WeiWei Zoom interview 21 0423

 Here's the description:

M.E. Thomas (author of Confessions of a Sociopath) interviews WeiWei, a personality disordered individual that identifies as having characteristics of psychopathy and borderline personality disorder (BPD). They talk about feeling alien, including understanding at a young age that whatever they are naturally is repulsive to normal people and necessitates masking or pretending to be something else at a very early age just to get along. They talk about how the origin of much destructive behavior of the personality disordered comes from boredom and the boredom comes from a lack of cohesive personal narrative, which results in an existential sense of emptiness.

The cruise ship story

I know this post is going to sound random to most people and morose to some people and everyone can agree it probably belongs in the category of navel gazing. But there is one story (probably not true, because I think I heard it at like a cousin's graduation or something) that I have heard that inexplicably haunts me. In fact, I'm surprised I have never said anything about it because I feel this strange compulsion to re-tell it to people, like the movie The Ring (which I thought was such a great metaphor for so many things in life, by the way).

The story: some lady wants to go on a cruise, but she is not financially well off. So she saves all of her money for years and finally has saved up enough to go. But she doesn't have a lot of money to spend on the cruise, a budget of $20 a day. So she figures she'll just bring along some food with her (saltine crackers and cheese) to save money. Now for whatever reason, this story makes me cringe. Because I haven't even cruised before, but my impression is that the standard cruise is all-inclusive. Some more upscale restaurants may charge additional fees, but at least the entry-level restaurants meals are included in the price of the cruise ticket. And of course this is true of the cruise in this story, except the lady doesn't realize it. Instead she has a great time, participates in the activities and goes to the different locations. The last night of the cruise she decides to treat herself and dine in the restaurant. She orders whatever she wants and she loves it. At the end of her meal, she waits for her server to bring the check. After a while, she flags someone down and asks for her bill. The server, surprised, tells her that there is no separate cost for her meal, it's included in the price of the cruise.

I feel like I should tell my therapist this story because maybe there is some deep seeded psychological issue behind the story for me (read here for a similar real life experience). Or maybe I should email my brain doctor, because he's good at dream interpretation and this seems similar. But I actually thought about it again tonight possibly in connection with the reason I keep thinking about it -- I thought about it in relation to my general lack of attachment to life or this world. I've simply never found life to be that compelling. Kind of like a tv show that maybe I might find myself stumbling upon on Netflix and watching the first season or so, but ultimately not getting that caught up in it. Like I don't hate it, and I like it well enough to sit through it and enjoy it, just not enough to keep wanting a bunch more of it. It's oddly a family trait. My brothers would also say that they welcome death, or at least that they have no fear or dread of it and that it will have elements of release or relief to it. (One of my sisters-in-law used to complain about it, worry that it would mean that he would abandon his kids by not trying hard enough to survive a disease or other injury. Interestingly, now she feels the same way about take-it-or-leave-it life and can't remember how she ever could have felt any other way, so maybe it's contagious). But even though I've always had a friendly stance towards death, I think I've always wondered if I wasn't just eating saltine crackers and cheese in my closet of a room rather than dining at the all-you-can buffet. And I think that more than anything else has been a secret wish or hope of mine. But I feel a little funny admitting that now because I've been in therapy with a great therapist for over two years now and have made a lot of reconnections to emotions and letting go of some of the more problematic personality disorder thinking patterns, have actually started finding fulfillment in my career, have better relationships with my family the last few years than I had in any other few year span in my life. But if anything, I feel even less thrilled about life than I ever have. Maybe it was the cutting back on the shenanigans. Maybe feeling my emotions more really and deeply is making me overall less satisfied with life. Or maybe I thought that I'd have found the way to the buffet by now if it existed, but the fact that I'm still here eating cracker sandwiches suggests that maybe this is it and I have to get better at appreciating what I have? I don't know, it's kind of hilarious because I feel like for the first time I am starting to have problems that only normal people have, but I haven't yet learned all of the coping mechanisms that go along with them.

Sociopaths in media: Collateral

From a reader:

I loved the movie Collateral, starring Tom Cruise as Vincent the hitman and Jamie Foxx as the largely hapless cab driver, particularly this clip. Here’s the set up: Maxx is a cab driver with dreams of owning his own limo service. He’s been driving his taxi for 12 years, telling himself all the while that he is planning and saving money, awaiting the perfect time to start his own business. When Vincent gets into the backseat of his cab, Maxx assumes he’s just another fare. He is of course dead wrong. Vincent forces Maxx to act as his driver, ferrying him to various locations around LA to kill everyone on his to-do list.

