Sociopaths and theology

People often express a certain level of discomfort with the thought that sociopath minded people exist in the world. I'm not a theologian, but it seems that many common deities or religious beliefs directly suggest sociopaths or implicate sociopathic traits. For instance, the Christian's Jesus (because it is his special day) may have seemed friendly when he was in his mortal incarnation, but as the God of the Old Testament he has been called "the ideal sociopath."

A part time theologian friend of mine has been working on a theological "take on sociopathy" based on "theological anthropology":

Theological anthropology is the academic name given to the study of the human in relation to God. Both in terms of the innate nature of human beings (e.g. body vs. soul, body vs. soul vs. spirit, or monism) and in terms of the biblical doctrine of imago dei (we are somehow an "image of God"). What this doctrine entails has been hotly debated through the centuries. The primary issue is one that is connected to the notion of theodicy (the so-called problem of evil). If God is Good and we are made in God's image, why are we "bad", i.e. sinful? The traditional explanation is original sin, but that doesn't help much because there is so much disagreement about what that means, too. One can ask, as certainly many have in the past about gay people, "Is the sociopath made in the image of God?" If we hypothesize that sociopaths, as homosexuals, can attribute their status to some combination of (a) pre-natal disposition; (b) post-natal socialisation and (c) personal affirmation, then what does that mean for theological anthropology?

So we must explore the concept of "conscience." The conscience is what humans are endowed with--an internal guide--to tell us God's will and help us do the "right thing." The "right thing" has always been defined, or at least seriously impacted by, human notions of what is right and good. To explore this, Kierkegaard posits the "Knight of Faith." This figure places her faith in herself and in God; she is not influenced by the world. This is the Individual writ large, without connections and pretensions. Kierkegaard (or really his pseudonym, Johannes de Silentio) identifies two people as Knights of Faith--Mary, Mother of Jesus and Abraham. He uses the biblical story of Abraham to demonstrate the relation of ethics to the Knight of Faith. The world, with its ethics, would find Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his only son completely abhorrent. Abraham operates, however, in a realm of faith. He draws the knife to pierce his son's heart, because that is what God (the sublime) demands. This connected with what Kierkegaard calls the teleological suspension of the ethical.

In any case, it seems society would likely label Abraham as psychopath or sociopath if he had murdered his son. In fact, the world would probably do so if it discovered that Abraham even was willing to do so. I think some sociopaths are like the Knight of Faith. What is ethical or conscience-driven, in a teleological sense, is much less clear than society wants to think. Who is to say that any particular sociopath is not a Knight of Faith, formed in the image of God? My point is, how can we judge this, as humans in the world? We can certainly say that certain behavior is criminal and must be addressed and punished . . . my point is not to abolish human law. But to recognize that what is considered a crime or a violation of standard decency or ethics is a human judgment is important.

Then, of course, there are passages in the Bible that show God acting like what modern-day psychologist might deem a "sociopath." Some Protestants refer to this as via negativa or divine darkness. I've been thinking about this, too. Perhaps sociopaths are more directly the image of God. And that is why many of us admire them and are fascinated on some level we don't completely understand.

Believing in evil

A reader asked me if I believed in evil, and whether that has anything to do with my feelings on religion. I don't really feel that there is evil, like in a normative, pejorative sense. I do believe in opposites, light and dark, pleasure and pain, in other words things that could not really exist without the contrast of their absence. How could there even be a concept "light" if there is no concept "dark"?

But to think of them as "opposites" or diametrically opposed is also inaccurate, I think, because although light may be the "opposite" of dark, they have much more in common with each other than light does with, for example, either pleasure or pain. In my mind they are more like two sides of the same coin, opposite in only the most technical, narrow definition. So I guess I believe in good and evil, but they are also sort of interchangeable to a certain extent, and I personally wouldn't necessarily know whether something was good or evil, or whether anything ever has an inherent quality of good or evil about it. So I guess to me the issue of whether there is good and evil is sort of moot because it has no practical relevance to my life. Or it probably actually does, I’m sure, in some earth spins once every 24 hours sort of way.

