Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Mass manipulation (part 1)

Recently I attended an "air your grievances" work meeting. I was only tangentially related, but was called in out of an abundance of caution or some other nonsense reason. People started asking questions and within minutes were erupting in angry accusations. Although each person's grievance wasn't much on its own, the sheer number of them surprised everyone there. People were incensed against management who remained heedless to the most pressing concerns (albeit other people's concerns), rigidly refusing to adapt any of their policies. Everyone left riled up with grievances that they never knew they had before. I thought this was absolute idiocy. I can't imagine a meeting being run more poorly. The idea that if people could only get together they could come to sort of an agreement is absurd.

When I have little insurrections in projects that I run, I target the biggest complainers individually. I schedule a meeting or write them a quick email saying things like, "I noticed that you seemed really frustrated by x." I let them talk for as long as they need, commiserating with them without necessarily committing to any particular position, i.e. not trying to overly justify or entrench myself in any particular position nor agree with their own position. As part of the commiserating, though, I focus on their feelings, "that must be so exhausting," or, "I understand, it's very demanding." I try to use words that sound sympathetic but also make the problem sound either surmountable or something that should be expected from such an important/valued position/employee. I figure that most people just need to vent, but I am also trying to subtly shame them, implying that they are being a crybaby and that they should toughen up. By isolating the potential instigators and stealing their thunder, I never give them the chance to speak publicly and gain support. Without a chance to speak publicly, everyone else is left knowing only about their own particular struggles, assuming that it may have more to do with their own personal failures than a larger institutional failure. Assuming that maybe theirs is an isolated incident, they don't divulge their shameful failure to their colleagues and the mutiny never reaches the necessary tipping point of participants.

Monday, November 14, 2011

Sociopaths in the news: Jon Roberts


From a book review by the NY Post:
Jon Roberts was a made man, a drug smuggler, a killer. He hobnobbed with OJ Simpson and Ed Sullivan, rubbed shoulders with Pablo Escobar and Carlo Gambino, and made enemies out of John Gotti and Ronald Reagan.

He tortured college students for fun, helped snuff-out “mob accountant” Meyer Lansky’s stepson and admits to brutalizing his ex-girlfriend with a belt when she tried to leave him. He flooded the country with cocaine in the 1980s.

Regrets? He has none.

“So would you call yourself a psychopath?” The Post asked him on Friday.

“Well, that depends on how you define psychopath,” Roberts said.

“A lack of empathy or remorse.”

“Well, then, yes I am,” he said. “I enjoyed my life. How many other people lived the life I did? Maybe that Bernie guy, but who else?”
Among other indulgences, Roberts whose run-ins with famous people of all types made him a sort of self-styled "“Forrest Gump of crime and depravity,” claimed to have "drugged Ed Sullivan (here with Jayne Mansfield) and tried to blackmail him with a prostitute." The most memorable quote from his father was "“The evil path is the strong path because evil is stronger than good.”

Why can't all sociopaths be this glamorous? ;)

Sunday, November 13, 2011

Fencing: A sociopath sport?

Im considering taking up fencing, based on the following from the Wikipedia article:
At the most basic level, fencing revolves around the opening and closing of various lines of attack and defense. In order for one fencer to hit, the other must make a mistake and leave an "opening." Fencing tactics rely on a mixture of "open-eyes" opportunism and deliberate "set-ups", where the opponent is systematically fed false information about one's own intentions.

Saturday, November 12, 2011

Another view (part 2)

(cont.)
Your story of the socipath woman who was persecuted by the Aspies really struck a chord. I was bemused by your confusion at why such a person would approach Aspies for help understanding neurotypicals. To me it's entirely reasonable and even brilliant: Her style was probably wrong, but she was groping in the dark. The thinking would be simple: "Neurotypicals don't understand me. I thought I understood neurotypicals but now I realize I don't and a lot of my life has been fucked up because I misunderstood shit. Here is a group that gets together and strategizes on how to deal with neurotypicals. They may be able to help me." That's not dumb dude, that's way fucking smart. Aspies and socios should be able to offer each other all sorts of insights, actually, as any two people looking at the same problem from different perspectives will often help each other. Both could help each other overcome where they are weak, and also identify where they are stronger and better than neurotypicals.
I suspect extremely sadistic sociopaths (i.e. deriving strong pleasure from inflicting suffering for one reason or another--enjoying the sounds of screaming and the sight of blood spurting and the feeling of power caused by cruelty) are probably dangerous to the point where they probably need to stay watched at all times. But otherwise, I begin to suspect that if more sociopaths "outed" themselves a whole hell of a lot of them could be made useful to society and have happier, more productive lives for themselves.

