Hypothesis: to enable malice in the quantities where it does “raise status or improve the odds of reproductive success”, evolution made it a psychologically rewarding behavior (as well as plugging into socially rewarding circuits when it succeeds at raising status). And reward in the brain is implemented such that any rewarding behavior has a danger of self-reinforcing into an addiction.
Do we see more malice than this generic explanation can explain?
As for self-hatred, I don’t get the sense that it’s the same experience or drive as malice. Of course they could still reinforce one another due to overlapping brain signalling, etc. How do you see them relating to one another?
At least in my case, I found that I was repeating the spontaneous self-hating thoughts back to myself and making them louder. Once I realized that a piece of the process was under my control, I was able pretty much stop doing that part of it, and it’s helped with making the spontaneous self-hating thoughts less frequent and intense.
However, why was I amplifying the self-hatred in the first place? I’m not sure. Some of it may be a hunt for intensity, but that doesn’t seem like the whole answer.
(I’m playing the devil’s advocate here, trying to answer everything with generic answers and seeing if they’re sufficiently powerful.)
Perhaps for the same reason you can get a tune stuck in your head, repeating and reinforcing itself. (For many people, including myself, the affect of “thinking a thought” is auditory—I hear myself say the thoughts I think.) Many kinds of thoughts, mental “tics”, etc. may have this repetitive self-reinforcing pattern—not just self-hating ones. We may be seeing a natural selection effect where the most self-reinforcing thoughts last the longest—all due simply to the fact that thoughts can be self-reinforcing.
How are thoughts self-reinforcing? Thinking them (which we may process similarly to hearing someone else say them) creates emotions, and in some cases these emotions increase the chance of similar thoughts recurring, creating a positive feedback loop. For example, being praised or thinking self-praising thoughts makes you happier, while thinking self-hating (or other-hating) thoughts makes you sadder or angrier (with yourself).
This might be a contributing element in self-reinforcing feelings of malice, but I would expect that if you actually act on those feelings of malice (towards someone else), the results of the actual acts would swamp any such effects.
Hypothesis: to enable malice in the quantities where it does “raise status or improve the odds of reproductive success”, evolution made it a psychologically rewarding behavior (as well as plugging into socially rewarding circuits when it succeeds at raising status). And reward in the brain is implemented such that any rewarding behavior has a danger of self-reinforcing into an addiction.
Do we see more malice than this generic explanation can explain?
As for self-hatred, I don’t get the sense that it’s the same experience or drive as malice. Of course they could still reinforce one another due to overlapping brain signalling, etc. How do you see them relating to one another?
At least in my case, I found that I was repeating the spontaneous self-hating thoughts back to myself and making them louder. Once I realized that a piece of the process was under my control, I was able pretty much stop doing that part of it, and it’s helped with making the spontaneous self-hating thoughts less frequent and intense.
However, why was I amplifying the self-hatred in the first place? I’m not sure. Some of it may be a hunt for intensity, but that doesn’t seem like the whole answer.
(I’m playing the devil’s advocate here, trying to answer everything with generic answers and seeing if they’re sufficiently powerful.)
Perhaps for the same reason you can get a tune stuck in your head, repeating and reinforcing itself. (For many people, including myself, the affect of “thinking a thought” is auditory—I hear myself say the thoughts I think.) Many kinds of thoughts, mental “tics”, etc. may have this repetitive self-reinforcing pattern—not just self-hating ones. We may be seeing a natural selection effect where the most self-reinforcing thoughts last the longest—all due simply to the fact that thoughts can be self-reinforcing.
How are thoughts self-reinforcing? Thinking them (which we may process similarly to hearing someone else say them) creates emotions, and in some cases these emotions increase the chance of similar thoughts recurring, creating a positive feedback loop. For example, being praised or thinking self-praising thoughts makes you happier, while thinking self-hating (or other-hating) thoughts makes you sadder or angrier (with yourself).
This might be a contributing element in self-reinforcing feelings of malice, but I would expect that if you actually act on those feelings of malice (towards someone else), the results of the actual acts would swamp any such effects.
Does this sound possible?
I don’t think I’m apt to amplify other sorts of thoughts, though I may repeat them.