In this scene, Vincent and Maxx have just escaped a hectic shoot out at a nightclub. Vincent has killed the 4th of the 5 victims on his hit list and Maxx attempted to escape during the melee with the help of detective Fanning. Just when it seemed as if Maxx and Fanning would make it, Vincent shoots the detective, thinking he was doing Maxx a favor. As you will see, Maxx has an epiphany of sorts after being confronted with Vincent’s harsh but truthful views.

I really liked this movie. The performances were terrific. Contrasting Fox’s passive everyman with Cruise’s uber disciplined sociopath made for a thematically interesting dynamic. The scene was, in a nutshell, an insightful look at how sociopaths see empaths better than they see themselves. I wonder though, is Vincent really a sociopath or is his career choice simply an inevitable result of his philosophical nihilism? Not that it matters to any of his victims.

Sociopath police: True Detective

In hacker culture, there are different color "hats" of people. White hat means you basically just ensure that systems are unhackable. Black hat hackers are the opposite, they're out there looking for vulnerabilities and exploiting them. Grey hackers are somewhere in between. Maybe they're breaking laws, but usually it's not malicious, or it's at least for a "good reason," whatever that may be to them.

I started watching True Detective, an HBO television series, and while I wouldn't say that any of the characters seem obviously sociopathic, by the time the mystery gets solved we'll probably realize that somebody is. For our protagonists we have a couple of cops. With giving too much away, the straight man, Marty Hart played by Woody Harrelson, makes questionable moral decisions. At one point his partner asks him what it is like to live a life sans guilt. His partner is not much better. Rust Cohle, played by Matthew McConaughey, is a master of compartmentalizing and situational ethics. Sometimes it seems like he is a deeply moral person (he spends a long scene explaining how unethical it is to bring children into this world, yanking them out of nonexistence), but he is also perfectly willing to kill people should the right situation present itself. He is nihilistic, but congratulates his partner after doing something completely unlawful: "Good to see you commit to something". It's not that he doesn't believe in right and wrong, he just had a different view than almost anyone else you would meet (but could it be just a sociopathic code? And actually, Marty's version of right and wrong is only superficially Judeo-Christian. When it comes down to it, they both have a very flexible sense of morality). Cohle is also insanely cool under pressure, is famed throughout the are for reading people, and is an extremely persuasive guy when he wants to be.

Is one of these characters a sociopath? Both? If they are, they are not black hat. Marty comes off as white hat, gradually seems more gray, and some think he's actually black. Cohle comes off as grey, sometimes creeps darker towards black, and every once in a while says something extremely white. But maybe that is more reflective of what he has chosen to do with his life to give himself some sense of purpose. When Marty asks him what's the point of getting out of bed in the morning if he believes life is meaningless, Cohle answers "I tell myself I bear witness, but the real answer is that it’s obviously my programming. And I lack the constitution for suicide." Sound like something you might say, sociopaths? But this is coming from a man whose definition of honorable behavior would be for human kind to "deny our programming; stop reproducing, walk hand in hand into extinction. One last midnight, brothers and sisters opting out of a raw deal." So I don't know.

Or maybe they're just cops. I heard a rumor once that police get their personality tested for sociopathic traits -- you have to have at least some but not too many. That doesn't surprise me, with police officers being in the top 10 jobs for sociopaths. And even if you weren't a cop, I bet dealing with some of that stuff and the frustrations of not actually being able to do much good in the world would eventually leave you pretty morally jaded.

Whatever these two characters are, the themes, plot devices, and overall flavor of the show are sociopathic and both sociopath and empath readers are likely to relate with one or both main characters, oddly enough. (At least at times.)

My favorite line after raiding the cocaine in the police evidence room, "They really should have a better system for this."

Vampires vs. zombies

Vampire movies and television are a guilty pleasure of mine. I like them because I think there are fun parallels to my own life. I watch zombie movies or television because I think there are fun parallels to the way everyone else lives their lives. That's why I enjoyed this article in the New York Times so much, "My Zombie, Myself: Why Modern Life Feels Rather Undead."

