Monday, September 26, 2011

Desensitized

Sometimes I hear people say that they were "born this way," whatever way that happens to be. To say you are born a sociopath or born gay is like saying you were born smart or born tall. Yes, you may have the genetic predisposition to be smart or tall, but the existence of feral children is an important reminder that no one is born any of those ways, that we rely on the most basic daily interactions, nutrition, culture, education, experiences, and myriad other influences in our development to become who we become. I realize that "born this way" is just shorthand and I've used it too, but I think it is sloppy and often masks some of these other important influences.

Was I born to charm? Born to harm? I wasn't necessarily even born to speak or wield a weapon. So how do we get there? What makes some of us different from others. Obviously it has a lot to do with genetics, but it also has so much to do not just with our our experiences, but in what particular order and when in life we experienced them. It's through our experiences that normal gened people can be desensitized to things like killing, and sociopathic gened people can be sensitized to things like being aware of the needs of others.

I intentionally sensitize myself to things all the time. When I studied music, I sensitized myself to minute changes in pitch because I played a fretless string instrument and needed to be keenly aware of pitch to play in tune. Now it drives me crazy to hear musicians playing out of tune. It's not just that I have a more discriminating taste than I used to, I actually have a very visceral reaction to pitch problems to the point that I can feel nauseated.

Things that used to shock me no longer do through repeat exposure, and vice versa. I know that my genes might predispose me to the way I think and interact with the world, but I also take full responsibility for the amount of control over the rest. Every day I am in motion, sensitizing myself or desensitizing myself, constantly reshaping my brain, making and breaking habits, making myself more less inclined to act or think a certain way.

I am careful what I do and say, what I allow myself to think and daydream about. It's not always because I am worried about external consequences (would I do these things if I were sure to not be caught?), but rather internal consequences. How would doing or thinking that thing change me and is that someone I want to become? I'm all too aware that we are what we eat.

On a related note, I don't expect to look or act exactly like other sociopaths because I haven't made the same trillion decisions in the same order that they have, even if we might share a particular gene sequence. Via my exposure to the myriad variety of sociopaths and other personality types that I've run into on the blog and in real life, I have eliminated many misconceptions I had about sociopathy (criminals are low-functioning, etc.). Keeping an open-mind is one of the habits I hope to keep by challenging my own beliefs as vigorously as I challenge those of others.

Sunday, September 25, 2011

Evil = ignorance

"There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance." -- Socrates

I was watching some science fiction film the other day with a classic good against evil struggle, but more morally ambiguous than most. Characters in the film were picking sides and the audience was tempted to make judgments about who were the "good" guys and who were the "bad" guys. I thought of my own religious beliefs that include "good" and "bad" as concepts, but more in the sense that everything has its opposite. Maybe because I've been trained to think this way from childhood or maybe it's because my brain works differently than most but I rarely have normative takes on morally "good" or "bad" issues. However, reading this quote reminded me that I do take a negative normative stance on ignorance, particularly willful ignorance of the self-deception variety.

Saturday, September 24, 2011

Song: Terrible Things



If you dig under my feet
You will find things that you don't want to see
Things that I hide deep down inside
A menagerie of the tragedy I caused and all of my flaws
And my demons are all that can see
Then what would you do if you only knew?

All of the things that I've done
Terrible things you would never believe
Things that I've done
Oh, how you'll run
If you knew a single one
All of the things that I've done

Would my face give me away
I know it won't
'Cause I don't even feel
I just reflect what you expect
So you don't suspect that
I could be exactly who I am

All of the things that I've done
Terrible things you would never believe
Things that I've done
Oh, how you'll run
If you knew a single one
All of the things that I've done

I know that I'm inflected
But who could have predicted
That monster that I've become
I keep things carefully covered
So no one will discover
That I could be the culprit
I'm sorry I can't help it

All of the things that I've done
Terrible things you would never believe
Things that I've done
Oh, how you'll run
If you knew a single one
All of the things that I've done

Friday, September 23, 2011

Socios on TV: Breaking Bad's Gus

From a reader:
Have you followed the TV show Breaking Bad at all? It has a fantastic premise: a middle aged chemist is diagnosed with cancer, and this in combination with a mid-life crisis of sorts leads him to begin cooking meth. The various travails of his life in the aftermath of this choice make for great viewing, and the show is great television. It's from AMC, whom you may admire already if you've ever seen the show Mad Men.

At any rate, there is a character named Gus who runs a massive meth production and distribution network, something he does with sterile precision and professionalism. In seasons 1 to 3, he remains courteous and polite at almost all times, although certain scenes allude to his likely sociopathy. In the first episode of the currently airing season 4, his true nature is shown for the first time, in an exhilarating portrayal of his ability to kill without the slightest hint of emotion, although it is a combination of calculation and burning anger that leads him to do it. The actor is exceptional- his face remains blank, but you can feel the smooth decision-making process happening behind it.

The link is here.

I strongly suggest you set aside 45 minutes to watch this, and I would love to know your impressions. In the event that you are too busy to spend 45 minutes on this, the scene in question is from appx. 27 minutes in until 38 minutes in.
M.E.: I have been a big fan of the show, initially for the fun premise and the overall bleakness. I too thought that Gus was a sociopath. When wearing a mask, he is almost obsequiously polite--classic sociopath. I particularly liked the third season for him, when he was clearly "seducing" Walter [protagonist] into going into business with him. It's so understated and tasteful the way he crawls into Walter's head and feeds him whatever he needs to hear. There is actually palpable chemistry between the two. But you are right, the portrait of Gus as sociopath was really completed in the first episode of this current season. Interestingly, the more I watch the show the more it seems like Walter leans narcissist, or at least is highly narcissistic. At first I just wrote off a lot of Walter's eccentric behavior to cancer and the premise, but the writers have actually done a great job making him seem like he was a ticking time bomb and if it wasn't the cancer scare, it would have been anything else that might have finally set him off into a narcissistic tailspin.

