And Spice

There's an old home movie of a very unempathic person I know. In it, she's only about four. She's got bangs and dimples, riding a tricycle in what I would call rather agressive circles. And something else. There's this glint in her eye, this look of -- what? It's definitely adult-like, knowing, too grown-up. It appears as though she may be plotting the overthrow of -- whom? Her family, her town, our world? It's really a very scary look, especially if you know how she turned out. She is not an axe murderer, I am happy to report. But you would not be better off knowing her, and if you were a sensitive person or dependent on her in any way, you might be much worse.

So is it nature or nurture? I don't know, but I have my suspicions. I think she was this way from the start; her environment just let it blossom. I'm fairly sure nobody in her family ever told her to "be nice." Just wasn't in them, not people oriented to the internal life of children at all. I bet as long as she did fine in school and didn't physically attack anyone, as long as she didn't overtly SHAME them (she didn't), she was left, as were her siblings, to say and do what they wanted to each other and other kids. But the meanness, the total lack of empathy, it was there. In her. Deeply. And by that I mean in her genes, hormones, brain structure, whatever. And how-oh-how can we dislodge this from people such as this?

Which brings me to Jane Brody's recent New York Times piece, in which we learn that her grandson is a nice little boy and that to foster empathy we need to explain to children, explicitly, how their bad behavior impacts others and makes life less fun for them.

Hey, I'm all for trying.