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1. 00:02 At the very beginning of the human species, people moved in tiny groups, maybe eight, maybe 10 people. They were hunter gatherers. They comprised usually a family unit or a clanish unit. Bigger groups were unheard of. And when groups came across each other,
2. 00:30 conflict usually erupted over territory and hunting rights. And so empathy the way we understand it today was not very useful at that time because people didn't come across many other people. They did not come across strangers. They knew each other well.
3. 00:58 They became one a single organism part of which hunted the other part gathered and reared children. People didn't need to empathize with each other because the level of familiarity was so deep, so profound that one knew others in the group as one knew oneself.
4. 01:26 And yet empathy did emerge during the hunter gatherer phase of humanity. Empathy for the prey. Empathy for the animals being hunted. And this is the topic of today's video. The predatory roots of empathy.
5. 01:51 My name is Samakin. I am the author of malignant self- loveve narcissism revisited and I'm a professor of psychology before we start before we go there I would like to read to you something Camila posted a comment on YouTube one of the videos and here is what she had to say
6. 02:12 hi Sam because you are speaking of the many metaphors and analogies you have developed to communicate the complex and mystifying world of the narcissist I wanted to share with you one of my own. I conceptualized the narcissist as a wonderfully talented ice sculpturist
7. 02:31 sculptor who keeps within the walking freezer of his mind a fantastic ice sculpture. His highest accomplishment, his grandio false self-concept. The key to keeping the ice sculpture in its perfectly preserved condition is of course the Freon, which for the
8. 02:53 narcissist is his narcissistic supply. And because the artist loves his creation and depends on it to garner the admiration and affection of his adoring fans, the artist's main occupation in life is guarding, monitoring, and obtaining a never- ending supply of freon.
9. 03:14 And if the freon runs low, a frantic search for a new source of freon becomes the main preoccupation of the artist. And if the freon does run low and the sculpture is ruined, this is narcissistic motification. I can and do go further in my own mind
10. 03:34 with this analogy. It suits it suits the way I conceive of the narcissist. But you get the gist. Yes, I do. Thank you for this vivid imagery of the inner recesses of the narcissist's mind. And so I mentioned that early hunter gatherers moved in tiny
11. 03:58 groups. These were basically the equivalent of extended or extended nuclear families. Everyone knew everyone profoundly. Everyone shares shared everyone's life. If it was a single organism with multiple extensions, there was no real need for empathy. Empathy is about
12. 04:17 decoding the mind of the other, mainly strangers. And so people did empathize, but they empathize mostly with prey, with the animals they were hunting. Now, of course, there was empathy between the members of the group, the members of the ingroup, the members of
13. 04:41 the hunter gatherer extended extended clan. Of course, there was empathy. I'm not I'm not denying this. And of course, we do empathize with pe with meaningful significant people in our lives, people we love, even people we hate. But at that period, after a certain point in time,
14. 05:03 empathy was replaced with familiarity, the ability to predict another person's thoughts, emotions, and resultant behavior. And so empathy, the resources of empathy were dedicated to deciphering the animal, to putting yourself within the animal's
15. 05:25 skin and fur in order to anticipate the next moves of the animal. Any hunter to this very day, any hunter would tell you that there is a process of empathizing with the animal being hunted. There is a process of becoming one with that animal. There's a pro process of
16. 05:44 putting yourself as a as a hunter in the hoofs or the claws of the animal so that you can predict the future behavior of the animal and be there waiting for it to appear and to be hunted down. So people were empathizing with a prey. People were predators during the hunter
17. 06:07 gatherer phase of humanity. All people were predators. And this process of empathizing with the prey in a collective collective empathizing allowed for coordination and for inroup bonding. I claim that empathy emerged during hunting. Empathy is a hunting artifact.
18. 06:31 People were people empathized with the animal and because everyone in the hunting in the hunting posy or the hunting group everyone empathized with the animal simult simultaneously and similarly if not identically this created a common denominator between people and allowed
19. 06:51 them to coalesce and to cohhere into groups. The hunting for became the hunting collective. The hunting collective gave rise to a collective hive mind which is a prerequisite for the what we call the interubjective space a prerequisite for empathy.
