Thursday, August 22, 2013

Sociopaths in the news: Stealing babies

I actually don't know enough about the culture of China to be able to tell whether this would be considered something sociopathic, or rather something just a little opportunistic and coldheartedly pragmatic. The Los Angeles Times reports about an obstetrician in China who convinced parents and grandparents to give up newborns that she claimed were disabled or otherwise undesirable:

Her method, authorities and victims say, was cruel and effective: convincing families that their babies were dead or dying, or afflicted with incurable diseases or congenital deformities. In rural China, a lack of support and restrictions on family size can make people reluctant to raise a child with disabilities.

Police say the doctor's victims were often friends and neighbors, forced to make heart-wrenching decisions about whether their babies should live or die, thus becoming complicit in their purported deaths. Zhang, the families say, even charged them a fee of about $10 to dispose of the corpses.

Zhang is believed to have frequently preyed on the fears of the grandparents, who in the Chinese countryside are desperate for healthy grandchildren to carry on the family line. The mothers were frequently left out of the loop.

Part of the reason this could happen is that health care is not sufficient to care for certain babies who could otherwise survive, or a lack of support for people raising children with disabilities:

A generation ago, unwanted babies in rural China were dumped in a well or smothered. Zhang Wei of the Enable Disability Studies Institute, a Beijing-based advocate for the disabled, said a disabled child still makes life very difficult for rural families.

"The whole burden comes down on the family. There is nobody to help them, no money and no education about what they can do, so they abandon the baby," Zhang Wei said.

However, perhaps the most shocking example happened with a family who was convinced to give up a baby who was claimed to neither be clearly male nor female, due to the dishonor it would bring on the family:

"He is not completely male, but not female. It will bring shame on the family," whispered the doctor, Zhang Shuxia, a trusted family friend whom they affectionately called "Auntie." "Don't worry," Dong recalled Zhang telling him. "Auntie can help you."

She advised that Dong and his mother give up the baby, euphemistically, to let him be euthanized.

Now I understand that parents of newborns are probably vulnerable, particularly ones without a high level of education and sophistication, but can you imagine choosing to euthanize your child just because it failed to conform to particular social norms that had nothing to do with its health? Of course it is difficult to raise a child who is different in these ways, but it has nothing to do with actual physical disability and everything to do with a natural human intolerance for difference. People put enormous pressure on each other to conform, often enforced with bullying and shaming. Although sociopaths don't feel the same sort of pressure to conform or enforce conformity, I can imagine that they would use this pressure people feel against them, if it would benefit them. That's why I wonder about the obstetrician. Either way, the antidote is to be self-actualized and to not fear the opinion of the masses, something that these princess boys have down (and Bradley Manning, apparently, good for him).

22 comments:

  1. People also have a natural human intolerance for killing babies.

    ReplyDelete
  2. The Vikings used to do almost the same thing with unwanted newborns. Can't say for sure if the practice was common to them all, but it was not uncommon in either Norway or Iceland. The local person of authority (in one or other form) of the farm would decide if the newborn was set out in the woods to meet its death, propably as food for wildlife.

    The coldness in people, the life they must have endured, and the hardship, together with a social system that is far from what we grow up in today propably formed these humans to be very different from what we are used to. Innate natural or not.

    It is remarkable how little thought to others is described in many of the viking sagas. I can only imagine the despair a mother must feel when her newborn is left to die in the woods without her having a vote in it, and then having to live in close somewhat relations on a remote farm with those responsible.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I'm the person who wrote about Casey Anthony the other day. Like I said, I know next to nothing about computers, but I do think I know enough to know
    that some "unusual" attempt was made to contact me on my computer.
    I only use two E-mail names. Isn't true that unless you revel your E-mail
    adress there's no way a person could find it? I recieved a short message
    from a person I did not not know about Casey Anthony. How did this person
    find out my other E-mail adress? Also, I got a skype friend request on
    this undisclosed adress from the same person "Marie". Again, this could
    be from anyone, but who knows? The person in question had no idea what my
    appearence was like, and believe me, I'd rather that no one know what my
    appearence is like.
    Concerning my intrest in Casey Anthony: Not only has there never been
    anyone like her in 100 years, (O.J. was NOT like her. O.J. was race based
    jury nullification) Lizzie Bordon comes to mind. The all male jury
    couldn't bring themselves to convict Lizzie, because they couldn't
    concieve of a woman comitting such a voilent offense.
    There was no social media in Lizzie's day. She could fade into obscurity.
    Casey will have no such luxaury. She must feel very lonley and unloved.
    Everyone needs love. M.E. couldn't live without love. Despite her
    protestations she doesn't need it, most of her life decisions are based
    on it.
    Do you have any idea what M.E. could do for Casey IF they could make
    each others accquaintance? M.E. could teach her how to flourish. M.E.
    could give her a reason to live! And if M.E. could humanize her, what
    would this do for M.E.'s goal to change society's perception of
    sociopaths?
    They say, "To know all is to forgive all." I don't claim to know all there is to know about Casey, but I do know quite a bit. I have analized
    her using every personality classification system known to man. I've
    discovered that Casey is NOT a person to be reviled, she is a person
    deserving of compassion and understanding. Her mother should NEVER have
    compelled Casey to give birth to a child she was so ill equipped to raise. Casey's mother would have known this, if only she knew about
    personality typeology.
    It was God's will that Casey be acquited. You couldn't round up 12
    dumber people if you tried. God wanted Casey acquited. It's as simple as
    that. But now M.E. has a golden oppertunity. A gift has been handed to
    her. M.E. can reform Casey. She's the only one in the world, that can!
    And if she does she will reform peoples' negative opinions of sociopaths.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You are romanticizing the hell out of this to the point that you are sounding completely delusional.

