The origins of criminality as a feature of sociopathy (part 3)

Because it largely captures people who commit crimes, either sociopathic or non, the PCL-R is both over-inclusive of non-sociopathic criminals and under-inclusive of non-criminal sociopaths. (Id, citing Lilienfeld, 1994.) At best, research based on the PCL-R can be characterized as “a literature on unsuccessful psychopathy.” Id. However not all sociopaths are unsuccessful. Rather the “great majority of psychopaths” have (Id, quoting Hercz, 2001, ¶ 11.) via their “ individual differences in talents and opportunities” channeled their psychopathic tendencies not into criminality, but into heroism, worldly success, etc. Id, citing Cleckley, 1976; Harkness & Lilienfeld, 1997; Lilienfeld, 1998; Lykken, 1995. Hare himself has conceded, most sociopaths are not criminals.

Although Hare never filed suit, he successfully delayed publication of Skeem and Cooke’s article by three years. He was also roundly criticized as improperly interfering with the peer review process. In an article titled “Fear Review,” Scientific American writes : “’It was [a] shock,’ Skeem says of Hare's legal threat. ‘this is not about Professor Hare, and it's only incidentally about the Psychopathy Checklist,’ she says. ‘The focus was really on how we could move the field forward.’”

Hare conceded in his response to Skeem and Cooke that the PCL-R does not embody the concept of psychopathy, nor is criminality a necessary component, but there are only twenty factors and three of them specifically deal with criminality: “criminal versatility”, “juvenile delinquency” and “revocation of conditional release” (revoked parole). Another is “many short-term marital relationships”. Only half of the factors track Cleckley sociopathy.

How did non-Cleckley traits enter the PCL-R?

[B]ecause participants in the PCL development sample were criminals rather than nonincarcerated patients or nonpatients, it seems likely that the initial candidate pool included many more deviance-related items, such that [Cleckley’s] positive adjustment indicators dropped out in the selection process. The result is that the PCL-R, compared with Cleckley’s original diagnostic criteria, contains items that are uniformly indicative of deviancy and psychological maladjustment.

Patrick, et al. (2009).

Studying exclusively criminals and then assuming sociopathy must be related to criminality seems like an obvious sampling error. If I exclusively studied my church congregation for sociopathy, could I properly infer a connection between sociopathy and organized religion? Even Hare admits “the majority of psychopaths aren't criminal,” so how could he be satisfied basing his test exclusively on criminals?

Despite round criticism from the psychological community, the PCL-R’s psychopath has left a lasting academic and public impression. Notwithstanding mounting research to the contrary, the dominant popular view of sociopathy is Hare’s criminal recidivist remorseless killer. This is the psychopathy of Hollywood murder movies. I too am scared of such a person, although I haven’t yet encountered one.

Modern researchers remain divided between Cleckley’s carefree bon vivant and Hare, Rollins, McCord and McCord’s criminal deviant.  While Cleckley’s view of sociopaths amounted to emotional colorblindness, Hare et al. depict a “bad egg” rife with moral rottenness – a severely emotionally damaged individual characterized by a loveless and guiltless existence of unrestrained malice for fellow man. Id. Where Cleckley saw “boldness,” they see “meanness.” Where Cleckley saw a lack of connection to the sociopath’s own feelings and the feelings of others, they see a vicious disregard for the feelings of others. Id. Cleckley sought to understand underlying thought patterns, they sought to label external behavior. Cleckley saw a potential patient, they see a social predator. Cleckley saw a problem for which he was seeking a cure.[i] They see a problem that needs to be identified and isolated to protect society, or as Hare has said:

Measurement and categorization are, of course, fundamental to any scientific endeavor, but the implications of being able to identify psychopaths are as much practical as academic. To put it simply, if we can't spot them, we are doomed to be their victims, both as individuals and as a society.

Hare’s remorseless criminal psychopath is associated with “Factor 2 psychopathy”. While Factor 1 traits track Cleckley’s sociopath, Factor 2 adds new traits largely associated with deviance. Not surprisingly, there is little correlation between Factor 2 and Factor 1 traits. In fact, some flatly contradict each other:

•         High aggression, impulsivity, and sensation seeking. Harpur et al., (1989); Hare, (1991).
•         Aggression provoked by reactionary anger. Patrick & Zempolich, (1998); Porter & Woodworth, (2006).
•         High levels of alcohol and drug dependence. Hare, (2003); Smith & Newman, (1990).
•         Deviant behavior.  Hall et al. (2004)
•         High disinhibition and boredom, anger, alienation, distress at negative everyday events. Id.
•         Low conscientiousness and low interest in achievement. Id.
•         Low personal socioeconomic status. Id.
•         Historic and future crimes against people, including violent crimes. Skeem, Mulvey, and Grisso (2003)
•         High aggressiveness. Id.
•         Low agreeableness and lower connection to or interaction with other people. Id.
•         High FFM neuroticism (worrying or negative feelings about everyday incidents), low FFM agreeableness, and low conscientiousness.

o   Interestingly, these are exactly opposite of the Factor 1 results for these categories.

Patrick, et al. (2009).

How can the same group be characterized by both high emotional reactiveness and low emotional reactiveness? Are they angry anxious drug addicts or are they happy-go lucky charmers? Are they impulsive sadist below-the-poverty-line loners or socially dominant Machiavellian CEOs? Are we looking at violent offenders who have a hard time regulating their overpowering emotions or feckless opportunists who have a hard time feeling their own or others’ emotions? Are they primarily emotionally or intellectually driven? Reactive or proactive?

As researchers have posited, the same group can’t really be both, unless we’re talking about two or more separate but related things. Perhaps, as some have suggested, one thing is more nature and the other nurture. Some say one is a sociopath and the other is a psychopath. Or one is a primary sociopath and the other a secondary sociopath. Some say they have the same underlying cause, but only manifest differently. For example, that sociopathy manifests itself naturally in boldness, and meanness is only what happens when you combine sociopath plus risk factors, e.g. childhood neglect or abuse, low socioeconomic status, low education, single parent household, etc. When Cleckley’s emotional blindness is given prosocial outlets, they argue, it can lead to “social efficacy, imperturbability, and tolerance of danger” and if not, “impulsivity, rebelliousness, alienation, and aggression.” Id. This would explain the shared traits (fearlessness and boldness) you see between criminal and non-criminal sociopaths as well as the differences in behavior between the two.[ii]

---

[i] Cleckley’s position was that he knew of no treatment, but he blamed it in part on the collective evasion of the issue by the psychological community and society at large rather than any definitive evidence of there being no treatment:

Although I spared no effort to make it plain that I did not have an effective therapy to offer, the earlier editions of this book led to contact with psychopaths of every type and from almost every section of the United States and Canada. Interest in the problem was almost never manifested by the patients themselves. The interest was desperate, however, among families, parents, wives, husbands, brothers, who had struggled long and helplessly with a major disaster for which they found not only no cure and no social, medical, or legal facility for handling, but also no full or frank recognition that a reality so obvious existed.