20. 07:14 I'm mentioning all this that empathy emerged from hunting which is a distinctly non-empathic or disempathic activity and that empathy was focused on the prey rather than on other people because that's precisely what what is happening with narcissists and
21. 07:30 psychopaths. Before we proceed, allow me to read to you a paragraph from Andrew Mars, A History of the World. An amazing book, by the way. There's a There's um aonomous BBC series titled the history of the world with Andrew Mah. Anyhow, he say he says in the book that um hunters
22. 08:01 merged fused mentally with the animal they were hunt with the animals they were hunting. Let me read it to you. Andrew Mar says we also know that later agricultural societies worship deities associated with their survival gods for rain, water, sun, corn.
23. 08:24 So it seems likely that hunter gatherer societies give us gave a spe special place to the aspects of nature they relied on most heavily, the animals they killed and the animals they used. Today's hunter gatherers tend to show reverence for and close observatory
24. 08:48 interest in the birds and animals they live off. African hunters are known to mimic animals they intend to pursue to try to get inside their thinking. Surely the cave paintings of uh various animals have a similar origin. So this is what Andrew Mar has to say
25. 09:11 based on multiple studies that he cites in his book that there was some mimicry involved. The hunter became the animal at least for a while. In order to enter, gain access to the animal's mind. The hunter became the animal. The hunter the hunter transformed himself into the
26. 09:35 animal he was hunting. It's the ultimate form, the most unadulterated form of empathy. Narcissists and psychopaths do exactly the same. They regard other people as prey the way the hunter regards his quarry, the animals he's hunting. Especially psychopaths, but definitely
27. 09:59 also narcissists regard other people as tools, extensions, instruments to be used and they hunt these people. Hunting is a crucial feature of pathological narcissism and psychopathy. And in the process of hunting, the narcissist and the psychopath deploy a
28. 10:21 skill, if you wish, the skill of cold empathy. Cold like cold empathy is a phrase I coined to describe the amalgamation of reflexive and cognitive empathy, but with the absence of an effective component. There are no emotions involved. When the
29. 10:40 psychopath and the narcissist empathize with other people, they resonate with them. They decode and decipher them and understand them and comprehend them and gro them fully. They put themselves inside the skins and shoes of other people to perfection even
30. 10:58 more than healthy and normal people. And yet none of this produces in the narcissist or in the psychopath an emotional resonance, a reaction that the the there is no emotional identification with the other person. Cold empathy is therefore indeed cold
31. 11:21 and people are perceived as I said as a kind of prey. Whereas a narcissist and psychopath are instinctively or reflexively predatory. How does the narcissist, how does the psychopath, how do they succeed to empathize with people? How does the hunter succeed to empathize
32. 11:43 to empathize with his quarry, his prey, the animal he's hunting? There are vast differences between the hunter and the animal. There's an enormous gap or abyss between the narcissist and psychopath and healthy normal people whom they they're hunting.
33. 12:06 The narcissist prey the psychopath's victim target or mark. They're usually very very different psychologically and psychonamically from to the narcissist than the psychopath. They're like two different species. How is empathy possible at all even
34. 12:23 called empathy in the hunting process whe whether you're hunting an animal or whether you're hunting a human being how in principle is such empathy possible there are four pillars four foundations that allow such empathy to emerge number one a common background in classic hunting
35. 12:48 both the human hunter and the animal being hunted share many things. They share the the the feeling or the emotion of fear. They share the same physical environment. They come to mimic each other. Especially the hunter mimics the animal. So there's a
36. 13:12 lot in common. Similarly, narcissists and psychopaths, especially narcissists, have a lot in common with their victims. They usually have a common background of, for example, a dysfunctional family or adverse childhood experiences or trauma and abuse in early childhood.
