What is the difference between a buddhist-like state of calm awareness of suffering and tragedy and a psychopathic mind-set?

When a person is capable of obersving their emotions from a step backwards and deciding how to act based upon said emotions then are they not as "conscience-free" as a psychopath?

Is this the dilemma that the existentialist faces? The awareness that the "self" is not the same as emotion and so choice made by the "self" is always ultimately free.

Attachment. Supposedly, the advanced Buddhist meditator/monk/practitioner is detached from results/desires because she is detached from ego. The theoretical psychopath wants what he wants. He is attached to his own desire. He may not be emotional or empathetic to others, but he can get pretty worked up if he is blocked from getting what he wants.



There is a difference between choosing a detached way of being versus being born that way. A conscience bound person, even a Dalai Lama type, is still more likely to behave in ways that are considered moral after years of meditation and practice. Conscience is probably too deeply rooted to be done away with completely. You also mention that your hypothetical person makes decisions based on emotion rather than being a slave to emotion like most people. The psychopath, on the other hand, never had access to those emotions to act on or deny to begin with.



It can only be a dilemma if you think that being a normal person, the kind that are deeply attached to their emotions, is something to be valued. The fear is, if you somehow get past that, then you will be no different than a psychopath. (THE HORROR!) But you would be different, so there is nothing to fear. You may get to a place where you see beyond the futility of common morality, but that doesn’t mean that you start to live in a completely immoral way. It simply means that your sense of morality will be more subtle, refined and autonomously generated than most. It also means that you will never be able to return to the herd. You would be on the outside of all that. For good.

Well having an objective/logical view of things is a sign of maturity. It seems far too often that people allow their amygdala to misguide them into rash behaviors. By not controling these emotions... they allow emotions to control them.

So if we all have our vices.. than everyone has different personality issues they need to control. Perhaps desires of the amygdala vary from person to person. Creating such desires as womanizing and cleptomania.

I've not noticed such personality disorders in psychopath. I believe a lot that is said is also misinterputed.

So maturity could be the control of such emotional desires or "temptations of the flesh". Perhaps the say that if your hands make you steal... chop them off... actually meant... if you have a tendancy to steal "clepto" then... cut your hands off. For it better to lose a part of the temple rather than the whole thing being destroyed as that one part of the temple brought down the rest.

So for most the message would be "cast out bad behaviors" and for a clepto it would be "cut your hands off" and for a petiphile it would be... "kill yourself".

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