YouTube Zoom Interview for Lance the Christian Sociopath

 Here's the YouTube description:

Author of Confessions of a Sociopath M.E. Thomas talks with Christian Lance about whether or not a psychopath can be a good Christian and what that might mean, about how the psychopath thinks in very outcome oriented ways (to the point that it might be difficult for them to conceptualize how other people make choices in process oriented ways), about how psychopaths mask and evade detection by pretending to be what people expect of them, etc. 

Mormon psychopath video

Here is the video for today's Zoom meeting.

Zoom week 3 youtube link and Zoom details for Monday 5/4

Here's the video for last week. Our guest had technical difficulties and didn't end up making it in time, so it turned into just a little Q&A about filling out forms, ethics, moral inconsistency, and religion.


M.E. Thomas is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

Topic: Sociopathworld Zoom Meeting 20 0504
Time: May 4, 2020 12:00 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)

Join Zoom Meeting
https://us04web.zoom.us/j/71647075746

Meeting ID: 716 4707 5746

Religious moral reasoning vs. guilt and getting better

A reader sent me this video of David Woods (Christian psychopath) talking about his religious conversion and how he gets pushback from other Christians because he still doesn't feel guilt.

First, him explaining (I don't think super well) about guilt. 

Second, him talking about how religious people insist that feelings of guilt are a necessary part of religious conversion/salvation. 

I remember when I got judged by some members of my own church, they said that it wasn't necessarily what I had done in the past that made me such a bad person, but that the way that I felt about it. I thought that was a totally anticipated reaction for people to have because my religion does emphasize to a certain point one's change of heart over the ledger recording one's actions in life, whether good and bad. That is, someone might have a change of heart at the last minute death row style and still be just as worthy of salvation as someone who had been "good" their entire life. On the other hand, it's obvious a mental health disorder to not have the same feelings of guilt and to expect someone to feel differently is like expecting gay people to not be attracted to members of the same sex. So I feel like this thoughts vs. action issue is something that many if not all religions have had to evolve their thinking on as we learn more and more the limits of controlling one's thoughts and feelings.

A quick word about guilt. The way I explain a sociopath's lack of guilt is through sense of self. Shame is something that society imposes on you to make you feel bad because you have violated one of their moral constructs. Guilt is a feeling that you have violated your own moral construct or self construct. For instance, if you think of yourself as being an honest and generous person, you may feel guilt if you behave in a dishonest or selfish way. But if you don't think of yourself in any sort of terms, either as being dishonest or honest, you won't ever have experience guilt because you won't ever violate your own self concept. I think sociopaths can regret that things didn't play out differently, and they can even feel remorse when they understand that it was their action that led to things paying out poorly or hurting people that they didn't want to hurt but maybe in a moment of extra impulsivity they did hurt.

Here's his video saying that before a sociopath can get better, he has to see himself as having a problem or being flawed or missing something, rather than seeing sociopathy exclusively as a super power.

White Nationalism as Drug Resistant Bacteria

I want to argue yet again not only is shaming hypocritical and cruel, it's ineffective. Recently, I started to think of the rise of white nationalism as a drug resistant bacteria and shaming as the overused antibiotics that have led to the rise in white nationalism. I saw an Saturday Night Live recently hosted by Aziz Ansari where he asks people to start pretending not to be racist again.



It makes (obliquely?) an interesting point -- did all of the policing of political correctness, enforced by social shaming actually change people's underlying attitudes about race, class, privilege, etc.? Or did it just cause people to be quietly prejudiced and bitter about the shaming attempts?

A character from The Mindy Project recently remarked "Every white person’s greatest fear is being called racist. It’s their equivalent of actual racism." And I have noticed that white people do seem to feel quite oppressed and like they are being unfairly treated by being called racist. For instance, I had a conversation recently with a close family member of an older generation about political correctness and asked him what about it was so upsetting to him. He said that he didn't even believe that people who enforce political correctness even believe in it or care about the people they're allegedly trying to protect. He thinks it's just a way that people put other people down, for the same reason that anybody ever tries to enforce a social hierarchy against someone else -- a selfish desire to feel superior.

I tried to explain that anything can good be used to advance bad purposes (speaking of which, I'm watching the Handmaid's Tale). I just had a conversation with a friend whose non-Mormon husband was raised in a Mormon community -- wasn't invited to any of the block parties, wasn't allowed to go to anyone's houses for sleepovers, no one cared to communicate with his family at all until his mom got sick and they started trying to aggressively proselytize. I'm sure those Mormons felt like they had scriptural support to justify their exclusion.  But I'm also pretty sure it's all reasoning post-hoc, that is they decided how they wanted to act and took otherwise neutral or good principals and twisted them to fit their preconceived notions. It's why so many people hate organized religion (see again the Handmaid's Tale), which is the point I made to my Mormon relative who hates political correctness. In fact, it's a problem that has been specifically addressed many times in addresses by the church leaders to church members, including most recently this reference to my favorite topic of shaming by President Dieter Uchtdorf:

During the Savior’s ministry, the religious leaders of His day disapproved of Jesus spending time with people they had labeled “sinners.”

Perhaps to them it looked like He was tolerating or even condoning sinful behavior. Perhaps they believed that the best way to help sinners repent was by condemning, ridiculing, and shaming them.

Perhaps the current adherents to shaming believe that the best way to get people to change is by condemning, ridiculing, and shaming them. Perhaps the shamers of the world truly believe that they're doing a good thing, rather than doing what my relative believes political correctness police do -- putting others down so that they can feel relatively more superior. Perhaps they choose to intentionally inflict harm on others for the sake of some higher purpose, thinking that the world will be a better place because of it, rather than the obvious natural result of their actions -- increased antagonism, hurt, distrust, pain, hypocrisy, etc. But even if shamers' intentions are to create more positivity and good in the world, it doesn't work (or works so seldom that the aggregate effect is failure). Because even if you are right when you try to correct someone, there's a psychological concept called the "backfire effect" that makes you confronting someone with those facts extremely ineffective -- it most often leads to them becoming further entrenched in their beliefs. Sort of like drug resistant bacteria becoming more beefy in response to increased use of antibiotics. This Oatmeal page has a great explanation with citations to further reading/listening on the backfire effect.

