Quote: Victims

“once I gave up the hunt for villains, I had little recourse but to take responsibility for my choices ...Needless to say, this is far less satisfying that nailing villains. It also turned out to be more healing in the end.”

― Barbara Brown Taylor

Why not prey on the weak?

I think it's a myth that sociopaths tend to prey on the very weak. I typically don't, at least. I don't have a categorical rule against preying on the weak, but unlike the mighty lion I just don't tend to go for the weakest wildebeest. And why is the lion always going after the weak? It must be because eating is more or less a chore for him. He must not get much additional pleasure in taking down a fast wildebeest and eating it then just settling for the slowest one. Eating's more or less a chore for me too. I also will not go out of my way to make eating more difficult than it needs to be -- for instance won't travel to the grocer in inclement weather. Not to say I don't enjoy eating or even sometimes the experience of eating/acquiring food, but like the lion I just don't see the point in making it harder than it is to achieve my endgame.

If the endgame in eating is largely consumption of calories, what is the endgame of interacting with people? It's not pure consumption, although that is certainly part of it. No matter how you describe "consumption" with regards to people, whether number of sexual partners or number of friends or people that love you or who would do anything for you, everyone has some level of standards. You don't want to consume just any person, you want to consume a particular type of person, a particular quality of person or for a particular reason. Consumption isn't just about numbers for anyone, including sociopaths. Yes, I could target more people if I only went after the weak, but I don't need to do so, nor do I want to do so. I don't see the point in mindlessly stacking up conquest after conquest, it just doesn't appeal to me. My endgame is not adding another name to my list of conquests, it's the process and pleasure of making the attempt.

In fact, if I see someone weak, I usually just ignore them. If I see someone emotionally limping along in front of me, most of the time I make like the Levite priest in the good Samaritan story and cross over to the other side of the street so I don't have to even look at them. I like my prey to be strong with a tragic flaw, like Achilles. My dream prey would take every ounce of mental strength, agility, and ingenuity to conquer. My dream prey would keep me up at night wondering how I was going to win. I would suffer setbacks and wonder if I would ever recover. I would experience small victories and feel the exhilaration of attaining some progress, however incrementally small. My dream prey would take everything out of me, and that would be the value of it -- all of me.

I wonder if lions ever hunt for pleasure. Other animals certainly seem to:

Problems and (no?) solutions

A certain type of reader of this blog would find this comment to be incomprehensible, stupid, disingenuous, short-sighted, illogical, immoral, deceitful, offensive, over-simplifying, and dozens of other terrible things:

We do not always have a choice as to whom is part if our life. If a close relative or a co-worker is a sociopath, we may need to make room for them in our life. My point is that if there was better awareness and acceptance of sociopathy, there could be better harmony and less pain, destruction, awkwardness, hiding and running away for both sociopaths and empaths. 

Our society has learned to accept, even embrace most genetic, behavioral, physical and mental differences - people deformed by polio, people of different races, creed and religion, homosexuals, bisexual, transexual, people with down syndrome, autism, amputees, blind people, deaf people, etc. Are the sociopaths so different that they should never be accepted? Is our society too rigid to make allowance for them? 

The trouble is that sociopaths intentionally hurt people, whereas all of these other types don't, right? Or is it that those other types might intentionally hurt people, but they don't do it for sport? Or is it that those other types might intentionally hurt people, but sociopaths are so much more effective at it? Or is it that those other types might intentionally hurt people, but the types of hurts that sociopaths do are worse? Or is it because those other types are not categorically defined by their propensity to hurt people, but sociopaths are?

It's kind of convenient to say that sociopaths do terrible things and aren't at all treatable (where is the proof?). It basically allows society to wash its hands of this particular subset of people while providing a palatable scapegoat for all of the nastiness that normal people get up to but can't quite face in each other (or themselves). The tricky part is that a lot of us live in civilized cultures where for most people with psychological issues like this we try to treat them or accommodate them. But maybe you argue that sociopaths don't need to be accommodated because they thrive, you say. But what happens when you identify them and then take away their ability to thrive? If they are outted are they thriving? If they are imprisoned, are they thriving? Once you take away their ability to thrive, then do you treat them? Accommodate them? Never, because they don't deserve better? They don't seem like victims to me. If anything they are always victimizers. But what happens if one or more of them truly become victims? Collateral damage in the service of a greater cause?