As to the religion, I feel like my life is like a big game of Blindman's Bluff and I’m "it". I’m not sure why I’m playing it and the targets seem to always be moving. Believing the religion is sort of like thinking that eventually I’ll get to take the blindfold off and see things as they truly are. It seems like a plausible belief to me, although certainly not convincing. Having at least one part of me believe it gives me a lot more patience for what seems like a very tiresome endeavour. I guess I get the same sort of pleasure in living my religion that I get from saving for my retirement (which was already fully-funded by the time I was 30). Only part of me actually believes I will live to retirement age, but it's such a small sacrifice to put away a little money here and there. And if I do actually retire, that would have been a very "smart" thing for me to do. In other words, it’s just another version of playing the game well, capitalizing on all available opportunities, and coming up with back-up plans. And, of course, it has its perks.

(Like free exorcisms.)

Sociopath quote: indifference

“The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.”

— Charles Darwin

Sociopathic Buddhism: tautology or contradiction?

One of the most sought after sociopathic traits by normal people is the ability to be "zen" in the face of stress or danger. I've always suspected there may be a connection to the sort of consciousness that sociopaths experience and that sought to be attained by Buddhists, so I was glad when a reader took the time to explain the connection to me:

Consciousness is something that has always fascinated me, but until recently I've only explored it intellectually, not directly. I've been experimenting with Zen meditation for a few months now, and it occurred to me one day that there are some interesting parallels between sociopathy and Zen Buddhism, such as emotional detachment, no strong attachment to a self, not buying into belief systems, and having a focus on the present. Also, Buddhists, like sociopaths, can appear to outsiders as unemotional, or emotionally cold. However, Buddhists do appreciate emotions and actions that are spontaneous, and from the gut, just not those arising from the intellect. Given the above, I wonder if Buddhism, in spite of being a religion, would hold a special appeal to the sociopathic mind?

Is it possible even that the sociopathic mind is closer to enlightenment? Empaths identify so closely with emotions and find emotions so compelling, that I wonder if they would have a harder time attaining Buddhist awareness than logical, less emotional individuals, and might be more likely to fall into the trap of merely chasing after a spiritual high? Or would sociopaths, in spite of their detachment and greater awareness, have a harder time letting go of the scheming?

Being fully in the present requires letting go of the attachment to all thoughts, including concepts such as empathy, sociopathy, conscience, power, control, good, evil, and most importantly the self. It also requires letting go of the attachment to feelings, which are also a type of thought. You have to stop both thinking and feeling. As long as we are thinking (or feeling), we are busy either reflecting or anticipating. We're making a story from what is happening around us, and caught up in some illusion or other. Buddhists maintain that we suffer because we live in such states of illusion perpetuated by our thoughts. Giving up attachment to our thoughts brings awareness, and with awareness comes freedom from illusion, and thus freedom from suffering. With awareness also comes compassion. The compassion arises from experiencing directly, through meditation, our connection to everything and everyone. It doesn't matter if you are an empath or a sociopath. According to Buddhists, we all have this Buddha nature, even if we don't know it. We are all the same.

Looking at it this way, the difference between a sociopath and empath is only an illusion.

Here is a quote from "No self. No problem" by Anam Thubten, that I liked, that puts it well: "When one illusion doesn't work then we become disillusioned and we go around with our antennae up looking for another illusion. We look for one we don't associate with any memories of being disillusioned, one with no sense of disappointment. We look for something new, something different, something better. When we don't find an illusion we like, we make a big deal out of it. We say we're having a spiritual crisis. We're going through the dark night of the soul. We feel that the ground beneath our feet is shaky. We don't like being in darkness, in emptiness. We want to find an illusion that gives us comfort, that gives us what could be called a psychological massage. Soon we find another illusion, one that is full of promise."

You could say that, in a way, the sociopaths give empaths a psychological massage.