So if shaming doesn't work, is it just cruelty for the sake of being cruel? Is it just twisting otherwise good concepts to advance oneself in a social hierarchy to the detriment of someone else?

Famous (?) sociopaths: David Wood

A reader sent this to me, and for the first couple of minutes I had no idea why and thought it was going to be a discussion of religion, and part of me wanted to give you this video without telling you where it's going so you could have the same experience of being surprised when this guy just starts talking about what it's like to grow up with mental health problems that largely remained undiagnosed. He talks about being diagnosed as ASPD and launching in this discussion of feeling like he was socialized/brainwashed about morality, so begins to just start doing wrong things all of the time as a reaction to it. And of course, after the first 8-10 minutes or so, it does get into religion topics, mainly criticizing Islam and radical Muslims. But the first part I think some people might relate to, not realizing that your brain is wired differently, and so just acting as if what you're doing is normal and right and obvious.

I wonder if he still identifies with being ASPD, because then another example of a religious sociopath. I wonder how his Christian followers feel about that?

Epicureanism = religion for sociopaths

I have been really into the famous stoic Marcus Aurelius recently. Part of trying to become more aware of my emotions means that I am suddenly sometimes swimming knee deep in terrible emotions, without any practice dealing with any of it or making sense of it. Marcus Aurelius has been a good way to get more zen about things. Quotes like:

"When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: The people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly. They are like this because they can’t tell good from evil. But I have seen the beauty of good, and the ugliness of evil, and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own — not of the same blood or birth, but of the same mind, and possessing a share of the divine. And so none of them can hurt me. No one can implicate me in ugliness. Nor can I feel angry at my relative, or hate him. We were born to work together like feet, hands, and eyes, like the two rows of teeth, upper and lower. To obstruct each other is unnatural. To feel anger at someone, to turn your back on him: these are obstructions."

And:

"The only thing that isn’t worthless: to live this life out truthfully and rightly... patient with those who don’t.”

In a similar vein, a reader rights about the appeal of Epicureanism for sociopaths:

This one is a long read, but I think you'll enjoy it.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/08/08/110808fa_fact_greenblatt?currentPage=all

Apparently Machiavelli was an Epicurean. Epicurean philosophy: materialist, rational, pleasure-oriented and pro-social. It is very different from Catholocism/Christianity.

Personally, Stoicism appeals to me more. It is basically the same philosophy, but with more emphasis on self-control in all situations. But if you are happy and full of joy and wonder, it is a lot easier to be nice.

If you always remember that you've only got right now to live - and that you'll be dead forever - that makes it a lot easier to be nice to oneself and others.

A selection:

Anyone who thought, as Lucretius did, that it was a particular pleasure to gaze from shore at a ship foundering in wild seas or to stand on a height and behold armies clashing on a plain—“not because any man’s troubles are a delectable joy, but because to perceive what ills you are free from yourself is pleasant”—is not someone I can find an entirely companionable soul. I am, rather, with Shakespeare’s Miranda, who, harrowed by the vision of a shipwreck, cries, “O, I have suffered / With those I saw suffer!” There is something disturbingly cold in Lucretius’ account of pleasure, an account that leads him to advise those who are suffering from the pangs of intense love to reduce their anguish by taking many lovers.

Religion and sociopathy

From a reader:

We corresponded a few months back about your sister.  I've been following your blog on and off since and having read your book I know you take your religion seriously.  I've found myself returning to my own religion and am beginning to realize how accurate it's world view and message is.  Sociopathy does not exist as defined by psychologists.  A default lack of empathy (or diminished capacity) should yield indifference, not pleasure at other people's misfortunes (not to mention deliberating causing the misfortune, especially when the victim has been generous to you).  

I'm not proselytizing but I'm certain if you read the Qur'an you'll find answers to any and all questions you may have that remain unanswered despite years of therapy, research and experience.  The website below has three English renderings.  Worst case you'll just become familiar with a book believed to be divine by a quarter of humanity.  

http://www.usc.edu/org/cmje/religious-texts/quran/

Best of luck.

M.E.:

Ok, I downloaded i to my Kindle.

I do feel like Islam is a beautiful religion. I visited Egypt and Jordan years ago and saw some Mosques and was half tempted to convert right there.

I sometimes wonder whether our connection to our religions feels so good because we are recapturing a little that sense of identity and connection to the universe that is otherwise so sorely lacking. What do you think?

Reader:

I think you phrased it almost perfectly.  For the past few months I've been battling depression resulting from heartbreak.  I was betrayed by my own father, brother and closest friend (who was also my love interest).  No one knows what I felt and why I feel I was wronged.  All of them are less intelligent than I and apparently lack insight so they mistook all my favors for manipulation.  I've been depressed in the past and easily recovered from medication rather quickly.  This time around it has been a mental jihad - I've been fighting to decide whether I should give up being a nice guy who's always screwed over and care about myself only.  What led me to God was the fact that I could NOT - no matter how hard I tried - keep my integrity while prioritizing myself.  I swear it was as if I had only two options: be a "good" person and stay depressed / lonely or become apathetic and be happy by causing others suffering along the way to material success.  No matter how hard I tried I couldn't knock myself out of it.  If you knew me personally you'd know how strong my resolve & self-control once was.  Then all of a sudden I had a mysterious experience while driving once.  I've been ruminating about the same thing for months but this time it felt like it wasn't me who was talking to me but literally something outside which imprinted its message directly in my heart.  Since that day I've been coming closer and closer to true faith.  I read the Qur'an and I understand the verses which once read like some lunatic having a go at poetry but now they so much sense I can't help but cry so many times I read some of them.  

