Thursday, December 11, 2008

Life = futility punctuated with tragedy

While driving to work today I saw a school-aged child walking a bike with a flat tire down a busy street in inclement weather. It made me remember how horrible and awkward childhood was. Then I started trying to remember when things got better. I kept thinking, moving more and more recently in time, and I couldn't really pinpoint a specific time when I stopped feeling like that kid with the flat tire. Then i started wondering, did things ever get better? Am I still that same kid?
How is one to live a moral and compassionate existence when one is fully aware of the blood, the horror inherent in life, when one finds darkness not only in one's culture but within oneself? If there is a stage at which an individual life becomes truly adult, it must be when one grasps the irony in its unfolding and accepts responsibility for a life lived in the midst of such paradox.
-- Barry Lopez

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Sociopaths = next Holocaust target

I posted earlier this month about a new television show exploiting criminals by giving them the best day ever right before arresting them. The TV executive responsible for the show rationalized the exploitation: “If it were a regular person you’d feel bad for them, but they are all wanted by the law.” This sort of rationale is used frequently to justify persecuting sociopaths or other unpopular sub-populations. Take for instance the justifications for the horrible medical experiments practiced by the Nazis on their Jewish captives:

What underpinned this behaviour was a widespread belief that some people were less than human, relegated to a lower plane of existence by their inherited degeneracy - or their race. For German doctors, a camp inmate was either a racially inferior subhuman, a vicious criminal, a traitor to the German cause, or more than one of the above. Such beings had no right to life or wellbeing - indeed, it was logical that they should be sacrificed in the interests of the survival and triumph of the German race, just as that race had to be strengthened by the elimination of the inferior, degenerate elements within it. After all, German medical science had uncovered the causes of several major diseases and contributed massively to improving the health of the population over the previous decades. Surely, therefore, it was justified in eliminating negative influences as well?

These days, it is obvious that racial hygiene is pseudoscience, but in the 1920s and 1930s it was considered a perfectly reputable science, and indeed many universities had academic departments devoted to it, not just in Germany. Against this backdrop, with their nation engaged in total war and steeped in propaganda and ideology that proclaimed the Jews to be a "cancer" or an "infection" threatening the health of the volk, physicians and scientists really did come to believe that the enemies of the Nazi state were subhuman.
Does the term subhuman sound familiar?

Sunday, December 7, 2008

Sociopath TV execs exploit their sociopath criminal brothers

Fox Television is planning a new television program tentatively titled, Smile, You’re Under Arrest. The show features law officers setting up elaborate sting operations to lure criminals with warrants:
“It is a reverse Punk’d,” says Fox President of Alternative Entertainment Mike Darnell. “Instead of the worst day of your life and then a joke at the end, this is the reverse. This is the best day of your life, and then we arrest you.”

One of three set-ups just shot in Arizona features the cops luring a criminal to a movie set with the promise of making him an extra and paying him a couple hundred dollars. An elaborate film set is staged and filming begins on a faux movie. The set-up continues as the director then gets mad at the lead actor, fires him and replaces him with the law-breaking extra.

The scene escalates with the fake director introducing the mark to a supposed studio mogul and continuing to create this dream-comes-true sequence. Finally, all the participants are revealed as officers of the law, and the criminal is apprehended (before signing waivers to let the footage be used in the show).

Other scenarios include a fake fashion shoot where the subject thinks he is about to become a supermodel and another in which the mark becomes an auto racer, a set-up which ends when a police car comes up behind him on a race track to pull him over.

“If it were a regular person you’d feel bad for them, but they are all wanted by the law,” Darnell says.
This is why people feel fine persecuting sociopaths. You can just hear someone justifying sociopath abuse: "If it were a regular person, you'd feel bad for them."

Thursday, December 4, 2008

Sociopath quote of the day: evil

All that is necessary for evil to succeed is that good men do nothing.

Edmund Burke.

Sociopath = into S&M?

Most of the responses from my empaths-who-date-sociopaths-are-asking-for-it experiment were from the women seeking men ad. Maybe that means that straight men are more into sociopaths than straight women, gay men, or gay women. But I think the more likely explanation is that straight men looking on craigslist for women are looking for a dominatrix. Guys looking for nice girls go to church social functions, guys looking for easy girls go to bars, and guys looking for dangerous girls go online. True? How about this as a case in point:
Just a Great ad .... and straight to the point .. so well done you .... pity half the people who worked for me arnt like that ... save me so much time ... but thats life i guess... and i like jimmy Stewart also ....
You will also no doubt be deluged with replies .... and some very strange i bet ... however if no suitable white knights on horseback ( in full shinning armour of course ) happen to appear just let me know...... and i will feed my steed and drinks ( the Sanderson is good fun ) and dinner would be my pleasure ....
Me .... 6'2 200lbs (slim ) 54 considered attractive ( well a frog needs a kiss now and then )..... my home is in Liverpool and i keep a flat in London as my business is down here ....as I am every week for 2/3 days (for all my sins I am in the fashion industry ... we supply clothing to most high street strores River Wallis Oasis etc etc etc ... ... ) we have an office in Hong Kong were i go for around 8/9 days every 8 weeks or so .... I also keep a home in Majorca and try to get out there most weekends during the summer...

If i hear from you when it would be nice .... and if not i wish you luck on your quest....

Peter
Peter, like many others, was not dissuaded by my addendum to my personal ad:
Almost .... no stutter ..... and of course he was very nice to all in " a wonderful life " ... and most of the other listed things are .... well " cool "
.. sinister ( hmmmmm ) promiscuous ( more HMMMMM .. capital letters ) .. flexible and able to rationalise ... ( dont we all ) manipulative ( most women are ... its actauly a gift )
.... so you sound quite the lady .....
Now if i was a couch doctor i would probably find many things wrong with you .... however as i am not and of course my services are free ... and include the bottle of good wine and dinner ..... it may be well seen as " sinister " ..... " promiscuous " and " manipulative " .... but you decide.
I will of course promise not to bore you.....
Oh, I know you won't bore me, Peter. I won't let you.
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