Maybe even if they eventually become victim they still deserve what they get because they decide to be that way? They decided to be born with the genetic predisposition and decided to be raised in a particular way to cause them to be a sociopath? But they would chosen to be that way if they were given the choice over again? Would you choose to be who you are if given choice? How about they didn't choose to be the way they are, but they do choose to do the things they do? As much as we all "decide" to "do" the things that we do? So they should be punished just like an empath would for the same crimes? More harshly? Less harshly?

I'm being sincere. Let's hear people's best solutions, not just the first step, but all the steps that follow until we've reached some sort of equilibrium. (Or ignore the real issues and start the personal attacks, as some of you like to handle these types of posts, even though there is nothing at all personal about this post).

[Also, we all agree that there should still be leper colonies, right? Kind of their fault getting leprosy in the first place, and if any of you got leprosy you would voluntarily ship yourself off to some dungeon to rot so as not to risk infecting anyone else? I think that's how Jesus would us to handle it?]

Magazine story request

From a journalist:

Dear M.E., 

I am a journalist in the Washington, D.C. area planning to pitch a story to [a women's magazine about sociopathy. To prepare a good pitch I need to find several people under the age of 30 (the [magazine] demographic) who have had some sort of relationship with a sociopath.

In addition, I also need to compile a list of potential sources and interviewees for such a piece.

Since you have an online community on the topic, I suspect you probably receive many e-mails from both victims of sociopathy and sociopaths themselves. Would you be able to connect me with some of the victims (preferably women under 30) who have interesting stories to tell? Perhaps someone who was in a committed relationship with a sociopath?

Many thanks!

If you are either a female sociopath or a female victim of a sociopath, preferably under 30, let me know and I'll forward your email on to the journalist.

Good intentions not good enough

The other day I was with a group of my relatives. One of the children is a quirky guy, probably could be diagnosed somewhere on the autism spectrum but his parents seem to worry about stigmatizing him with any sort of label. Another adult relative grabbed him in sort of a roughhousing way and the child screamed bloody murder. We were in a crowded place and everyone turned to look at what could possibly cause such a reaction. There should be nothing unusual about a child who does not like to be grabbed by surprise, but I guess a lot of children like it? So people do it and basically expect all children to like it; if they don't they're often labeled "too sensitive" or some other label that shifts the blame on them for their reaction, rather than it staying on the perpetrator where it belongs. Watching this scene, I couldn't help but think about how much I distrust good intentions (I write about it here, the tendency to self-deceive about good intentions here, and the inherent paternalism or one-size-fits-all hubristic approach of many good-intentioned behaviors here).

I'm not saying that the guy who grabbed the child was "wrong", largely because I don't care about the moral rightness or wrongness of such actions (even if morality plays a part in some decisions, I believe that most things in life have no moral implications at all). What I am saying is that the last thing in the world that my little relative wanted to have happen was to be grabbed in that way. The adult of course apologized, but I've also seen people in similar situations defend their position, as if trying to convince the victim that they should toughen up, or that the treatment is good for them (see above re paternalism and hubris), or often the perpetrators seem to honestly believe that the victim actually does like that treatment, but is just being intentionally difficult as a form of politicking or emotional manipulation. Whatever the reason, the violators in these situations (the persons who impose their own will on another person, ignoring the that person's autonomy and volition) often excuse their own behavior or believe that they are not responsible for the consequences of their own actions because that is not what they intended. And that is the most dangerous thing about them.

I really like this quote from C.S. Lewis from his essay anthology "God in the Dock" (1948):

My contention is that good men (not bad men) consistently acting upon that position would act as cruelly and unjustly as the greatest tyrants. They might in some respects act even worse. Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be 'cured' against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.

This is a major reason why I am libertarian -- people are bad enough about this without giving them the authority and power of the state to use. 