….the psychopath presents an important and challenging enigma for which no adequate solution has yet been found. Although still in the unspectacular and perforce modest position of one who can offer neither a cure nor a well-established explanation, I am encouraged by ever increasing evidence that few medical or social problems have ever so richly deserved and urgently demanded a hearing.

Cleckley, “Mask of Sanity”.

[ii] See, e.g.:

“The boldness component of psychopathy, which is tapped weakly and incompletely by the items of the PCL-R, is important to distinguish in turn from the meanness component, which is well represented in the PCL-R. One reason is that the distinction between boldness and meanness is crucial to reconciling Cleckley’s conception of psychopathy with that advanced by more criminologically oriented theorists (e.g., McCord & McCord, 1964; Robins, 1966). Another is that boldness, although phenotypically distinct from meanness, appears to share a key etiologic substrate (i.e., diminished fear capacity). This raises the important developmental question, discussed in the last major section below, of what intersecting etiologic factors give rise to meanness as opposed to boldness in temperamentally fearless individuals.

Yet another reason is that the construct of boldness is likely to be of unique importance in understanding so-called “successful psychopaths”: individuals exhibiting high levels of charm, persuasiveness, imperturbability, and venturesomeness who achieve success in society as military, political, or corporate-industrial leaders (cf. Lykken, 1995).”

Patrick, et al. (2009).

The origins of criminality as a feature in sociopathy (part 2)

Cleckley’s sociopath was “bold”, boldness here being “a capacity to remain calm and focused in situations involving pressure or threat, an ability to recover quickly from stressful events, high self-assurance and social efficacy, and a tolerance for unfamiliarity and danger. Terms related to boldness include fearless dominance (Benning, Patrick, Blonigen, et al., 2005), daringness, audacity, indomitability, resiliency (Block & Block, 1980), and hardiness (Kobasa, 1979).” Id. Bold individuals are likely to show: “social dominance, low stress reactivity, and thrill–adventure seeking (Benning et al., 2003; Benning, Patrick, Blonigen, et al., 2005) . . . imperturbability, social poise, assertiveness and persuasiveness, bravery, and venturesomeness.” Id.

Boldness was evident in [Cleckley’s] case descriptions and diagnostic criteria in terms of poise and high social efficacy, absence of anxiety or neurotic symptoms, diminished emotional responsiveness, imperviousness to punishment (“failure to learn by experience”), and low suicidality. Other historic writers concerned with psychopathy in psychiatric patients as opposed to criminal samples (e.g., Kraepelin, Schneider) also identified bold externalizing types. Id.

Cleckley studied non-criminal sociopaths at a large inpatient facility. No other researcher has focused so extensively on non-criminal sociopaths.

Most researchers studied criminals, and consequently defined sociopathy as a dark strain of criminal deviance. Early researchers William Maxwell McCord and Joan McCord painted a picture in “The Psychopath: An Essay on the Criminal Mind” (1964) of a socially detached, predatory, aggressive, and remorseless individual plagued by angry-reactive forms of aggression and resultant criminality. Similarly Lee Robins, whose work underlies the DSM-V’s “Antisocial Personality Disorder” (ASPD), focused on a maladjustedness marked by persistent aggression, criminality, and destructiveness. Robins (1966, 1978).

Around that same time, Robert Hare developed his Psychopathy Checklist (now revised, PCL-R), based on the Canadian criminal population. The PCL-R is the most popular diagnostic tool for sociopathy. Hare based it on Cleckley’s sociopath, however, it is distinctly darker:

In contrast with Cleckley’s portrayal of psychopathic patients as personable and ostensibly well meaning but feckless and untrustworthy, this latter perspective conceptualizes psychopathic individuals as cold, abrasive, and aggressively exploitative in their interactions with others.

Patrick, et al. (2009).

Cleckley saw “boldness.” Hare substituted “meanness.” Why? Interestingly, Hare’s own early work also found boldness instead of meanness. Id. What changed?

Alice, a sociopath I met in Australia, theorizes that it wasn’t the sociopaths that changed, but Hare. Alice thinks Hare is biased. In fact, she goes so far as to tell me she believes he’s a subclinical narcissist. Her evidence for narcissism includes Hare’s statements that suggest he has a fragile ego and needs to be liked by others. For instance, you could read the following statement as a theory about how most people feel, or you could read between the lines and see someone who is overly concerned with how he is perceived by others:

“We are haunted to some degree by questions about our self-worth. As a consequence, we continually attempt to prove to ourselves and others that we are okay people, credible, trustworthy, and competent.”

He does seem to take the misdeeds of sociopaths personally, for example he warns:

“All the reading in the world cannot immunize you from the devastating effects of psychopaths. Everyone, including the experts, can be taken in, conned, and left bewildered by them.”

Hare speaks from personal experience. He is on record describing his first encounter with a sociopath “Ray” as a long con in which Ray influenced Hare to break prison rules. Hare said he did what Ray asked to build a “rapport”. Due in part to Hare’s influence, Ray received a plum job in the prison mechanic shop. When Hare’s tenure at the prison ended, Ray performed a tune-up on Hare’s car. The brakes failed while Hare was driving down a hill, family in tow. A local mechanic confirmed that the brakes had been rigged with a slow leak. 

Alice thinks this early experience and his continuing inability to build a rapport with prison sociopaths caused him to harden his heart against them. Alice thinks he sought payback by portraying them in the worst psychological light possible, destroying their possibility of parole.

Alice’s theory for Hare’s anti-sociopath bias is consistent with the facts as we know them.

To give you an idea of Hare’s lack of scientific objectivity, in his book Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us he calls sociopaths the “monsters of real life” and warns:

“On a more personal level, it is very likely that at some time in your life you will come into painful contact with a psychopath. For your own physical, psychological, and financial well-being it is crucial that you know how to identify the psychopath, how to protect yourself, and how to minimize the harm done to you.”

Hare has manifested other narcissistic traits. In a widely publicized move, he threatened to enjoin the publication of an academic, peer-reviewed article that criticized his PCL-R. The article, by researchers Jennifer Skeem and David Cooke, argued that “the PCL–R weighs antisocial behavior as strongly as—if not more strongly than—traits of emotional detachment in assessing psychopathy.” Consequently, it “is overly saturated with criminality and impulsivity (Blackburn, 2005; Forouzan & Cooke, 2005)” and as such, it “imperfectly maps psychopathy” and “does not fully correspond to Cleckley’s (1941) conceptualization, on which it is purportedly based.” 

