Friday, May 21, 2010

Sociopaths in film

Adapted from the novel of the same name, this review of the film:
While there exists a long and rich cinematic fascination with murderous psychotics, first person accounts are less common, and generally less agreeable to audiences (indeed, the seminal Peeping Tom effectively demolished Michael Powell’s career). After all, if the sociopath is freakishly and essentially devoid of sympathy and empathy, how are we to identify with them? The answer, in this case, is to disregard the question entirely: identification is irrelevant and impossible — we must simply find the character charismatic and watchable. This places a tremendous burden on Affleck’s shoulders, and he ably meets it — his performance is brilliant, affirming once again that he is one of the most underrated American screen actors of our time. Effortlessly underplaying a role that would tempt most actors to over-act, he modulates his expressions and physical demeanor to match, chillingly, the accounts of certain real-life sociopaths we know from the news: charming, and blandly — almost vacantly — handsome.

Told from the express point of view of a psychotic, The Killer Inside Me, with its remorseless displays of violence, is necessarily divisive. Lack of character development is a valid complaint, and indeed, flashbacks to Ford’s childhood psychosexual experiences are likely red herrings, seemingly providing no meaningful answers. Yet this is exactly what the subject matter calls for: lacking ordinary humanity, the protagonist has no “character,” as we know it. There is no explaining, no understanding. Thus, that which may well disgust certain viewers is exactly what makes The Killer Inside Me a terrifying yet ultimately compelling film.

Thursday, May 20, 2010

Our fate

From the blog of the Lexington correspondent of the Economist.
THE other striking Supreme Court ruling yesterday concerned sex criminals. The court said the federal government could detain them indefinitely, even after their sentences end, if they are determined to be sexually dangerous.

Much of the debate turned on whether the power to detain such people properly belongs to the federal government, or to the states. Justice Clarence Thomas predictably says that Washington is over-stepping its enumerated powers.

Perhaps so. But I think the most important question is how the system will actually work. The government is claiming the power to imprison people forever, not for crimes they have been convicted of, but for crimes they might commit in the future. That's an extraordinary power. It's similar to the power both the Bush and Obama administrations claim to detain "enemy combatants" indefinitely because, although there is not enough evidence to convict them in a court of law, we know they will re-join al-Qaeda if we let them go.

Neither problem is easy. But with the sex offenders, we could be looking at a much, much larger group of people. The lead petitioner in yesterday's case, Graydon Comstock, was convicted of buying child pornography and sentenced to 37 months in prison. Less than a week before he was due to be released, Alberto Gonzales (then the attorney general) declared him to be sexually dangerous.

That is, the government asserts that he:

(1) has previously "engaged or attempted to engage in sexually violent conduct or child molestation," (2) currently "suffers from a serious mental illness, abnormality, or disorder," and (3) "as a result of" that mental illness, abnormality, or disorder is "sexually dangerous to others," in that "he would have serious difficulty in refraining from sexually violent conduct or child molestation if released."

The thing is, he doesn't have to have been convicted of a sexually violent offence, or of child molestation. The standard of proof for holding Mr Comstock for the rest of his life is "clear and convincing". That is less rigorous than the "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard you'd need to establish to send me to jail for a few months for picking someone's pocket.

Will this kind of preventive detention be applied sparingly? Will there be adequate safeguards to prevent abuse? I have my doubts. There are more than 600,000 people on sex-offender registries in America, probably most of whom are not dangerous. Given the immense political pressure to keep our children safe, I worry that giving someone like Alberto Gonzales the power to hold people forever for crimes they have not yet committed is asking for trouble.

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Growing up a sociopath

Children growing up in this era of digital permanent records have it rough. Every single moment, successes and mistakes, are being recorded and accessible for all eternity. Even if the child himself opts out of the constant chronicling of their early years, their friends are their doing it for them. It's like we have gone back to an earlier era where everyone in a small town knew everyone's personal business. This is bad for empath young people, but potentially devastating for sociopath young people who will make many distinctive mistakes while growing up. From a reader:
I grew up in a small town where everybody pretty much knew each other and being a child i kinda let others see my true self. Everybody there now hates me, i mean everybody. No friends, no nothing, just people hating me. Or so i think...