And from the other side of the fence, here is an excerpt from an article criticizing Buddhism (quoted here): "Even if you achieve a blissful acceptance of the illusory nature of your self, this perspective may not transform you into a saintly bodhisattva, brimming with love and compassion for all other creatures. Far from it—and this is where the distance between certain humanistic values and Buddhism becomes most apparent. To someone who sees himself and others as unreal, human suffering and death may appear laughably trivial. This may explain why some Buddhist masters have behaved more like nihilists than saints. Chogyam Trungpa, who helped introduce Tibetan Buddhism to the United States in the 1970s, was a promiscuous drunk and bully, and he died of alcohol-related illness in 1987. Zen lore celebrates the sadistic or masochistic behavior of sages such as Bodhidharma, who is said to have sat in meditation for so long that his legs became gangrenous."

The darker side of Buddhism, or the misunderstanding of an unenlightened mind?

Sociopath quote: good and bad

When people see some things as beautiful, other things become ugly. When people see some things as good, other things become bad.

-Lao Tzu

Contradictions

An interesting reaction to the book is that it has contradictions. The most popular one is that I say that I was not the victim of abuse but then describe a less than idyllic childhood. Perhaps a close second is that I say that I have average looks yet consider my own breasts to be remarkably beautiful. Or maybe another is that I say I don't necessarily think anybody is better than anybody else, but I happen to be smarter than most people.

To me these things aren't contradictions. I never felt like the victim of abuse. Although I have sometimes played the role of victim (provoking my father, trying to get teachers fired or get better educational/job opportunities, etc.), perhaps due to my self-delusion/megalomania about being powerful and being someone who acts rather than be acted upon, or perhaps due to an inability to really feel bad about bad consequences that happen to me, I have never been able to actually identify with victimhood. I love my breasts, but I know that objectively I am average looking (I feel like men should understand this concept well, I feel like I have almost never known a man who wasn't infatuated with his genitalia). And I just happen to be smarter than most people -- that is exactly what it means to score in the 99th percentile on tests measuring intelligence (at least speaking of the type(s) of intelligence that these tests are meant to measure, and I acknowledge even in the book that there are a variety of different ways to be intelligent). Being smarter than most people is a fact about me the same way that my height and weight are facts. If I were exceptionally tall or fat, I would acknowledge those things about myself too without making any normative judgment that being tall makes me better or being fat makes me worse. I know people tend to think that smarter = better, but I have seen enough incompetent geniuses to not hold this opinion myself.

But I think people's negative reactions to seeming contradictions suggests something about people's discomfort with ambiguity. From Joss Whedon's recent graduation address to Wesleyan University:

[Our culture] is not long on contradiction or ambiguity. … It likes things to be simple, it likes things to be pigeonholed—good or bad, black or white, blue or red. And we’re not that. We’re more interesting than that. And the way that we go into the world understanding is to have these contradictions in ourselves and see them in other people and not judge them for it. To know that, in a world where debate has kind of fallen away and given way to shouting and bullying, that the best thing is not just the idea of honest debate, the best thing is losing the debate, because it means that you learn something and you changed your position. The only way really to understand your position and its worth is to understand the opposite.

That doesn’t mean the crazy guy on the radio who is spewing hate, it means the decent human truths of all the people who feel the need to listen to that guy. You are connected to those people. They’re connected to him. You can’t get away from it. This connection is part of contradiction. It is the tension I was talking about. This tension isn’t about two opposite points, it’s about the line in between them, and it’s being stretched by them. We need to acknowledge and honor that tension, and the connection that that tension is a part of. Our connection not just to the people we love, but to everybody, including people we can’t stand and wish weren’t around. The connection we have is part of what defines us on such a basic level.

I liked this a lot. Some of the most black and white thinkers use sources that are anything but, e.g. the ultra-religious using scriptural texts that portray a God of seeming contradictions (both kind and vengeful, both forgiving and damning) to justify making their own black and white assessments of certain things as being pure evil and others being unassailable good. A little like the junk science you see in sociopath research. The Joss Whedon quote also reminded me of one of my favorite twitter quotes:

"What is this "good" versus "evil" bullshit? There are no such animals in the real world. We do not live in a comic book for Christ's sake."
— M.E. (@sociopathworld) July 28, 2013

UPDATE: I think this article about being gay and Catholic is very interesting and relevant to any discussion of seeming contradictions and how there are many ways to live a life consistent with what you believe, despite what everyone else might think.