Re-education

File this under the failures of morality and neurodiversity (the process of thinking) but also diversity of thought (the result of the thinking -- the actual belief). Is it just me, or does it feel more like there's a thought police than even when I started the blog eight or nine years ago.

I was watching a Korean movie and saw a reference to re-education camps. I looked it up and found this NY Times article from 1981 about actual thought police:

This is the first time that the continuing large scale of what are known as ''purification camps'' or ''re-education camps'' in South Korea has been disclosed in a publication here. It is also the first indication that there have been deaths caused by beatings in the camps, a charge that has not so far been made by South Korean human rights groups in Seoul an d that has been deni ed by Seoul officials. Camps for 'Hooligans' Opened

Army camps for ''hooligans'' were first opened in the summer last year, after military leaders headed by Gen. Chun Doo Hwan took power. Between August 1980 and January 1981, a total of 57,561 people were ''warned or re-educated,'' according to The Korea Herald, an English language newspaper in Seoul. The paper said that 38,259 of these underwent ''correctional programs in military camps.''

Arrests were originally made under martial law decrees. But the newspaper account, printed in January, said that ''purification'' programs continued into 1981 after martial law was officially terminated. Some 6,506 people were to continue under detention in ''reformatory training'' and 6,852 ''hardened hooligans'' were given ''hard labor,'' The Korea Herald said.

Tolerance has been preached with some emphasis since the re-education camps, but even in the movie there were still some wishing for those halcyon days when people who did not fit a majority groups vision for human could be dismissed as being subhuman -- a deplorable. And nowadays, is it worse? Because people aren't just hating typical targets like sociopaths or pedophiles, everybody seems to be at everybody else's throats enforcing their standard of morality on the other. The one good thing about this is as more and more people find themselves on the receiving end of social justice warriors and others looking to remake the world more in their image (either in appearance in thought) normal people are realizing that the tactics that they often advocated as being fair and just for use by their side might be less noble or effective than they thought.

I wonder what would happen if people realized that morality is in the eye of the beholder and stopped trying to force others to comply with their own particular flavor or brand. 

The Rationality of Tolerance

Even when I was little, I had a healthy skepticism for people's professed moral positions. Maybe I just didn't understand (and still don't) the nuances of morality well enough, but to me most people's moral codes seemed horribly inconsistent and regularly skewed to their own self-interest or to the care and benefit of those closest to them. Of course now we have social research cottage industry about the darkside or limitations of empathy. Also, it seems more obvious (at least to me) when there's been a regime change, and the same people who decried the dubious tactics of the previous ruling class adopt the same in order to augment and perpetuate their own power.

Religion, often the seedbed of social moral norms, often has some of the greatest hypocrisies, or at least religious people often act far from what they profess to be their moral obligation to others. I have most experience with Mormons and the LDS faith, so that is where most of my experience is with this as well, and it's such a stumbling block to the church's efforts and to members' experience with the church that they've been doing a social media campaign addressing differences and loving others unconditionally.


But the judgment and rejection that some experience in the LDS church, I believe, is just a reflection of broader societal problems -- writing entire groups of people off as being less worthy of care, being quick to disenfranchise others, judging people harshly based on one singled out aspect of their personality or one single event in their life, etc. None of it is really a rational way to behave, but I see otherwise perfectly rational people try to rationalize these feelings all the time, and even dig in when challenged about them. Mob mentality seems to reign much more powerfully now than I remember at any other point in my lifetime.

I know I've written about tolerance before, but I just see stuff like this and think that empathy seems so limited if it still allows this sort of behavior to happen (and often encourages or is the source of this sort of in/out group thinking). Whereas, think about how much better the world would actually be if people were able to withhold judgment and instead seek to understand and appreciate each others' differences or even just leave each other mostly alone, but try to allow a place for everyone to develop and express their unique talents somewhere in someway in this world. Just because that was not how we were evolved to think, in our tribe-first primitive social brain mentality, doesn't mean that it's not the best way to think now. 

Applauding intolerance

Today I saw a quote mistakenly attributed to Meryl Streep that has gotten a ton of traction for some reason on social media. It actually comes from (apparently) some relatively unknown Portuguese writer who is now attempting to have the quote correctly attributed to him for some reason:

“I no longer have patience for certain things, not because I’ve become arrogant, but simply because I reached a point in my life where I do not want to waste more time with what displeases me or hurts me. I have no patience for cynicism, excessive criticism and demands of any nature. I lost the will to please those who do not like me, to love those who do not love me and to smile at those who do not want to smile at me.

I no longer spend a single minute on those who lie or want to manipulate. I decided not to coexist anymore with pretense, hypocrisy, dishonesty and cheap praise. I do not tolerate selective erudition nor academic arrogance. I do not adjust either to popular gossiping. I hate conflict and comparisons. I believe in a world of opposites and that’s why I avoid people with rigid and inflexible personalities. In friendship I dislike the lack of loyalty and betrayal. I do not get along with those who do not know how to give a compliment or a word of encouragement. Exaggerations bore me and I have difficulty accepting those who do not like animals. And on top of everything I have no patience for anyone who does not deserve my patience.”

Ok, starts off sort of ok, then quickly turns to choosing not to coexist with certain aspects of humanity, not tolerating certain aspects of humanity (hating comparisons? really, hate?), avoiding people who are rigid and inflexible (are you rigid and inflexible in saying these things?), bored by exaggerations (which is probably the most pretentious things that I've read today, but I haven't read too much), and having difficulty accepting people who don't happen to find as much joy in animals as this guy seems to. Really? You're not going to struggle "accepting" someone who is not a fan of animals?

To me this on its face, and as evidenced by all of the "likes" and "shares" it has garnered, seems to be clearly celebrating intolerance. When I first read it and thought it might have been Meryl Streep, I thought, ok, you are maybe just a little like all of the other kind of racist/intolerant/bigoted old people I know who have gradually seemed to be less tolerant of difference, either in people, viewpoints, or activities -- things and people that may or may not directly affect you, yet you are still "displeased" with the very thought of them. 