How sociopath target their "victims"

It turns out that sociopaths really do have an uncanny ability for spotting susceptible victims, as suggested in a study described by a Psychology Today writer:

In a study by Wheeler, Book and Costello of Brock University, individuals who self reported more traits associated with psychopathy were more apt to correctly identify individuals with a history of victimization. In the study, male student participants examined video tapes of twelve individuals walking from behind and rated the ease at which each could be mugged. The men also completed the Self-Report Psychopathy Scale: Version III (Paulhus, Hemphill, & Hare, in press) which measures interpersonal and affective traits associated with psychopathy as well as intra-personal instability and antisocial traits. Finally, they were asked to provide verbal rational for their ratings. Overall results confirmed a strong positive correlation between psychopathy scores and accuracy of victim identification. This means that individuals that score higher for psycopathy are better at selecting victims.

The study is also featured in this video clip from I, Psychopath.

I think sociopath do tend to go for a particular type of victim, or at least a certain susceptibility to their "charms." I wrote about this a little here. A typical target would be someone the sociopath feels like he can dominate, or where he can tell there is some wound, some "damage" that he can stick his finger in and play with. Being with damaged people is good for socios in two ways: (1) the playing, and (2) the damaged person expects other people to be damaged as well, so socios don't have to do as good a job of keeping up appearances, i.e. can be more of their unapologetic selves.

But that begs the question: how do sociopaths know who is damaged, or at least so quickly and accurately? As one of my readers said "I put up armor but most sociopaths can see right through it."

It reminds me of a trip I made to New Zealand. New Zealand has been an isolated island so long that it traditionally had no mammals, except for bats. Instead, it had a extremely diverse ecosystem of birds. These birds had perfected "defenses" against the other birds in their ecosystems and had survived for millions of years that way. I was told that one of the natural defenses of the birds was to remain perfectly still, which made them almost impossible to spot by the predator birds flying high overhead. Or course this tactic made them (almost literally) sitting ducks when man brought rats with them to the island.

Simply put, we all have "defenses" to disguise our weaknesses, whether wearing clothes, cosmetics, compensating with a flashy car, acquiring meaningless degrees and titles, etc. Most people construct their defenses with the average person in mind -- your boss, your spouse, your kids, your colleagues, your friends and family. A defense that may work swimmingly with most people may work not at all with a sociopath. Asking a sociopath how he is able to see through these devices is sort of like asking a rat how he is able to see through the facade of a bird remaining perfectly still.

The virtues (?) of victimhood

For a lot of spiritual/religious people there is the interesting issue of theodicy, the problem of evil: “how we justify the existence of suffering with belief in a God who created us, who loves us, and who providentially manages the world.” I've noticed that people (here in the comments and in my real life) seem to want to give meaning to bad things, typically in one of a few ways: (1) that God is testing them (and so presumably as long as they hang in there, the bad thing gave them a chance to prove themselves and is at worst neutral), (2) that they suffer to make them stronger (so the bad thing is really a blessing in disguise), or (3) they suffer as a testament to the evil of other men (and those men are going to be condemned or punished, so a net negative). This last reason is the most troubling to me. A lot of people come to the comment section with judgment on their tongue and calls for blood for the sociopaths that have wrecked their lives and so deserve untold horrors.. For some of these people, this one experience has come to define their existence.

When religious people think of someone who really had it rough, they frequently will think of Job. Job not only lost everything, all of his wealth, family, friends, he suffered immense physical pain. Job basically had it about as bad as you can get it. But there was no one for Job to hate except God, which he declined to do. As his reward, God gives him double what he had before. Dostoevsky writes in the Brothers Karamazov:

God raises Job again, gives him wealth again. Many years pass by, and he has other children and loves them. But how could he love those new ones when those first children are no more, when he has lost them? Remembering them, how could he be fully happy with those new ones, however dear the new ones might be? But he could, he could. It's the great mystery of human life that old grief passes gradually into quiet, tender joy.

But I have a feeling that for a lot of the victims that come here, having their lives restored wouldn't be nearly enough for them to relinquish their claims to victimhood. In their mind, giving up their hurt would also mean giving up the meaning and sense of purpose they've assigned to that hurt. Giving up their pain would mean giving up their hopes for justice -- that the wrongdoers will eventually suffer commensurate to their misdeeds. These people would rather live a life of eternal victimhood than they would a world in which things eventually get better.