Thursday, September 22, 2011

Back for more (part 3)

(cont.):
Do you know why I love him? I feel sometimes that it's silly that I do. He is obviously bad for me, or for anybody in fact. But....

The other night, he invites me over, and his friend A is there. He takes care not to pay a whole lot of attention to me. He doesn't include me in the conversation, he doesn't look at me while he talks. Every so often he responds with much irritation to something I say or do, but that's all. He flirts with A, and when I sit down he makes sure to sit somewhat far away from me, even at the expense of comfort. It made me feel crazy-sometimes I don't really know if these gestures are purposeful and other times I'm sure they are. I go into his room, look at his wall, he's covered a section of it with his artwork. One of his pictures has written along the sides "this is nothing but a torture game". I walk out of his room and the words echo in my head and I feel better, like I can see through him.

Later that night, it is only me and him and A. He asks A if she's heading out soon, and she says, well, at some point she is. Ten minutes later, he asks her again. She says, yeah, she's going to bounce. And she does. So I can't help but get the feeling he's engineered the situation so that she would go, and I'd stay. And we go in his room. I sigh for no particular reason. What is it? He instantly asks. Is something wrong, what's up?

I think to myself, you expect me to complain about how jealous I feel. But I won't, I've seen this coming all along. So I just laugh at him, say, nothing.

We sit down on the bed, I'm somewhat far away from him, he asks me again what's up, I assure him nothing is up. And I'm like, I'm not going to play into this and he's not going to get into my pants. But then he pulls me closer to him and puts his hand on my thigh and I realize that I'm going to let him win. Because I want to. Because if I get so turned on when he touches me I might as well just go with it. I don't know why all the emotional manipulation makes me frisky. But it does.

Later, I say, "you like to toy with people, don't you?" but he dances about with his reply and I allow myself to be led away by his evasiveness.

I suppose something must be wrong with me. There's a perfectly nice guy that I know who is attractive enough and very into me and sweet as hell, but if he touches me I just squirm and feel antsy and turned off and cold.

Maybe it's because I play mind games myself, which has been pointed out to me before. I don't really know, but how can you go against that fire that some people just spark with their skin?

Sociopath boy has this raptor gaze, like he is devouring me with his eyes. Like a hungry predator. It makes my heart pound, those eyes on fire. and I just feel like I would very much like to be eaten-what can you do?

Sociopath boy, he consumes life with this same fervor. At heart he is nomadic, forlorn, there isn't a place for him. He says he'd like nothing more than to travel the world endlessly, never settling, forever without a home. Sometimes I think he feels a poignant emptiness. I love him because he ripped me from my comfortable little nesting place inside my head, he threw me into the world and showed me the silent places in the mountains where he once drove aimlessly down mountain trails alone in his car, smoking pot and possibly reflecting on the space inside himself where something seems curiously absent...he lies, yes, pathologically. I told him once how much I admired his natural talent for lying. He seemed quite flattered until he realized that I had been implying more than I'd said, and at that point he looked at me and said, "stop trying to pin me down as the bad guy".
His lies, they can be part of what makes him such a pleasure. It is grand to hear him weave tales of nonexistent crescent fishes that live off the coast of nonexistent islands, describing their mating habits and hunting grounds as if he'd known their etymology his whole life. He is fantastically amusing, and his whim's inventions are hard to tell from his factual knowledge. Those instances are endearing, but this same talent is used to regularly manipulate you with ruthless grace. He lies so masterfully that one cannot help but be awed.

But really-I really love that he is a sadist, sure, and I like that he kicks me hard and pretends it's a nervous tic, or when we kiss he bites my lip so hard I feel it hurting the next day. But really I love that something about him seems perfectly innocuous and shameless, like a child. A selfish lust most are too tame to seize. There is nobody, nobody like him, nobody with fire like his, with such savagery and yet such an artistic wondering mind, craving beauty even whilst destroying many a beautiful thing.

I'm an empath hands down. I have a heart like jelly, I cry easily, I feel deeply, I'm empathetic to a fault. If a character in a movie is embarrassed, I cringe and look away on his behalf. Cheesy abandoned animal commercials make me extremely sad. I can see the world from any perspective and make it my own. But when I can manipulate people, I do. I'm very good at it. I play mind games. When I'm not into a person and I know their into me, I make a game out of trying to get them to fall in love with me. And they do, and then I'm bored. And I don't want them, not one bit. But I can't win with sociopath boy. The game just keeps going. It changes every day, it is always some new puzzle piece that he hands me, but really none of the pieces fit together so I just have to keep puzzling.

The people on your site are always saying what idiots empaths are, to fall in love with sociopaths. But I'm not stupid. I know he will never be mine, I will never ever have him like I want. he will hurt me because it excites him. And I will be hurt, but then and again it will excite me to be hurt, so am I stupid and pathetic for feeling? It is part of your natures to be the way you are. It is part of our natures as empaths to fall, from time to time, head over heels in love. And if you already know that he is a sociopath, that he will hurt you, but you want him all the same....does that make me a very stupid empath? I am an existentialist, m.e., I'm not very judgmental, I forgive too easily. I have a strong moral inclination against murder and rape, but I feel that right and wrong still bear only contextual meaning.

If we live once, why not live for the deepest and most enthralling sorts of pleasures and passions? So yes, it is harmful, dysfunctional. Even if he cannot feel love for me like mine for him, it is still worth it, to keep his presence in my life.

Emerson: "Why should I cumber myself with regrets that the receiver is not capacious? It never troubles the sun that some of his rays fall wide and vain into ungrateful space, and only a small part on the reflecting planet."
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