37. 13:33 Both the victims of narcissists and narcissists come from relatively similar or even identical familial backgrounds. And so they know each other intimately. The intimacy between the hunter and the animal, the intimacy between the narcissist and his victim, the intimacy
38. 13:53 between the psychopath and his mark, intimacy between predator and prey, the intimacy between the serial killer and his victims. This type of intimacy is the most extreme, the most intense, the most profound, the most allervasive. Nothing comes close to it and it is
39. 14:14 founded on these commonalities. These commonalities of background of environment and of effect. Number two, we're now talking about the psychological processes and constructs that give rise to cold empathy. Despite the differences between hunter and
40. 14:38 hunted, there are commonalities that give rise or foundations that give rise to the possibility of empathy between them. However limited, however non-effective, non-emotional. So the second um pillar is nuanced hypervigilance. the hunter, the psychopath, the
41. 14:58 narcissist, they are attuned to the slightest subtleties, the most flattering nuances in body language, facial expressions, in micro expressions, in language. They are attuned. The attunement is enormous. It borders on hyper vigilance. the narcissist and the psychopath and
42. 15:23 the hunter. They scan they scan the prey. They scan scan the hunted animal. They scan the quarry. They scan the mark of the target or the victim. And the scanning is super detailed, extremely penetrating. It is ubiquitous, covers everything,
43. 15:47 all-encompassing, all engulfing. And the attention paid is not is is inordinate is extreme attentional focus in the screening process. That's why victims describe a feeling of laser like a laser gaze or a laser look that kind of paralyzes them the way animals would be paralyzed in
44. 16:13 the headlights confronted with headlights of an oncoming car. So this attentional focus coupled with the nuanced hypervigilance leads to the mapping of the victim, the creation of a representation of the victim that captures all the vulnerabilities, all the weaknesses, all
45. 16:34 the the access points, all the penetration vectors, everything which lends itself to the capt capturing ing of the victim, acquisition of the victim and leveraging or using the victim, abusing the victim. And finally, the victim and the h and the hunter,
46. 17:00 victim, the prey and the h, the predator, the victim and the narcissist, the victim and the psychopath, they share a kind of fantasy. The fantasy could be shared or the fantasy could be merely affected. For example, when the psychopath presents to the vict to his
47. 17:18 mark or to his target a fantasy, the psychopath is fully aware that it's a fantasy. The psychopath's reality testing is intact. The psychopath knows the difference between reality and fantasy. But the psychopath is emotionally invested in the fantasy
48. 17:37 because he regards the fantasy as the vehicle through which he is going to accomplish his goals. So whether the fantasy is shared with the victim or whether the fantasy is imbued with extremely intense emotions and cravings and even aggression, the
49. 17:55 fantasy is always there. Even between the hunter and the animal there is an interplay a delicate interplay which is narrative in nature which is essentially a kind of fantasy. And if you want to get deeper to delve deeper into this I would advise you to
50. 18:14 read the book Mobidik which is essentially the chronicle and the the intimate profiling of a hunting hunting expedition for a huge whale. So the hunter and the animal they bond. There's a type of bonding, a type of attachment which which is narrative
51. 18:36 bonding. Narrative attachment. It's it's about a story. There's a story unfolding. Everyone has a role in this story. It's the same with the narcissist and his uh intimate partner. the narcissist and his source of supply, a psychopath and his victim or mark or target. In all this
52. 18:57 situation, everyone is embedded in to some extent rayifies and an fantastic space within which a narrative, a fictional narrative in many ways unfolds. There is intimacy between the hunter and the animal. There's a kind of attachment. There's a kind of bonding.
53. 19:23 They there's binding. They're bound together. And they develop this intimate relationship where the animal becomes the reason for the hunter's existence. The animal represents the hunter's life whereas the hunter represents the animals death. life and death the most
54. 19:51 profound foundations and pillars of existence the forces that drive the universe not only according to Freud. So this is the role play if you wish which underlies the whole thing. But empathy is clearly associated with a hunting process. Clearly clearly
55. 20:15 emerges from the predator prey interaction interactive space and as such empathy has predatory aspects. For example, even in classical warm, healthy, normal empathy between two people, there there is a kind of appropriation of the other person, kind of annexation
56. 20:45 of the other person, kind of digestion of the other person. Empathy always takes over the other person. When you empathize with someone, you are subsuming them. You are swallowing them. You're digesting them. You're experiencing them through your own mind
57. 21:05 and in this way you are denying them a separate existence. And this I think is an excellent encapsulation and description of what hunting is all about.