Showing posts sorted by date for query born this way. Sort by relevance Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by date for query born this way. Sort by relevance Show all posts

Friday, July 12, 2013

A rose by any other name

As a follow-up to the sociopathy = criminality? post, this selection from Martha Stout's Sociopath Next Door on whether culture plays a role in creating a sociopath, or even more interestingly, "curing" one:
Apparently, cultural influences play a very important role in the development (or not) of sociopathy in any given population. Few people would disagree that, from the Wild West of the past to the corporate outlaws of the present, American society seems to allow and even encourage me-first attitudes devoted to the pursuit of domination. Robert Hare writes that he believes "our society is moving in the direction of permitting, reinforcing, and in some instances actually valuing some of the traits listed in the Psychopathy Checklist—traits such as impulsivity, irresponsibility, lack of remorse."

In this opinion he is joined by theorists who propose that North American culture, which holds individualism as a central value, tends to foster the development of antisocial behavior, and also to disguise it. In other words, in America, the guiltless manipulation of other people "blends" with social expectations to a much greater degree than it would in China or other more group-centered societies.

I believe there is a shinier side of this coin, too, one that begs the question of why certain cultures seem to encourage prosocial behavior. So much against the odds, how is it that some societies have a positive impact on incipient sociopaths, who are born with an inability to process interpersonal emotions in the usual way? I would like to suggest that the overriding belief systems of certain cultures encourage born sociopaths to compensate cognitively for what they are missing emotionally. In contrast with our extreme emphasis on individualism and personal control, certain cultures, many in East Asia, dwell theologically on the interrelatedness of all living things.

Interestingly, this value is also the basis of conscience, which is an intervening sense of obligation rooted in a sense of connectedness. If an individual does not, or if neurologically he cannot, experience his connection to others in an emotional way, perhaps a culture that insists on connectedness as a matter of belief can instill a strictly cognitive understanding of interpersonal obligation.

An intellectual grasp of one's duties to others is not the same attribute as the powerfully directive emotion we call conscience, but perhaps it is enough to extract prosocial behavior from at least some individuals who would have behaved only in antisocial ways had they been living in a society that emphasized individualism rather than interrelatedness. Though they lack an internal mechanism that tells them they are connected to others, the larger culture insists to them that they are so connected—as opposed to our culture, which informs them resoundingly that their ability to act guiltlessly on their own behalf is the ultimate advantage. This would explain why a Western family by itself cannot redeem a born sociopath. There are too many other voices in the larger society implying that his approach to the world is correct.

As a tiny example, had Skip [previously mentioned sociopath in the book] the American been born into a strongly Buddhist culture, or Shinto, would he have killed all those frogs? Perhaps, or perhaps not. His brain would have been the same, but all the people around him would have maintained that respect for life was necessary. Everyone in his world would have been of the same mind, including his wealthy parents, his teachers, his playmates, and maybe even the celebrities he saw on television. Skip would still have been Skip. He would have felt no honor for the frogs, no guilt if he murdered them, no repugnance, but he might have refrained from doing so because his culture had unanimously taught him a lesson, something on the order of proper table manners, about how to fit in—a lesson that his perfectly good intellect had mastered. Sociopaths do not care about their social world, but they do want, and need, to blend in with it.
I'm curious whether Dr. Stout believes that the Shinto version of the sociopath Skip would still be a sociopath. In other words, if Skip's brain is the same, if Skip is still Skip and wanted to kill those frogs but refrained from cultural/spiritual beliefs or influences, does he remain a sociopath? Is a sociopath his behaviors or his thoughts and inclinations?

Saturday, May 18, 2013

Book appendix (part 5)

(cont. from interview with my mother):


Sometimes I feel guilty for it because I know I was gone, being on the stage and trying to figure out what would bring happiness in my life and I was gone way too much. I should have been home more and keeping tabs on things.  

I know you were always closed off, like affection.  You weren’t ever very affectionate, as far as hugging.  You were kind of closed off emotionally.  I don’t ever remember you crying.  Instead of you being sad, you usually chose to be angry.  That was your emotion of choice.  It seems like when you got angry, you would just get in someone’s face verbally and then you would try to get that person to have their own emotional explosion.  I remember you would try to push dad’s buttons and get him to get really mad.  It’s almost like you liked the emotional turmoil of anger and every now and then you would feed into that and make it happen.  Then things would calm down, until they would build up again.  But I don’t know. Dad was like that too.  But it seemed like you and he butted heads a lot.  I don't remember you ever being sad or hurt.  Even when you were in the hospital with the physical hurt, you weren’t crying or sad.  You know, like a normal person would do.  Especially girl.  You know teenage girls, they would cry over stuff, be hurt or have their feelings hurt.  I don’t remember you ever being like that.  So you were definitely not the typical teenage girl.  I think that’s why you didn’t have a lot of teenage girl friends. Most of your friends were boys, maybe because you related to them a lot more.  Boys aren’t very emotional, they’re more thinking.   

I think you have a little ADD.  It’s hard for you to focus on one thing at a time.  You have to be doing like 3 things at once, even in church you’ll be doing multiple things.  You can’t focus on one thing at a time, or at least not for very long.  But I also think you’re always just thinking about things and wondering about things, so something will catch your interest and you’ll want to explore that.  You’re kind of an explorer type of personality; you like to explore new and different things.

In the way that you did far more and went far more than any of the other kids, that was a little bit of a surprise because I don’t think it was anything normal. You were like super child, going out and doing things far beyond what was expected.

I don’t think you’re trying to corrupt people, but I think you like to do things for shock value—just throw things out there and see how they land, see how they would fly. So I think I was a little uncomfortable with your influence over your younger siblings. I think you’re influential. Sometimes I see the whole family bending to what you want to do and I think we have set you or accepted you in that role of figuring out what we want to do or how we are going to do it, and I think we enjoy that. And I don’t think you carry it too far either. I don’t think you’re too pushy about it. But you are definitely a natural born leader. I think that’s what makes you such a good teacher. I think you’re influential because you’re smart and determined and passionate about the things you want to do, and I think people tend to want to follow someone like that. I think the family follows you because we know you’re smart and efficient and you can figure out probably the best way of doing things and you have novel and fun ideas. You’re always full of ideas. And you’re always coming up with good ways of solving problems or making things happen smoothly.

I remember one time when I was super proud of you, singing this particular song I like. That was a proud moment because you were just up there saying I’m my own person, I don’t care what other people do to me, I’m going to live my life the way I want to.  And I was just proud of you for that.  I don’t think I’ve ever been that way.  I’m getting to be more and more that way, but I used to not be.  I used to be codependent, trying to manipulate people from the wings but never really voicing my opinion and saying what I wanted, what I needed.  I was always kind of in the shadows.  That’s why I liked the stage I think, because I could be somebody else, another person.  And I was good at it and people thought I was wonderful, so I think that’s why I kind of got addicted to the stage.  

I think the book is kind of cool.  I see it as another step in your healing and becoming more your own person.  Kind of dealing with all of the stuff that’s happened to you and figuring out who you really are.  I think the book is part of this process.  

Friday, May 17, 2013

Book appendix (part 4)

From an interview with my mother:


It was hard for me when you were born.  Baby number three is always hard because when there’s two there’s one for each parent, but when there are three it’s hard.  And you came so close to Jim.  And Jim was taking his sweet time getting potty trained, so I had both of you in diapers for like a year.  And that was before the disposable diapers were popular and they were expensive so we had cloth diapers and I had to wash them and hang them out on the line because we didn’t have a dryer.  So it seemed like that was my whole life was taking care of babies, changing diapers, washing them, hanging them out.  I think that was the time I went a little nutso.  I remember I just started freaking out sometime and dad had to call grandpa and have him come over and talk me out of it.  I don’t know, just the stress and everything probably piled up.  In those days I wasn’t very good about keeping on an even keel.  I’d let thing build up and build up and then just start flipping out.  