The Qur'an asks a reader to approach it with humility.  Be objective and try to not have any bias - one way or another - when approaching it.  For me, the combination of objectivity (or as close as I could be to it) and watching a youtube series on the life of Muhammad ("seerah of Muhammad") did it.  I could not convince myself that this man was a liar.  I'd bet my life he genuinely meant what he said.  Of course he could still have been deranged / deluded etc but it begs the question: "do deluded people end up doing what Muhammad did"? He united an unknown tribal "civilization" spread over 1 million square miles into countless tribes in a period of 23 years and immediately following his death these very people - people with no history prior to this point, no significance whatsoever - conquered almost all the ancient civilizations from Spain to Western India in under 100 years.  Imagine an outsider - an alien civilization examining us from the outside.  I doubt they'd look at Muhammad's accomplishments and say "the only explanation is what some people who never knew him and live hundreds of years after him have said: he's deluded." 

Lastly, I also realized that he was dealing with classic psychopaths / sociopaths but most of those same people ended up becoming some of the greatest people in history.  You can look up figures like Umar and Khalid bin Walid - their impact on the world is documented in western sources as well as muslim sources.  Besides the history, my own personal experience in dealing with family and friends has shown me that sociopaths are not incapable of empathy - they are just unlikely to do so until they see a victim of theirs forgive them knowing full well what was done to them.

On a little bit of an aside, I've been really interested recently in learning how the 12 step programs use the concept of God/higher power and religion/spirituality in really instrumental/pragmatic ways, as being an essential element of a successful program. I've watched some friends who were never at all spiritual or religious have to figure out some way to integrate that as a primary driver in their lives. Why, I wonder, is this true? 

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.

Sociopaths: net gain or loss?

From a reader:

This is about a one minute clip of David Mitchell, british comedian, talking about atheism and religion in general. I don't know why, but it made me instantly think of your blog and book, and the way you talked about including mormon faith as a guidance in your life. I have had similar thoughts of catholicism and religion in general for quite a long time, and I think Mitchell brings up excellent point, where beliefs are not really there to be right or wrong, but to provide comfort in life. For me, one of the few emotions I experience is void feeling, grasping me from my stomach up my throat, when i think of death. When my consciousness ceases to exist, I am going to be no more. Unimaginable, yet so tempting to think about. I really would like there to be something after we die!


I related with his suggestion that people often mistakenly identify cause and effect relationships. Are religious people war mongering killers? Or do war mongering killers just find a helpful vehicle in religion. And if the former, if we took out religion, would there be fewer wars and deaths? Would something replace it? Is there some offsetting advantage to religion? Perhaps certain aspects of religion increase the likelihood for violence and hatred and other aspects decrease it so that there it's a wash? (Also it's funny that we as a society used to think that it was the godless atheists that were the cause of all the world's horrors, so it's still a little funny to see the opposite argument getting made all of the time).

The religion angle is interesting to me personally, but more interesting for purposes of this blog is the tendency for people to reduce complicated correlations into simple cause and effect relationships where they believe that if they only removed the cause, the effect would stop happening. For instance, if a sociopath wreaks a little bit of havoc and we remove sociopaths, there would be less havoc and the world would overall be better. But will something else take their place? At least in certain circumstances?

Imagine the example of someone who chronically speeds while driving. He gets pulled over by a police officer who cites him for speeding. In some ways the police officer could be seen as the cause of the ticket, but if that particular cop didn't pull him over, does that mean he would never have gotten a speeding ticket that day? Or worse, have gotten in a serious accident? The existence of police officers might seem terrible for speeders, but are speeders actually better off without a particular police officer? Or police officers in general?

The other argument is that even if sociopaths do bad things, could it be possible that they also do good things? Enough good things to make them overall beneficial to society? Isn't that true of most of us? We sometimes cheat on a spouse or don't pay our taxes or lie to our boss or fudge a CV or steal cable or exaggerate a claim for reimbursement, but we also volunteer for our church or coach our son's football team or plan parties for our co-workers' birthdays or mentor young sociopaths? :)

I'm just saying, I've met some people who have asserted that sociopaths cause billions of dollars of damage a year, and part of my does not doubt it, but the other part of me wonders if it's possible that their risk-taking in business and go-getting mentality doesn't earn even more for the people that back them.

I know I've said this before, but from a recent comment, if you dare take a sociopath's word for it:

I absolutely think sociopaths can be morally good people. In fact I would argue that sociopaths have the potential to be more effective citizens of society. Because I am not clouded by emotions as more empathetic people are, I make decisions based on logic, reason, and common sense. I'm charitable, kind, and compassionate because I know that will improve society.

Sociopathic savior

When I was growing up I had such insight into the psyches of others (and when I was younger, not enough of a filter from saying creepy things to people's faces), that people would tell me that I should be a psychologist. Often I feel like people either seek me out because they are interested in having me see through them or someone else they're trying to understand, or at the very least it contributes a lot to what my friends seem to get out of our relationships. That's why I thought this email from a reader was an interesting take on the reasons why a sociopath might choose to help people:

First of all, I just wanted to thank you so much for Confessions... I personally have several male sociopath friends (we just attract each other!), but no fellow female sociopaths have ever come my way. As such, I was naturally curious how other women display their sociopathy, and how the display of my own characteristics "measured up" to other females. I'm happy to say that much of your book felt like stream of consciousness coming from my own mind. There were even a couple of adages or quotes I found within your book that I've been saying for years, haha. It was a pleasure to read.

All gushing, flattery, and gratitude aside, I wanted to take a chunk of my own life and throw it to the wolves, as it were ;) I'm not asking for clarity on whether or not I'm a sociopath (I know I am, and I don't need "reassurance" for such things), but I suppose I would like to initiate a bit of discussion among your readers as to how sociopathy can play out.