Anyway. I keep having nightmares and stuff about this. Like people there shooting me or killing me. Is it possible that this is just an overreaction caused by the fact i haven't been there in like a year? Actually i pretty much isolated myself from everyone until i grow up and hopefully not be annoyed by people walking by me on the street, by people. It is hard to say that i am cruel or something, i don't admit anything. But i might be ;). And given this cruelty i am afraid that they might start an angry mob and burn me like a witch. Even as i am writing this i am having some kind of deja vu and that makes me believe that i had dreamt of this. So following this logic i am going to actually get shot by someone who i have wronged. I know this sounds crazy and i know that ... maybe... it isn't real but every muscle in my body is telling me it is real. It is telling me to go back and do nice things, show that i care or something so that it won't come up with me being shot.

When i was younger the people there actually once started an angry mob that wanted revenge for all the bad things i did to them. The leader of the mob knew awful many things about me and that scared me out of doing anything to protect myself. I just sat there and listened how they were angry at me. They got me back against the wall and i panicked. I think that was the best choice at the moment because i didn't know how much they knew. Now when i think back i guess i should've at least protested. Don't even fucking know why i didn't play the victim. Probably there were too many of them knowing all kinds of different things each and playing a victim wouldn't have worked.

Fuck man, this whole e-mail is a deja vu to me. :-s . I wouldn't like telling anybody else about this, cause i don't know where would that lead. I don't even trust a psychologist to tell him. I am thinking that i could go out and make friends somehow but i am afraid of meeting people i previously knew. It's like i can't behave the way i want because people can see through it. I've been worrying about this ever since then and nowdays, when i am interacting with people, i am trying to be as honest as i can. I even keep them from liking me or getting involved in some kind of relationship with me because i know i will end up in that situation in which everything will be revealed. I would pretty much like to get rid of this sensation, so if you have any advice please let me know. Think i am fucking turning into a skizoid. And i also believe that ignoring this and going on with my life will only lead to that day in which i get shot in that coffee shop i keep dreaming about. Anyway. I hope you've seen this before and the whole deja vu thing is just in my head. You can post it on your blog if you want, hope nobody sees it, but keep it anonymous. Even though, in my paranoia, i think that someone that would read this would know it was me. WOW. I'm fucked. I will try to find a psychologist, somehow, someone i can trust, even though i don't know how he would help me. At the moment, i feel like i am going to be convinced that it is all in my head only when i died of natural causes or something different than i think. Anyway, tell me what you think.
Thanks.

Friday, May 14, 2010

On the wrongness of rape

From our friend the law and economics scholar in response to my request: "I wonder, could you give a quick summary of the Posner argument for not hurting people to post on the blog?":
I would be more than happy to provide a summary of Posner's arguments on why harming others is wrong. But I'd like to take a look over his text book again, so as not to misrepresent the Genius himself. Just as a taster I can tell you why rape is 'MOSTLY' wrong :). (God damn I wish it wasn't haha, that'd save a shitload of effort). In some ways I believe an explanation of why rape is "sometimes" wrong is more interesting than harm in general.

Basically, rape bypasses the market in sexual relations in the same way that theft bypasses markets in ordinary goods and services, and therefore should be forbidden. Something that bypasses the market is wrong. Here's the clinch. Sometimes rape is right. I'm going to paraphrase Posner here. Sometimes rapists derive extra pleasure from the fact that a woman has not consented. For these rapists, there is NO MARKET SUBSTITUTE - market transaction costs are prohibitive- and it can be argued, therefore, that for them rape is NOT A PURE COERCIVE TRANSFER and should NOT BE PUNISHED if the sum of satisfactions to the rapist (as measured by what he would be willing to pay - though not to the victim - for the right to rape) exceeds the victim's pain and distress.

The PRACTICAL OBJECTION is that rapists are hard to distinguish empirically from mere THIEVES OF SEX and that giving them free rein would induce women to invest heavily in self-protection. Posner goes on...and states "the fact that any sort of RAPE LICENSE is even thinkable within the framework of the wealth-maximisation theory that guides so much of the analysis in this book is a limitation on the usefulness of that theory". I believe Posner is probably not a sociopath. But I mean... writing about the difficulties of giving a 'license to rape' because it's hard to distinguish between genuine rapists and those who are 'thieves of sex': haha :). I recall long conversations with some girls at university on the "license to rape"...I fucked them all in the end without the license. :). To be honest I think I would have to think long and hard to give an explanation of why "rape is generally wrong" in terms that a person of average intelligence and experience would understand. It rests on the idea that the market is supreme...until that is understood it's just empty words.
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