Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Perspective

People don't understand how powerful their minds are. Our world is exactly as we want to see it, as we have trained ourselves or allowed ourselves to see it. And yet, it is very difficult for most people to be open minded. It reminds me of the story of one of the very earliest films from the Lumière brothers. From Wikipedia:

L'arrivée d'un train en gare de La Ciotat (translated from French into English as The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station) is an 1895 French short black-and-white silent documentary film directed and produced by Auguste and Louis Lumière.

This 50-second silent film shows the entry of a train pulled by a steam locomotive into a train station in the French coastal town of La Ciotat. Like most of the early Lumière films, L'arrivée d'un train en gare de La Ciotat consists of a single, unedited view illustrating an aspect of everyday life. There is no apparent intentional camera movement, and the film consist of one continuous real-time shot.

The film is associated with an urban legend well-known in the world of cinema. The story goes that when the film was first shown, the audience was so overwhelmed by the moving image of a life-sized train coming directly at them that people screamed and ran to the back of the room. Hellmuth Karasek in the German magazine Der Spiegel wrote that the film "had a particularly lasting impact; yes, it caused fear, terror, even panic." However, some have doubted the veracity of this incident such as film scholar and historian Martin Loiperdinger in his essay, "Lumiere's Arrival of the Train: Cinema's Founding Myth". Whether or not it actually happened, the film undoubtedly astonished people in the audience who were unaccustomed to the amazingly realistic illusions created by moving pictures. The Lumière brothers clearly knew that the effect would be dramatic if they placed the camera on the platform very close to the arriving train.
What does this have to do with sociopathy? A lot maybe, or not a lot, but sociopaths seem unusually skilled at geting out of their own perspectives and see things from different angles. They also seem better than most at holding multiple perspectives at the same time. Has anyone noticed this? Sociopaths may have their own perspectives, perhaps one in which they are the best in the world and a more realistic perspective that allows them to function in real life aware of their potential weaknesses, and be able to live in both at once. I actually think the ability to shift perspectives is what makes them such skillful manipulators--they can see the perspectives of the people they regularly associate with and into their head to predict their every thought and movement. Sociopaths understand better than most that perception is everything.

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Dealing with my Sociopath: Yes UKan, Yes UKan, yes UKan!

From UKan's wife:

My husband asked me to write my thoughts on how it is I put up with him as a sociopath, so after some thought I've decided to indulge him. I don't typically like to let him into this many of my thoughts, but I think it'll be an interesting post to the many on this site who've long been wondering about him. And I think it's a good thing to be open about, even if vicariously.

To start with a bit about myself, I am a rational personality type, so my underlying motive for my life is to understand things. In my past I have always dated people I was curious about. Curiosity is my idea of interest, or caring, if you will. Every man I dated was bizarre to say the least, and I will not choose here to go into that further.
My husband is no exception to strangeness, not because like some idiots on here think that he's complicated and so full of dimension, but because he is so simple. The tedious thing about exes is that though they all vary dramatically socially, and often think they're different, they tend to be simple, and the same fundamentally. Like Asians, they start to all look alike.
Just kidding.

But seriously, most people are too simple once you discover their issues of particularity. In some cases I'd try to help them grow up but their inherent blindness to themselves and their own simplicity is even more tedious. They're inherent undesire to change and fears of coping all begin to look alike, no matter how variable.

With my husband, his natural complexity is not in how he doesn't deal with some glaring issue, but in elusiveness and nonchalance about his glaring issues. It consistantly amuses me how he deflects others from who he is, and pulls their own glaring issues to a forefront. I don't get bored of my husband because he never ceases to amuse me with his naturalness and fundamental-ness. He has impulses and he follows them. No fronts.

I call him a Demon because it has a natural symbolic picture of who he is. He tries to convince me that he isn't, or tries to convince himself sometimes that he's human, but he just isn't. Everything for him all falls back onto a few inherent humanistic desires like sex, territoriality, amusement, procreation, vanity or pride etc. His lack of any social rounding amuses me and never ceases to feed my curiosity not because he's trying to be complicated, but because he's so fundamentally simple.
I hate when people try to add fluff to who they are; meaning, or reasoning to something that breaks down so simply. My husband just comes out as simple, and I don't tire of it.

I suppose that's a bit of a contradiction; not being bored of my husband because he's simple, but that's how I am.

So to advise the silly people who come on here with ideals about their sociopath being so complex, stop projecting your "Complications" on something so inherently uncomplicated and you'll begin to understand that just because you like to sugar coat things with your emotions, that doesn't mean the rest of the world does.

A sociopath is not a sensitive man with deep poetic complexities, but an animal seeking amusement. You are expendable, as you have the specialness of an ant. Unless you can see him for what he is, or get him to show you what he is.
My success with my husband is not that I idolically look up to him with blind batting lashes, but that I see that he's just an animal, and that I cope with the shallowness of reality, and can demand no more from him than he's capable of. I am satisfied by the reality of our relationship, and ask for no delusions. Though sometimes they feel nice, I'd rather have the cold reality.