A lot of modern life is exactly like slaughtering zombies.

IF THERE’S ONE THING we all understand about zombie killing, it’s that the act is uncomplicated: you blast one in the brain from point-blank range (preferably with a shotgun). That’s Step 1. Step 2 is doing the same thing to the next zombie that takes its place. Step 3 is identical to Step 2, and Step 4 isn’t any different from Step 3. Repeat this process until (a) you perish, or (b) you run out of zombies. That’s really the only viable strategy.

Every zombie war is a war of attrition. It’s always a numbers game. And it’s more repetitive than complex. In other words, zombie killing is philosophically similar to reading and deleting 400 work e-mails on a Monday morning or filling out paperwork that only generates more paperwork, or following Twitter gossip out of obligation, or performing tedious tasks in which the only true risk is being consumed by the avalanche. The principal downside to any zombie attack is that the zombies will never stop coming; the principal downside to life is that you will be never be finished with whatever it is you do.
***
This is our collective fear projection: that we will be consumed. Zombies are like the Internet and the media and every conversation we don’t want to have. All of it comes at us endlessly (and thoughtlessly), and — if we surrender — we will be overtaken and absorbed. Yet this war is manageable, if not necessarily winnable. As long we keep deleting whatever’s directly in front of us, we survive. We live to eliminate the zombies of tomorrow. We are able to remain human, at least for the time being. Our enemy is relentless and colossal, but also uncreative and stupid.

Battling zombies is like battling anything ... or everything.

“I know this is supposed to be scary,” [a friend] said. “But I’m pretty confident about my ability to deal with a zombie apocalypse. I feel strangely informed about what to do in this kind of scenario.”

I could not disagree. At this point who isn’t? We all know how this goes: If you awake from a coma, and you don’t immediately see a member of the hospital staff, assume a zombie takeover has transpired during your incapacitation. Don’t travel at night and keep your drapes closed. Don’t let zombies spit on you. If you knock a zombie down, direct a second bullet into its brain stem. But above all, do not assume that the war is over, because it never is. The zombies you kill today will merely be replaced by the zombies of tomorrow. But you can do this, my friend. It’s disenchanting, but it’s not difficult. Keep your finger on the trigger. Continue the termination. Don’t stop believing. Don’t stop deleting. Return your voice mails and nod your agreements. This is the zombies’ world, and we just live in it. But we can live better.

I say that this is how everyone else lives their lives, but my life is remarkably similar. Someone asked me recently why do I seduce people, why do I play games, what's the point? I guess I wasn't aware there was some other choice for how to live your life other than find things that keep you engaged and entertained. But yes, empaths play one version of this game, and I guess we play another, and you can say that one is about love or emotions and that is somehow better than having it be about power and winning, but is it? Seems like a matter of personal preference.

The Gervais Principle (part 3)

A reader sent me a link to the latest edition of the Gervais Principle. From the reader:

Have you read the final installment of the Gervais Principle? You mentioned the previous installments in older posts, but the last section is much more insightful and relevant to sociopaths than the previous ones. 

Venkat basically describes sociopaths as ultimate social nihilists that progressively learn that every single ideal or moral calculus that gives meaning to human existence as social constructs. In the end, sociopaths find immense freedom in a world that has no meaning except what they create or choose to acknowledge. This means that sociopaths can still coexist peacefully (social contracts), both with empaths and other socios. I identify very strongly with this nihilism, and I have frequently mentioned the idea of an absent god before I read the Gervais Principle, but I also feel that you do not identify very strongly with this description, given your adherence to the tenets of Mormonism, unless I am misinterpreting you. What are your thoughts? 

Here's what I replied (makes the most sense if you read the article first):

Thanks for this! I enjoyed it a lot. I especially liked this part:

"The mask-ripping process itself becomes revealed as an act within the last theater of social reality, the one within which at least manipulating social realities seems to be a meaningful process in some meta-sense. Game design with good and evil behaviors."
I feel like a lot of sociopaths stop at that stage for a while. They give me a hard time for revealing their methods, as if playing a game was any less meaningless than everything the empaths are up to.