You can't handily write off huge swaths of human behavior as being beyond tolerance, patience, or even coexistence and be seen as a lover of mankind. No one has to tolerate people who are easy to get along with or things that you already like. Tolerating only comes into play with things that are hard for you to deal with, displease you, or hurt you. And what does it mean to deserve someone else's patience? It really makes you wonder, who would be worthy of this guy's patience? It reminds me of another quote that I have seen in the feeds of my not immediate family "if you're helping someone and expecting something in return, you're doing business not kindness". Similarly, if you are being patient with someone who you kind of think is great or tolerating someone that is really pretty similar to you, you're not actually being patient or tolerant, are you? I'm not necessarily saying this guy is wrong for thinking or saying these things, I'm just saying that this is exactly the sort of thing that sociopaths get castigated for -- seeing and valuing other people merely for what effect they have on you rather than allowing them to be their own individual expression of humanity that deserves equal shrift to your own. 

See, as I type this I indicate to you that I clearly have a distaste for certain types of things. This type of attitude, for instance. But I don't think it's abhorrent or repulsive, or not deserving of my tolerance or patience, and I don't think that I can just choose not to coexist with people like this. Because everyone in the world is different from me. I'm sure there is no one who shares exactly my tastes and opinions on every single issue. The arrogance is not in assuming he is right to think these things, because of course when we form opinions that's a form of thinking we're right, that's what it means to form an opinion and we do it hundreds if not thousands of times a day. The arrogance comes from dismissing or punishing or otherwise treating people more poorly for having certain opinions dissimilar to yours, at least or perhaps particularly when those opinions don't affect you at all (how is this guy offended by whether I like animals or not?). 

But people love this quote for some reason. Why?

"I Can Tolerate Anything Except the Outgroup" -- a review

I dated someone that used to give me a lot of flak for saying that I didn't particularly like white people -- that I was being very racist by saying such a thing. At the time I defended myself. What I meant was that I didn't like the expectations that white people have of me -- to act a certain way or else I'm making a bad name for the rest for "all of us". I got the same vibe often from women and mormons for similar reasons. Sometimes lawyers? Sometimes people of my same generation or social class. Sometimes musicians. If there were ways that I didn't quite fit into my "groups", I felt some degree of conflict over it. In fact, I was thinking the other day about how the racism and other isms that seem to affect me personally the most (not surprisingly being born white and privileged) are the aggressive attempts to include me within a particular group and keep me behaving rather than any attempts to exclude me from anything. But how have I let that all affect me, is an interesting question to explore.

This article "I Can Tolerate Anything Except the Outgroup" was a very interesting article about the way people form group identities and what it actually means to be tolerant of someone who is different from you and how easy it is to deceive ourselves of our level of tolerance (myself included). I guess I realize now more than ever that the fact that although I am fine with certain hated groups like pedophiles (or it used to also include transgendered people back when there was still a predominant ick factor about them in society, does anyone remember that from about a decade or two ago?! It's crazy how fast the world is moving), that doesn't necessarily make me a particularly tolerant person. Because do I have a lot of love and tolerance for moral hypocrites and those that claim to have empathy for every group but none for sociopaths? No, obviously not, and I now see that as a personal failing of mine.

Worth reading in its entirety, here is just the beginning:

In Chesterton’s The Secret of Father Brown, a beloved nobleman who murdered his good-for-nothing brother in a duel thirty years ago returns to his hometown wracked by guilt. All the townspeople want to forgive him immediately, and they mock the titular priest for only being willing to give a measured forgiveness conditional on penance and self-reflection. They lecture the priest on the virtues of charity and compassion.

Later, it comes out that the beloved nobleman did not in fact kill his good-for-nothing brother. The good-for-nothing brother killed the beloved nobleman (and stole his identity). Now the townspeople want to see him lynched or burned alive, and it is only the priest who – consistently – offers a measured forgiveness conditional on penance and self-reflection.

The priest tells them:

It seems to me that you only pardon the sins that you don’t really think sinful. You only forgive criminals when they commit what you don’t regard as crimes, but rather as conventions. You forgive a conventional duel just as you forgive a conventional divorce. You forgive because there isn’t anything to be forgiven.

He further notes that this is why the townspeople can self-righteously consider themselves more compassionate and forgiving than he is. Actual forgiveness, the kind the priest needs to cultivate to forgive evildoers, is really really hard. The fake forgiveness the townspeople use to forgive the people they like is really easy, so they get to boast not only of their forgiving nature, but of how much nicer they are than those mean old priests who find forgiveness difficult and want penance along with it.

ENTP = quintessential sociopath?

From a sociopathic-identifying reader:

I have been fully immersed in psychology in the last few years, leading to my exposure to the Meyers Briggs personality indicator, which I feel is relevant to my possible sociopathy due to my strong identification with the ENTP type. 

Even on the surface level, ENTPs seem to be the ideal candidate for a sociopath: our zero tolerance policy toward boredom and consequent willingness to go to any lengths for stimulation combined with our ability to turn charm on and off without a second thought is nearly identical to the driving factors that sociopaths seem to have. Personally, I exercise my social manipulation skills (aka "charm") often and with much joy, objectively viewing most people as little more than pieces in a large and exciting game. 

Regardless of my psychopathic tendencies as a child, my uncertainty toward my identity is due largely in part to the contrast of stereotypical sociopathy and my ENTP personality. My lack of morality could either be attributed to a mental disorder or the results of inherent indecision and refusal to accept traditional ideals--although many believe INTJs to be the personality most closely linked to sociopathy, I think (possibly from personal bias) ENTPs natural inclination to charm, cajole, and intently seek out to challenge any form of regulation aligns us almost perfectly with the portrait of a sociopath.

My struggle now is mostly originated from the possibilities of either my true nature as a sociopath or of the simple fulfillment and exhibition of qualities blanketed under the ENTP personality type. 

On tolerance

I thought this was an interesting Malcolm Gladwell quote on tolerance:

What we call tolerance in this country, and pat ourselves on the back for, is the lamest kind of tolerance. What we call tolerance in this country is when people who are unlike us want to be like us, and when we decide to accept someone who is not like us and wants to be like us, we pat ourselves on the back… So when gays want to be like us and get married, we finally get around and say, “Oh, isn’t that courageous of me, to accept gay people for finally wanting to be like us.”

Sorry — you don’t get points for accepting someone who wants to be just like you. You get points for accepting someone who doesn’t want to be like you — that’s where the difficulty lies.

