I think it’s fascinating and gratifying that there’s an obvious and overwhelming selection pressure toward people who don’t put their own interests ahead of others. 
I think you’d actually have a really hard time drawing line of causation across the “web of trust” from traits that engender empathy to genetic success. You end up having to argue from the equilibrium of complex systems, which resists generalization. making a case of the success of apathic genes is far more straightforward.

To my mind, being filled with self-doubt, feeling pained at failures, perpetually questioning one’s own beliefs and actions, are the prerequisites for being a good human being. In a world full of suffering and oppression, if you’re always happy and confident, you’re probably one of those responsible for the suffering and oppression.

It often seems like psychologists recognize material insights in spiritual beliefs, point this out, and then stand there with big grins, waiting for applause, blissfully unaware that the real intellectual work hasn’t even started.

The principle feature of psychopathy is a lack of empathy. The principle reason that we have those “knobs” turned a little low is because we are striking a balance between our own self-interest and that of others. 

Psychopaths are last people you would want to ask for advice on how to most effectively consider the interests of others and arrange them in a harmonious balance with your own. 

Somewhere in the nebulous web of indirect causation, there’s a selective pressure toward empathetic traits in individuals. 

But I’m curious to know why you would not want to read it? (As in – you’re obviously interested enough in the subject to comment on the article.) (Not trying to pitch or sell the book, just wondering.)

Your comment just gave me an excuse to put out a song I made called “NOW” on soundcloud:

https://soundcloud.com/cowicide/now

The samples in it I think apply to your comment. ^_^

Psychopaths have a conglomeration of very positive traits that they use in everyday life. I mean, psychopaths are assertive, psychopaths don’t procrastinate, psychopaths focus on the positives of situations. They don’t take things personally. They don’t beat themselves up when things go wrong. They don’t overly criticize themselves. And of course they are very cool under pressure.

Yes, yes. The same is true of viruses.

…”focus on the present”: That’s dumb. Isn’t that where credit card debt and divorce come from?

Precisely the contrary. Credit card debt comes from throwing your bills under the bed unread because the sun’ll come out tomorrow, you can bet your bottom dollar. Besides its philosophical connotations, focusing on the present is extremely practical and task-oriented.

Maybe the follow-up book will interview the homeless for economic tips or junkies for advice on self-control.

…it appears to be a premise conceived to cash in on people’s natural interest in psychopaths.

Are psychopaths the new Shark Week?

This is one of the best written introductions to mindfulness from  a non-clinical perspective I have found:
http://www.urbandharma.org/pdf/mindfulness_in_plain_english.pdf

If you are looking for an approach to specifically treat something like anxiety, the Mindfulness and Acceptance Workbook for Anxiety is excellent. Also, for a more general clinical intro the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Workbook is also a very good introduction. Both workbooks come with meditation CDs which is a help if you do not have someone around to teach you the practices.

If meditation is not your thing, any book on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy by Russ Harris is different approach to coming to understand the processes that make up mindfulness through exercises and metaphors rather than extended periods of meditation.

If you find you like these books, I highly recommend finding a meditation instructor or therapist skilled in these approaches. Ask around for recommendations, like any profession there are honest and skilled practitioners and there are quacks!

When I hear lines like that, it always makes me feel like someone is hoping I’ll just take whatever they say in hopes of seeming wise. I wonder where that puts me.

It reminds me a game I used to play with my Christian friends, which ultimately increased (rather than decreased) my skepticism: bible balderdash. We’d take turns making up fake bible verses, mixing them with real ones, and having the other players guess which were real and which were fake. It was disturbingly easy to fool each other, and we were insiders, presumably sensitive to what was and wasn’t authentic.

Since none of us can read Markus’ mind it may make more sense to let him respond if he cares to do so.

All of us are “world blind”.  We can see the details but it’s tough to step back far enough to get them to fit together into a whole.  Adding more details — more description, more words — just makes it more difficult to unite all the details as part of the same whole.

You’re screwing yourself up by putting “that which cannot be described” into the “concept” bucket — which is essentially a description.  So you’re right in some sense; there are probably no concepts that cannot be described in words.  What cannot be described is not a concept.  Another riddle for you.