There’s a famous story about a guy named Phineas Gage who was a railroad worker in the 1800’s.

One day at work he had a metal rod go through his eye and into his brain.

And you thought Monday’s were tough.

Here’s the interesting part.

Don't let a spike through the eye ruin your outlook on life!

Up until the day the spike went through his head, ‘Ol Phin was a pretty cool, even tempered guy. Stuff didn’t bother him and he liked people.

After the accident he turned into a disagreeable asshole.

Maybe it was he was really pissed off about the whole spike-through-the-eye-into-the-brain thing.

Brain researches think it was something else.

There’s a part of the brain in the frontal lobe called the ventromedial area. It seems when that area gets messed with people lose their morals. They can think rationally but they are almost hyper-rational. They don’t care about consequences to others. They lose their healthy sense of fear and they take absurd risks for immediate gratification dismissing future consequences.

This has nothing to do with how they were raised, whether they were breast fed from falsies, whether they got enough hugs from Daddy–it’s totally physical.

Could that explain the diagnosis of assholitis? Could it explain addiction? Could it explain evil?

Damn, it’s getting to the point when you can’t blame anyone for anything any more.