I think it is that sort of nihilism that allowed me to write the book and be so flippant about it and possible ramifications. Some people think my zen attitude is from my mormonism. Maybe. It is true that if you believe in religion then a lot of things in life just don't matter much. But if you don't believe in religion, then for sure nothing in life matters much. So that's where I sort of am on Mormonism. I'd like to think that I will continue to exist forever and be a god. If that doesn't work out, oh well, there's really no such thing as "wasting time" doing one thing over another. But I do think my conception of God is really different from most people's, including most Mormons. The Otherwise Occupied God, or the God who might care about us but has the perspective to not really be as caught up as we think he might be in what all we get up to (or he cares about different things than we think).

The article's most basic argument, in reference to the emphasis that the "losers" place on social interactions and the accompanying emotional checks and balances:

But by their very nature, emotions overweight social behavior over material substance. Having a $100 bill thrown contemptuously at you hurts. Being politely handed $10 feels good. The Loser mind, predictably, sees the first act as a slight and seeks revenge, and the second act as nice and seeks to repay it.

We saw an example from the The Office last time. In the sales-commissions episode we find that for the support staff, sharing in the salespeople’s commissions and being thrown a thank-you party are emotionally equivalent. Both heal the emotional rift, but one leaves the salespeople vastly better off.

The Sociopath as Priest

It is this strangely incomplete calculus that creates the shifting Loser world of rifts and alliances. By operating with a more complete calculus, Sociopaths are  able to manipulate this world through the divide-and-conquer mechanisms.  The result is that the Losers end up blaming each other for their losses, seek collective emotional resolution, and fail to adequately address the balance sheet of material rewards and losses.

To succeed, this strategy requires that Losers not look too closely at the non-emotional books. This is why, as we saw last time, divide-and-conquer is the most effective means for dealing with them, since it naturally creates emotional drama that keeps them busy while they are being manipulated.

Sociopaths encourage this mode of processing by framing their own contributions to betrayal situations as necessary and inevitable. They also carefully avoid contributing to the emotional texture of unfolding events, otherwise their roles might come under scrutiny by being included in the emotional computations.

For theatrically skilled Sociopaths, other non-vanilla affects are possible. “Divine anger” (Jan),  ”charming but firm elder” (Jo Bennett) and “unpredictable demigod” (Robert California) are examples. These framing affects are designed to shape outcomes without direct participation, in ways that cannot be achieved by neutral low-reactor affects.
***

These non-vanilla personalities operate by adding to, or subtracting from, the net emotional energy available to go around in Loser emotional calculations, but without intimate involvement. Sociopaths basically create the emotional boundary conditions of Loser life in simple or complex ways, depending on their skill level.
***
Guilt is the one emotion that Losers cannot always resolve for themselves, since it sometimes requires quantities of forgiveness that mere humans cannot dispense, but priests can, as reserve bankers of the fiat currencies of Loser emotional life.

Other good nuggets:

• manufacturing fake realities is very hard. But subtractive simplification of reality is much easier, and yields just as much power.
• Sociopaths exercise agency on behalf of others. They do not grab power. Power is simply ceded to them.
• Sociopathy is not about ripping off a specific mask from the face of social reality. It is about recognizing that there are no social realities. There are only masks.  Social realities exist as a hierarchy of increasingly sophisticated and specialized fictions for those predisposed to believe that there is something special about the human condition, which sets our realities apart from the rest of the universe.
• There is, to the Sociopath, only one reality governing everything from quarks to galaxies. Humans have no special place within it. Any idea predicated on the special status of the human — such as justice, fairness, equality, talent — is raw material for a theater of mediated realities 
• Non-Sociopaths dimly recognize the nature of the free Sociopath world through their own categories: “moral hazard” and “principal-agent problem.”  They vaguely sense that the realities being presented to them are bullshit: things said by people who are not lying so much as indifferent to whether or not they are telling the truth. Sociopath freedom of speech is the freedom to bullshit: they are bullshit artists in the truest sense of the phrase.
• Non-Sociopaths, as Jack Nicholson correctly argued, really cannot handle the truth. . . . The truth of values as crayons in the pockets of unsupervised Sociopaths. The truth of the non-centrality of humans in the larger scheme of things.
• When these truths are recognized, internalized and turned into default ways of seeing the world, creative-destruction becomes merely the act of living free, not a divinely ordained imperative or a primal urge.  Creative destruction is not a script, but the absence of scripts. The freedom of Sociopaths is the same as the freedom of non-human animals. Those who view it as base merely provide yet another opportunity for Sociopaths to create non-base fictions for them to inhabit.
• Morality becomes a matter of expressing fundamental dispositions rather than respecting social values. Kindness or cruelty, freely expressed. Those who are amused by suffering use their powers to cause it. Those who enjoy watching happiness theaters, create them through detached benevolence.