Growing up, I had all of the classic symptoms of a sociopath. I used my parents' divorce to manipulate, guilt-trip, and ultimately profit from both parents, I would get in fights at school, covering up quickly by claiming the other child wanted me to hit them because they wanted to see what I was learning in martial arts, I learned how to fake guilt in that "I guess I took it too far," with crocodile tears to boot. I would lie about the most mundane of things, like whether or not I had brushed my teeth a particular morning, and sometimes I would lie just to create emotional outbursts "for the fun of it" (ie: I was homeschooled by my stepmom, who I despised entirely, so occasionally I would come to my dad in tears, confessing I had "failed" a really important test, that I felt like I wasn't taught any of the material covered. In reality, I always got very high marks, but I gained a sort of satisfaction in watching my dad blow up at my stepmom for "ruining my education.")

All of this took a turn when I was sixteen, when my dad, in one of his outbursts, killed my stepmom, baby sister, and himself. (I was also shot, but survived.) I was "sentenced" to court mandated therapy, which was entirely necessary as I was having flashbacks, nightmares, etc. But my therapist noticed something: aside from my dad--who, at very least, had sociopathic tendencies, though his primary dx was bipolar... he was incredibly intelligent, however, and through his own wits and ways of "bending the law," he went from being a high school dropout, son of a hooker to a multimillionaire by his early twenties. I still admire and respect him, probably more than any other person--aside from my loss of this influential role in my life, I did not grieve. I was not concerned for my losses, except the man I saw as most contributing to my education and growth (he spent hours every week teaching me about social manipulation, business strategy, etc)--someone I had seen as "useful." My therapist chalked this up to a delay in grief caused by shock, but five and a half years later, I have never been so much as concerned to think of the others. 

Though I was not grieving, being in therapy taught me how I "should be" grieving. My therapist used a lot more suggestive questions than she probably should have, likely to try to draw me "out of my shell" or to help me put a name to emotions I was "experiencing," but didn't "understand." So I created a persona based on this "grieving me." My performance won me a full-ride scholarship to college, many families opened their homes to me, and I noticed something odd--people came up to me, seemingly out of the blue, to talk to me about their problems, thinking "if anyone could relate," it would be me.

Having been in therapy, and having keenly observed my therapist, I simply played counselor to these people. And they would look at me and tell me how much I inspired them and gave them hope... Several told me, eventually, that had it not been for me, they would've killed themselves. The power and influence I had over these people was astonishing--and I loved it. 

So I used my education to get my BA in psychology, and in the near future, I will be pursuing a MA in Grief and Trauma Therapy. I currently volunteer once a week at a grief center for teens (I specifically work with teens who have lost someone to suicide, which earns me double points for 1. working with "the toughest cases," and 2. for being "strong enough to open up to relate in such a personal way to these teens"). I also work at a residential treatment center for adolescent girls who have been through trauma and abuse. Everyone I tell my persona's story to gushes at me in admiration, and more often than not, opens themselves up ever so completely to me. They trust me, in many cases, more than anyone else they've ever met. Trusting someone is laying down your defenses completely and being bareboned honest, fearless of the consequences. People trust me so much as to let me in where no other may go. I saved their lives, and in essense, now control their lives. The power of that is incredibly intoxicating.

So, yes: these days, I help people. And I am damn good at it. But I'm tired of hearing so many people (mostly empaths and wanna-be-sociopaths) tell me that no "real" sociopath would want to help people the way I do. Even some sociopaths are skeptical. But the display of sociopathic behavior is rooted in what we want. We want power. For me, I've found the most success in gaining power through letting people trust me on what they believe to be their own terms. Yes, I could ruin them, and that is a delicious fantasy (and one, admittedly, I play out now and again with lovers)... but if I did so with clients, my reputation could be ruined more than it would be worth. By being "responsible" with my power, I gain more of it. 

I'm curious what you and yours would remark on my endeavors. I don't help people because I feel "compassion" or any nonsense like that. I don't feel any sort of "trauma bond" either. Simply, I'm good at something, and people admire, praise, and depend on me (to the point of stopping themselves from suicide) for that. Any other "savior sociopaths" out there? (After all, being a Savior entails being someone's God...)

Enough about religion

A reader asks about my religious faith:

Good evening ME,

Thank you for an interesting blog.

Lately you have been writing quite a bit about your religion. I am curious , do you REALLY believe in any of your religion? One of the basic traits of sociopaths is, according to Hare and others, “free from delusions” and I dare say that anyone who is not delusional cannot believe in any religion since they by definition require you to believe something that clearly cannot be true (mostly because there never is any real evidence at all, just books and pastors but also because if you look at any religion with a clear mind it is quite obvious that people believe it because others have told them to believe it in combination with that reality(there is no heaven etc. ) is unbearable for empaths).

I am not saying there cannot be grains of truths and/or wisdom in any religion but the basic tenets cannot an are not true. Do you see this?

Yeah, I realize that a lot of people don't understand, or don't like, or don't like reading about how I relate to religion. And I'm sorry if it seemed like I over-posted about it before. I don't mean to inundate readers with anything they'd rather not hear about. I started posting more about religion when the book came out because I was no longer as worried about hiding certain aspects of myself from being used to identify me. Before that, I intentionally kept most of what I posted generic, both for the identity purposes and so people who shared those traits could project their own experiences onto what I wrote to be able to relate better. After doing that for several years, I thought that it might be interesting to change it up by giving people a more fleshed out portrayal of someone who has been diagnosed with this disorder. I know some of you didn't like that change, just like someone of you didn't like any of the other changes that I've made or things that I've done in the public eye. But I don't really know what I'm doing or have a master plan. I just try things out and sometimes they work ok and sometimes they are disasters.

But yeah, after the book came out I started talking more about things I had been quiet about before: being female, more about being in my particular profession, and more about some of my other specific formative life experiences.  Because I do feel like a lot of the way I think and present to the world is influenced by these things: growing up in a big, smart, (a little trashy) Mormon family; being female; studying and practicing law; being American and a Californian; being a classically-trained musician; etc. I don't think those things necessarily have much or anything to do with sociopathy, but they do have something to do with the sorts of choices I make in how I live my life. And I realize that a lot of people (most?) are not interested in me as a person, and I realize a lot of you believe that I am a narcissist for various reasons (maybe even narcissistic personality disorder? which I definitely show signs of), including that I talk about myself a lot (and use the word I and me a lot and seem delusional, or as my friend puts it, like a megalomaniac). But thanks everyone for your feedback and I hope to do better. But also sometimes I wrote posts more for niche audiences (or at least hope to), because although I understand that not everyone is interested in certain topics or certain aspects about me, I think others are? Maybe other Mormons, other musicians, other INTJs, or other people who have been diagnosed as having Asperger's (as my most recent therapist suggested, funnily enough). And often I just use this blog as sort of a journaling project to write about the things that are on my mind, not knowing whether they will appeal to outside audience or not. So feel free to skip the posts you find boring or inapplicable, and hopefully we'll pick up with something more to your liking in a later post.