"Feeling For You"

To file under failings of empathy (and the urge to simplify and reduce humanity into a problem that can be fixed only if you point it out often enough?), from Timothy Burke:

When the streams do cross and someone in a group or a discussion suddenly says, “Actually, I feel pretty hurt or offended by the way you folks are talking about this issue, because I’m actually the thing you’re talking about”, what happens? Sometimes people make non-apology apologies (“sorry that you’re offended”), sometimes people double-down and say, “You’re crazy, there’s nothing offensive about talking about X or Y”. A turn or two in the conversation, though, and what you’ll often hear is this: “Look, I just care about you and people like you. So I want to help.” (Or its close sibling: “Look, not to insult you personally, but people like you/behavior like that costs our society a lot of money and/or inflicts a lot of pain on other people. Don’t you think it would be better if…”)

I’d actually like to concede the sincerity of that response: that we get drawn into these discussions and the judgments they create out of concern for other people, out of concern for moral and social progress. That we feel passionately about people who let their children go to the park by themselves, about people who train their children to go hunting, about people who are overweight, about people who drive big SUVs, about people play their radios too loudly in their cars, about people who buy overly expensive salsa, about people who play video games, about people who raise backyard chickens, about people who demand accommodations for complex learning disabilities, about people who follow the fashion industry, about people who post to Instagram, about people who feed their kids fast food twice a week to save time, and so on.

I’d like to concede the sincerity but the problem is that most of these little waves of moral condemnation or judgmental concern don’t seem to be particularly compassionate or particularly committed. The folks who say, “I just want to help, because I care about you” show no signs of that compassion otherwise. They usually aren’t close friends to the person they’re commenting on, they usually have little empathy or curiosity overall. The folks who say, “Because I care about progress, about solving the bigger problem” don’t show much interest in that alleged bigger problem. The person who hates the big SUVs because they’re damaging the environment is often environmentally profligate in other ways. If the SUV-judger is consistently environmentally sensitive, some other aspect of their concern for the world, their vision of a better society, may be woefully out of synch or weakly developed.

The people I know who really care about others generally aren’t the people going on Facebook to say, “Man, I’m sick of people hiding behind claims of depression” or “If I meet another mother who thinks it’s ok to bring cupcakes to my child’s class, I’m going to go berserk”. The people I know who are really think about incremental moves to improve the world don’t get hung up on passing judgments on someone they’ve witnessed fleetingly in public.

I also liked this comment on the same post:

I think that at least part of these kinds of incidental judgements that people have and the weird fierceness of them in contrast to their weak post-hoc justifications (false compassion) comes from not having a good way to talk about non-instrumental aesthetic concerns.

We (I mean Westerners I guess) cannot really appeal to aesthetics as a justification. Think about grammar. People always justify things like lay/lie or “12 items or fewer” in terms of clarity, as though it were actually likely to confuse someone about meaning. Of course, no one is ever confused about meaning in those cases. However, for someone who has a strong aesthetic sense of which is correct, there is a moment of annoyance, a kind of disgust-related aversion to hearing the wrong one. This is actual source of the grammar pedant’s complaint, but it can’t be expressed as a valid justification because it’s not instrumental to some commonsensical social goal. So they invent concerns about clarity of language. Ditto the driver who is momentarily annoyed by a bicyclist and then concocts arguments about how not sharing in licensing fees makes riders freeloaders. The presence of an element that doesn’t fit smoothly into a mental model of how a system should work (for people like themselves) is the real problem. People do have some interest in keeping their mental model of the world well-defined, if only to lighten cognitive load. What’s problematic is the prioritization of one group’s aesthetic concerns over another’s very lives (e.g. drivers who bully cyclists on the road).

I’m a fat person, or I have been on and off, and I more or less share your take on the situation there. I’m quite sure that people aren’t expressing their real concerns when they talk about health or medical costs. (After all, runners have an extremely high rate of injury and no one thinks that they are anti-social; much to the contrary.) Although I don’t really want to sign up for some kind of identity politics of fatness either, I think it is ultimately rooted in the disgust response, much like the kinds of aesthetic judgements that go along with racism.

I think that not being racist and not being homophobic etc. are special cases of suppressing these extraneous aesthetic requirements with the understanding that some specific dimension of variation needs to be tolerated and integrated into the mental model of how things work — but that tolerance is the result of hard-fought gains specific to each case.

Which of the mental health categories get this type of hate the most? 

Brain matter

From a reader:

I've just completed your book and was particularly struck by a few things towards the end.  Its inspired me to share a few things with you mindful of your comments in the epilogue (which I'm guessing you intended would draw attention to your 'vulnerabilities'?).  

As a highly sucessful health professional with experience and interest in the brain it has taken me a while to realise where on the spectrum I lie personally.  I doubt I am fully sociopathic within your conception though certainly have family history and personal features (impulsivity, occasional recklessness, narcissism, lack of inborn empathy - though I'm a good actor) recognised by a psych friend and my therapist. I score pretty high up on the various formal inventories I have filled.

Your book I found entertaining, certainly does strike a chord and there is much I can resonate with, so I guess you have succeeded in part of your mission to demystify and encourage tolerance and understanding, if only to those whose experience of life fall within the same ball park as yours.

My principle reason for contacting you relates to your thoughts about the relationship between neuroanatomy, neuropsychology and neurochemistry in hard wiring the features of sociopathy.  I have had the unique (to me at any rate) experience of having had parts of my neuroanatomy and chemistry rewired following neurosurgery for tumour, radiotherapy and the commencement of psychoactive drugs to control resultant epilepsy.  My MR is a battle field. Of interest to me, and perhaps to you, is that this has not really changed who I am. It has (pre diagnosis of my tumour and subsequently as the years of 'recovery' have rolled on) attenuated, and in some cases damaged, my carefully honed life skills which have enabled me to deal with myself and what life throws at me.  

In studying myself going though this I have begun to realise  (I think I already knew) that I have controlled most of my sociopathic features in ways that have generated professional and (to casual observers) personal relationship success over the years.  Having acquired structural neuro damage and been forced to take drugs whose neurochemistry is well understood to have bad effects on people like me, these features have not gone away (I'm still me) , but have become more likely to leak out in ways I find increasingly difficult to control.

I guess I'm saying that to me I'm still the same (despite the re-wiring) but to others (family and colleagues - largely but not exclusively empaths as you call them - terrible term but I know what you mean) I've become more difficult and more 'sociopathic'.  This to my mind gives credence to some of your speculation about aetiology and might be of interest?  I have certainly worried about my kids' genetic predispositions and sought to parent in ways that teach them how to deal with whatever emergent traits might given them difficulty as they grow. 