Choosing the better part

I have been thinking a lot about the meaning of life. I recently had a conversation with a friend who is going through something of a midlife crisis. He was dissatisfied with his expat job so he quit and moved to an expensive city with a renowned singles scene. He had saved up a ton of money over the years of working long hours and thought that the key to his life's happiness was now to focus on his personal life. Old habits die hard, though, and once he got to the city, he quickly became lonely and depressed. He was even less happy than he was at his old job. Why?

It's an interesting sort of puzzle and I found myself being drawn in to try to figure it out myself. My first thought was that his old job gave him a sense of purpose. The more I talked to him, though, the more I thought it must be that his old job gave him a sense of status and superiority -- he complains about not flying first class anymore, not having preferred "status" with his airline and bank, and he talks all of the time about his degrees from very fancy schools, as if that should be all that is expected of him in life.

The other day he announced to me that he had solved the riddle of his unhappiness with the help of his therapist -- he "needs" to make a lot of money. Not to spend the money, he assured me (he lives a Spartan existence), but for the security. He assured me that his need wasn't any different than these people who feel like they need to spend a lot of money (why the need to legitimize?) and all he wanted was to have enough money so that he could pay people for life's necessities rather than relying on informal social contracts.

"Do you think there's also a sense of validation that you are worth a large sum of money?" I asked. "Or do you think there is some value in social contracts apart from the services or gifts you might receive? Do you think it might be better to just believe that people can be lovely and so it is no great shame that you are just the same as everyone else?"

He's a smart guy and a sceptic (not at all spiritual) so I focused on studies that have shown that one of the factors most correlated with life satisfaction are the number and quality of interpersonal relationships. He replied he is not most people, though, arguing that he is an introvert and that it is "really hard" for him to interact with people and consequently he doesn't like to. Then we talked for a bit about the difference between being true to the person he is day to day versus where he wants to end up in 20 years. Specifically, if he does become rich enough to replace social contracts with monetary ones, there will be less of an incentive to make or maintain relationships. Gradually that will become more and more true until he will (all the while acting completely rationally regarding his day to day preferences) end up 20 years from now with few connections to the human race. And is that where he wants to be?

I was reminded of a scripture that I never understood until recently. Jesus comes over to Martha's house for a meal. Mary, her sister, sits at his feet and is instructed by him until Martha complains, asking him to admonish Mary to help her with the preparations. Jesus rebukes her and says "one thing is needful: and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her." The implication is that Mary's focus is properly on the eternities while Martha is focused on preparing a meal that will soon be forgotten.

I used to not be able to think of my future except in terms of probabilities. I think this is true of a lot of teenagers, but it took me a long time to outgrow it -- not really until my 30s. Studying music helped -- having to plan ahead and invest in myself for a long term payout. I learned a lot more when I picked up gardening during an extended period of unemployment and self-introspection (basically when I started the blog). I learned that success (at least in my garden) was the product of dozens of small things that I did daily and even if did those things, catastrophe might still strike in the form of a frost or animal interference. Gardening was good for me to internalize both a sense of long term cause and effect and the knowledge that just because I put in the work didn't mean everything would necessarily turn out fine. If things worked out, I was happy. But I also learned to be happy that I had taken the chance, even when I didn't get the results I had hoped for.

I love beets, but I loved that garden more for what it taught me about myself and the world -- that I am like a garden, in a very Candide "we must cultivate our gardens" sort of way. And that I may be tempted to indulge in hundreds of impulses a day, but that I too can choose the better part that will lead to a more lasting life satisfaction. (And still have the immediate satisfaction of feeling like I'm choosing better than most.)

Finding joy beyond self

One of my readers suggested that the exchange between Tinkerbelle and Daniel Birdick here should get its own post. I agree. The thing I particularly like about this exchange is Birdick's description of finding joy and meaning. It's in particular conceptions of self as "good" or even "bad" or anything in particular. It's in other, external things. Sometimes the source happens to be oneself, but it's not for the sake of "being" something, but the sake of having done or experienced something -- having made someone laugh so hard they choke, as opposed to "being hilarious." Maybe it's not quite "selfless," but for being so self-involved, the sociopath happens to enjoy a lot of things that have nothing to do with him or how he feels about himself.