Why should you care if you're more helpful to neurotypicals? First so you don't have to hide; hiding may be fun sometimes but is probably exhausting much of the time. Also, because you can have a life you just plain enjoy more and which allows you to accomplish more of your goals in straightforward, no-bullshit fashion.

A cynical stereotype would be to say that we use you when killing and other nasty business needs doing, but that's ridiculous oversimplification; a person lacking empathy could do all sorts of positive things that aren't in the least bit destructive, and wherein lack of empathy has no more particular value than the inability to see the color red or a tendency to be easily sunburned; just not relevant. A socio who has fully concluded, "it is in my rational self-interest to help people in ways X, Y, and Z, and to not engage in A, B, and C" could be a tremendously productive in all sorts of fields where their sociopathy would be irrelevant. In other areas, it could be an outright asset in an endless number of subtle areas where your blunted or nonexistent empathic reponse would allow you to clinically analyze and recommend in areas where other people's emotions cloud their judgment. If I were a manager I'd probably want at least one of you on my team, and not necessarily for "dirty work." I don't need "dirty work," I need someone who thinks dispassionately and logically and can see shit other people can't. At minimum, you'd be the guy to tell me in a business negotiation, "Stop with the goody-goody reasoning with that guy. He doesn't care. You're just irritating him." Or better yet, "You don't know how to deal with this guy, I do. Just let me do it. I'll close the deal, watch."

If you are a sociopath, for whatever reason you have a blunted or nonexistent sense of empathy. Although this has multiple ramifications, in the end that's all it amounts to. It may amuse you to know that I discussed this with a very serious-minded Christian (Catholic) friend and he said (at first to my surprise but not now) that indeed, there's absolutely no reason a sociopath could be not just a good Christian but an outright Saint; his basic line was "emotions are overrated, it's actions that matter. It doesn't matter how you feel about it, it's what you DO that counts."

Friday, November 11, 2011

Another view (part 1)

From new reader Dean Esmay:
Hi. I run a fairly popular blog and occasionally I do interviews. I've been writing about sociopathy/psychopathy lately; for a wide variety of reasons the subject fascinates me but has only come to my focused attention recently. FYI, I am not sociopathic to the best I can determine; remorse and guilt are far too familiar to me. I also have a son who is autistic, and I have strong aspie tendencies--although in atypical fashion, one of those oddballs who's somewhere on that spectrum but not clearly identifiable.
My recent reading on the subject of psychopathy has shocked me out of a few metric tonnes of preconceptions. Not your blog alone but definitely your blog has been impressive and at times mind-blowing. I've been reading you rather voraciously. At first you creeped me out pretty bad but the more I read the less so. Before reading your blog, other reading on the subject led me to see a parallel (not link, but definite parallel) between this condition and the aspie/autie spectrum. When I saw that you also perceived a connection it confirmed I was onto something. I doubt the conditions really are related any much more than writing and painting are related--in other words, sort of but not really. But they clearly share some common traits.

I had presumed that a sociopath/psychopathic had to be evil; now I have had a near-total rethink. You may not be comfortable with the terms "good" and "evil" but I pretty much use them in the Judeo-Christian sense and am comfortable with that language; I sense you can work with that without too much philosophical hairsplitting for now. My take at the moment is that sociopathy mixed with sadism (deriving pleasure from deliberately inflicting suffering) is probably going to generate a dangerous and quite evil person, and sociopathy mixed with stupidity and lack of self-awareness is probably going to generate a highly destructive personality (to self and/or others). But it does not follow that sociopathy all by itself is malignant. Potentially malignant of course, but who in this world is not potentially malignant? It is not as if sociopaths invented lying, cheating, backstabbing, and so on.

I suspect that among the high number of socipaths in prison, the majority are the stupid or non-self-aware kind, who can probably be helped with self-awareness and psychological training that focuses not on feelings but on rational self-interest: "Look, you have this limitation, this form of emotional color-blindness. It has contributed to many of your problems. But if you focus on these specific things, these specific behaviors, even if they're uncomfortable or alien at first, you are likely to have a far more rewarding life." I don't pretend I can list what all those things would be, or what all the strategies would be, but I think that sociopaths themselves, working with neurotypicals and other types of "neurodiverse," could learn to do this exact thing, just as dispassionate study of autism and asperger's has done so much to help people in that sub-population. (They haven't just been helped by "awareness," although that has been helpful; identifying useful coping and constructive life-strategies has done a lot, as has early diagnosis and better forms of intervention).
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