Perils of certainty

One of the families I grew up with had a younger daughter who was somewhat troubled. She was the youngest and the family had started having troubles by the time the child was about 7 years old, which is shortly after I met them. The girl was really awkward and annoying in sort of a spoiled seeming way. She seemed oblivious to just about anything going on around her and she would do these really bizarre things or throw fits and scream like she was possessed. I hated being around her and I (along with almost everyone else who knew the family) blamed the mother, who seemed to baby her and not set any limits. Recently I spoke with the aunt of this child. The aunt said that the now 20-something-year-old girl is an engineer and is your basic Asperger's type, which to me explained a lot of what I considered unacceptably obtuse and annoying affectations when I was younger. The aunt opined that the child's mother turned out to be wiser than we all knew -- that the mother understood the child was exceptional, which is what prompted the hands-off parenting style. The theory sounded right to me and it was a relatively small thing, but in that moment I experienced a distinct paradigm shift, not just about this family but about parenting and how well we think we understand people and the world around us, compared to how little we actually know. It made me think of this NY Times op ed, "The Dangers of Certainty" (worth reading in its entirety). The article discusses the author's experience of watching The Ascent of Man as a child, and one episode in particular:

For most of the series, Dr. Bronowski’s account of human development was a relentlessly optimistic one. Then, in the 11th episode, called “Knowledge or Certainty,” the mood changed to something more somber. Let me try and recount what has stuck in my memory for all these years.

He began the show with the words, “One aim of the physical sciences has been to give an actual picture of the material world. One achievement of physics in the 20th century has been to show that such an aim is unattainable.” For Dr. Bronowski, there was no absolute knowledge and anyone who claims it — whether a scientist, a politician or a religious believer — opens the door to tragedy. All scientific information is imperfect and we have to treat it with humility. Such, for him, was the human condition.
***
There is no God’s eye view, Dr. Bronowski insisted, and the people who claim that there is and that they possess it are not just wrong, they are morally pernicious. Errors are inextricably bound up with pursuit of human knowledge, which requires not just mathematical calculation but insight, interpretation and a personal act of judgment for which we are responsible. 
***
Dr. Bronowski insisted that [physic's] principle of uncertainty was a misnomer, because it gives the impression that in science (and outside of it) we are always uncertain. But this is wrong. Knowledge is precise, but that precision is confined within a certain toleration of uncertainty . . . no physical events can ultimately be described with absolute certainty or with “zero tolerance,” as it were. The more we know, the less certain we are.

In the everyday world, we do not just accept a lack of ultimate exactitude with a melancholic shrug, but we constantly employ such inexactitude in our relations with other people. Our relations with others also require a principle of tolerance. We encounter other people across a gray area of negotiation and approximation. Such is the business of listening and the back and forth of conversation and social interaction.

For Dr. Bronowski, the moral consequence of knowledge is that we must never judge others on the basis of some absolute, God-like conception of certainty. All knowledge, all information that passes between human beings, can be exchanged only within what we might call “a play of tolerance,” whether in science, literature, politics or religion. As he eloquently put it, “Human knowledge is personal and responsible, an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty.”

The relationship between humans and nature and humans and other humans can take place only within a certain play of tolerance. Insisting on certainty, by contrast, leads ineluctably to arrogance and dogma based on ignorance.

At this point, in the final minutes of the show, the scene suddenly shifts to Auschwitz, where many members of Bronowski’s family were murdered. Then this happened. Please stay with it. This short video from the show lasts only four minutes or so.

 


It is, I am sure you agree, an extraordinary and moving moment. Bronowski dips his hand into the muddy water of a pond which contained the remains of his family members and the members of countless other families. All victims of the same hatred: the hatred of the other human being. 
***
When we think we have certainty, when we aspire to the knowledge of the gods, then Auschwitz can happen and can repeat itself. Arguably, it has repeated itself in the genocidal certainties of past decades. . . . We always have to acknowledge that we might be mistaken. When we forget that, then we forget ourselves and the worst can happen.

Morality changing according to context

I thought this article defending Twitter outrage was interesting, perhaps largely because I finally understood why people defend mob mentality (short answer, at its best it is one of the few purely democratic versions of social advocacy and activism). First, to his credit, I was heartened to see the author acknowledge how dangerous Twitter mobs can be for even "ordinary" people ("All the while aware that if we get it wrong, at some point Twitter may turn our way, set to destroy. No one is off-limits."). But he argues that this is (1) not unique to Twitter and (2) not a downside, but a feature of the Twitter/Internet mob:

If the ruthlessness on Twitter shocks you, well, it isn’t a ruthlessness only found there. This ruthlessness is everywhere—you may be projecting. Our economy and political system operate on a lack of forgiveness. We bring our children up now with zero-tolerance policies in the schools—can we really be surprised if we and they use them elsewhere? One bad credit report, one bad night at the hospital with a $30,000 bill and no insurance, one firing, one bad book, one bad tweet and you’re gone, consigned to a permanent underclass status forever. No way out. Our president had to make a deal with a few major companies to hire the long-term unemployed because not having a job became the quickest way to never get hired—we’ll see if the companies follow through. If there’s no forgiveness online it’s because there’s no examples of forgiveness anywhere in American life.

Meanwhile, underneath the prevalence of the public apology is a great public wrong. And so we, the public, we want someone to do something. We want the offending column fixed, the black woman comedian hired, the bill to pass, banks to lend safely, clean drinking water, health care, a job, even just a book recommendation we can count on. We want action on whatever it is, and we go to Twitter for it, feed fatigue and all, because there, unlike just about everywhere else, we still get what we’re after.  Twitter, for all the ridiculousness there, is one of the few places where there’s accountability at all for any of this. While it may feel dangerous that no one is above being taken down by Twitter, it also means that in its way, it is the one truly democratic institution left. It may be terrifying that it is the one place you have to be more careful than most, but that is also why, for now, it still matters.

So in the first paragraph he argues that Twitter social shaming is no different than any other ruthlessness we encounter in real life, e.g. become a felon and become politically disenfranchised. But then in the next paragraph he says that Twitter is there so we can actually right these wrongs. And the great thing about Twitter is that "we, the public" decide which wrongs deserve to be righted through social shaming and which we don't care as much about. (Interestingly, that's also how the ancient Romans determined which gladiators lived or died -- following the desires of the mob. Also interestingly, there was a far greater uproar about a racist tweet referencing the AIDS crisis in Africa then there ever were outraged tweets about the AIDS crisis in Africa. Also "we, the public" was also how we oppressed gay people, kept down black people, and hunted communists for decades.)