Here it is, starting with Daniel Birdick:


This post stayed with me because I believe it encapsulates one of the “sociopath’s” defining characteristics: the inability to believe in self. “Normal’s” have a more or less static sense of self. This sense of self includes but is not limited to beliefs about morality, politics, religion, and of course sexuality and gender. “Sociopaths”, not so much. My theory is that “sociopaths” are unable to believe the story the left hemisphere of the brain constantly spins about who and what the self is the way “normals” do. The aware “sociopath” knows he/she is wearing a mask. The “normals” believe the mask they wear is who they really are. The aware “sociopath” has a better chance of understanding humanity’s true nature as a result of his/her inability to believe while “normals” live and die by the cobweb of illusion their brains ceaselessly spin about the self. Metaphorically speaking, the aware and intelligent “socio/psychopath” is the last of mankind’s prophets. Their very existence serves as a living testimony to the nihilistic truth of the universe. 

Mark Twain said it well, (if a little melodramatically): “you are but a thought -- a vagrant thought, a useless thought, a homeless thought, wandering forlorn among the empty eternities!"

Tinkerbelle:

Mr Birdick....what make's you happy? If sociopaths believe in nothingness and have no sense of self....what do you actually enjoy in life except "ruining" those around you. I did think that your post had a point, i understood your perspective, i really did, however what is there to look forward to in life if the left side of the brains hemisphere doesn't constantly spin a sense of self? Is life pointless?, You have me thinking now.

Daniel Birdick:


Hello Tinkerbelle.

What makes me happy? Jamaica Delights. Watching the sun rise over the ocean. The rich green color of freshly cut grass. Good music. A well delivered punch line. Cheesecake. Brilliant acting. A perfectly cooked T-bone steak. An expertly crafted movie, one where all the elements that go into great filmmaking are there on the screen. Watching my little niece run happily toward me. Devising effective stratagems to deal with the ceaseless power game that passes for “human adulthood”. I could go on and on, but you get the point. I enjoy many of the kinds of things I suspect you enjoy. I just don’t need to indulge in just so stories, like “Daniel is a republican, democrat, straight, gay, bi, would never kill, hates lying, and so on” to experience that enjoyment.

Is life pointless? Yeah, it is. Meaning and purpose are nothing more than products of the human consciousness, which is itself prone to self deception and delusion. (Witness the spectacle of billions of people all over the globe prostrating themselves before their invisible friends for instance.) Fortunately, it isn’t necessary to believe in meaning, purpose, morality or “selfhood” to enjoy the exchange of ideas or take delight in the taste of ice cream on a hot summer day or have great sex.

This may very well be one of the main things that bother “normals” about “sociopaths”. We at least have the potential to enjoy many of the things they enjoy without the baggage of having to negotiate with an inborn conscience. This fact may gall them because it makes a mockery of all their precious beliefs about morality and meaning.


Tinkerbelle:


If life really is pointless we all may as well lay down and die this very second. Why waste one's time? I've often pondered the "point". Sociopaths don't offend me with their views, people are who they are. Besides the topic is a damn good juicy debate!
I just think to myself that its ashame sometimes thats all (not in a condescending manner)...I can only imagine sociopathy to be like only ever watching black and white film's. Beautiful no doubt, yet two tone, empathy is like experiencing a film in burts of technicolour. Creativity stems from emotion. 

Maybe sociopathy misses the "point". Then again maybe not?...who truely knows?


Daniel Birdick:


Hi Tinkerbelle. You're right. These kinds of discussions are fascinating. It gives me an opportunity to exercise my mental muscles. Thanks for being my "spotter", so to speak. ;-) 

Now to address your comments-

Tinkerbelle said: “If life really is pointless we all may as well lay down and die this very second.” 

Is that true? Are you certain that this must be the inevitable outcome of discovering that life is meaningless? That would be akin to a 12 year old deciding that she’s never going to celebrate Christmas again after finding out that Santa Claus doesn’t exist. That would be a valid option, like any other, but not a necessary one. 

“Why waste one's time?” 