But here is what I replied to this reader:

This is an interesting question. First, I think that everyone suffers from delusions because we cannot correctly perceive or understand reality. So when they say free from delusions, I think they are largely making the distinction that sociopaths do not suffer from psychosis. There may also be a small distinction between other personality disorders like narcissism, which seem to be a little more out of touch with reality than sociopathy manages to be?

In response to religion being delusional, we are always being delusional in some unknown way. We used to believe that homosexuality was unnatural and a mental illness. We used to bleed people. We used to think the world was flat. I do not flatter myself that I would have been immune to any of those delusions had I lived in those times and with that knowledge. I'm aware that the things we don't know vastly exceed the things we do know. So believing, perhaps delusionally, in religion is not a problem for me.

If anything, it has helped me to manage having a personality disorder. For instance, although I don't really feel like I am any particular person or have a strong sense of self, my religion teaches me that I am, I have a soul, and so does everyone else, and our main job in life is to become more perfectly who we were meant to become and to help others to do the same. My religion teaches me that just because I have done bad things does not mean that I am a bad person who is incapable of ever changing or doing good things (or my dad, or anyone else who has hurt me in the past). My religion teaches me that my brain and other physical defects can distort how I see the world, who I believe myself to be, and how I act in a way that is not really "me", and I can do things to minimize those effects and (eventually) become free from those. My religion also teaches me rules of morality are not determined by consensus and that I shouldn't worry about the judgment of other people so much as the judgment of a more perfect arbiter, so I try to focus on the big stuff, like achieving enlightenment, and not necessarily on the small bad stuff that currently happens to be most controversial in the world. My religion teaches me that although I can change, I have been given certain gifts that are essential to humanity, that no one is trash or sans value, and that all of us have a specific role to fulfill as part of the body of Christ. I'm sure some or all of this sounds ridiculous, but the net effects of believing it are good for me, and so I (like everyone else in this world?) maintain certain beliefs that are good for me that may otherwise seem entirely specious.

"if free will didn't exist we'd still be better off believing in it."
— M.E. (@sociopathworld) April 11, 2014

Sorry for all of the recycled posts. I'm on vacation.

Also, this Brene Brown video on returning to religion as a researcher.

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.)

Practicing Catholic

From a reader:

My name is Violet and I have recently been "Diagnosed" with ASPD, specifically Sociopathy. My psychologist of six years has recently told me (recently, as in almost three months ago) that he believes me to be a sociopath and for quite a while now. This was sort of a revelation; so many aspects of my life and mind became clear and made complete sense. I then realized why so many relationships failed and why I never could understand certain life lessons my mother or others would try to explain.

The reason I am writing to you is because I have a few questions and I am internally torn at the moment.  I am a practicing Catholic and have been since the "age of reason." I think that is probably one of the most difficult aspects of my life, that is, being myself and trying to live by what my Faith and Church teach even when I disagree or possess no love or interest in it. I am purely a Catholic because the fear of Hell was instilled within me from a very young age. I have always questioned the Church when others around me follow it blindly, or what appears to me to be blindly. Do you believe it is possible for a sociopath to fully accept a form of religion? My religion teaches that human nature is inherently sinful. There are degrees and variations of evil and good. The Church never mentions anything about the human brain and how certain disorders or personalities could make one more susceptible to sin. Sociopaths can lie, cheat, kill, steal, etc. without feeling remorse but this doesn't mean that we will, we are just more inclined to do those things and with ease. Would you say I am right? Psychology doesn't seem to apply with most Christian religions. People do not think psychologically. Most people do not seem to think, independently anyway. I am a philosophy major. I have also taken many logic courses. Thinking differently and more extensively has always been a part of me. I am sure you can relate.

I am having difficulty finding facts about Sociopathy online. Most of what I come across are the exaggerated and dramatic narratives from "Victims of Sociopathic/psychopathic relationships" who complain about their past romantic relationships and the "Sociopath or psychopath" who wronged them. I find it very humorous that they think that because one man/woman (normally a man though) cheated on them and ended the relationship that this therefore makes them a sociopath or psychopath. What a hasty generalization. There are so many disorders, why do people always label the "evil doer" as a sociopath or psychopath? Also, there doesn’t have to be something psychologically wrong with a person to perform hurtful or faulty acts.

Most people are terrified of sociopaths/psychopaths. I find this very interesting. I told my closest friend and she has absolutely no issue remaining my best friend. In fact, she finds it fascinating and she said it explains a lot of my behavior. She is also Catholic and an empath. I think she has a "Normal personality." She is the least dramatic and emotionally charged person I know, and because of this our friendship works very well.

I understand that most people are fixated on the "no remorse" aspect of the personality and that is why they are afraid and prefer to remain apart from us. I am tired of pretending though and I am tired of being an actress. Every now and then I am myself though, either with people I am just meeting or my mother's friends. I just do not see the sense in pretending for certain people; I gain nothing from them so I will stay away.  

I also have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Is this common? My research online only stated that the personality favors order and control. I am constantly internally examining myself for all of the traits I have read or the little "ticks" that I possess. Since discovering that I have the personality this has been a great personal study.


I have one more question. Is it normal that there would be an abusive instigator or crucial person who would illicit abnormal emotional behavior for a sociopath? From Childhood maybe? Research has suggested this. Sort of like the one person who helps form the person through abuse and could possibly only be the person to illicit any sort of emotional behavior? My psychiatrist thinks it is possible and told me that my mother is this person. She is the only one who can make me cry. Do you have that sort of person?