The problem with this line of thought is that Twitter isn't actually a democracy, primarily because Twitter and all other mobs = unconstrained lawlessness. Democracies abide by rules and procedures, and that goes double for justice systems within democracies. Twitter does not. No one is counting votes. No one is making sure that no one is voting twice or unduly influencing others to vote their conscience. In fact, there is every evidence that people fear the social shaming mob and consequently self-censor and sanitize themselves on Twitter and other social media so as not to become collateral damage (even the author of the original article admitted that he kept himself from tweeting certain things, afraid that "someone would get unreasonably angry at me for it" and argues at the end that he has to be more careful on Twitter than he is in other forums). And what are the rules or procedures for determining who deserves our collective ire? Is it the person without insurance with the large hospital bill? Any more or less so than the woman who tweets racist jokes? The child who has violated the zero tolerance policy at school? Should we forgive one and not the others? Does it depend on if the person without insurance couldn't obtain insurance or if they were just too lazy or cheap to get it themselves? Or if the child came from a disadvantaged background? Or if the racist joke was tongue in cheek? Or if it was made right before a transcontinental flight without Wifi? And how can we make these nuanced determinations in a way that ensures some degree of due process? And is there an Twitter Innocence Project out there exonerating those that have been socially shamed but are more innocent than we originally believed? Or are we pretty sure that mobs never make mistakes? If someone hits economic rockbottom, they could always declare bankruptcy, which disappears after a certain number of years. This and other legal safeguards blunt the ruthlessness of much of life. Are there similar safeguards for people who commit social or political gaffes? Or is that the lowest people can go in our eyes?

I guess I don't quite understand this aspect of the author's pro-Twitter activism position -- is he pro or anti ruthlessness in life/Twitter? And could it be that people are ruthless on Twitter not just because they are honestly attempting to right public wrongs but because they like it and because they can and because they don't have to face the same consequences for their actions that they might normally? And if so, maybe people can understand a little better why I enjoy ruining people (see also feature comment).



Ryan Holiday references the above video:

As Louis CK put it, in our cars we seem to have a different set of values, values that apparently make it OK to be absolutely horrible towards other people. But that’s not the only place. Think about all the angry, vitriolic comments you read on the internet. People do it because they can. Because it’s anonymous and they know they won’t face any real consequences saying awful things to other people. There’s countless situations like this, we change our values because we have tacit permission to be terrible, and because no one will hold us accountable.

We tell ourselves that this is cathartic but it’s really not. Has anyone ever really felt better after punching a pillow? Or does this actually make us more angry? Does yelling really express your frustration or manifest more of it? Do you criticize the person you’re in a relationship with because it’s necessary or because it’s possible? Do you take advantage of people simply because you know you have power over them?

When deprived of these options, what do we do instead? Usually nothing. We ignore the temptation of those impulses. In the best cases, we’re left with feelings that we must address instead of blasting them at other people.

It’s a lesson all of us should consider whenever we lash out, get short, or angry with other people. Are we doing it out of genuine necessity, or are we doing it because in that context, we can? If it’s the latter, let’s question in it. Let’s ask if it’s really something we want to have in our lives and if we’d feel better if the “permission” was magically rescinded.

From Louis CK "I'd like to think I'm a nice person, but I don't know man."

The worth of souls

I've been thinking recently about the different ways that people value human life. From LDS President Dieter Uchtdorf on how God values human life:

Think of the purest, most all-consuming love you can imagine. Now multiply that love by an infinite amount—that is the measure of God’s love for you.

God does not look on the outward appearance. I believe that He doesn’t care one bit if we live in a castle or a cottage, if we are handsome or homely, if we are famous or forgotten. Though we are incomplete, God loves us completely. Though we are imperfect, He loves us perfectly. Though we may feel lost and without compass, God’s love encompasses us completely.

He loves us because He is filled with an infinite measure of holy, pure, and indescribable love. We are important to God not because of our résumé but because we are His children. He loves every one of us, even those who are flawed, rejected, awkward, sorrowful, or broken. God’s love is so great that He loves even the proud, the selfish, the arrogant, and the wicked.

What this means is that, regardless of our current state, there is hope for us. No matter our distress, no matter our sorrow, no matter our mistakes, our infinitely compassionate Heavenly Father desires that we draw near to Him so that He can draw near to us.



Apart from being a reminder of the impossibly high standard that many religious people are meant to hold themselves to when tasked with loving their fellow man as God loves them (and the great chasm from that expectation to their actual performance), I think this represents an interesting alternative to valuing human life than what has become the fad of late: prestigious job, fancy house, and attractive significant other being the baseline indicators for success, with additional money, celebrity, talent, or power being the true distinguishing characteristics to lift one above the masses of mediocrity. I have been in all sorts of cultures, from where Porsches are considered wannabe striver cars to where owning a bike is the envy of the village, but no matter where you are or what criteria you are using people always manage to find some way to think that they're better than other people.

I'm not suggesting that people stop judging others -- that's for them to reconcile with their own personal beliefs. I just think it's telling to see the different standards the people use to judge themselves and others. I thought the video below was an interesting perspective that happens to be very counter the majoritarian view -- so much so that I imagine many people assume she feels this way just because she does not rate high on attractiveness herself (sour games?). Her view: "I never want to get into this place where I feel like what I look like is more important than what I do . . . . Being beautiful is not an accomplishment." I especially liked the part where she compared humans to how other animals look: "It's absurd when you waste too much time on it, when you look at the perspective of being part of this kind of silly looking species on this planet in this solar system in this universe that is huge and contains life forms we haven't even encountered yet and that are completely foreign to us."


But what is the sociopathic angle to all of this? Maybe that sociopaths also sometimes get judged according to standards that they feel are arbitrary or silly? And if you can see some absurdity to the way that many people value human life, maybe you can better understand how sociopaths feel about adhering to seemingly silly and arbitrary things like social norms? Maybe to let the people know who write to me to tell me, "get your life together and establish a legitimate career" or opining that what I have done with my life is "wholly insignificant" that my value system for the worth of a life is probably a little different from there's? And that's ok. I'm glad some people love their middle class lifestyles because they stabilize society and pay into the welfare coffers for the rest of us bottom feeders. Or maybe I am setting up a pity play -- trying to trigger an emotional response in people who read this in order to promote more tolerance as part of a desperate ploy to prevent further legally sanctioned prejudicial treatment of sociopaths?

Or maybe I've just been thinking about this because it seems like our transition from consumer culture to information culture has made us all connoisseurs and critics of "content," including the people that populate our lives. But I'm not sure that most people enjoy being the subject of other people's scrutiny. Nor could you really say that everybody is fair game, if fair is something you believe in. Because I don't remember asking to be born, much less born the way I am and I can't imagine that most people do/did either. And yet there is such a temptation to become an amateur critic of the humans we encounter. But what a dim view of humanity to believe that there is any morally sound and unbiased basis for sorting people out according to value, ranking something so unknowable as the human soul according to such superficial criteria as "our 'riches' and our 'chances for learning.'" Because out of all of the wonders of this world, humans are the most amazing to me. I guess that's why I like the Mormon doctrine on this point: "Remember the worth of souls is great in the sight of God".