We thought you were perfectly healthy, but you had thrush at birth and the thrush got worse, which made you not want to nurse.  I would try to calm you down by nursing you.  You would just be upset and there was nothing we could do to get you to stop crying.  You would cry until you were exhausted and then sleep for a while.  So that was a very trying time.  Finally, I don’t remember how old you were until we finally took you into the doctor, and they checked you out and said you had thrush.  You had a herniated navel too, probably because you were crying so violently.  That was sad, my poor baby.  I just remember the family get together at the beach when you were crying and everyone was trying to be the one to hold you and calm you down but nobody could do it so I just took you and went away with you walking around the whole park.  I would sometimes just leave you in a room to cry.  There was nothing else to do.  I put you on your stomach on the water bed because you seemed to like it.  So you would cry and fuss, the waterbed would rock you and you would finally go to sleep.  In some ways I think that made us bond more because I was very emotionally involved with you and protective of you, wanting to fix what was wrong and wanting you to be better, happier and healthy.  So I think I was maybe a little extra attached to you.  Dad would be the one who would say, “Just put her in a room and shut the door.”  Because we lived in that little dinky house, so there wasn’t anywhere where you could escape the noise.  I wonder what Jim and Scott thought of that.  I don’t remember focusing on them at all, I was just so wrapped up in you.  Poor Jim, because he was just a little guy.  He probably got ignored a lot when this screaming baby came along and kicked him out of mama’s world.  

I can’t remember hardly anything about your childhood. I remember you drowning as a child.  I can’t remember who noticed you back there but then when I saw you, it seemed like you had let go of the boat.  But I just remembered feeling totally frantic and I remembered just having this sick feeling and praying that you would be ok.  It seems like we had to go down the river a little to be able to pull over to the side of the river.  I can’t remember how they called to get people to come help.  I ran up the beach, sick with worry.  I guess you just kind of came to and started breathing.  You seemed to be pretty much ok.  I mean kind of out of it a little, but I was just happy you were conscious and breathing and back with us.  

I remember when you had your appendix problem.  I always thought that I was pretty good at reading my kids, knowing what was wrong with them, but you were super hard to read.  And we had never had anything serious happen with the kids before, so this was a first for us. I didn’t really know or think there was something that was seriously wrong because you weren’t even acting serious until you developed a fever.  But when we went in there and it had ruptured and you were so sick, I was mad at myself for not having taken you in sooner.  But you were really good at being closed off, showing a brave front and going off and doing your thing and you didn’t really care if you were sick or let little pains get in the way.  You were just off doing yourself.  So I guess your common sense with your health wasn’t that great.  Because I remember you went and even played in a tournament with your appendix either ruptured or about to rupture.  So that was crazy.  I can’t even comprehend someone being able to do that.  

I remember you hated the hospital and always tried to get dad to eat your food, which wasn’t very hard.  And I remember he had to finish your breakfast that morning so you would get out of there and wanted to get out so bad.  And then you had to be in a wheelchair for like 5 days after.  And I remember you being at school and seeing how the kids were fawning over you and I realized that you had a lot of friends and people that cared about you.  And you seemed to be in pretty good spirits about the whole thing.  It’s not like you were like, “I’m in a wheelchair and this sucks.”  I think you were kind of enjoying a new experience.  But I think you were happy to get better—get back to your fast paced life.  You wouldn’t have lasted in a wheelchair that long for sure.



Thursday, February 14, 2013

Tell me doctor (part 2)

(cont.)


By the time my siblings were born and I started school, I had already developed addictive tendencies (an understatement for a full blown addiction) and a rage act. An act I would constantly submit my mother to, because of the disconnect, which I found tedious and unnecessary. Like her. And because of the habit. Addicts become angered and defensive when confronted, and that was me. A little too often. Screaming that I hated her, that she wasn't my mother, etc. Anything to hurt her and walk away. Disregarding consequences.

At this point, I was already showing signs of antisocial behavior. Sure, I liked to go out and play, with very few selected acquaintances. With friends. But I much preferred (and still do) staying indoors, by myself. Either playing on my own, drawing, or watching a movie.

Sometimes I think and wonder if I was born to either be in jail or in a mental hospital. I’ve always felt that way. I can tell you that I’d do just fine. Confined in a four by four, blank walled cell. With nothing to do and no one to talk to. I’ve always lived in my head so there wouldn’t be much change. I’ve never had a problem with pretense (it’s like a switch.) With dissociation and compartmentalization. I mastered them at a very young age, due to my one-too-many, objectifying, hospital stays (I see myself as a Subject rather than a Person) and, I often use them to my advantage. Not as a coping mechanism but as tools. Though I am more than sure any therapist would say differently. 

Also, I’ve never been too keen with showing affection, or having it offered to me. Hugs alone make me doubt my every move. If I am to give one, or am given one, I have to mentally prepare myself beforehand. No matter how spontaneous the act may seem, it’s always carefully calculated. Any sort of affectionate gesture is, to me. A kiss, a hug, a--whatever else. It’s rehearsed, in my head at least. And it has to be. Otherwise, it’s an uncomfortable, awkward moment, for my counterpart. For me it’s simply confusing. Same goes with compliments and love confessions. My usual response, “Um, OK.” Then, silence.

Ex. One of my mother's favorite tales. 
If someone, either in attempting to be polite or because they genuinely wanted to, kissed me on the cheek, I would immediately rub my face clean. Agitated. Obviously, I was seen as rude, though they would say "cute". Soon after many insults of this sort, from my part, my mother had to teach me to be polite. Such a concept. Like a pup being prepared for a dog show. I hated it. The idea of not only putting up with people but also having to pretend to like them. To be "nice" to them. It took me years to get used to it. Used to it, not like it.

As for the addiction, it wasn't a big deal. Not from where I was standing. My parents knew about it but never did anything to stop it. Suppose I can't blame them, being new to the whole parenting alone, it's no easy task. Or so I'm told. Specially with a sick kid. The expected over-protectiveness and all. Suffocating. And so, an opposing reaction. Sometimes.

I would hide, lie, act. Whatever had to be done to get what I "needed" (wanted*). Consciously. After many years, the summer before I started high school, I decided I was going to quit. Cold turkey. And I did. And I haven’t gone back to it since. Will power, another switch. Reason why I have little to no sympathy for addicts. Bit ironic, I know.

During one of appointments, my then pediatrician warned my parents to be really careful with me. He told them that I was really smart, perhaps too smart for my own good, as they say, and that I knew how to handle people. That I would know exactly what, when, how to do whatever I had to do, to get my way. That they shouldn’t take on my “disability” as an excuse to let me get away with murder. That if not careful, I would use them. Manipulate them. That for their sake, it was better off if they kept me intellectually stimulated. Busy. I suppose that’s how I became an artist. Art. We all have our ways to feel connected.

I'm not sure what I did to make the Doc so concerned for my parents but, to date, it remains true. Sometimes, when extremely frustrated, I have outbursts. Small, raw moments when people get glimpses of what I call the “inner me”. Though rare, I hate it when it happens. Not because I’m shy, or coy, as people usually perceive me to be (I keep to myself). But because it means I was distracted. A spontaneous and small loss of self-control. Like with those childhood pets. Loss of self-control. Extremely irritating to me. My thought process is, “I know better. I can do better. I am better than that.”

Somewhat compulsive, I admit it. Borderline scary, I admit that too. But being as experienced as I am, as good as I am with controlling myself. Even those small impulses. Those primal urges. This, this is like a slap on the hand. Undermining. If I’m as good as I’ve come to be with this sort of thing, the average reactions shouldn’t be a problem. But I am aware that I have been caught in the middle of the confusion when trying to find an appropriate expression, reaction, reply. When I don’t know what people want from me and I have this odd, blank expressionless face. However, there had been times when the absolute opposite happens. With my siblings, it’s happened, "People should be thankful I don't manipulate them as much as I could!" To which they usually agree. I'm not sure if that's a good thing, or bad. If anything, these small moments of off-guarded behavior show me that, yeah, maybe, somehow, in some way, they know that something is off. Not right. Not properly.

