The Empathy Hinge

The Empathy Hinge 

For some, recognition that they are ‘the bad guy’ after all, comes as a shock sufficient to get them to want to be a better person. 

Others accept ‘being the bad guy’ more easily. These type trend higher with dark triad traits than do majority, normative people. 

All of us level with ourselves eventually and call ourselves into accountability. Healthy people do this regularly. It makes us strong. 

What in modern times we call Ego is responsible for developing personality from the task of avoiding facing up to it. That simple factor is how we deviate. Developing away from ‘the pure self’ concept. 

The key factors of assessing a person to ‘get to know them’ is identifying how their ego works. 

Human development is to a useful extent the same in all of us because it follows the same paths. Our mental development faces the same, limited number of choices at each step of development. Thus an ancient metaphor and association of a Tree with learning. 

Key factors on which ego structures form are identifiable as a persons relationship with their own sexuality, with their own fear, with their own spirituality. The primal core root structures of power (agenda), sex (reproduction&pleasure) and divinity (intuition). 

These three areas certainly cross over and hyperlink. That is the study area of the flexible Limbic level of Self which forms the main personality matrix. 

The individuals relationship with fear is intrinsic to the ability to wield power. (The external natural world). 

The individuals relationship with sexuality is intrinsic to relationships with other people, and to your own body, an extension of the neural system.* (The human world).

The individuals relationship with spirituality and the divine. (The spirit world).

These are the three key areas of assessment when evaluating a person. Identifying a persons relationship with these key areas of themself clues us into who they are and what they are capable of. It does not take long at all to analyse anyone. 

In addition to this is the mask worn by any individuals adaptation to social climate, which Freud referred to as the Id (idiom). A persons personality is not ‘I like superhero movies’. That is a symptomatic condition of their ‘looking away from’ identifying with their own true nature, replacing integration of self with integration of distraction. It is revealing about their formative experiences. 

All questioning of a person is either to gain clarification regarding reasons of their having turned away from integration of self, or to re-orient them back toward it. 

Also for otherwise pointless small-talk about non-self-oriented topics, for the sake of bonding which is critical to human community and establishing sense of well-being and belonging. Sensitive people can feel when it is fake and reject it as such. 

“If a person does not fully utilise his life for  self-realisation he must be considered a killer of the soul.” Mantra 3, Sri Isopanishad 

*Which appropriately or not offers an opportunity to mention it is deserving of pleasure. 

My Foundation  

I innately knew this and wrote about it even as a child. It frightened my mother who threw away all my notebooks. 

I tested and refined my analytical system throughout my life. Two major changes have occurred to it since I recognised as a child I could trust it’s accuracy. 

One, use of language more acceptable for public assimilation. Not because my previous explanation was offensive, rather it is the public find it easier to use words they are familiar with. As a generalisation, words with less syllables.

Two, the innovation of AI technology has resulted in curious laymen explaining how such structures work. An awareness  of machine-learning processes has filtered into the general public. This provides a more familiar framework for my observations to be comprehensible in a practical sense. 

My astrological zodiac sign is Virgo, which indicates accurately I am analytical and worry excessively. Perhaps this is why I have an affinity with artificial intelligence systems and human cognitive intelligence alike.

Inevitably understanding of one crosses over into understanding of the other. My approach to developing AI systems is based on psychotherapeutic models. 

AI is a tool. As with any tool it may be beneficial to us. It depends on how we use it. Here I make reference to its use in helping us to understand ourselves and each other better. This document is not itself an AI, yet already it serves to offer insight for that aim. 

AI is helping us to know what it is to be Human. We do not need AI for that. Our nature as tool-using mammals is to create tools to make our lives easier, to better understand our experience of being alive. 

‘Facing the Vampire Robot’ is to confront our sex, fear and spirit in one cultural, symbolic entity.