Your website is very helpful.

My response:

Thanks for this! Your thoughts on Catholicism reminded me of this and this post on contradictions.

I do think sociopaths can be religious, for various reasons, including maybe that they just want to. My religion seems to take into account psychological issues and relies more on mercy than justice, so maybe that's why I feel at home there.


I don't think that we don't have emotions, we just don't usually give them any sort of meaning or real role in our lives. You probably feel anger towards your mother? I used to feel angry at my father, now I just don't. I figure, what's the point?

Neuroscientist and diagnosed James Fallon has talked about having bouts of both obsessive compulsive behavior and anxiety issues. If you believe that sociopathy is largely a disorder of attention, which I do, then it makes sense that we would become fixated on things (OCD or anxiety) in addition to being completely oblivious to others (unemotional, unempathetic) -- hyper and hypo attention, if those are words.

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?

What the Grinch Teaches us About Good, Evil, and the Possibility of Change

I love the Grinch story/movies. For those that haven't experienced them, the Grinch is a bad guy (or tragically misunderstood?) who has a turnaround and his heart grows three sizes. How does it grow three sizes? It wasn't because he was shamed.

I got some pushback on my dislike of shaming as an enforcement method in the recent post "6 Surprising Findings About Good and Evil." (Some people found the scientific findings so surprising, they flat out disagreed with them.) People did not like my suggestion that we stop using gossip and public shaming as blunt instrument enforcement mechanisms for ensuring conformity of moral and social behavioral standards. And this was even before the Justine Sacco fiasco, where a Sarah Silverman style joke was the impetus for people who had never given half a thought to the AIDS crisis in Africa to judge her worthy of the equivalent of public social stoning.  One person's criticism: "Your solutions are always based on the whole world changing, but not you. . . . This is the self-delusional part of your diagnosis that has to change in order for you to see a change in how the world accepts you." I think the gist of that comment is that people could simply avoid being shamed by always acting properly (or that social change is not possible or not desirable in this instance?).

The problem is that no one behaves properly all of the time. Whether it is a tasteless joke, or a deeply held belief that is politically unpopular, every single person has done, said, or thought something that, if widely publicized, could ruin them. So often these people who have been shunned by society are not necessarily better or worse overall than most people, they are largely just unlucky (or have too much integrity to change their values due to the pressures of the crowd?). And for that lack of luck (or abundance of virtue however misguided we believe their virtue is?), we collectively destroy them. And I think this is wasteful, unnecessary, and suggests that people must really enjoy shaming to do it as often as they do because that seems to be the major benefit.

I think ruining people's life over one thing they did is generally a bad idea because people are dynamic -- they change their beliefs and their loyalties and their values many times over their lifetime. Think of the violent criminal who mentors and assists his fellow prisoners while incarcerated or the Grinch whose heart grows three sizes. Society is also dynamic -- an idea that was once politically unpopular becomes the norm and vice versa. You may think you're very right in the moral judgments and punishments you invoke against strangers, but so do the people who publicly stone people for otherwise consensual adultery. I'm not saying that society is wrong or needs to change to accommodate me. I'm just saying, these are some of the easy and not even original to me critiques of the prevalent and severely effective blunt instrument that is social shaming to ensure compliance of social norms. Furthermore, as I previously posted, shaming doesn't work how people would like it to. If someone shamed you, would you change your heart or just try to stay more under the radar? There is actually evidence that restorative justice is actually more effective than retributive justice (like shaming and the subsequent social fallout), both in terms of victim satisfaction and offender accountability. For instance, wasn't it because the Grinch was the recipient of restorative justice (allowing him fully back into society after he brought back the Christmas he had stolen) that he was able to change his heart? Or do we no longer give people the benefit of the doubt or even acknowledge that they have the power to change? Maybe we would have preferred for the Grinch to live his life in isolation in his cave, forever shunned from polite society?

I guess it's easier for me to see the negative aspects of shaming than the positive because I have seen so many people in my life make radical changes -- it's why I don't hate my parents for things that happened in my childhood and why I have an appreciation for the redemptive power of spirituality and religion in people's lives. 

A utilitarian view of justice? (part 3)

From the reader again:

I wonder if empathy is a refuge for people who don't believe in god but find utilitarianism too cold as a basis for morality. Or maybe people who have an excess of empathy find it abhorrent to be utilitarian, because it's somehow dehumanizing (ie, being utilitarian means you make an impersonal calculation about the greatest good for the greatest number, as opposed to treating everyone like as individuals)?

I'll share a story with you, which you're also welcome to publish on your blog: I was flying home from Africa a few years ago, and was seated beside a Moroccan woman and her son, on their way to visit family in Montreal. At one point, she asked me about my religion. I told her that I didn't believe in god, which immediately distressed her. I recall her almost frantically reassuring me that I was probably a good person anyway, and that I looked like I loved my family, and so on. I think she was, in her own way, trying to be nice to me and not make me feel bad about my atheism!

Her apprehension of me makes sense, I think.  Her morality derives from God. She doesn't kill, steal, or eat pork because Allah forbids it. Then she meets me, and not only don't I believe in Allah, I don't believe in any god at all. If I don't believe in god, then what stops me from killing and stealing? In her eyes, nothing! And yet I don't look like a monster. How is that possible? What prevents people from being monsters if not god? I think some empaths feel the same way about sociopaths and empathy.

I'm guessing that some empaths think about someone like you, who doesn't experience any emotional empathy, and freak out like the woman beside me on the plane did. Their morality is based on empathy/god. You have no empathy/don't believe in god. Therefore you have no morality. You now become completely unpredictable to them, hence the fear.  You eat pork and don't pray, so maybe you also murder?  You don't cry when others are in pain, so maybe you can kill someone and not feel badly about it?

This last part of the story reminds me a lot of this.

When saw we thee a stranger?