The Brothers Karamazov is one of my favorite books. One of the characters Ivan struggles with this desire for justice:

I must have justice, or I will destroy myself. And not justice in some remote infinite time and space, but here on earth, and that I could see myself. I have believed in it. I want to see it, and if I am dead by then, let me rise again, for if it all happens without me, it will be too unfair. I want to see with my own eyes the hind lie down with the lion and the victim rise up and embrace his murderer. I want to be there when everyone suddenly understands what it has all been for. All the religions of the world are built on this longing, and I am a believer.

Apart from the established health benefits of forgiving and letting go of past hurts, Ivan's position is simply inconsistent with reality. There is no perfect justice. To keep clamoring for it suggests a significant break with reality. This is particularly true of justice against people like me, who don't really believe in “right.” Everything just is. If bad things happen to me, I wouldn't recognize them as any sort of retribution for past wrongs. I do not believe life is "fair" that way. I wouldn't actually feel like I was being punished, so what's the point? 

Monks, psychopaths, and shameless empaths

All walk into a bar...

This Forbes article, "What Vulnerability Looks Like to Psychopaths, Monks and the Rest of Us," makes an interesting comparison between sociopaths and Buddhist monks (apparently made in Kevin Dutton's book The Wisdom of Sociopaths), before veering off into stream of consciousness nonsense:


Ironically, both psychopaths and Tibetan monks detect deep emotions that are invisible to others.  Psychopaths are much better at recognizing “those telltale signs in the gait of traumatized assault victims” notes The Wisdom of Psychopaths author, Kevin Dutton.

Tibetan monks, steeped in meditative practice, are also especially adept at reading feelings that are hidden from the rest of us, Paul Ekman discovered. Ekman, is the preeminent expert on lying and on the six universally expressed emotions in the face — anger, sadness, happiness, fear, disgust and surprise. Scarily, psychopaths score especially high on the Hare Self-Report Scale of psychopathy in seeing those core expressions, especially the ones that make us most vulnerable, fear and sadness, according to Sabrina Demetrioff.

Not to get overly aspie anal about semantics, but I don't know how it is ironic that both psychopaths and Tibetan monks detect deep emotions invisible to others? I have made the connection before to a psychopath's detachment and a buddhist's detachment.



Unlike our common impression of psychopaths as dangerous serial killers, and some are, others use their high-performing capacity to remain calm in stressful times to conduct surgery, lead soldiers or become sought-after CEOs.  After all, as Dutton suggests, if you’re having brain surgery, wouldn’t you want someone who is not distracted by feelings and completely in control and concentrating on the operation? If your life were in danger on the battlefield, wouldn’t you want someone who could coolly survey the situation and deeply recognize others’ reactions, to determine the best way to rescue you?

Psychopaths adept detection of vulnerability is one of their most potent skills.

At which point the article contrasts Brene Brown's work on shame, and how one need only embrace their vulnerability and let go in order to be more courageous and connect better with others. Of course sociopaths are also shameless, but in a bad way that is different than when empaths acquire a lack of shame? It's not clear, but the article seems to suggest that lack of shame can lead to two very different result: extremely prosocial behavior and extremely antisocial behavior. I agree with that, particularly to the extent that feelings of shame seem to mitigate any extremes in behavior. But I disagree about the implicit distinction that it is psychopaths who would be doing all of the antisocial behavior and that shameless empaths are harmlessly prosocial. It's just odd to see an article come so close to drawing exact parallels between psychopaths and monks, and psychopaths and the empowered shameless empath, and then just sort of assume that monks, empaths, and psychopaths are not the same at all, for some undisclosed reason.