      You have put Casey on some sort of "personality typeology" inspired pedestal and are determined to be her hero and savior.
      You can't save her. And neither can M.E.

      I get that you want to be special, that you want to help, that you want to be appreciated and maybe even loved because you brought light and love into the heart of a monster. After all, Casey's not a monster deep down, she just needs someone to love her, to teach her.
      Then watch her bloom and transform into the beauty you know she is. Just like Beauty and the Beast, huh?

      Then people will all see that you were right. That sociopaths aren't bad, they just need love and understanding.
      You have the delusion that your love, compassion and determination will change the world.
      People's negative opinions of sociopaths will not change because M.E. gives her a good ol' motivational kick and Casey then claims to have found the light. Wake up. They will much more likely view it as a sociopath showing their cunning, lying, manipulative side.

      With regards to the emails, it's not true that you have to reveal your email for someone to find it. You would be very surprised at the trails that people leave back to themselves online. And no, you don't have to be a computer whiz to find it.

      You had this contact with the person using the same middle name. It doesn't mean anything. You just have this all consuming obsession with Casey and it makes you feel special, important, like all your efforts have been recognized to convince yourself it's her reaching out to you. Feeding your own ego and convincing yourself that what you're doing is right.

      You are leaving yourself wide open to be used and abused, by anyone who sees fit to do so, because this obsession of yours would be ridiculously easy to exploit.

      Also, do you have any idea how this personality typeology stuff sounds? I'm pretty sure that you are doing these charts and then desperately searching for something about Casey that validates it. He who seeks, will find. You are projecting the image of what you think she is, not who she really is.

      Delete
  4. I have compassion for these parents BUT we all have choices and it must be unbearable to withstand that lifelong pain.

    Now, I understand why China's academic level is so high; they also expel the children who have mental issues from school. Only the brightest can perform at those high levels. Pathetic society.

    ReplyDelete
  5. People put enormous pressure on each other to conform, often enforced with bullying and shaming. Although sociopaths don't feel the same sort of pressure to conform or enforce conformity, I can imagine that they would use this pressure people feel against them, if it would benefit them. That's why I wonder about the obstetrician.

    I don't think one needs to be a psychopath to not find conformity alluring.

    But what makes me wonder about the curious little twist, do we need the term "psychopath" to deal with any type of person that tries to exploit human weakness and misinformtion?

    Concerning the larger field not just the sexually deviant but also the maybe mentally handicapped. I just finished reading an article by a female gynaecologist who after years of a fight against male dominated medicine concerning the female body, a work I profitted from myself. I even remember and supported the early slogans "my belly belongs to me", finds herself deeply puzzled by the more and more influential prenatale diagnostics.

    So really we share some of the problems with China, while we may not have others. Like the enforced one kid family and other results like missing females.


    In any case, (I'll return to studying the topic, once I have finished something else,) I still feel slightly uncomfortable to use the term psychopath simply for people that exploit the weaknesses of others for their own benefit ... I am still rather satisfied with using Machiavellians for that type. But I am learning. In any case since self-interest and money seems the way of the world, shouldn't there be much more psychopath in that simple equation scenario? Or are all the scientist studying it hypocrites?

    ReplyDelete
  6. ME, are you taking down my posts? I see them posted and then gone the next day.

    ReplyDelete
  7. just to make a point

    ReplyDelete
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