My siblings. If I believed in love, I'd love them. Thing is, I'm not sure if I’ve ever felt love. Or loved. Even with my father. I felt understood, accepted. Not loved. I don't even know what that feels like. And the picture I have of what the L-word is supposed to be, it seems too Disney-like to be real. Of course, that could be expected from an atheist, which I've been my whole life (never wrote to Santa.) Nevertheless, I am curious. I don't think my idea of love is the same as the “real thing.” If it does exist.

In fact, I don't think I love. Sure, I care enough. Appropriately enough to make a mental note of X subject. I tend to be more, territorial. Protective. But that's not love. As far as I see it, that's animal instinct. It's primal. It's selfish, and sometimes childish. Like a wolf with its cubs. Or food. It's always been that way and I don't think it has any possibilities of changing. At least, I hope it doesn't. Because I wouldn’t know what to do with sentimentalists and the uselessness that comes with them.

Anyway, growing up, I was never interested in relationships. In puppy love. In crushes. I’ve always liked being alone so, I didn’t see the supposed need to have any of that. If it ain’t broken don’t fix it, right? And sure, don’t get me wrong, there has been attraction towards some individuals but, never something I couldn’t live without. That much’s still the same. But I must admit that there have been moments when, out of boredom or frustration given isolation, I wished I was in a relationship. Like my peers. Then I think about it again and shake off the idea as a whole, because if unnecessary, absurd.

And maybe that’s part of what’s brought me to write this letter. Curiosity first and then, a small need to know if maybe there is a logic explanation to my ways. Please, do not misinterpret that as a need for “meaning”. A “purpose”. I find both myths ridiculous.

At the age of twelve my father died, and I’ve been alone ever since. Well, in a sense. I’ve always been alone. We are all in our own. Respectively. At least I see it that way. We create relationships with constant shared moments but, in the end, we’re on our own. Some like it, some don’t. I, I remain indifferent.


Saturday, December 22, 2012

Heroes and sociopaths

I have posted before about how being a sociopath can make you *feel* like you are a superhero. I think this feeling (narcissistic self-import) is relatively common among sociopaths. For instance, I stumbled upon this not-me description of it here:
Being a sociopath doesn't mean you have to be evil. We struggle to feel the difference between right and wrong, but we do know the difference since we have had it drilled into our heads since we were children, right? Fact is, us sociopaths have more choice in this world than the rest. That is because we can choose to be heroes or we can choose to be villains. No one else can do that, they have to be what they are, they are born a certain way, they will always be that way. Us sociopaths can change to our surroundings. We can do anything we choose to do.
Interestingly, some say this feeling goes both ways -- that superheroes can sometimes feel (or act) like sociopaths.
We look at heroes and do-gooders as a special sort of breed: people who possess extraordinary traits of altruism or self-less concern for the well-being of others, even at the expense of their own existence. On the other end, sociopaths also have an extraordinary set of traits, such as extreme selfishness, lack of impulse control, no respect for rules, and no conscience.

As crazy as it sounds, there may be a closer link than than most people would think between the extreme-altruistic personality and sociopathic personality. Would it shock you to know that two people, one with the traits of extreme-altruism (X-altruism) and the other the traits of a sociopath, could be related? Even siblings? And that their personality traits are very similar, with only a few features to distinguish them? Research by Watson, Clark, and Chmielewki from the University of Iowa, “Structures of Personality and Their Relevance to Psychopathology” [pdf], present a convincing argument in which they support the growing push for a trait dimensional scheme in the new DSM-V to replace the current categorical system.

[X- altruists are risk takers and rule breakers.] When they are faced with that moment, they just act. Compulsively. Barely considering any other course. The lack the impulse control to stop themselves from doing “the right thing” when it comes to the welfare of others, yet ironically, it almost always results in some form of negative consequence for themselves. They have no problem breaking the rules when it means helping an innocent, yet they highly value the importance of obeying rules in other contexts. That’s crazy, you say? Now you’re getting the idea.

[but sociopaths are unfeeling monsters, altruists are so great, bla bla bla]

Interestingly, these two type of individuals, the sociopath and the X-altruist, may appear similar in their displays of behavior, and at times, even confused for the other type. If an X-altruistic person is compelled to break rules without remorse in order to help a disadvantaged person, is may seem as if he is acting rebelliously, especially if the motives behind his behavior are not known. On the other hand, a sociopath may donate a large sum of money to a charity, a seemingly altruistic behavior, but his actions may have been motivated by his selfish need to appear better than or more generous than a colleague. The defining characteristic that separates the two personality types is their ability to empathize, either not at all or too much, which then drives the extreme behavior of each.
And my favorite comment from the article:
Interesting article, but not without bias, and in my opinion, unprofessionally written. Never before have I heard a health-care professional refer to a sociopath as "nasty". As a behavioral specialist, I would expect you to know better than anyone that sociopaths do not choose their hereditary personality disorders anymore than your beloved X-altruists do. Why call names?

And how do you define virtue and "good" intent? Is not the X-altruist's all-consuming desire to help others, at the expense breaking these rules you seem to value so much, just as selfish as the sociopath?
followed closely by this one:
Your intentions are obvious. Try as you like, we'll never associate heroes with sociopaths.

And the social order will thus survive, despite your kind's attempt to weaken and destroy it.
It's an interesting point, though. Are sociopaths considered "bad" just because they seem to do, on average, more "bad for society" type things? If so, can't we just punish the "bad behavior" without singling out everyone with the condition and eradicating them? For another interesting look at heroes and sociopaths in fiction/media, see this article on the "heroic sociopath," including such gems as this rationalization of Peter Pan: "He's only slightly less uncaring towards others as his nemesis Captain Hook and comes across better mostly because his sociopathy is a result of being a perpetual child, whereas Hook really has no excuse." Aspies or Auties, anyone? I'm not so much saying that the hate against sociopaths isn't at all warranted, more that there is no principled way to hate sociopaths and not hate other people/personalities/disorders that are widely accepted or even beloved in society.

Tuesday, November 13, 2012

Raising genius

I really enjoyed this article by Andrew Solomon in the NY Times Magazine, "How do you Raise a Prodigy?" I thought the parallels between raising a prodigy and raising a sociopath were compelling. He first talks about his recent research in parents that raise children with special issues:

Prodigies are able to function at an advanced adult level in some domain before age 12. “Prodigy” derives from the Latin “prodigium,” a monster that violates the natural order. These children have differences so evident as to resemble a birth defect, and it was in that context that I came to investigate them. Having spent 10 years researching a book about children whose experiences differ radically from those of their parents and the world around them, I found that stigmatized differences — having Down syndrome, autism or deafness; being a dwarf or being transgender — are often clouds with silver linings. Families grappling with these apparent problems may find profound meaning, even beauty, in them. Prodigiousness, conversely, looks from a distance like silver, but it comes with banks of clouds; genius can be as bewildering and hazardous as a disability.

He then goes on to express some of the particular difficulties in raising any child who is different than the norm, particular a child who is different from the parents themselves, and how there are no easy rules:


Children who are pushed toward success and succeed have a very different trajectory from that of children who are pushed toward success and fail. I once told Lang Lang, a prodigy par excellence and now perhaps the most famous pianist in the world, that by American standards, his father’s brutal methods — which included telling him to commit suicide, refusing any praise, browbeating him into abject submission — would count as child abuse. “If my father had pressured me like this and I had not done well, it would have been child abuse, and I would be traumatized, maybe destroyed,” Lang responded. “He could have been less extreme, and we probably would have made it to the same place; you don’t have to sacrifice everything to be a musician. But we had the same goal. So since all the pressure helped me become a world-famous star musician, which I love being, I would say that, for me, it was in the end a wonderful way to grow up.”