Bad things happen for good reasons.

Monday, October 17, 2011

Guest post: Explaining the Villain

From a reader:

Often he's presented as male, antisocial, perhaps depressed and more than likely suffered some sort of childhood abuse. He has no faith in humanity or the decency of the ordinary individual. His only interest is in himself, in satisfying his own needs and maintaining his own well-being.

If you look at human instinct, you'll see our animal and rational sides.

Our animal instincts are all linked to self-preservation. The need to eat, sleep, fuck and our emotions: empathy, sympathy, sadness, fear, kindness. In society we raise ourselves to believe that emotions are good, that personal needs are questionable and only suitable to be satisfied if it poses no threat to the community around us.

Then you've got our rational half. Our self-awareness, our ability to check the logic of our own actions and moderate our instincts.

We pretend, with our apparent intelligence, that we can overcome our animal instincts, that they're unnecessary and ought to be shut down because of a strong fear that we might lose control.

If one person is too different, if they're apt to lose control or have ideas that present a threat to the majority, we will cast them out in order to protect the stability of our herd. This is the beginning of our villain. He will be made to feel defective, different and discriminated against from the beginning. Made to feel he or she is inherently wrong for things they have no control over.

The defective unit will be cast out and left to fend for himself. Once out, our young one will be welcomed back in. The invitation, however, is conditional. The person must surrender what it is about them that makes them different. People will say that its an optional trait, that this thing can be discarded, that if the person was normal there would be no problem.

Our outcast is naturally resentful and his difference may well be something that cannot be changed.

After being outside for long enough, our alien will have learned to appreciate his position. He is out of the forest and can see the trees. He can see the herd for what it is, the faults, the failures, the bureacracy and its inability to perform a logic check its own reasoning. Depending on how badly he's been treated, he will often attempt to help the individuals in the herd and free them from their ignorance. Enlighten them as to their position. They will retaliate and be scared, refuse to believe the ideas of the outcast because he's been flagged as dangerous.

After this failure, our alien will naturally be angry, he'll take the herd as prey and treat them as an enemy. He will be treated as a second class citizen, still subject to all the same rules and regulations as normal herd members but without a voice. It won't be recognised that he can provide anything of discernable value to the community. His ideas, however enlightened they might be in reality, are null and void and out of that same fear of a loss of stability, can't even be looked at in case it damages society.

Sunday, October 16, 2011

Sociopaths in the news

A seven-year-old boy broke into the Alice Springs Reptile Center in central Australia by jumping the fence, and then proceeded to feed both live and dead animals to a crocodile:
The footage shows the barefoot boy, wearing shorts and a T-shirt, climbing over the zoo's fence on Wednesday morning, evading sensor alarms possibly because of his size. He is seen throwing live lizards into the crocodile's enclosure, bashing others to death with a rock, and smashing a turtle the size of a dinner plate on a concrete pathway.

According to Mr Neindorf, the boy is mainly "blank-faced." He added: "We're horrified that anyone can do this, and saddened by the age of the child."

Saturday, October 15, 2011

Edward Cullen = sociopath?

Apparently, Debra Merskin, associate professor for the school of journalism and communication at the University of Oregon, as claimed that the vampire protagonist from the teenage vampire series Twilight, is a sociopath. From the Sydney Morning Herald:

Writing in a recent issue of the Journal of Communication Inquiry, Merskin argues that Edward has all the hallmarks of a "compensated psychopath".

Unlike full-blown psychopaths, compensated psychopaths have learnt to conceal their limited emotional repertoire and "pass" as normal. "While he is incapable of feeling compassion, or remorse, there is an awareness that the full-blown psychopath doesn't have - that these feelings do exist in the world but he is somehow lacking," Merskin explains via email.
Edward, she says, ticks all the boxes.He's psychologically immature; although born in 1901, Edward is fated never to develop beyond the age of 17.

He's socially withdrawn, living far out of town, and he's controlling. He frequently belittles Bella, saying she's emotionally unobservant, she's absurd and, most patronisingly, "You've got a bit of a temper, don't you?"

Edward's inability to love is the crucible for the romantic tension throughout Twilight. "I don't know how to be close to you. I don't know if I can," he says to Bella. And, perhaps most tellingly, Edward admits: "I'm not used to feeling so human. Is it always like this?"

Merskin says these types aren't new in literature and cinema. Oscar Wilde's Dorian Gray, serial killer Patrick Bateman in American Psycho and Wall Street's Gordon Gekko are all examples of compensated psychopaths.

But unlike Edward, none of these fictional characters was presented as boyfriend material. This, Merskin says, makes Edward novel. It also makes him concerning- especially given that its target audience is young women and adolescent girls.
I don't know. I'm not convinced. I like vampire stories typically because they echo some themes from my own life, not surprising if you believe (as I do) that the vampire myth originates from sociopaths. I'm no expert on the Twilight series, but to the extent that Edward acts like a vampire I'm not surprised people would think he is sociopathic. However, I thought the whole point of the series was that Edward does not act like a vampire? A chaste defanged vampire?
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