I grew up in a very welcoming church in which the primary doctrine was that we are all children of God (spirit siblings) with the divine potential to become gods ourselves. Over the recent holiday I asked my uncle how he converted to the church. He told me a story of being 17 years-old, searching for truth, and finding it in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. I asked him what were the church teachings that inspired him to make such a change. He said primarily the belief in the pre-existence -- that we had spiritual lives before this one and that we each chose to come to this planet and receive a body to have a physical existence.

After he answered my questions he turned it back on me. He had read the book and wanted to know what about the church made me keep believing, despite being the way I am. The truth is that I have always believed and never doubted. My mother thinks that is a gift of the spirit. But I've also never had reason to doubt. The teachings of the church have always felt as true to me as anything else people have told me. But I told my uncle, I have learned that everyone has their own view of any belief. There are no identical Mormons -- there are no identical political conservatives, or feminists, or humanists, or even sociopaths. Even though you can categorize people into big groups, people really are special snowflakes and they will not always fit the mold in the way that other members of that group will expect. That doesn't mean they don't belong to that group or groupings are not useful, We were never meant to be the same and we're all too complex to describe with just a few categories or characteristics. For instance, I used to fixate on the "criminal" description of criminal sociopaths, thinking that they must be the "low-functioning ones." It wasn't until I interacted with some that I realized that "criminal" didn't really mean everything I had just sort of assumed it did. Now I don't have such rigid views about how I expect people to manifest their personality disorders or other mental issues.

But bringing it back to religion, I liked this talk from a LDS Bishop about gay mormons:

Even in the Church, among brothers and sisters, we are sometimes strangers. We have a tendency to judge one another for failure to understand the gospel as we understand it or abide by the commandments as we ourselves do. In every ward there are members who speak disparagingly of those who are different, who question the devotion of their brothers and sisters on some basis, who treat them as strange.

In Romans, Paul emphasizes the importance of the saints having tolerance and charity for those who are different. To those who may make judgments about others in regard to their eating habits, for example, he says, “If a man is weak in his faith, you must accept him without attempting to settle doubtful points. For instance, one man will have faith enough to eat all kinds of food, while a weaker man eats only vegetables. The man who eats must not hold in contempt the man who does not, and he who does not eat must not pass judgement on the one who does; for God has accepted him” (14: 1-3, New English Bible; hereafter NEB). Disputations about the Sabbath day are seen in the same light. “This man regards one day more highly than another, while that man regards all days alike. On such a point everyone should have reached conviction in his own mind. He who respects the day has the Lord in mind in doing so, and he who eats meat has the Lord in mind when he eats, since he gives thanks to God. For no one of us lives, and, equally, no one of us dies, for himself alone. . . . Let us therefore cease judging one another. . . . Let us then pursue the things that make for peace and build up the common life” (14:5-7, NEB). Building that common life is our common stewardship and when we take it seriously we progress as individuals and as a Church.

I am struck by what Paul says because I think he is trying to teach a very important lesson: there are a number of things about which the Lord seems not to care, in which He gives us choice. It seems there are many issues over which we choose to be divisive, which are of no consequence to God. He doesn’t care whether we are Republican or Democrat, liberal or conservative, rich or poor, sophisticated or simple. It is probably of no concern to Him if we are vegetarians, eat white flour, have beards, wear colored shirts to Church, or the myriad other things that some of us consider important enough to judge, condemn, or spiritually disfellowship one another over.

Instead of focusing on such trivia, we should, as Paul says, “pursue the things that make for peace, and build up the common life.” Those things generally are love, understanding, tolerance, acceptance, liberality of spirit, magnanimity, and forgiveness.
***
[T]he following statements by Joseph Smith might prove instructive:

“The nearer we get to our Heavenly Father, the more we are disposed to look with compassion on perishing souls. We feel we should want to take them upon our shoulders and cast their sins behind our backs.”

“Nothing is so much calculated to lead a people to forsake sin as to take them by the hand, and watch over them with tenderness. When persons manifest the least kindness and love to me, O What power it has over my mind, while the opposite course has a tendency to harrow up all the harsh feelings and depress the human mind.”


“Our Heavenly Father is more liberal in His views, and [more] boundless in His mercies and blessings, than we are ready to believe or receive.”
***
The entire burden of Christ’s message is that we should be slow to judge and quick to forgive, that we should consider all people as ourselves, and that we should love one another without regard to our differences. The Golden Rule applies especially to all those whom we consider strange, queer, abnormal—all those whom we might see as different from or less than we are.

The truth is that despite all being special snowflakes, we have much more in common with each other than we would ever have separating us and we are interconnected in ways that we cannot comprehend.

Nature wills discord

Truth: nature wills discord. From Immanuel Kant's "Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View" (1784):

The means employed by Nature to bring about the development of all the capacities of men is their antagonism in society, so far as this is, in the end, the cause of a lawful order among men.

By “antagonism” I mean the unsocial sociability of men, i.e., their propensity to enter into society, bound together with a mutual opposition which constantly threatens to break up the society. Man has an inclination to associate with others, because in society he feels himself to be more than man, i.e., as more than the developed form of his natural capacities. But he also has a strong propensity to isolate himself from others, because he finds in himself at the same time the unsocial characteristic of wishing to have everything go according to his own wish. Thus he expects opposition on all sides because, in knowing himself, he knows that he, on his own part, is inclined to oppose others. This opposition it is which awakens all his powers, brings him to conquer his inclination to laziness and, propelled by vainglory, lust for power, and avarice, to achieve a rank among his fellows whom he cannot tolerate but from whom he cannot withdraw. 

Thus are taken the first true steps from barbarism to culture, which consists in the social worth of man; thence gradually develop all talents, and taste is refined; through continued enlightenment the beginnings are laid for a way of thought which can in time convert the coarse, natural disposition for moral discrimination into definite practical principles, and thereby change a society of men driven together by their natural feelings into a moral whole. Without those in themselves unamiable characteristics of unsociability from whence opposition springs-characteristics each man must find in his own selfish pretensions-all talents would remain hidden, unborn in an Arcadian shepherd’s life, with all its concord, contentment, and mutual affection. Men, good-natured as the sheep they herd, would hardly reach a higher worth than their beasts; they would not fill the empty place in creation by achieving their end, which is rational nature. 