While it is true that some parents push their kids too hard and give them breakdowns, others fail to support a child’s passion for his own gift and deprive him of the only life that he would have enjoyed. You can err in either direction. Given that there is no consensus about how to raise ordinary children, it is not surprising that there is none about how to raise remarkable children. Like parents of children who are severely challenged, parents of exceptionally talented children are custodians of young people beyond their comprehension.

I love the Lang Lang quote. It is such a great acknowledgment that different folks require different strokes. If there is anything that I hope to achieve with the blog and getting people to think about the presence and role of sociopaths in society, it is probably to preach this gospel that we're all really different from each other in ways that we too often either ignore or pretend don't exist. There's nothing wrong with heterogeneity, in fact it is probably what keeps us so viable as the dominant species on this planet. Monster babies are born into all types of family every day. But the word monster need not mean B movie horror matinees, it could also be someone more like Lang Lang.

Thursday, September 20, 2012

The sociopath's 'due north'

It is often said that sociopaths have no moral compass. But what if there is no such thing as a moral compass? What if instead, there are multiple ‘due norths’?

That seems to be the unspoken implication of an article i read recently about morality. The article features Jonathan Haidt’s ‘Moral Foundations’ theory, which purports to explain why morality varies among different cultures on the one hand while still showing some striking similarities on the other hand. The theory suggests that there are five universal foundations. Each culture in turn 'selects' a few of those foundations and builds traditions, norms and rituals upon them to construct a commonly shared morality. The five foundations in brief are:

1) Harm/care, related to our long evolution as mammals with attachment systems and an ability to feel (and dislike) the pain of others. This foundation underlies virtues of kindness, gentleness, and nurturing.

2) Fairness/reciprocity, related to the evolutionary process of reciprocal altruism. This foundation generates ideas of justice, rights, and autonomy.

3) Ingroup/loyalty, related to our long history as tribal creatures able to form shifting coalitions. This foundation underlies virtues of patriotism and self-sacrifice for the group. It is active anytime people feel that it's "one for all, and all for one."

4) Authority/respect, shaped by our long primate history of hierarchical social interactions. This foundation underlies virtues of leadership and followership, including deference to legitimate authority and respect for traditions.

5) Purity/sanctity, shaped by the psychology of disgust and contamination. This foundation underlies religious notions of striving to live in an elevated, less carnal, more noble way. It underlies the widespread idea that the body is a temple which can be desecrated by immoral activities and contaminants (an idea not unique to religious traditions).
Using the American political spectrum as a kind of case study, Haidt suggests that liberals tend to value harm/care and fairness above all else, while conservatives emphasize ingroup loyalty, authority and purity. He takes pains to suggest neither value grouping is objectively better than the other, merely different. I agree with him since there's no good evidence to suggest otherwise. What’s more, not only are values and moral biases at least in part, genetically heritable, the particular society a person is born into very often also plays an decisive role. What those two facts make clear is that conscious choice is not a relevant factor when it comes to generating most people’s sense of ‘right’ and ‘wrong.’ As one author puts it, since most people cannot see what comes before (genetics, history and culture), they assume what comes after (their beliefs, biases and morality) are freely chosen. It’s obvious they are not. Moreover, not only are the moral biases that many empaths swear, live and die by not freely chosen, they are not even rational. The evidence coming in from research on morality indicates that emotions, gut reactions, play a leading role in moral judgments and that rationalization of those judgments follow. The human brain is a belief factory, and part of its job is to rationally justify moral feelings.Iif people want to reach a conclusion, they usually find a way to do so that has little to do with anything resembling sound theory or evidence; in short, it has little to do with reality. This partly explains why sociopaths can see the hypocrisy and absurdity that often passes for moral debate.

Which brings us back to the subject. The sociopath is born with much less in the way of moral biases. We don’t need to justify our actions to ourselves, although we may go through the motions of justification with others because we know that’s what they expect and doing so is sometimes useful. More importantly, it’s clear to us in a way that it might not be for most empaths that when it comes to morality, there are as many ‘due norths’ as there are people. Until convincing evidence to the contrary comes in, there’s no reason to fix our so called broken moral compasses. We don’t need no stinkin' moral compass. Reality based thinking works just fine.

Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Mask of Sanity: Anna

I was trying to look up something remembered in Hervey Cleckley's "Mask of Sanity" the other day and stumbled upon the hilarious account of the woman Anna.  I especially like his description of his first impressions of her:

There was nothing spectacular about her, but when she came into the office you felt that she merited the attention she at once obtained. She was, you could say without straining a point, rather good-looking, but she was not nearly so good-looking as most women would have to be to make a comparable impression. She spoke in the crisp, fluttery cadence of the British, consistently sounding her "r's" and "ing's" and regularly saying "been" as they do in London. For a girl born and raised in Georgia, such speaking could suggest affectation. Yet it was the very opposite of this quality that contributed a great deal to the pleasing effect she invariably produced on those who met her. Naive has so many inapplicable connotations it is hardly the word to use in reference to this urbane and gracious presence, yet it is difficult to think of our first meeting without that very word coming to mind, with its overtones of freshness, artlessness, and candor.

She had passed her fortieth birthday some months before. Neither her face nor her figure had lost anything worth mentioning. Despite her composure, she gave a distinct impression of energy and playful spontaneity, an impression of vivid youth. In response to ordinary questions about her activities and interests she spoke of tennis, riding, and reading. More specific inquiry brought out opinions on Hamlet's essential conflict, comparison between the music of Brahms and the music of Shostakovitch, an impressive criticism of Schopenhauer's views on women, and several pertinent references to The Brothers Karamazov. She expressed opinions on current affairs that seemed to make excellent sense and talked with wit about the cyclic changes in feminine clothes and the implications of atomic physics for the future. What she had to say was particularly interesting and she said it in just the opposite of all those many ways of talking that people call "making conversation."

As discussion progressed, the picture of a rather remarkable woman became more and more distinct. Here was evidence of high intelligence and of considerable learning without discernible bookishness or consciousness of being "an intellectual." Her manner suggested wide interest, fresh and contagious enthusiasms, and a taste for living that reached out toward all healthy experience. Having a cup of coffee with her or weeding a garden would somehow take on a special quality of fun and delightfulness. Something about her over and beyond her looks prompted the estimate that she would be very likely to elicit romantic impulses, strong sensual inclinations, from most men who encountered her. Here, it seemed, was natural taste without a shadow of posed estheticism, urbanity without blunting of response to the simplest of joys, integrity and good ethical sense with the very opposite of everything that could be called priggish or smug. She showed nothing to suggest she meant to give such an impression or that she had any thought as to how she seemed.

I've never read Mask of Sanity all the way through, only read snippets, but I have actually been enjoying it more recently.  I probably like it best out of all of the books about sociopath.  It is glaringly anecdotal, biased, and suffers from a pretty clear lack of objective, systematic research, but so is this blog, and there is something about his writing style that I enjoy. I like the Anna story because you can tell that he was taken in by her, and I think it is sometimes much better to see source material of people who are taken in rather than hear the same old "superficially charming."  I like the description of her idiosyncrasies: the accent, her artlessness, her eternal youthfulness, her attractiveness that seems to be something more than mere beauty, her intelligence, her charm, even a reference to the Brothers Karamazov (interestingly, later it discusses how she does not have the high brow tastes or prejudices of the typical "intellectual" of her education and breeding, but treats gossip magazines with the same interest as the music of Russian composers).  Later in the chapter on Anna, Cleckley tells how she quite sincerely taught Sunday Schoolvolunteered for the Red Cross, and engaged in haphazard same sex liaisons, one time with a nurse after being universally adored during a hospital stay ("Once while hospitalized for a week or ten days, she left the almost universal impression of being a delightful patient. Courteous, composed, undemanding, and cheerful, she took discomforts and minor pains in a way that elicited admiration.").  It reminded me of my own nearly identical experience charming all hospital staff without meaning to  while stuck there for a week after an appendectomy -- I was a crowd favorite, was called very "brave" and had random nurses ask me to keep in touch.