Good cocktail conversation tidbits

For that social function you have coming up soon at which it might be fun to subtly suggest that sociopaths are not as bad as people think they are, Wisdom of Psychopathy author Kevin Dutton shares
Some Surprising Things You Never Knew About Psychopaths:

• Psychopaths can sometimes be more empathic than the rest of us. This is especially the case in sadistic serial killers. As one senior FBI profiler told Dutton: “Sadistic serial killers feel their victims’ pain in exactly the same way that you or I might feel it. They feel it cognitively and objectively, and emotionally and subjectively too. But the difference between them and us is that they commute that pain to their own subjective pleasure.” Studies have also shown that some psychopaths have more ‘mirror neurons’ (empathy brain cells) than normal people.
• They can be more altruistic than the rest of us. Studies have shown that psychopaths are quicker to offer help to people in need than everyday folk.
• They don’t take things as personally as the rest of us. Research in the field of neuroeconomics has shown that psychopaths make more money than the rest of us in negotiation games because they are more willing to accept unfair offers.
• As well as taking lives, they can also be better at saving lives than the rest of us—especially in knife-edge situations when the chips are down. 
• Psychopaths make really good customs officers. In one experiment Dutton ran, psychopaths were better at picking out people with contraband concealed about their person than were non-psychopaths.
• James Bond is a psychopath. A recent study shows that James Bond epitomizes the profile of the successful psychopath: ruthless, fearless, charming, persuasive, non-conformist, extraverted, thrill-seeking, philandering, and decidedly lacking in the conscience department.

Halo effect

As a partial continuation of yesterday's post, I found this description of how child molesters target their victims and get away with it to be pretty interesting and relevant to all victims and victimizers. From Malcolm Gladwell via the New Yorker:


The successful pedophile does not select his targets arbitrarily. He culls them from a larger pool, testing and probing until he finds the most vulnerable. Clay, for example, first put himself in a place with easy access to children—an elementary school. Then he worked his way through his class. He began by simply asking boys if they wanted to stay after school. “Those who could not do so without parental permission were screened out,” van Dam writes. Children with vigilant parents are too risky. Those who remained were then caressed on the back, first over the shirt and then, if there was no objection from the child, under the shirt. “The child’s response was evaluated by waiting to see what was reported to the parents,” she goes on. “Parents inquiring about this behavior were told by Mr. Clay that he had simply been checking their child for signs of chicken pox. Those children were not targeted further.” The rest were “selected for more contact,” gradually moving below the belt and then to the genitals.

The child molester’s key strategy is one of escalation, desensitizing the target with an ever-expanding touch. In interviews and autobiographies, pedophiles describe their escalation techniques like fly fishermen comparing lures. Consider the child molester van Dam calls Cook:

Some of the little tricks that always work with younger boys are things like always sitting in a sofa, or a chair with big, soft arms if possible. I would sit with my legs well out and my feet flat on the floor. My arms would always be in an “open” position. The younger kids have not developed a “personal space” yet, and when talking with me, will move in very close. If they are showing me something, particularly on paper, it is easy to hold the object in such a way that the child will move in between my legs or even perch on my knee very early on. If the boy sat on my lap, or very close in, leaning against me, I would put my arm around him loosely. As this became a part of our relationship, I would advance to two arms around him, and hold him closer and tighter. . . . Goodbyes would progress from waves, to brief hugs, to kisses on the cheek, to kisses on the mouth in very short order.

Even when confronted, child molesters frequently get away with it because they seem so charming and likable and molestation is such a horrible thing to believe about someone, much less accuse someone of participating in:

The pedophile is often imagined as the dishevelled old man baldly offering candy to preschoolers. But the truth is that most of the time we have no clue what we are dealing with. A fellow-teacher at Mr. Clay’s school, whose son was one of those who complained of being fondled, went directly to Clay after she heard the allegations. “I didn’t do anything to those little boys,” Clay responded. “I’m innocent. . . . Would you and your husband stand beside me if it goes to court?” Of course, they said. People didn’t believe that Clay was a pedophile because people liked Clay—without realizing that Clay was in the business of being likable.

I thought this was an interesting example of the halo effect, the residual goodwill that accompanies one good trait like physical attractiveness or likability and unduly impacts the viewers ability to accurately assess other aspects of the person. The overall impression of the person as likeable blinds the viewer to evidence that the person does bad things. Take as an example Jerry Sandusky -- so successful and relatively powerful in his own slice of the world that he is able to get away with one of the most unthinkable crimes for decades.

