Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Understanding very little

A reader writes:
I am wondering, do you watch "Lie To Me"? The latest episode of Lie To Me which I watched had an interesting ending, where Tim Roth's character (one "Dr. Lightman") wrote that he understood very little, least of all those close to him.

I understand very little. I see people and I know what they feel, happy, sad, angry, annoyed, aroused, excited. but all in all I understand very little. I know they are experiencing something, but I do not understand the "humanity" that occurs around me. I know I am required to do certain things at certain times, and I will do those things, but do I understand why. I know I must, or I will be viewed in a negative light that makes my life difficult.

Indeed, it seems as if almost everybody I meet was handed a blue-print to behaviours, a list of requirements, of responses and of reactions. And it seems I missed that handing out, missed the instructions, missed that which is needed to be...well, human. This is how I viewed the world when I was younger, and how I have adapted.

As I said, I know but I do not understand. Human life occurs all around me, and I can not help but watch.

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Tell me lies

I've been amazed at the sheer amount of lying I've had to do recently with holiday parties, family functions, and work. I haven't had to be around people as much this past year, so my lying skills are rusty. Also I've been a little sloppy and unlucky, which means I keep getting caught doing compromising things, necessitating more frequent lying. For example, I have an odd habit of rifling through people's bathroom drawers. I did this recently at a party, certain that the sound of the music would muffle any excessive noise. Unfortunately my host was waiting right outside the door to use the toilet after me. Most people would avoid confrontation, but not her. She asked if I was looking for something. I immediately said no, uncertain of how much she had heard. When she gave me a certain look and I realized I was caught, I did a quick mental brainstorm for plausible lies and said, "You were out of handsoap." Luckily this was at least sort of true, true enough for her not to get angry at me.

Lying is a risky life strategy. The worst thing that could happen is to get caught in a compromising situation, lie about it, and then get caught in the lie. People get very angry at you when that happens, although everyone has been in that situation at least once in their lives.

Everyone has a unique relationship with lies/truth. I was emailing one of my exes recently about lying, an ex who happens to currently be in a volatile relationship with another ex. I said:
Maybe the biggest difference between you two is that sometimes you lie or give sugarcoated truths but other times you will just bluntly say important things that you think need to be said. In contrast, X will either be honest or refuse to say anything at all. This is a bad combination because you like and expect to be lied to for some things but want the truth for really important things (how you treat people) and X basically wants the truth all the time or silence, even if it means taking a break from the other person (how X treats people). Because X sometimes tells you the truth when you want to be lied to and you sometimes lie to X instead of being upfront, you both get upset.
I am not sure what my relationship with lying is. Lying can be very fun and exciting, particularly when lying to get out of a scrape, but it can quickly turn into a chore. The character Tom Sawyer learns through his fence painting scheme that "Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and that Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.”

Sometimes I daydream about what my life would be like if I didn't have to lie all the time, where people didn't expect to have their ego massaged, or to hear a rosy take on reality, or they were just generally more tolerant of the diversity of human behavior. It would be nice to be able to tell the truth more frequently. I would love to be able to tell certain people certain truths with zero repercussions. I guess I could always drop the mask(s) and eliminate the need to lie that way, but I doubt I will ever take that step. As much as lying can be a chore, I think the pros outweigh the cons for now.

Saturday, December 11, 2010

Criminally sociopathic (part 2)

Cont.:
I ended up selling meth for a few years after all this. Amusingly the reason was I wanted to meet more people who were willing to commit real crimes like robbing armored cars or finding someone who would pay me to kill people and it's not like you can post wanted ads so I figured the easiest way to meet new criminals who weren't a bunch of stupid kids was to start selling drugs. I had been nonplussed by the kids I met in community service. Most of them were there for vandalism charges and none of them showed any real initiative.

So my criminal career after that mostly consisted of me selling meth starting from $20 sacks on the street to pushing pounds for a Mexican cartel family to cooking it myself interspersed with things like armed robbery of other dealers who had disrespected me (great excuse to go take what you want from someone and have some fun).