About this season every year I have a period of introspection and self doubt.  Sometimes I wonder if I believing I am a sociopath is a self-fulfilling prophecy, or distorts the way I see me in the world.  Recently I've been questioning again what I am doing writing this blog or believing that I am a sociopath, whatever that means.  I watch myself interact with others and think, is this what a sociopath would do?  Have I been living a lie these past few years?  It just seems like such a bizarre thing to believe this about oneself, bizarre even to believe that sociopaths exist and aren't just some random assortment of personality traits that occur together solely by chance.  I am sure I never will stop asking myself these questions, but when I read stories like Anna's and see all of the incredible parallels to my own life, including small details or other things I couldn't have known or whose existence in my life predate any awareness of what the term "sociopath" meant, I am just floored.  It's not necessarily the life I would have chosen for myself given an infinite number of options and I sometimes wonder at the improbability of who I am, who I turned out to be, but I really am ok with it.  More than ok, I'm happy.

Thursday, May 31, 2012

Weak sense of self

A reader sent me this interesting lecture from Stanford Lecturer Kelly McGonigal about the neuroscience behind self-referential processing.  She sums up the main point of her argument thusly: "we carry the seeds of suffering in our own minds, primarily through the human mind's habit of carefully constructing and then rigidly defending a sense of self that is based on our preferences, our attitudes, our beliefs, and our personal stories and that it's this churning of the self machine that gives rise to so much of our daily suffering."




It discusses whether there is some way to have a self-awareness that does not engage the self-referential processing, i.e. an experiential self that is not based on the narrative of self-referential processing or the stories we tell ourselves, but rather is based on "the awareness of the constantly changing feelings, thoughts, and things going on in our environment".  The answer is yes, but only among people who are trained in meditation.  My personal experiences and anecdotal knowledge regarding sociopaths suggests to me that this would also include sociopaths, who naturally have a weak sense of self (see also here), and seem to experience self-awareness almost entirely as the experiential self, not the self-referential self (using her lexicon).

It's interesting too that this lecture was apparently given at a Buddhist conference.  I have never bothered to learn much about Buddhism, but people have frequently remarked here on how the sociopath's detachment from self and lack of anxiety regarding outcomes is what many Buddhists hope to accomplish in order to achieve Nirvana. And sociopaths just happen to be born that way.

Here's what the reader wrote:


There's 3 categories in the experiment:
1) non-meditators
2) recent meditators
3) experienced meditators


My understanding of what happens:
Category 1 feels the pain, then thinks "how long will this go on, why me? oh shit? get away, get away!"


Category 2 feels the pain and focuses on their breathing. They ignore the pain as best they can by focusing on something else. Meditation has given them the ability to concentrate, so they concentrate on something other than the pain.


Category 3 feels the pain and tries to feel and examine it as best they can. They are so busy doing that, moment by moment, they aren't thinking, "why me, how long will this go on" etc. because when they really focus on what they are sensing, as opposed to how things aren't how they would like it, they lose their sense of self.

Saturday, May 19, 2012

Sociopaths in literature: East of Eden's Cathy

Probably the most prototypical sociopath portrayal in literature is Cathy from Steinbeck's East of Eden.
I believe there are monsters born in the world to human parents. Some you can see, misshapen and horrible, with huge heads or tiny bodies; some are born with no arms, no legs, some with three arms, some with tails or mouths in odd places. They are accidents and no one's fault, as used to be thought. Once they were considered the visible punishment for concealed sins.

And just as there are physical monsters, can there not be mental or psychic monsters born? The face and body may be perfect, but if a twisted gene or a malformed egg can produce physical monsters, may not the same process produce a malformed soul?

Monsters are variations from the accepted normal to a greater or a less degree. As a child may be born without an arm, so one may be born without kindness or the potential of conscience. A man who loses his arms in an accident has a great struggle to adjust himself to the lack, but one born without arms suffers only from people who find him strange. Having never had arms, he cannot miss them. Sometimes when we are little we imagine how it would be to have wings, but there is no reason to suppose it is the same feeling birds have. No, to a monster the norm must seem monstrous, since everyone is normal to himself. To the inner monster it must be even more obscure, since he has no visible thing to compare with others. To a man born without conscience, a soul-stricken man must seem ridiculous. To a criminal, honesty is foolish. You must not forget that a monster is only a variation, and that to a monster the norm is monstrous.

It is my belief that Cathy Ames was born with the tendencies, or lack of them, which drove and forced her all of her life. Some balance wheel was misweighed, some gear out of ratio. She was not like other people, never was from birth. And just as a cripple may learn to utilize his lack so that he becomes more effective in a limited field than the uncrippled, so did Cathy, using her difference, make a painful and bewildering stir in her world.

There was a time when a girl like Cathy would have been called possessed by the devil. She would have been exorcised to cast out the evil spirit, and if after many trials that did not work, she would have been burned as a witch for the good of the community. The one thing that may not be forgiven a witch is her ability to distress people, to make them restless and uneasy and even envious.
. . .
Even as a child she had some quality that made people look at her, then look away, then look back at her, troubled at something foreign. Something looked out of her eyes, and was never there when one looked again. She moved quietly and talked little, but she could enter no room without causing everyone to turn toward her.

She made people uneasy but not so that they wanted to go away from her. Men and women wanted to inspect her, to be close to her, to try and find what caused the disturbance she distributed so subtly. And since this had always been so, Cathy did not find it strange.

Cathy was different from other children in many ways, but one thing in particular set her apart. Most children abhor difference. They want to look, talk, dress, and act exactly like all of the others. If the style of dress is an absurdity, it is pain and sorrow to a child not to wear that absurdity. If necklaces of pork chops were accepted, it would be a sad child who could not wear pork chops. And this slavishness to the group normally extends into every game, every practice, social or otherwise. It is a protective coloration children utilize for their safety.

Cathy had none of this. She never conformed in dress or conduct. She wore whatever she wanted to. The result was that quite often other children imitated her.

As she grew older the group, the herd, which is any collection of children, began to sense what adults felt, that there was something foreign about Cathy. After a while only one person at a time associated with her. Groups of boys and girls avoided her as though she carried a nameless danger.

Cathy was a liar, but she did not lie the way most children do. Hers was no daydream lying, when the thing imagined is told and, to make it seem more real, told as real. That is just ordinary deviation from external reality. I think the difference between a lie and a story is that a story utilizes the trappings and appearance of truth for the interest of the listener as well as of the teller. A story has in it neither gain nor loss. But a lie is a device for profit or escape. I suppose if that definition is strictly held to, then a writer of stories is a liar -- if he is financially fortunate.

Cathy's lies were never innocent. Their purpose was to escape punishment, or work, or responsibility, and they were used for profit. Most liars are tripped up either because they forget what they have told or because the lie is suddenly faced with an incontrovertible truth. But Cathy did not forget her lies, and she developed the most effective method of lying. She stayed close enough to the truth so that one could never be sure. She knew two other methods also -- either to interlard her lies with truth or to tell a truth as though it were a lie. If one is accused of a lie and it turns out to be the truth, there is a backlog that will last a long time and protect a number of untruths.
. . .
Nearly everyone in the world has appetites and impulses, trigger emotions, islands of selfishness, lusts just beneath the surface. And most people either hold such things in check or indulge them secretly. Cathy knew not only these impulses in others but how to use them for her own gain.

It is quite possible that she did not believe in any other tendencies in humans, for while she was preternaturally alert in some directions she was completely blind in others.