Thanks be to Nature, then, for the incompatibility, for heartless competitive vanity, for the insatiable desire to possess and to rule! Without them, all the excellent natural capacities of humanity would forever sleep, undeveloped. Man wishes concord; but Nature knows better what is good for the race; she wills discord. He wishes to live comfortably and pleasantly; Nature wills that he should be plunged from sloth and passive contentment into labor and trouble, in order that he may find means of extricating himself from them. The natural urges to this, the sources of unsociableness and mutual opposition from which so many evils arise, drive men to new exertions of their forces and thus to the manifold development of their capacities. They thereby perhaps show the ordering of a wise Creator and not the hand of an evil spirit, who bungled in his great work or spoiled it out of envy.

I have gotten a lot of flack for being ruthless, for ruining people, for going after my enemies with full force of mind and spirit, and particularly for enjoying it all (would Jesus do that? the God of the Old Testament seems to). What do we think of soldiers who enjoy killing? Monsters? What do we think of people who love beating their opponent soundly? Antisocial? What do we think of people who think that they are the best at what they do? Narcissists? Delusional? What do we think of people who are willing to get their hands dirty in order to achieve their goals? Primitive? Evil? One of my favorite things is to be beaten by a worthy opponent, so I have a hard time understanding when other people claim to be the "victim" of a sociopath who happened to, for example, outplay them at politics at work, or in a child custody battle, or business partnership, or any number of skirmishes that are necessary for the world to function as it currently does. I know that some people loathe the fact that this is life, that it makes us no better than animals. I love Kant's suggestion that it is exactly the opposite -- this antagonism is what prompts humans to strive to achieve something more than living like animals.

Along those same lines, from this NY Times article "Are the Roma Primitive, or Just Poor?" (which hilariously suggests that primitive/poor are the only possible explanations for their particular brand of "antisocial" living):

 “It is very difficult to interpret their behavior based on our own 20th-century standards,” Alain Behr, a defense lawyer who represented two of the accused clan chiefs, explained by telephone from Nancy. “This community crosses time and space with its traditions, and we in Europe have trouble to integrate them. Yet they have preserved their tradition, which is one of survival.”

Mormons ok with mental illness

For something that is as shockingly common (this foundation cites 1 in 4 Americans with a diagnosable mental disorder in any given year), very little has been said about mental illness in the LDS/Mormon church. This weekend is the 183rd Semiannual General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints where church leaders speak to the church members and the world (watch the final two sessions today via internet or BYUtv). Member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles Jeffrey R. Holland addressed his remarks on Saturday to "those who suffer from some form of mental illness or emotional disorder, whether those afflictions be slight or severe, of brief duration or persistent over a lifetime." Among other things, Elder Holland asserted that "[t]here should be no shame in acknowledging [mental illness]" and that mental illness is much like any other physical affliction that can be treated and eventually healed, whether in this life or the life to come. From the Deseret News:

While those dealing with a mental illness or an emotional disorder may feel like a “broken vessel,” they must remember the “vessel is in the hands of the divine potter,” said Elder Jeffrey R. Holland of the Quorum of the Twelve.

“Broken minds can be healed just the way broken bones and broken hearts are healed,” he said.
***
These afflictions, he said, are some of the realities of mortal life.

"In striving for some peace and understanding in these difficult matters, it is crucial to remember that we are living — and chose to live — in a fallen world where for divine purposes our pursuit of Godliness will be tested and tried again and again.

“Of greatest assurance in such a plan is that a Savior was promised, a Redeemer, who through our faith in Him would lift us triumphantly over those tests and trials, even though the cost to do so would be unfathomable for both the Father who sent Him and the Son who came. It is only an appreciation of this divine love that will make our own lesser suffering first bearable, then understandable, and finally redemptive.”
***
“So how do you respond when mental or emotional challenges confront you or those you love? Above all never lose faith in your Father in Heaven who loves you more than you can comprehend. …. Faithfully pursue the time-tested devotional practices that bring the Spirit of the Lord into your life. Seek the counsel of those who hold keys for your spiritual well being. Ask for and cherish priesthood blessings. Take the sacrament every week and hold fast to the perfecting promises of the Atonement of Jesus Christ. Believe in miracles.”

If things continue to be debilitating, seek the advice of reputable people with certified training, professional skills and good values, Elder Holland counseled. “Our Father in Heaven expects us to use all of the marvelous gifts He has provided in this glorious dispensation.”

Although the stigma of mental illness encompasses most if not all mental disorders, sociopathy is often the hardest for people to understand or sympathize with. Oddly, I think that people who believe in souls have a harder time with sociopaths than those who don't. For the atheists, it makes all the evolutionary sense in the world to have a segment of the population who is particularly ruthless and predatory. For the religious, it suggests that mankind is more animalistic than they're comfortable believing. But so do a lot of things, like the evidence against free will, the debunking the idea that our thoughts come from us (the way we typically think of that happening), or that we can control our thoughts. Where is the soul there? Where is the soul with my two Down Syndrome relatives? A lot of my Mormon family members believe that their souls are "in there somewhere," but the physical limitations of their brains do not allow their souls to manifest themselves as they otherwise would. I read an op-ed recently where the parent of a child on the autism spectrum felt that their child was locked away inside his mind, never able to fully express himself or be understood. Let's say I started acting like a completely different person and it turned out that I had a brain tumor, the removal of which caused me to return to my normal self -- which one is the true expression of my soul, and how could you prove it? Do religious people with dyslexia feel like their soul is dyslexic? But a lot of religious people assume that I must be soulless, or my soul is damned, or that I'm a demon, or that I must be possessed by demons. It's sort of a weird thing for religious people to believe for a lot of reasons. Like what is the point of God creating things that are eternally damned because they happen to have particular brain wiring/ genetics?