Are You Sadistic Enough to be an American?

As reports show, the sadistic treatment of immigrants, even those with papers for residency, has become pervasive across the USA. Since Trump became president, over 100 immigration judges have been fired, many for being too sympathetic to the unique situations of individuals and families.

Hmm, virtue is about attending to the uniqueness of each situation and acting to promote wellbeing of Life around you. What’s the opposite? Sadism.

Erich Fromm, one of the most insightful psycho-political analysts of the 20^th century, wrote many books that are still relevant today. In The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness, he defined sadism as “the passion for unlimited, godlike control over [people] and things…unrestricted power over another sentient being” (Fromm, 1973, p. 27).

NOTE: Dr. Fromm treats sadism as a cultivated trait. Indeed, Dr. Bruce Perry points out that frequented early life states become traits. But, although this is likely from undernurturing, I would treat sadism as a state we can all get into if we are not careful—uncompromising ‘power-over’ another’s life.

Sociologist Lewis Mumford (1934) noted that the essence of civilization is to exert power in all sorts of forms. Fromm went further in describing the development of urban civilization as full of “passion to destroy life and the attraction to all that is dead (necrophilia)” (ibid, p. 191). This is the wétiko or windigo psychic virus Native Americans have described, a cannibalism of Life (Forbes, 1974).

Such viruses have been around for the approximately 10,000 years of hierarchical civilization, but only in a minority of places on the planet. Until recently, most people and places embraced biophilia, Fromm’s coined term for the love of Life and living things, which requires a well-functioning right brain. Otherwise, the left brain takes over with its confabulations and “logical” scripts.

Margaret Atwood, in The Handmaiden’s Tale, and George Orwell, in 1984, gave us novels demonstrating what necrophilia can look like at the socio-political level where an ideology of power is sadistically forced on a society.

“Complete control over another human being means crippling him, choking him, thwarting him. Such control can have all forms and all degrees” (Fromm, 1973, p. 322).

Sadism is left-brain-driven activity rooted in underlying deep insecurity and the desire for power, manipulation, and control. The left brain does not understand/cannot perceived dynamic Life; it is oriented to controlling static things (McGilchrist, 2009).

Deep insecurity is conditioned in the brain by early toxic stress in babyhood (not providing 24/7 comforting care as in the evolved nest). (It can also come about from later unresolved trauma.)

Parenting practices described in The Myth of Good Christian Parenting (see prior post here on “Biblical parenting”) show what sadism looks like towards children in the family, encouraged by religious leaders guided by ideologies of power and power-over.

In their first handful of years, the sadist will have experienced disempowerment through ‘power-over’ relationships, where caregivers intentionally or unintentionally foisted terror on them (through, for example, separation from mother at birth, sleep training, isolation, corporal punishment, neglect). The baby was treated like an object instead of a unique person-in-the-making whose experiences are molding personality during rapid brain growth.

Treated cruelly as a child, the sadist learns to distrust Nature—including himself, and others. Instead of a species-normal biology of love, he develops a biology of fear.

The sadist is afraid of everything but will submit to the powerful and the scripts they purvey.

The sadist is socially and emotionally incompetent from undernurturing during sensitive periods of socioemotional intelligence development (notably in the first three-six years). But, like novices generally, the sadist doesn’t recognize how incompetent he is. The sadist is unaware of real life because he was shaped to be divorced from his true self and is guided by the false self of left brain provenance.

The sadist despises what is not certain or predictable—i.e., real life. Real life “offers surprises which would force him to spontaneous and original reactions. For this reason, he is afraid of life…The sadistic character is usually xenophobic and neophobic—one who is strange constitutes newness, and what is new arouses fear, suspicion, and dislike, because a spontaneous, alive, and not-routinized response would be required” (ibid, p. 325).

To overcome inner feelings of impotence and a missing or broken inner moral compass, the sadist loyally orients externally to an attractive framework, like capitalistic competition, or religious superiority, or an intellectual discipline. Anything that does not fit his preconceived notions is heresy, treasonous, dangerous, or at least deserving of contempt.

The sadist desires control and mimics what he himself experienced—the smothering of the (unpredictable) life force. The sadist is stimulated by the helpless, those who cannot fight back, where he can demonstrate ‘power-over’ another.

