Memento

A lot of socios have been asking me recently about how they can get themselves to do things or stop doing things. Today I'll address doing things. I'll address how to stop doing things in another post.

First, acknowledge your strengths in this area. Sociopaths are natural doers. More than most people we are able to act without thinking. This decisiveness can mean good things, like efficient execution of what needs to get done in a professional setting, but it can also mean bad things like food poisoning or a black eye from an ill-considered risk.

What are your weaknesses? We're naturally worse at planning ahead than other people. We may want to do great things like climb the corporate ladder, become a crime lord, or otherwise acquire a position of power and influence, but when it comes down to it, a lot of times we just can't be bothered. We'd rather keep sleeping on our parent's couch, bumming off our friends, or otherwise staying under the radar.

How do we do things that are actually worth doing? I think the key is playing to our strengths. In AA they say you can't think of sobriety in terms of never taking a drink again, you have to think of it in terms of, "I'm not going to have a drink today." If you break up whatever it is that you are trying to accomplish in little tasks and rely on your decisiveness to actually execute those tasks, you can trick yourself into accomplishing long term goals.

A good example for me is saving for my retirement. I have always loved money, and it seemed like a good idea to have money to retire with, just in case everyone hates me by the time I'm old, or I've been fired multiple times from multiple different jobs, or I end up becoming disabled somehow and I don't feel like becoming a ward of the state. Most people would think that a sociopath would never be able to accomplish the amount of deferred gratification necessary to save for retirement, but I did. I fully funded my retirement by the time I was 30 because every time I even thought of retirement, I would transfer as much money as I had in my checking account into a retirement account, an account that I set up so that I can't withdraw money without going through a lengthy process. Losing that money feels bad, but like everything else, it only hurts for a moment and then I quickly move on to other things. And of course I never have the patience to try to withdraw the money. It's like my own socio financial version of Chinese fingercuffs.

The process is similar to what happens in the movie Memento. In Memento, the protagonist suffers from acute amnesia, where every 10 minutes or so his short term memory is lost. He doesn't remember anything from after the brain injury that he suffered when his wife was murdered, but he is determined to find her killer despite his condition. His workaround is to write himself notes, even tattooing certain pieces of information on his body. If he reads a note in his own handwriting telling himself to do something, he does it without question. Spoiler alert, but as we continue to watch him in the movie, we realize that he is not always honest with his future forgetful self. He will intentionally mislead himself, knowing that his future self will unquestionably follow orders, and he does all of this for one purpose -- not to find his wife's killer, it turns out, but just to be happy, to give his otherwise empty life meaning. It's a movie and it's not an exact analogy, but it's the same idea -- use your foreshortened vision to force yourself to do things that you otherwise would not, to do things that other people cannot.

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.

Fun seduction idea?

One of my work acquaintances has apparently been ostracized by a mutual friend of ours because the fiancée thought that she dressed like a whore at a Halloween party and was worried that her man would stray because of it?  (My impressionable self has picked up inappropriately placed question marks from reading Twitter feeds).

I want to mess with her, but mainly just because she has revealed a weakness (relationship insecurity) that seems too delicious to pass up.

My plan is to "confess" to her in a simulated drunken overshare.  I'll tell her that I have often wondered if I could "also" seduce her fiancé.  Depending on how much she has had to drink and her current level of paranoia, I may have to wait just a bit to let that thought have its full effect on her (which given his varied and prodigious sexual history should be a pretty easy sell).   After she has let that marinate for a while, I will then try to seduce her myself while she is (hopefully) vulnerable from the thought that her fiancé is cheating on her with all of his smarter-than-she-is-work-friends.

Thoughts?

I think chances of it succeeding are pretty low, but chances of it increasing her insecurity are pretty good if she's so thrown off by a Halloween party "sexy third world slave" outfit, that's she's basically prohibited him from ever seeing this woman again.  (I wasn't there and there apparently isn't any photographic proof of whether or not a third world slave costume could be considered "sexy" without seeming really grossly imperialistic and in poor taste -- this is just what I've been told).

Are sociopaths better than empaths?

I don't actually think that sociopaths are superior to empaths.  Unlike some (most?) people, I haven't formed a mental hierarchy of types of humans from sociopaths down to aspies, or empaths down to sociopaths, or any other sort of arrangement based on value to society or dominance or anything else.  We're different, yes, and some of those differences are strengths and some of them are weaknesses and some of them are strengths in one situation and weaknesses in another.

When I studied music seriously, I spent a lot of time practicing orchestral excerpts.  Excerpts are specific to a particular instrument, e.g. french horn or flute.  They are passages from the standard repertoire that either feature the instrument prominently or are particularly challenging to play.

In music there are basically two types of technical difficulty: (1) idiomatic but intricate passages and (2) deceptively simple passages that, due to the inherent weaknesses of the instrument, are still quite challenging.  The former are passages that play to the strengths or unique features of the instrument, for instance double or multiple stopping on a string instrument, glissandos on a harp, diatonic runs in the key of a woodwind instrument.  These passages showcase the instrument at its very best and can make even an average player look like a superstar.  The latter are passages that often were written by a composer without considering the particular difficulties of the instrument.  They may require awkward alternate fingering to be performed successfully.  They may be in a bad range of the instrument or require complicated breathing or sticking.  They are not a vehicle for showing off, rather they are an attempt to mask the awkwardness created by vulnerabilities of the instrument.

I have intentionally avoided using the word "flaw" to describe the instruments.  The truth is that no instrument is perfect.  Instrument designers have improved upon the originals and they continue to make small improvements, but inherent in the idea of there being a "better" range, there must be a worse range.  To make one passage easier to play, you must consequently make another hypothetical passage harder.  There's nothing to be sad about.  But when it comes to empaths talking about how sociopaths are an evolutionary mistake or sociopaths talking about how empaths are idiots it sometimes reminds me of how trombonists try to argue that their instrument is the best because they can tune to the exact pitch or string instruments arguing their instrument is the best because they can sustain a note for forever.  I find those sorts of arguments to be quaint and in a way that reflects a particularly small view of the world.