When saw we thee a stranger?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

Introverts = oppressed?

I saw this originally posted here, original here, and was a little surprised that it is so popular? The accept-me-as-I-am introvert movement has gotten pretty big, and I think it's great that people are realizing that just because someone appears to be pretty antisocial does not mean that they think less of other people or wish them ill. Unless, they do? Because the below illustration and accompanying text sort of makes it seem like introverts could do without most people. Not only does the illustration include a lot of specious claims and outrageous generalizations, there is also a lot of stereotyping of other types of people.

But here are some of the more bizarre claims of this particular introvert:

• "introverted people make their own energy and, rather than taking it from others, give it on social contact." They make it? How? By eating? Glucose rich foods? And it's odd, apparently extroverts do not make their own energy? They're essentially parasites?
• "they tend to see extroverts as obnoxious predators" Ok, yes, non-introverts are not just parasites but predators.
• "interaction . . . is expensive and they don't want to spend it on something annoying (read: wasteful)" I guess most people are not worth the introvert's time...
• There's also a list at the end of how exactly to approve of the introvert while not wasting their time. Good to know.

I see this all of the time -- people preaching for tolerance for one group (their group?) while simultaneously putting down another. I think that's what a lot of people assume that I am doing by promoting greater awareness and acceptance of sociopaths, but I don't think sociopaths are better than other people. First of all, there is no legitimate criteria with which anyone could make such a statement (although it seems like most people would disagree with this statement -- I often hear people's assessment that sociopaths are human garbage and should be disposed of). Second of all, how could I possibly determine the worth of a human being whom I will never come to know fully (I don't even know myself fully). I

'm aware that this is apparently a very rare characteristic to have -- not judging people's worth. It's so foreign a concept to some of you that you will not believe me when I say it is true about me. Why? Because you do this, you assume everyone else must too? This assumption to me is a testament of the prevalence among the empath community of an implicit (or explicit?) valuation and hierarchy of the worth of individual humans. Is this why it's so easy to convince the masses that certain people are scum and not worthy of empathy or common decency?)

So everyone hug an introvert (also realize that you are energy sucking predators). 

Mob mentality

This was another interesting column in the New York Times about the history, origins, and power of fear + mob mentality in the U.S. Normal people sometimes don't like sociopaths because they don't like feeling that they are just a patsy to the sociopath's intrigues. They are hyper focused on thinking that the sociopath is the root to their problems. It may or may not be true that sociopaths are to blame for as many problems for which they are blamed. Historically, however, it is this fear, suspicion, and hate of "others" that not only perpetuates negative stereotypes to the utter disregard of reality, but leaves people open to be a further patsy to those who would capitalize off of their fear. These opportunists may include political or religious leaders, bosses and neighbors, and anyone else that would use your fear to drive their own ascension to power, or even turn other people's fears against you. Here are excerpts from the column:

A radio interviewer asked me the other day if I thought bigotry was the only reason why someone might oppose the Islamic center in Lower Manhattan. No, I don’t. Most of the opponents aren’t bigots but well-meaning worriers — and during earlier waves of intolerance in American history, it was just the same.

Screeds against Catholics from the 19th century sounded just like the invective today against the Not-at-Ground-Zero Mosque. The starting point isn’t hatred but fear: an alarm among patriots that newcomers don’t share their values, don’t believe in democracy, and may harm innocent Americans.

Followers of these movements against Irish, Germans, Italians, Chinese and other immigrants were mostly decent, well-meaning people trying to protect their country. But they were manipulated by demagogues playing upon their fears — the 19th- and 20th-century equivalents of Glenn Beck.

Most Americans stayed on the sidelines during these spasms of bigotry, and only a small number of hoodlums killed or tormented Catholics, Mormons or others. But the assaults were possible because so many middle-of-the-road Americans were ambivalent.

Suspicion of outsiders, of people who behave or worship differently, may be an ingrained element of the human condition, a survival instinct from our cave-man days. But we should also recognize that historically this distrust has led us to burn witches, intern Japanese-Americans, and turn away Jewish refugees from the Holocaust.
***
Historically, unreal suspicions were sometimes rooted in genuine and significant differences. Many new Catholic immigrants lacked experience in democracy. Mormons were engaged in polygamy. And today some extremist Muslims do plot to blow up planes, and Islam has real problems to work out about the rights of women. The pattern has been for demagogues to take real abuses and exaggerate them, portraying, for example, the most venal wing of the Catholic Church as representative of all Catholicism — just as fundamentalist Wahabis today are caricatured as more representative of Islam than the incomparably more numerous moderate Muslims of Indonesia (who have elected a woman as president before Americans have).

During World War I, rumors spread that German-Americans were poisoning food, and Theodore Roosevelt warned that “Germanized socialists” were “more mischievous than bubonic plague.”

Anti-Semitic screeds regularly warned that Jews were plotting to destroy the United States in one way or another. A 1940 survey found that 17 percent of Americans considered Jews to be a “menace to America.”

Chinese in America were denounced, persecuted and lynched, while the head of a United States government commission publicly urged in 1945 "the extermination of the Japanese in toto." Most shamefully, anti-Asian racism led to the internment of 110,000 Japanese-Americans during World War II.

All that is part of America’s heritage, and typically as each group has assimilated, it has participated in the torment of newer arrivals — as in Father Charles Coughlin’s ferociously anti-Semitic radio broadcasts in the 1930s. Today’s recrudescence is the lies about President Obama’s faith, and the fear-mongering about the proposed Islamic center.

But we have a more glorious tradition intertwined in American history as well, one of tolerance, amity and religious freedom. Each time, this has ultimately prevailed over the Know Nothing impulse.

Americans have called on moderates in Muslim countries to speak out against extremists, to stand up for the tolerance they say they believe in. We should all have the guts do the same at home.

This is why I am anxious in crowds. This is why I am a libertarian. I think I have a healthy fear of persecution that helps constrain any inclination to persecute others. Similarly, I wouldn't mind if the tables were turned on some of those people who are so sure that they know what's right and best for everyone. Maybe if they were on the receiving end of persecution themselves, they wouldn't be so self-satisfied. But I am glad that with the prohibitions on women wearing face veils in France, protests against a Muslim community center in New York, etc., people who would normally consider themselves open minded, inherently "good" and "wise" individuals with clear definitions of "right" and "wrong" are being faced to stare down the barrel of reality.

I smell change.