This is a picture of Ronald Lee Haskell. He is a big, tough looking guy, with a nasty temper. Ask people who knew him, and they would offer up images of him as a strong and dangerous opponent to face. One Achilles heel they would miss is a defective amygdala.
His defective amygdala makes him weak in a few ways. One, his behavior is controllable. He has a rage button, and just as the weak and diminutive Gary Busey could control the stronger and more technically intelligent Meatloaf (even defeating him in the Apprentice), you could control this character, from his thoughts to his behaviors, if you could understand how to focus his amygdala on some things, unfocus him on others, motivate him with angst, and slap him with aversive stimulus. As long as you always occupied the high ground of violence, thereby preventing him from using it against you, you could contain his amygdala and destroy him in ways unimaginably painful to us.
His second main weakness is that his amygdala cannot map out consequences, probably a quality which contributes to his amygdala’s sense of anger and frustration. The hardware is not there to do the mapping. In his case, he became so filled with rage at his ex that he decided to kill her, so she would no longer exist to stimulate his amygdala. He drove to Texas, killed almost all of his ex’s sister’s family in an attempt to locate her, and he did so without realizing how negatively this would affect his own life later on. He could kill a family, execution style, and have no idea that such an act could be bad for him at some later date.
For him, all there is, is the present moment, and the whims that arise in it. You can see the similarity to leftism. The difference is leftists have more fear, and less ability to do harm, so they usually restrain themselves from this magnitude of horror. But give them power, and the most ardent leftists would surprise you with how similarly they would think and act.
Which brings us to his third weakness. He cannot tolerate stress or negativity.
Here he is in court, as his amygdala overloads, and as it shuts down his brain, causing it to lose control over his body. This is a technical, mechanical failure of the neurological structures, just like an engine which seizes up due to no oil, or a computer which locks up due to a bug in its software. He contemplates how bad his situation is, his amygdala literally wracks his brain looking for an action which will relieve the negativity, it finds none, bangs him with even more aversive stimulus, wracks his brain again even harder, he still sees no resolution, and the cycle continues until his amygdala overloads, his entire brain shuts off, and he finds he can’t even stand up, because his brain can’t send the proper signals to his muscles.
Here he is sitting down in the immediate aftermath of the amygdala hijack. This is among the best pictures I have seen of a post-amygdala-hijack facial expression. Does he still seem as formidable? Notice the open mouth. That is a man who has been totally exhausted absent any physical activity, and who needs more oxygen than he is getting if he is to sustain his physical operations. You are looking at a man who is so oxygen deprived, solely due to neurological activation, that his brain reached the same point as a muscle that could not move another inch due to exhaustion. That is the end effect of a good amygdala hijack.
It is tempting to think that his fainting is an act, in search of sympathy. But I’ve seen this first hand, and as you can see in the picture, that guy isn’t thinking about anything but himself in that moment. In a case of this that I saw firsthand, the narcissist I knew would have been seriously injured, had I not quickly grabbed the back of his shirt, and lifted straight up to keep him from hitting the floor. This is a physical failure of mechanical structures in the neurological system, that occurs oblivious to all around, and it doesn’t just affect motor function. Immune function is affected too, gastrointestinal immune function especially. I have no doubt that Haskell was physically ill for a day or two afterward. (I wrote this prior to Vox’s post on Dunham growing ill – it is common to the type, so I expect it in these cases.)
This is different from us. I suspect that had I been framed impeccably for that same crime, been in that courtroom, seen the inevitability of my conviction and execution, and realized I had no way out, I would not have seen my amygdala shut down my brain like that. I’d have been extraordinarily pissed. I’d have resolved to seize any opportunity to escape and take revenge on my framer, but I would not have shut down like that. The idea of losing the ability to stand due to circumstances is beyond my ability to imagine. Even had I had a seizure and done the crime, I would have been able to take my punishment without losing consciousness.
For all their posturing, this enemy is weak. They are not designed for open competition, or the reality which produces it. In a world filled with governing structures designed to shield them from the consequences of their actions, they can hold up alright. But as those structures fail, they will find themselves increasingly like the character in that video. Faced with reality, they quickly reveal that they are just not designed for it.
They are weak but they are many.