This is of course true. If I were living a life like those you describe here I would be exactly the same, and it is not psychopathic. But we are discussing the modern, post-industrial age, where some people seem to believe that chicken grows pre-wrapped. This dodges the point. The 'distance' in our age from the consequences of our actions is used to justify choices that would never be made if direct contact with our natural resources was present. This 'distancing' is in itself quite comparable to the 'empathic' distancing of the psychopathic mind, and the consequences are identical. This is not about 'first instincts', it is about ethics, and your point strikes me as unintended sophistry. If you need to exploit sentient life to live, you must do it - there is no choice involved in that basic fact, and so ethics doesn't come into it. The moment you have choices (like in our actual lives here in the developed world), you have ethics, and ethics are driven by empathy. Db
RE: UK Gov. Operated By Psychopaths: Effectively Declares Animal Emotion, Sentience & Pain is Irrelevant