Monday, January 16, 2012

Portrait of a sociopath

I stumbled across this "self portrait" of a sociopath here, and thought it was one of the most accurate depictions of an everyday sociopath I've seen, and by that I mean it is the description of a sociopath that is the most similar to how I view myself:
I've often suspected I have sociopathic tendencies, but I don't fit all the criteria on your list.

I've lied and stolen from a very young age despite being brought up in a normal, loving, two-parent home. I had never been particularly loving until I learned consciously what the display of this behavior could do for me. In arguments with my sibling I was always labeled cold and unfeeling because I would turn off the outward expression of emotion to the point that I'm not sure I felt anything at all.

Despite this, I have forged some stable long-term relationships, married, and now have a daughter. I have learned to blend in with the status quo so much that I highly doubt if anyone suspects my inward nature. Once I learned consequence I stopped stealing and now only lie when it benefits me in some tangible manner and the risk of being outed is low. Despite this outward appearance of normalcy, I lack any sort of depth or substance. Emotions are often faked, and I have to work at performing regular friendship and relationship maintenance to keep these relationships going when there is no emotion behind the act whatsoever-(for instance, buying and providing a nice birthday card and gift for a long time friend with loving sentiments).

I struggle often with behaving appropriately and in a manner acceptable to society. I am still tempted to steal and have to slowly walk myself through the consequences of doing so. I don't avoid stealing by arguing the morality of it, but rather what would happen to me if I was caught. In my teen years I was promiscuous and to this day still struggle with my urges, though I have never cheated on my husband for fear of being caught. Sex and lust for me is more of a function of manipulation that it is a physical urge, though I can and have enjoyed sex.

I often fantasize about soulful, deep, searing love relationships but don't think I could ever truly experience this. I've used my looks and sexuality in the past to draw men in and after they fell I was through. I finally married after pressure from family, and conceived after 10 years due to pressure from my husband. I love my husband to the extent of what he can provide for me, financially and sexually, but I don't know what it means to have an aching heart for anybody real.

Nearly everything I do, even today, is calculated for personal gain. I am constantly weighing energy output VS gain VS acceptable behavior.

The only unfettered love I've experienced so far is for my daughter. She is the only one who I have *ever* given more to that I expected to receive in return, without calculating what my contribution will get for me.

I wish I wasn't like this, that I could feel a normal depth and range of emotion and not constantly be tempted by my urges. I really don't think anybody could help me, I think that my constant self-checking and chameleon lifestyle is really the best I can ever expect, I don't think a head shrink could provide me with any better "therapy". I some ways I think my disorder is a gift, because I am a consummate logician, being unfettered by normal depth of emotion.

I think there are probably many *many* people out there just like me, who live in a cloak of normalcy. I could be your neighbor, or even your wife. I firmly believe I was born this way and it is just how I am wired. I don't expect anyone to feel sorry for me but I wanted to give my own perspective on my APD.

I think I am more normal that anyone would care to admit, even to themselves.

Thursday, December 22, 2011

Connect the dots

Remember those games you used to play in primary school where the teacher would give you a bunch of clues and you had to guess what the person or thing was?  From a reader:
I'm wondering where I fall on the sociopathic spectrum, and what if anything I should do about it.
I was born into a troubled family - mother is was paranoid schizophrenic & father is narcissistc. Grandfather was a sociopath (he was sadistic, transgressive and super low-empathy). I spent most of my childhood (mildly) abused or neglected. I was a bedwetter. 
I tend to interpret peoples' actions the way a paranoid would, although I know rationally that I'm often wrong. 
I'm low-empathy. I have trouble reading the emotions of others. I often say things that bother people. Unless I'm paying a lot of attention, it is easy for me to offend people. When I offend people, I try to make amends (as a practical matter).
I tend to take things literally. I have a hard time with jokes. I speak bluntly. 
I'm generally quite honest, although when I want to lie, I take great delight in saying something that is literally true, but misleading.
In general, I'm bold. If I want stuff, I'll try to get it. I very much feel like my life is slipping away; there's no time to waste. I get bored easily.
As a kid, I didn't abuse mammals, but I was tough on slugs and snails. I took them apart, tortured them, etc. In my adult years, my job had me doing terrible things to mammals. They'd scream for a long time. I didn't like hearing the screams, it bugged me. If anything, they pissed me off with their screaming, because I had a job to do. Sometimes I'd get so pissed at them for screaming at me that I'd hurt them more. My sense is, I don't abuse animals for fun, but if I've got goals and to reach them I have to hurt stuff, I'll do it. If the things I'm hurting make my job difficult, I'll hurt them more after I get angry at them.
I've got something of a conscience, but not like most people. I do feel bad if I hurt people I love. I don't steal. But I do trespass, snoop, cheat on my taxes, smuggle contraband when it suits me, etc. I regularly do things that could get me arrested. 
If people cross a line, I consider extra-legal retribution essential. I've broken the law, repeatedly, to get revenge. It involved killing animals. I did it without remorse. I've gotten good at it.
I enjoy internet trolling, particularly by expressing un-PC thoughts. 
I'm sadistic. I really enjoy hurting my enemies. 
I've got ethnocentric/racist sensibilities. I think the world would be a better place if we got rid of people not in my racial group. If making that happen required me to volunteer, I'd do it happily. In this way, I'm altruistic. I'm not totally selfish. Then again, I don't love everyone in my racial group (or family, etc). If there were important enough goals, I'd think it reasonable to kill them for the cause.
If I could kill people and get away with it (or get approval, by being on a death squad), I'd jump to sign up. I'm kinda hoping we'll get a race war before I'm dead, so that I can hunt some humans.
I'm very manipulative and calculating. I lie. I do this even with the people closest to me. I kind of delight in doing it.
I transgress. When I do "bad" things, I don't have remorse. I do have fear of getting caught, and a deep hatred of authority figures. I know that if I was in the middle of a crime and a lone law enforcement officer caught me, I'd kill him in an instant if it meant the difference between getting away or being punished.
That said, there are some transgressions I feel are wrong, so I don't do them. If I do them, I feel guilty. Yet for someone who hates authority, when people disregard my wishes or authority, I feel they deserve the maximum punishment.
I get lonely. Rejection hurts and pisses me off. I want to be adored. When I've been rejected, I've thought of stalking, attacking or trespassing the person rejecting me. Or I think of re-seducing them, so that I can dump them to punish them.
My general sense is that I can't be a sociopath; I have something of a conscience. But then there's only about 5 people in the world I care about in non-abstract terms.

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Sociopath as entrepreneur

One of my mentors just asked me, "What made you who you are." It was meant to be complimentary. The implication was that I am better than a lot of my peers. Particularly my mentor is impressed with how I seem to understand many more aspects of the dilemmas we are working with than some of my colleagues.

I guess you could call it an ability to think abstractly, or an increased awareness of the mechanics--a more intimate knowledge of the behind the scenes action that is motivating so much of what we look at. It allows me to Bayesian update like mad, like an excel spreadsheet with hundreds of inter-working, interdependent formula, but capable of adjusting in an instant based on new information.

My mentor actually calls it "alien." Again, he means it to be complimentary. He subscribes to the theory that great thinkers and entrepreneurs tend to be "aliens," people who are not really part of their culture. Aliens live parallel lives with different mindsets than the majority. They're readily able to think critically about the world around them because it already seems foreign to them. There's no effort in trying to maintain distance or perspective regarding the problem. The distance has always been there. The distance will always be there because that is the way the alien interacts with everything in the world.

My mentor thinks I must be an alien because my smart ideas are not just smart, they're groundbreaking. Even the way I explain my ideas to others is alien. It's like I am trying to translate my ideas into a language that others will be able to understand. The effort I am making to communicate is apparent, like figuring out how to instruct someone to hike from point A to point B when I had just teleported there instantly. My mentor thinks that you simply cannot teach people to think this way. You can open their mind and teach them some tricks, but they will never think fluently this way the same way that an "alien" would. I laughed off his comments, saying that I have plenty of stupid ideas too. "Well I do too," he responded, "we all do. That's part and parcel of risky thinking."

