Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Aspie's bully sociopaths

In keeping with the previous post of aspie's/autie's not being as innocent as they seem, I was sad to see this story of an innocent sociopath being tormented by people with asperger's/autism. I guess being empathy-challenged makes aspie's/autie's excellent bullies:
I got involved in a forum war on Aspergia three years ago, in which I was arguing that a sociopath’s neurodiversity should be respected just like everyone else’s. The argument got started after a woman who was a clinical sociopath started posting on Aspergia’s forum. She had a very poor understanding of other people’s emotions, and she habitually made provocative statements as a way of getting responses that were strong enough for her to understand. Although she knew this wasn’t the ideal way to interact with people, she didn’t know what else to do. She came to Aspergia to learn how autistics dealt with the problem of misunderstanding emotions.

Of course, she didn’t explain all of this forthrightly and ask for help. I don’t think she was capable of expressing her intentions so clearly. Several of us dragged it out of her after a long, convoluted discussion that literally went on for days. After we figured out why she was there, a few of us started giving her advice on constructive ways to ask people about their feelings without being manipulative.

Unfortunately, by then she had already annoyed several other members of the forum with her confusing and provocative writing style, and they got together and decided to hound her off the forum with a barrage of nasty personal insults and rants about sociopaths. The poor woman did her best to avoid taking the bait and to practice writing friendly, non-provocative posts, but it didn’t matter what she wrote—they bashed it, and her, mercilessly.

I told them they should be ashamed of themselves for bullying a person because of her neurology on an autistic rights forum. The resulting argument went on for two months.

I’m not trying to start a war here, but I do feel it’s necessary to say this: Sociopaths have a cognitive disability. They’re not necessarily evil, and they can be taught more positive ways of interacting with people. And I am very strongly opposed to demonizing any group of people on the basis of their neurology.
First of all, I want to know what is this aspergia and what happened to this woman?Second, I wonder why she would be on an asperger's/autism site for advice on understanding emotions. That seems like the blind leading the blind to me. But fellow sociopaths, be warned that you will get even less acceptance from the rest of the empathy-challenged community than you will from the empaths themselves, to their eternal shame.

Thursday, April 16, 2009

Living life as a sociopath

I asked a relative of mine to describe living life as a sociopath:
I might be a sociopath. When I make a nasty remark or hurt someone’s feelings, it is easy for me to blame my actions on the person I’m hurting. I lose patience with people that can’t do things as quick as me.

I am easily bored at social gatherings where all of the discussion is light small talk. I will use this time to get the most stoic person to laugh. This makes me feel I’m in control. I also use flattery to make people feel good.

I was a delinquent as a child and treated my teachers as tools for my pleasure. I would only stop the “torture” after they would cry and even then I felt a sense of victory when I could beat them mentally.

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Sociopath or scoundrel?

Elie Wiesel, the nobel peace prize laureate and holocaust survivor, lost $15.2 million of his charity's money and lost his own personal life savings to Bernie Madoff. What did he have to say about him?
"Psychopath’ — it’s too nice a word for him,” Mr. Wiesel said in his first public comments on Mr. Madoff and the Ponzi scheme he is accused of perpetrating on thousands of individuals and charities, including the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity.

"Sociopath,’ ‘psychopath,’ it means there is a sickness, a pathology. This man knew what he was doing. I would simply call him thief, scoundrel, criminal.”
Sociopath is too nice of a word for him?! I thought this day would never come! But NPR criticizes Wiesel's choice of words. In a 5+ minute commentary, their resident linguist says the following (paraphrased):
Sociopath is not a term we use affectionately, we reserve it for unsympathetic malefactors. . . Certain clinical language exonerates badness by reframing it as illness. Sociologists describe this phenomenon as the medicalization of deviance. . . Sociopath is a loose term now used to describe anyone unfettered by the pangs of conscience. . . "Sociopath" doesn't add anything to what Victorians would describe as "heartless wretch," but now it comes draped in a whitecoat.
Thank you for your unsolicited opinion, NPR. Wiesel, on the other hand, is clearly a true visionary and humanitarian.

Thursday, April 9, 2009

Kill the rats!

Michael Vick was convicted of torturing and killing dogs. Many other football players have been convicted of rape. I asked my liberal co-worker, “What is worse, torturing and killing dogs or raping humans?” She said, “Of course killing dogs is worse!”

I’m sad to say, this is where the animal activist/liberalist/conservationalist mentality has matured to be. I once was asked, “How many lab rats would you kill to cure cancer?” I said, “Any and all rats I can get my hands on!”

I’m certainly not advocating killing off animal species left and right because any good biologist knows that the more diversified an ecosystem is, the more stable it is. If the lab can “produce” as many animals as they kill off, I say kill as many animals as you need.

One of my recent jobs had some Threadleaf Brodiaea (see image) on the site. We wanted to replant the bulbs on a portion of the land (almost ½!) that was not going to be developed. The environmentalist did not like that idea and made us create a 40 foot tall wall in order to not disturb the dirt the bulbs were in.The wall cost about 2 million to build. These are the reasons the economy is in the tank.

Saturday, April 4, 2009

Feedback from readers

Here is some feedback on the site, both from commentary regarding the blog on other sites and e-mails:
I ran across another site called “Sociopathworld”. Very insightful and somethiing of an eyeopener. I would describe it as the “Glenda the Good Witch” of the sociopath world. I plan to go back there to read further. I’ve only ever heard of sociopath criminals without really considering the alternative. One article was about raising a sociopathic child. My understand, however erroneous, had been that sociopaths are born not made. It is apparent that it can be either. Taking it one step further, I would expect there to be some crossover or mixture of traits. Actually, there must be. It would explain a lot of things. Okay, I’m pretty sure I have sociopath out of my system now.
And
just wanted to say thank you for all your work writing your blog. I find it insightful and encouraging.
So I will continue to read, even if I never publicly comment.

Thanks again,
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