What I don't understand is, how did humans evolve to be this way in the first place? Shortcut thinking? First impressions are actually more accurate than they are inaccurate? Not like I'm complaining. Obviously I have benefited from being able to fly "under the halo" myself.

Compliance

When I first started learning about statistics, I learned that surveys often reflect a selection bias in that the middle class will gladly sit there and answer questions when asked politely, but for whatever reason the upper and lower classes will not. So what you get with a survey is the opinions of the middle class, and none of the opinions of the upper and lower classes.

I saw a film about the middle class recently while visiting a friend who thought that I would love it. It's called Compliance. It's a fictionalized version of true events. A prankster calls up a fast food establishment (McDonald's in the original story), pretending to be a police officer, and gets the manager of the restaurant to require one of her employees to submit to a strip search, among other things.

I was so glad that I watched this film in the theatre. People were upset. A few groups got up and left. Several times people yelled at the screen, "Stupid!" or "What an idiot!" It was too funny hearing people's reactions. For some reason the audience members seemed to think they were immune to similar acts of stupidity. I think this NY Times article does a good job of describing the phenomenon: 

“It’s the kind of story that’s a blip, a headline you read and go, ‘Wow, that’s crazy,’ ” Mr. Zobel said. “Then you say, ‘That would never happen to me’ and move on. But I was thinking more and more about it, and it seemed to encompass a lot of things about people’s relationship with authority.”
***

To write the ingratiating, threatening lines of the caller — whose appearance and location are revealed about halfway through the film and who’s played by Pat Healy — Mr. Zobel immersed himself in the reality show “Cops.” “I was trying to pick up on the way that cops talk, the way they alternately comfort and assume authority in a situation and also manipulate in certain ways,” he said. “If you watch any one episode of ‘Cops’ you’re like, ‘Wow, they talked that person into doing that crazy thing.’ ”

***

Mr. Zobel has noticed that a common criticism of the film is to write off the characters as implausibly gullible fools. “Everyone plays the part of the hero in their mind and says that they wouldn’t do it,” he said. “But clearly that statistically is not accurate.”

As played by Ms. Dowd, a stage veteran with a long résumé of character roles on screen, Sandra is not simply an idiot nor a clear-cut villain. “When I read it, I knew on a gut level that you could play it in a truthful way,” she said. “I don’t think people want to actually see that part of themselves, it’s too uncomfortable. But for actors, we’re not looking to avoid the feeling, we’re looking to own it.”

***

“Compliance” can certainly be read as an allegory on blind allegiance to authority and the diffusion of responsibility. But Mr. Zobel stressed that the film does not advance a thesis; nor does his cool, controlled approach preclude empathy for his characters. “It all has to be rooted in real people and things,” he said.

***

“It’s been disappointing when I hear that people have problems with the film but don’t want to challenge me,” he said. “It’s intentionally complicated. I’m happy for any sort of conversation.”

After I watched it, I was sort of thrilled -- it was such a good example of the sort of herd mentality that I find so distasteful in most people. Sheeple! A link to this film should be next to the dictionary definition of the word sheeple, because it basically encapsulated everything there is to know or think about what it means to be a sheeple. It reminded me of a comment I saw once on this blog. I wish I could remember it. I feel like I included it in the twitter. It said something like -- "you always say we deserve what we get? how do we deserve it? for trusting people? for expecting the best from people and not expecting to get taken by everyone we meet?"

Of course while I was watching, I was just as disturbed as everyone else, probably more disturbed because I understood all of the horrible implications sooner than they did. I knew what would happen and I knew that the audience members would decry this as being an isolated incident of preying upon idiots, but I knew better. I know how fragile the social status quo is and how desperate people are to maintain that status quo, particularly those that think they benefit the most from it. The middle class! 