Preachers often encourage a false self in followers, because it gives them power, like Hegseth’s preacher, Doug Wilson, who recently preached on Mark 3, emphasizing the importance of biblically-informed hatred—that Christians should hate what God hates:

“It’s also not true that those who love God are only united by our loves. We’re also united by the things that we hate. We share a hatred of evil. We saw in our text today our Lord Jesus Christ consumed by anger. We saw that there are things that God hates and it’s right for us to share that hatred. So we’re not just pitting love versus hatred. It’s a biblically informed love and a biblically informed hatred and it’s those that pervert those categories that become our enemies. All those that were united by a love of the one true God should have gotten angry with Jesus when they saw what he saw. We love and we also hate. We are not defined simply by love. We’re defined by the object of our love, the Lord Jesus Christ who loved us and gave himself for us.”

Notice Wilson’s collapse of Jesus’ righteous anger (towards rigid rules against compassionate healing) into justification of hatred generally! He is advocating pathology, a false self, a superego of hatred.

Note that this is all species abnormal. Such a character would not have survived in our ancestral context, the 99% of human existence spent in egalitarian hunter-gatherer civilization, which follows kinship consciousness and knowhow (Narvaez, 2024, 2025; Topa & Narvaez, 2022). Communal evolved nest nurturing prevents sadism. And regular healing practices alleviate any feelings that might otherwise lead to aggression towards others.

When the right brain is underdeveloped, which happens in places like the USA where species-normal baby raising (Evolved Nest) is unsupported, people can get stuck in left-brain-directed functioning as an overlay for deep insecurity. They find an ideology or identity or other structure that gives them a sense of security, a sense of mattering. And they latch onto it rigidly like a life raft and may force it on others.

How do we grow away from a fear-based domination orientation? Where should our loyalties be? Is there a more substantial grounding for our nature, something true?

It’s time to remember that our identities, our roots, are broader than any human concoction.

We are Nature. We are Earthlings. We are Star Dust. Literally.

How do we let go of our rigidity and become flexible again, able to work without scripts, without hierarchical formatting, without domination?

We come back to Nature.

We remember that Nature sustains us, providing what Life needs. We get to know our local landscape: learn it, join it, love it. We hang out with the animals, insects, and plants there as partners. We sit still, dance, feel the dynamism together. Earth kinship membership. Earth caretaking. Nature-informed love.

How do we feel our way towards a kinship consciousness and knowhow? Here are some nudges to help:

Nature-connection nudges: 28 Days of EcoAttachment.Dance.

Self calming nudges: 28 Days of Self-Calming.

Play nudges: 28 Days of Solo Play

REFERENCES

Atwood, M. (1998). The handmaid’s tale. Vintage

Burt, M.F., & McGinnis, K.K. (2025). The myth of good Christian parenting: How false promises betrayed a generation of evangelical families. BrazosPress.

Forbes, J.D. (2008). Columbus and other cannibals: The wétiko disease of exploitation, imperialism, and terrorism, rev ed. New York: Seven Stories Press.

Fromm, E. (1973). The anatomy of human destructiveness. Henry Holt.

Narvaez, D. (2014). Neurobiology and the development of human morality: Evolution, culture and wisdom. W.W. Norton.

McGilchrist, I. (2009). The master and his emissary: The divided brain and the making of the western world. Yale University Press.

Mumford, L. (1934/2010). Technics & civilization. University of Chicago Press.

Narvaez, D. (2025). Overcoming climate havoc with inner development from deep nestedness. Ecopsychology, 17(3), 201-215. https://doi.org/10.1089/eco.2024.006

Narvaez, D. (2024). Returning to evolved nestedness, wellbeing, and mature human nature, an ecological imperative. Review of General Psychology, 28(2), 83-105. https://doi.org/10.1177/1089268023122

Naydler, J. (2018). In the shadow of the machine: The prehistory of the computer and the evolution of consciousness. Temple Lodge.

Orwell, G. (1950). 1984. Signet.

Perry, B. D., Pollard, R. A., Blakely, T. L., Baker, W. L., & Vigilante, D. (1995). Childhood trauma, the neurobiology of adaptation, and “use-dependent” development of the brain: How “states” become “traits.” Infant Mental Health Journal, 16, 271–291. https://doi.org/10.1002/1097-0355(199524)16:4<271::AID-IMHJ2280160404>3.0.CO;2-B

Topa, Wahinkpe (Four Arrows), & Narvaez, D. (2022). Restoring the kinship worldview: Indigenous voices introduce 28 precepts for rebalancing life on planet earth. North Atlantic Books.

Van der Kolk, B. (2014). The body keeps the score. New York: Penguin.