Here's an example of "alien" entrepreneurship, Tony Hseih, head of Zappos. From the NY Times:
At times, Mr. Hsieh comes across as an alien who has studied human beings in order to live among them. That can intimidate those who are not accustomed to his watchful style. “I have been in job interviews with him where you are expecting more, and it can be awkward silences,” said Ned Farra, who manages relationships with other Web sites for Zappos. “He is not afraid of it. It is almost like he is testing you.”

Mr. Hsieh said that he surrounds himself with people who are more outgoing than he is, in part to draw himself out. “My view is that I am more of a mirror of who I am around,” he said. “So if I am around an introverted person that is really awkward. But if I am around an extroverted person I will be whoever they are times point-5.”
***
Outwitting the system is something Mr. Hsieh has honed from a young age. In addition to describing his youthful business ventures (worm farms failed, personalized photo buttons succeeded), “Delivering Happiness” recounts a history of scam artistry. To fool his Taiwanese-born parents into thinking he was practicing piano and violin, he recorded practice sessions and played them back on weekend mornings.
***
Jason Levesque, another Harvard friend who worked at LinkExchange, recalled Mr. Hsieh’s self-effacement. When inviting friends to play a video game, “he was obviously the best at the game, but he would sort of hide that in order to get everyone to play,” Mr. Levesque said.

Like Mr. Zuckerberg’s, Mr. Hsieh’s success has been built in part on his ability to anatomize the way people crave connections with others, and turn those insights into a business plan.
***
Mr. Hsieh, who professes fascination with dating guides like Neil Strauss’s “The Game” and pontificated on his theory of the evolutionary futility of sexual jealousy, said he does not date. “I don’t usually define dating or not dating, together or not together,” said Mr. Hsieh, nursing another tall shaker of wine at the Downtown Cocktail Room. “I prefer to use the term ‘hang out.’ And I hang out with a lot of people, guys and girls. I don’t really have this one person I am dating right now. I am hanging out with multiple people, and some people I hang out with more than others.”
***
“I think of everyone I know in my life, he’s the best at not feeling jealousy,” she added. “But I think he’s human, whether anyone believes that or not.”
This is not the first time I have been called an alien. It is not even the first time that I have been called that with a positive or value neutral connotation. I never know what to say in these situations. I agree with them, obviously, but in terms of explaining to them why I might have grown up with the mentality of an "alien" in a foreign world...? "It's a mystery," I tell them. But it's not. It hasn't been a mystery since I became self-aware, or maybe since I learned of the term "sociopath".

Monday, November 21, 2011

Guest post: schizophrenic sociopath

From a reader:
Schizophrenic sociopath: a joyous autoportrait of Pabaisa
And they worshiped the dragon [the prototype of Pabaisa] which gave power unto the beast [the archetype of Pabaisa]. And they worshiped the beast, saying: "Who is like unto the beast? Who is able to make war with him?"
- The Revelation of John, 13, 4
Pabaisa – the Immoralist, the Antichrist, the Anarchist, everything, that is opposed to civilization, the breaker of codes and rules; the man with the strength of a giant and the brain of a child; the soul contract Terminator and the wish fulfilling Mephisto. Pabaisa imagines himself as a green-skinned, sharp-toothed, bird-of-prey-nosed, hatty, sabotted and with dingy purple dusters, even if no one is afraid of him outwardly and react to his grotesque smile neutrally. The blind, who don’t see the accursed wickedness and consider him as a friend. The feelings of abandonment, terror and lost identity spring from the degenerate’s inner being, his projection of himself as a despicable demon, who looks at his own reflection in pond like Narcissus, and cannot see himself truly, so he rolls away from his Olympian mountain of solitude and seclusion, and engages on a journey through dark, naked forests and barren, scorched deserts, searching for something, which would give him an identity, an understanding and a shelter. The beast does not look aggressively in reality, even on the contrary, like a sociopath, like all the rest, maybe even a perfect replica of a human. The intra-speciary predator is unfazed by the hunters in this regard.
The problem of Pabaisa‘s sexuality: Pabaisa is only partly a man. At least, he doesn‘t perceive himself as one. Due to accidental meiosis and gene selection, his body was born as a man. Pabaisa doesn‘t see himself as a woman, either. There is no hidden desire to be a woman, no secret jealousy. For all he knew, it didn‘t matter, if he‘s a man, a woman or both. Things like sex and sexuality didn‘t matter, from an abstract perspective to life; he could become any with the circumstances. He was a man, but he could easily become a woman any time he wished, if he felt, that the circumstances demanded it. The mastery of disguise.
First metamorphosis: Schizophrenia and split-personality disorder. Five different voices in his head and 1 = ½ + ½, or A = B + C. A as the state before Lucifer gets thrown out of Heaven, like a pure state, B and C as different embodiments of “evil”, annihilators of “good” and destroyers of life, i.e. chimeras and killers with the thirst for power and the hate for weakness. Question: Why? Answer: The man’s becoming a half-man, or two half-men, was prompted by his genius-overman flight to the skies of brilliance, which was replaced by anti-genius, when he flew too high to the Sun, or madness, and burned like Icarus. The absence of identity, family, friends from birth or losing them along the way. Adam without his Eve, or the inability to hide from humanity without his species representative. The Colossus B is Pabaisa’s A part, which doesn’t want an identity from the start, being the universal bodily brutality in the world of objects. The Titan C is Pabaisa’s A part, which wants an identity from all his heart, despite the consequences, being the conscious identity-subjectivity seeker. From appearances alone, one would say that here exists an extreme complex duality and conflicting characteristics, despite this, they both are nihilistic psychopaths, who, due to an open intimacy, love each other more than the lost A, the last connection with humanity, which they forged.
It seems, that monster’s C only goal, like some kind of ambitious animal, who is playing God, is to give others power, or value, maybe he even wants to create a race of snakes. Save himself by saving his saviors? Still, when the vampire extracts and reaches the other person’s zenith of happiness and the height of potential, when there is no place to climb higher, for him that person becomes a bore and he feels incomplete, which makes him act with cruelty and kill the parasitical person from hunger. On the other hand, the giant B is bathing in nihilistic conscious revelations about the indifference of the universe and the relativity of values, by which he tries to justify his murders. Cerber C didn’t want an identity connected to physical activity, which will never satisfy him, but with intellectual; he wanted an identity, which embodies everything he is opposed to, so he searches out the aristocrats.
Second metamorphosis: Narcissistic possession of a Prince. Prince is not as much of an ogre’s fruit of labor, as that, which Nietzsche claimed to be as soul-awareness transformation’s third stage. In short: 1. The camel – memory. 2. The lion – will-to-knowledge. 3. The child - wisdom. In this case, Prince is something of a “second childhood”, radiation of will-to-live and the forging of new values. Prince to the devil is everything, which he desires by his understanding of identity at that time: a status in society, political power, money, reactionary disregard for the sheep morality, wide connection circle, etc. The creature endures his hunger and postpones this inevitability for a long time for the means to an end, but one thing is missing – the War ambition, the natural evolutionary development condition, the only Art form of the ruling elite. The seven-headed, ten-horned and ten-crowned behemoth rises up and swallows up his Father and Mother, the King and the Queen, burning everything behind him and searching for a greater height, a new order within himself, which would shake the whole foundation of the Earth. The barbarian should not be held responsible for the killings of other people, because it is in his nature to be the Machiavellian, to be the blond beast-of-prey, devouring the lives of others.
Third metamorphosis: Re-integration into one person. The need to become singular: the pianist’s cut off arms, the drowning man's oxygen, the thirsty man’s water need. I am you. You are me. We are one. Prince is the outcast. We always were a monster, with a human side, which desperately clung to an identity, to save ourselves from drowning. The dragon with his identity as a Prince and as a Kreator gulps down the centaur without an identity. The active nihilism overcomes the passive nihilism. The monster, with a monster’s hunger, with a monster’s appetite, munching his other half from within. Pabaisa in a poisoned garden of Eden, knowing and wallowing in his own death, was made wild and totally uncontrollable, to satisfy his every desire, to realize his every ambition with unconditional commitment. And only then the Leviathan experiences his second true suffering, - having in mind, that the first one was the absence of identity, - not by killing his family and humanity, but whilst assimilating his other half, his primordial anonymity. The formless, faceless, nameless mammoth of a Prince, in the past only thinking of himself as un-and-in-human, feels a human, an all too human, familiarity with humanity, as if being a slave to the collective unconscious programming, which doesn’t have any uniqueness, personality or individuality, as if all the memory was implanted into his robotic brain – the gargoyle, who achieves cold intellectual empathy, the Satan, who finally kills God and outgrows the nameless humanity and its identity, swallowing it and making it his little, dirty dog-bitch. Ego-centrism as a whole humanity’s ego. Not power through wisdom, but the “real” world’s transcendence, which is denied to the rational mind. My name is Titas, for I am many.
Mutant A, troll B and savage C in the consequence of all the metamorphoses become phoenix A again, who has no identity, because it is stolen from the Prince, and made his own. The achieved pseudo-identity results in an existentialist tragi-heroism: after finding an identity, a meaning of life, Moby Dick understands, that the identity is the reaction between him, the other person and the whole world, that there is nothing, who could call him by his name, his meaning of life effectively disappears. The eternal incognito, a walking corpse and the super-cannibal in the end returns not even there, where he started, but into a negative sequence, because the beauty of the identity has disappeared, leaving only a heart filled with choking terror and disgust. The last man standing syndrome: will-to-life and will-to-power as will-in-itself, the loss to the world is its conquering. And so stands the Prince of princes, saying to himself, that if he is made of the parts and characteristics of dead people, then, basically, he is a person, but because they are dead, he never himself is alive. What scares the most – the paradoxical hunger in Pabaisa’s eyes and a satisfaction with his fake identity. Nobody stands on top of the world, except the highest alpha predator, who doesn’t have any dreams or hopes, who exists alone only to write himself an ending, then he will stop wandering and not knowing eternally his unbelievably mysterious soul, ignorant of boundaries and fears, but constantly fighting within itself. The realization, that you cannot become “a fake somebody”, but you can become “a true nobody”, the last prophet of the nihilistic truth of the universe. The wind became stronger, its screeching howl louder, and the air colder, as the demiurge’s eyes ached, while he was smiling into the Void.
Question: What is meaning of the story? Answer: No meaning. The worthlessness of efforts. To acquire, what is wanted, but to understand, that it doesn’t mean anything. To see, that there is no difference between good and evil, well and bad. Finally, a man can become anything he wants according to his wishes. He doesn’t have to take the walked-out road. He has a freedom of choice… People are like dice, they throw themselves in the direction of their own choosing.
Moral: If you admit your ontological uniqueness, identity becomes unimportant.
Sincerely, your friendly neighborhood Pabaisa.