They think that they are being unselfish. They are working hard while the poor people don't and the rich people don't and it's upon their shoulders that society is run. And it's also the middle class that will die (or kill) to defend the status quo. Martyrdom in the guise of patriotism or some other nonsense virtue. But they're not behaving unselfishly. Their behavior is motivated by fear and greed. People cling to the facade of predictability that the status quo provides them, distracting them from the possibility that life is meaningless or that they really aren't as good as they had hoped. This represents en masse what sociopaths are always targeting in individuals -- self deception and self justification. I don't mind them being martyrs. It's more this "kill" element that I'm worried about. The "let's all take up arms to defend this oppressive status quo for the good of humanity" mentality is what scares me. This is the fragility in the human mind and the social order that allows for mob mentality. 

But to answer the person, why do you deserve what you get? When you get taken by a sociopath? Or pranked? If you can't see it, I don't know if I can really explain it to you. But watch the movie and realize that the only people that the prank caller is able to control are the people who are invested in the status quo enough to be afraid what would happen if the status quo was disturbed. It is this fear that the prankster preyed on, and anyone who wasn't similarly invested in maintaining the status quo was magically immune.

By the way, my friend who saw the movie with me says he hates the word "sheeple." He says only stupid people use it. I guess the implication was that I am stupid for having used it. I don't like it that much either because I think it is often misused, like "nonplussed" or certain swear words. But if there was ever an application of that word, it applies to anyone who blindly struggles to maintain the status quo at all costs.    

The cure: self-awareness

I was reading through some old blog material and stumbled upon this comment by Peter Pan that I thought was unusually insightful and helpful, regarding the antidote to a sociopath's machinations:

Honesty with yourself is indeed the cure, and that includes realizing that you were a victim, and that although your ex was an ass, you must ultimately take responsibility for what happens in your own life. You have to be willing to face and accept the truth, no matter how painful it might be, so you can use it to make rational decisions about your future and what kind of life you want to live. Then you'll be equipped to handle encounters with sociopaths without getting burned quite so badly, if at all. All a sociopath has to do to enslave you is find out what you refuse to accept, and screw with your head and heart so that you see a connection between what you refuse to believe and what he wants to hide from you. Sounds like a lot of mumbo jumbo, I'm sure, but I assure you it's very real. Think back to how you were manipulated, and I think you'll find that at the heart of every lie you should have caught, there was a link to something about yourself, or life in general, that you couldn't allow yourself to accept. 

Interruption

A follow up from yesterday's posts, another piece of power behavior we can learn from our friend Oliver North -- interruption.


One source of power in every interaction is interruption. Those with power interrupt, those with less power get interrupted. In conversation, interrupting others, although not polite, can indicate power and be an effective power move, something noted by scholars in a field called conversation analysis. Men interrupt others more frequently than women, and doctors seldom listen to their patients for very long without interrupting. In each instance, patterns of conversation reinforce differences in power and status derived from other sources such as general social expectations and expert authority.

Watching the Oliver North and Donald Kennedy hearings illustrates this phenomenon. North on one occasion stops an interrogator’s anticipated interruption by holding up his finger and saying, “Let me finish.” He refuses to be interrupted and in several other instances talks over the lawyers and legislators questioning him. By contrast, at one point Donald Kennedy requests permission to continue speaking, asking, “Can I continue?” and thanks the congressman when permission is granted.

I can't stand it when people ask "can I continue?"  They are trying to shame the other person out of interrupting them.  Like most attempts to take the moral high ground, though, I find that it just comes off as whiny and ineffectual.  It's victim behavior.  Its message, at its core, is "I have been wronged, you have wronged me."  But it's very difficult to make victimization work for you as a power move.  I think most people look at victims and don't think "powerful" but "weak." Especially over something so small as interrupting and especially for a proceeding in which the ostensible aim is the truth, the overall effect of this type of behavior is to make the person seem overly defensive and like they are trying to hide something.  

I've actually seen a lot of people be taken down in the comments section via this weakness, trying to enforce false rules of engagement on others like good sportsmanship or good grammar or however it is that they think this gentleman's game of warfare should be played.  Courts use a certain degree of formality and adherence to rules, but in the court of public opinion I have found that being overly rigid in following any sort of "rules" just makes you look like you are trying and failing to play a game of smoke and mirrors.  There's a reason why everyone hates lawyers.  

Sociopath quote of the day: victim

Evil requires the sanction of the victim.

Ayn Rand