If you go to the court house and look at my record I have literally pages of charges that have been brought against me and a total of two convictions, one felony possession of meth and one misdemeanor 'being under the influence.' One of your posts mentioned this phenomenon. We might commit the crimes but compared to the poor saps who aren't sociopaths we don't do the time - we get off too often and leave early more often than not.

My first arrest on drug charges was stupid. I didn't know my rights well enough (though amusingly I'd taken a criminal law class at the local community college since my momma always said, "you have to know the rules so you can break them right"). After that first arrest I was on probation which meant I no longer had those protective rights that coulda saved me the first time which meant luck eventually got me a couple more arrests and on the last one the DA had actually realized I was someone he should pay attention to.

So I left it all behind (leaving a certain minor cartel family with thousands of dollars in unpaid debt that I didn't feel like dealing with). I had decided that I had a problem. I didn't have the drug problem I played to everyone else to excuse my behavior - I had a legal problem. Doing the work I had been doing with search and seizure terms is illogical. It's not a winning game so I figured I'd drop it for 3 years and come back when I had my rights back armed with the knowledge I'd picked up on how to work the legal system. My one close friend (the same one I got in trouble with when I was 16) moved back to town and told me to get my shit together and actually really did a lot of work toward re-socializing me. She also helped me decided not to go right back to work when my probation fell off (since of course, I had been a model of good behavior).

So here I am. In the last couple quarters of a 4 year degree in an extremely technical engineering major. And I feel dead. Because nothing else carries any feeling with it. It isn't that I can't avoid getting locked up or that I can't make money legally it's that when I weigh the price of risking prison against the price of living out a life of dead affect and absolute boredom the choice doesn't seem difficult. Survival isn't worth anything when you aren't doing anything with it. If I'm a criminal it's only because some things I enjoy are illegal and I don't particularly fear the consequences.

Friday, December 10, 2010

Criminally sociopathic (part 1)

From a reader:
One common theme in comments on your site seems to be "only the stupid sociopaths get locked up, they give us a bad name, if they were better at being rational/smart they wouldn't be ending up in prison." Of course as someone who has a handful of arrests I can't help but take this a little personally so I'll do my best to explain why I disagree with the position.

I was a criminal sociopath. I was the kind of criminal who was there for fun. To this day I haven't yet found anything that compares to the fun I had then. Any crimes before I was 16 were boring - I'd get in fights but mostly I had to actively convince another kid to fight with me under the pretense it was just a game (to me it was.. I couldn't get why they didn't enjoy it) and then when they were injured I had to work to convince them not to tell anyone what had happened to them so I wouldn't get in trouble.

When I was 16 I decided with a friend to burglarize a business. Basically I got off work, went to where she was working and while chatting with her mentioned I'd figured out how to get into a local store and into their safe. She said "So lets do it" so when she got off work we went back to my house, got together what we'd wear (there were cameras so heavy jackets and ski-masks), we went to sleep, woke up at 4am and walked downtown to do it. I should add here that I didn't do it for the money, I had several thousand dollars in my bank account and still lived at home having graduated high school before turning 16 and working.

Long story short we got away with it beautifully - for about 7 days. Then the only other person in the world who knew ratted on us. This was my first lesson in how weak most people are and one of many cases where I've been surprised someone did something that seemed completely illogical to me. In the meantime though my friend and I rented expensive motel rooms and bought new cloths instead of going home or washing what we had. Experiences that made the whole thing worth it include sitting with my friend on the hotel bed counting thousands of dollars in cash in our robes, finding a crazy alcoholic homeless woman and her 12yo daughter and having them follow us around buying us alcohol, and walking out of the store we had robbed pulling our skimasks up into hats so the cameras never got a shot of our faces, and then casually walking down a major street downtown to go change clothes at the bus station.

Having no priors and being a minor I never even went to Juvi - after all, I was the nice white kid from the middle class family who had made a horrible mistake and was oh so repentant.
(cont.)
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