This will be an online Zoom meeting. Please RSVP on our Meetup for this event to get access to the Zoom link. See our online meeting instructions at: https://torontooasis.org/online-meeting-instructions
Our program will run from 11 am to 12:30 pm. You can join the meeting starting at 10:30 am for our open social. After 12:30 pm, we will also have an extended discussion for half an hour, until 1:00 pm.
How can liberals understand human evil? Most of us have a positive view of human nature. Few of us have brushed up against a serial killer. However, we all encounter, and some of us work with, people who consistently leave turmoil and destruction in their wake. Interpreting such people has long been the province of moral theology but recently empirical psychology has made some progress in understanding destructive people in terms of what is now known as the Dark Triad of psychopathy, narcissism and Machiavellianism.
Psychopathy is technically an indifference to human suffering, especially a lack of concern (or remorse) for how one’s own actions affect others. Narcissism is an inflated sense of the esteem and deference that others owe to oneself. Machiavellianism is cunning manipulation of other people’s perceptions and emotions in order to advance one’s own agenda.
This talk will outline current thinking in personality psychology about these three traits, and how to deal with them. They all range over a spectrum, and most of us exhibit some of these traits from time to time. Current estimates are that somewhere over 5% of people are consistently high enough in one or more of these traits to cause serious trouble for their friends, co-workers and family.
Our featured speaker on this topic will be Dr. Mark Reimers, a quantitative neuroscientist at Michigan State University working to elucidate how dynamic brain activities give rise to mental functions and moods. Dr. Reimers has worked at the US National Institutes of Health, the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, and at the Virginia Institute for Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetics.
We will also be featuring some live music! Our guest musician will be cellist George Crotty: https://www.georgecrotty.com/
Please RSVP on Meetup to get access to the Zoom link:
https://www.meetup.com/toronto-oasis/events/299869960/
Looking forward to seeing familiar faces and perhaps some new ones!
This meeting and the guest musician have been recorded: GMT20240407-152235_Recording_1920x1080.mp4