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Faith

Religious people sometimes get on this site and tell us that we're all going to burn in hell. I don't know what religion these people belong to, but I imagine that they have some pretty common judeo christian beliefs that God created man. Even if you accept the belief that God does not actually create evil, he certainly creates the ingredients, possibly even sets the ball in motion. At least I think that is a relatively common belief among those religiously inclined in those ways. You may say that God doesn't want man to lie down with man as he would woman, but you can't deny that God seems to have made certain people especially prone to wanting to do just that. Similarly, the sociopath. Born different, although not necessarily to murder indiscriminately. To those religious people, were the sociopaths born to live a wretched life and burn in hell?

It's odd because I think some sociopaths are actually more inclined to religion than the general population. We're so used to taking things on "faith," e.g. the legitimacy of other people's personhood, the existence of an emotional palette different than our own, etc. It's sort of like the colorblind people who have to take our word for it that orange exists the way it does (or does it? who is to say that our perception of that particular segment of the electromagnetic spectrum is any more or less correct than theirs?). These things I take on faith not really as truths but as things that seem plausible enough that I cannot deny their existence (I cannot reject the null hypothesis for you statisticians out there). Because I am so used to accepting the existence of things that I can neither feel nor see myself, it's not at all a jump for me to indulge in religious beliefs. And I do indulge -- maybe because they are a form of hedging my bets, maybe because I was raised to be religious and many of my familiar and other relationship ties are based on religion, or maybe because these beliefs actually do help fill the void of meaning that I otherwise would feel in my life.

But accepting the possibility of a God as I do, why do I not agree with my religious brothers that I am destined to go to hell. How do I reconcile any religious beliefs with who I am? Honestly, although part of me feels dark, a big part of me thinks that I am more Godlike than most people, particularly the God of Abraham and Moses. It's easy for me to think that I was a ruler before this life and will be in the life to come, which is I guess the real reason that these religious types get on here saying I'm going to hell, because I'm pretty sure that's blasphemy in their eyes.

Rex tremendae majestatis,
qui salvandos savas gratis,
salve me, fons pietatis.

King of tremendous majesty,
who freely saves those worthy ones,
save me, source of mercy.

Monday, September 26, 2011

Desensitized

Sometimes I hear people say that they were "born this way," whatever way that happens to be. To say you are born a sociopath or born gay is like saying you were born smart or born tall. Yes, you may have the genetic predisposition to be smart or tall, but the existence of feral children is an important reminder that no one is born any of those ways, that we rely on the most basic daily interactions, nutrition, culture, education, experiences, and myriad other influences in our development to become who we become. I realize that "born this way" is just shorthand and I've used it too, but I think it is sloppy and often masks some of these other important influences.

Was I born to charm? Born to harm? I wasn't necessarily even born to speak or wield a weapon. So how do we get there? What makes some of us different from others. Obviously it has a lot to do with genetics, but it also has so much to do not just with our our experiences, but in what particular order and when in life we experienced them. It's through our experiences that normal gened people can be desensitized to things like killing, and sociopathic gened people can be sensitized to things like being aware of the needs of others.

I intentionally sensitize myself to things all the time. When I studied music, I sensitized myself to minute changes in pitch because I played a fretless string instrument and needed to be keenly aware of pitch to play in tune. Now it drives me crazy to hear musicians playing out of tune. It's not just that I have a more discriminating taste than I used to, I actually have a very visceral reaction to pitch problems to the point that I can feel nauseated.

Things that used to shock me no longer do through repeat exposure, and vice versa. I know that my genes might predispose me to the way I think and interact with the world, but I also take full responsibility for the amount of control over the rest. Every day I am in motion, sensitizing myself or desensitizing myself, constantly reshaping my brain, making and breaking habits, making myself more less inclined to act or think a certain way.

I am careful what I do and say, what I allow myself to think and daydream about. It's not always because I am worried about external consequences (would I do these things if I were sure to not be caught?), but rather internal consequences. How would doing or thinking that thing change me and is that someone I want to become? I'm all too aware that we are what we eat.

On a related note, I don't expect to look or act exactly like other sociopaths because I haven't made the same trillion decisions in the same order that they have, even if we might share a particular gene sequence. Via my exposure to the myriad variety of sociopaths and other personality types that I've run into on the blog and in real life, I have eliminated many misconceptions I had about sociopathy (criminals are low-functioning, etc.). Keeping an open-mind is one of the habits I hope to keep by challenging my own beliefs as vigorously as I challenge those of others.
Join Amazon Prime - Watch Over 40,000 Movies

.

Comments are unmoderated. Blog owner is not responsible for third party content. By leaving comments on the blog, commenters give license to the blog owner to reprint attributed comments in any form.