Why not? Besides, it’s only a waste if you define it as such. You have far greater power to define your personal experience of life than you know.

“I can only imagine sociopathy to be like only ever watching black and white film's. Beautiful no doubt, yet two tone, empathy is like experiencing a film in burts of technicolour. Creativity stems from emotion.”

You could be right. Even if you are right, even if “normals” greater facility for empathy is makes their experience of life richer, that doesn’t make it any truer and that’s my “point”. Emotions are no more an indicator of truth than speaking in tongues is an indicator that god exists. Being honest with myself is my highest value. Truth is what matters to me, not pretty lies. Even if I wanted to believe the fairytales others guide their lives by, I’ve discovered that I am incapable of it. Take empathy for example. Empathy literally means to vicariously experience the feelings of others. Your brain calculates what it might be like to feel what someone else is feeling and creates that experience within you. The literal experience of empathy is an evolutionary adaptation which I believe stems from the human drive to bond with other humans. But here’s the rub. You can’t really experience another person’s subjective state. You can only ever experience yourself and your own projections. So in a sense, empathy is as deceptive as morality is. Which again, is my point. The aware “sociopath” doesn’t miss the point because there isn’t one to miss.

The meaning of life (part 1)

A reader asked:

Hey dude, you know what would be interesting? An article about how sociopaths deal with boredom. What is boredom for a sociopath, why is it that it is so hard to deal with it and what do we do to not get bored. I am also curious about it. Thing is i am scared of the emptiness within myself. it's like when i was younger i used to have all these feelings that managed to keep me from getting bored by myself, you know, i had a way to meditate. but now whenever i am alone all i can sense is an empty space and for some reason i feel scared about it. it's like if i don't hold tight onto something i might fall into emptiness and never come back, dunno exactly. anyway, it's that emptiness that i want to know more about and how to deal with it.

Good question. I address this issue a little bit in this post. I was sort of made fun of for it in the comments of this post.

The human psyche really is so fragile. We lie to ourselves all the time about our existence and the meaning of our existence, like my recent post about free won't. Ignorance really is bliss in a lot of ways, but no matter how we try, we end up catching glimpses of the meaningless of life. I don't know why, really, but your question reminded me of Clive Wearing, a former musicologist, now the most severe form of amnesia ever documented. Every minute or so, he forgets absolutely everything and experiences a feeling of being born ex nihilo -- as if he never existed before, but now suddenly he does. He keeps a journal in which he writes over and over again, "I'm awake! For the very first time!" "I'm alive! For the first time!" "This is the first moment of my consciousness!" I think about him sometimes and wonder whether his life is horrible or wonderful.

What do you think about the subject?

I read the post and i think you are kinda right. That's how i feel, like living in a foreign country, gazing at the view but not being able to make any real interaction with the environment. I have been recently diagnosed with immature behaviour by a psychiatrist because i can't really make real progress in getting more mature, and i have to because i just dropped out of college because i was getting bored. Now i have to start all over again cause i don't want to skip college. I think it's true what you say about our meaningless existence also. I keep lying myself with fantasies about me being some kind of "chosen to do great" like that harry potter thing you talked about but i can see through the fog i create that i could also be a looser like everyone else. The "bad" thing is that realizing that i am just like everyone else doesn't change me. It's like i can't accept it willingly. I go on doing what i do and i feel kinda bad cause my psyche doesn't want to stop playing and realize that it has to get it's ass to work. Guess this unchangeable emptiness is something i have to get used to and work myself off to start doing some actual work. Guess this is why i reminded you of that amnesia guy. No matter what i do i can't change my perception upon life. I am still a kid even though i am 19.

About what you asked, i think he is having a good life feeling the beginning of his existence all the time like that. If he doesn't remember and the thrill keeps coming and coming i think he lives kinda happy all the time. Even though if someone explained to him his condition from a to the z, i think he would be kinda sad but not for long, right? Reminds me of the movie "First 50 dates" with adam sandler. If the people around him keep his illusion alive he doesn't have any reason for which to be unhappy and i guess that is all that matters. Sure, he won't do anything with his life being stuck in that loop hole but for him it doesn't matter, right? If i get to think of it he could be unhappy if he realized at the end of the loop that he is loosing his memory. That would be a moment of unhappiness, which would only make his existence pitiful but not horrible. Is pity a feeling a sociopath would feel? Hm...