older brother throw this one kitten in the air over and over again, badly hurting it.

I always in a sense had to justify my tendency to not want my dad to just kill any household pests without even trying other methods. Instinctively I never liked seeing any life form suffer, it was probably one of the many reasons I was labelled "too sensitive" by my family as a child. There's likely a fair bit more in this to reflect on for me.

From some respects senseless animal cruelty a few kids manifest (ie ripping wings off flies, I remember kids doing at school), would indicate a certain predisposition, if we'd be able to take in cultural / environment factors into the equations.

 

[luke wilson]

Should someone whose first instinct was to kill a bug (before they knew how or before they changed to "none of the above" which was not an option) be worried? Furthermore, what should they be worried about? After all it is taking another life and am sure there is a cost to it. I am asking for those with vision to reveal what they see as I am blind in this situation.

I guess I put so much energy into my subsequent responses because this experiment had somehow turned killing a bug into a 'sadistic' act - BEFORE I knew how the bugs would die. It was a trick! Everyone choosing "cleaning toilets" made me feel like, "What is this? what a bunch of angels, endure the murk and grossness of it all as it is 'making the world a better' place". Pffft, I call foul play. What can I say, it 'irked' me.

Doesn't help that apparently the other test revealed me to be high mach as well... God! What does that even mean? Could explain the first instinct of killing a bug rather than taking a cold shower (pain), cleaning the toilets(grossness as they would no doubt make the toilet as filthy as possible) or helping someone else kill a bug (weird).

 

[Carl]

Should someone whose first instinct was to kill a bug (before they knew how or before they changed to "none of the above" which was not an option) be worried? Furthermore, what should they be worried about? After all it is taking another life and am sure there is a cost to it. I am asking for those with vision to reveal what they see as I am blind in this situation.

I guess I put so much energy into my subsequent responses because this experiment had somehow turned killing a bug into a 'sadistic' act - BEFORE I knew how the bugs would die. It was a trick! Everyone choosing "cleaning toilets" made me feel like, "What is this? what a bunch of angels, endure the murk and grossness of it all as it is 'making the world a better' place". Pffft, I call foul play. What can I say, it 'irked' me.

Doesn't help that apparently the other test revealed me to be high mach as well... God! What does that even mean? Could explain the first instinct of killing a bug rather than taking a cold shower (pain), cleaning the toilets(grossness as they would no doubt make the toilet as filthy as possible) or helping someone else kill a bug (weird).

Well for what it's worth, I've been here too.

Maybe when we have so much pathological programming, it's hard to accept the idea that someone else genuinely wants to make the world a better place without special self interest? And because deep down we recognise the pathology we've picked up, and wish we could be like that, but don't see ourselves as worthy because we consider pathology to be part of who we are? Facing things about ourselves isn't easy, so it looks like you quickly constructed a buffer to deal with that.

 

[3DStudent]

I answered the question, but never posted a result. I thought about the options for a minute and chose putting my hand in ice water. It's not surprising, seeing that I am my own worst enemy at times, and man loves his suffering.

After reading the replies, it seemed like the toilet cleaning was the "right" choice. And I was kind of disappointed about that, but then again, refer back to my first paragraph. Anyways, it was an interesting way to look at one's self.

 

[Tripitaka]

Clean toilets. Easy one this. I cannot even swat mosquitos of which I struggle to have anny love for.

I am interested though to know what people with empathy with violent, angry behaviour but with no known personality disorder in their make up would say in this? Would it depend on their mood at the given moment? If they were pissed off would they go for kill, kill, kkill straight away, or if in happy mood would they opt for lesser ie; cleaning toilets?

I am just curious as people can act totally different from their usual characters dependant soley on the mood of the moment.
So effectivley if everyyone on here were in an angry, dark mood would they still say the same thing? I do feel that I would. But maybe I will waity until i am angry about something and ask myself the same question.

I will come back with the answer! Hahaha

Regards

Tripitaka

:D