Lack of empathy is 50%. In fact, it's the textbook definition of sociopath. It takes a numb person to shoot up a school full of kids, or a movie theater, or to pour a bucket of **** and piss onto the head of another.
Yes, your autistic son lacks outward signs of empathy. It's why he's likely anti social. But that doesn't mean he's a future serial killer.
The desire to dominate is the other half, the id. But the id is, for most of us, balanced out, kept in check, if you will, by our empathy, and our ego. We don't act out on our aggressive impulses because because we can empathize; gunnery sgt hartman said it best in Full Metal Jacket. "It is a hard HEART that kills!" That was the entire point of boot camp. To break a person down, destroy their ego, bring them closer to a more basic, and less human, being. Someone who listens less to their empathy, and focuses more fully on "objective completion". Why? Because war is in many ways an inhuman act. As we have progressed sociologically, civilization has placed more tenants upon us. Though shalt not kill. Killing others was a simple fact of life in pre civilization. We have a lot of evidence backing that up. But we have suppressed those basic instincts with indoctrination, a necessary step to have ever larger societies.
And yet, lately, in the last 10 years or so, I'm seeing a shift, at least as far as younger people go. Once upon a time, there was 2, maybe three school bullies. And they were bad. They were physical. Now? Well, now, it seems, almost everyone bullies someone else, when given the oportunity. Sure, not by pushing or slapping someone, or by throwing dirt at their face, etc. It's gone online, and it's verbal, now. It's common to see one person bullied by HUNDREDS now, online. And sure, it's easy for us to say, no problem, just unplug. But it's not that easy, is it? Facebook, twitter, and whatever else is out there...these are the means by which these kids interact with their peers. The advice of "unplugging" to escape bullying is no better than telling your child not to go to school for fear of bullies, or to sit by themselves in the cafeteria, and to stay off the playground at recess. It seems to me, bullying has become MUCH more prevalent than it was in my day, it's just less visible. A nasty comment on your wall or whatever in facebook never gave anyone a black eye.
And so I ask myself why. And the only conclusion I can come up with, when thinking about this, and then seeing stories like the OP, is that kids are becoming more emotionally detached. They are not developing empathy as early as they used to, as folks my age did when we were kids. The instinct to dominate, to seek the highest elevation over others, is unchanged, and likely will remain so.
