This is a follow up to the Yueyue video. I think that every culture is capable of horrible cruelties, in fact I think that the very institution of "culture" encourages it in ways (bystander effect) that make me sort of proud to be "anti-social."
And a lengthy explanation of why this is a result of some of our "pro-social" impulses:
Personally, I blame Burt Bacharach for all of this. Instead of "walk on by" it should have been "stop to help."
Saturday, March 10, 2012
Friday, March 9, 2012
Is sociopathy a real thing? (part 3)
On another subject, I totally agree with the conception of sociopathy being some sort of a nuance of character. There are smart people and dumb people, strong spirited and weak spirited, beautiful on the outside, ugly on the outside and so on. But it all happens on the inside and even if somebody is labeled as a sociopath or borderline or anything, you can only say that that's their way to deal with life. It's all about adapting to the environment with the brain and body that has been given to you.
I also think that the primary attraction on your blog is not the fact that it's about "SOCIOPATHS", the whole ambiguous thing around it. It's because you manage to bring particularities that you notice within yourself together in a bundle and people relate to that. When you say, I noticed this very weird thing about myself and I think that this might be the cause, I am blind to actually notice it, but I perceived through other senses, That is great, I mean, it brings joy to see that someone somewhere is having the same sort of more uncommon struggle that you are having at that moment. And I notice people trying to not show their emotions around your comment section and be all cool and stuff because they want to belong there. They feel lonely and they want to belong. I don't know whether it's sociopathy that we're dealing with here, but it's certainly a thing that only a bunch of people relate to somehow.
I know cause when I first started reading your blog I felt the same kind of lost and it helped me keep it all together. I knew those things about myself. I knew that I was noticing things and that I wasn't like everybody else and I wasn't crazy. If I actually took the time to explain, people would understand but after that I always felt too vulnerable and open and so I started keeping to myself. And it was the same kind of thing that you are bringing with your posts. That sense that somehow you don't belong around but you can shut up about it and be taken as normal and use whatever is making you different to your advantage to get things, Not some things that you always wanted or stuff because I get the sense that that kind of craving that other people have for "whatever" never occurred in us, but whatever floats your boat at a certain moment. That's just great.
On a somewhat related note, dear reader, I have been reading an interesting New Yorker article about the television show Portlandia, where they discuss the phenomenon of the urban hipster and how people will go out of their way to play up small differences to distinguish themselves from others in what Freud termed the narcissism of small differences. Sometimes I suspect the SociopathWorld community of this, myself included. It's easy to lose perspective about how much we actually share in common with every other human on this planet in a race to make ourselves as distinct as possible from people and beliefs that we may not respect.
But this isn't to say that there aren't real differences between people too. I guess it's what makes the development of "standards" like the DSM-5 so controversial.
Thursday, March 8, 2012
Is sociopathy a real thing? (part 2)
My response:
This is a very insightful question. I think this is one of the issues that comes from basing the diagnosis of sociopathy primarily on behavior. First of all, I agree. I am not sure that sociopathy is even a "real thing". I do think it's interesting that there seem to be people that are very similar to each other, but I think that is bound to happen in the spectrum of human personalities and behavior -- that you would be able to find people clumped together in any part of the spectrum. Sociopathy may just be a particularly intriguing segment of personality traits because of the disparately large effect they seem to have on the lives of others and the unique motivations that drive their behavior. Yes, I think that sociopaths brains may look different, but our brains are constantly adapting and are constantly being impacted by our experiences, thoughts, and decisions (caveat, there is some evidence that aspects of the brain you wouldn't expect to see changing in a lifetime are also statistically different in sociopaths than the general population). There's just so much we don't know about sociopathy that I am hesitant to actually come to any conclusions myself about its nature.
Even assuming that sociopathy is a "real thing" (as much as anything can be real), I think that it is difficult to study and understand. There's a chicken and the egg problem in terms of coming up with a diagnosis -- you need to identify sociopaths before you can make a list of their traits and you need a list of their traits to identify them. To the extent that there is somewhat of a history of what constitutes a "sociopath," that helps, but there really is so much variation between even modern researchers in terms of their conception of the defining characteristic(s) of a sociopath. On top of that, everyone seems to agree that environment plays a big role in any gene expression, and particularly a tendency to become a sociopath, with some researchers believing that certain subtypes are born while other types are made.
I personally don't feel like most of my behavior is all of that shocking or antisocial, particularly when compared to certain populations like the prison population. It's interesting that you say that [Eastern Europe] has a calloused population. I've visited other places that have an overall low baseline level of empathy and prosocial behavior (the Netherlands, Israel, Egypt, Vietnam, among others). I don't know what sociopaths would look like in those cultures. My guess is not necessarily any worse than the general population, just like uranium pollution may be difficult to detect in an environment with a high baseline level of radioactivity.
One thing is for certain, sociopaths do not have a monopoly on calloused behavior.
This is a very insightful question. I think this is one of the issues that comes from basing the diagnosis of sociopathy primarily on behavior. First of all, I agree. I am not sure that sociopathy is even a "real thing". I do think it's interesting that there seem to be people that are very similar to each other, but I think that is bound to happen in the spectrum of human personalities and behavior -- that you would be able to find people clumped together in any part of the spectrum. Sociopathy may just be a particularly intriguing segment of personality traits because of the disparately large effect they seem to have on the lives of others and the unique motivations that drive their behavior. Yes, I think that sociopaths brains may look different, but our brains are constantly adapting and are constantly being impacted by our experiences, thoughts, and decisions (caveat, there is some evidence that aspects of the brain you wouldn't expect to see changing in a lifetime are also statistically different in sociopaths than the general population). There's just so much we don't know about sociopathy that I am hesitant to actually come to any conclusions myself about its nature.
Even assuming that sociopathy is a "real thing" (as much as anything can be real), I think that it is difficult to study and understand. There's a chicken and the egg problem in terms of coming up with a diagnosis -- you need to identify sociopaths before you can make a list of their traits and you need a list of their traits to identify them. To the extent that there is somewhat of a history of what constitutes a "sociopath," that helps, but there really is so much variation between even modern researchers in terms of their conception of the defining characteristic(s) of a sociopath. On top of that, everyone seems to agree that environment plays a big role in any gene expression, and particularly a tendency to become a sociopath, with some researchers believing that certain subtypes are born while other types are made.
I personally don't feel like most of my behavior is all of that shocking or antisocial, particularly when compared to certain populations like the prison population. It's interesting that you say that [Eastern Europe] has a calloused population. I've visited other places that have an overall low baseline level of empathy and prosocial behavior (the Netherlands, Israel, Egypt, Vietnam, among others). I don't know what sociopaths would look like in those cultures. My guess is not necessarily any worse than the general population, just like uranium pollution may be difficult to detect in an environment with a high baseline level of radioactivity.
One thing is for certain, sociopaths do not have a monopoly on calloused behavior.
Wednesday, March 7, 2012
Is sociopathy a real thing? (part 1)
I have been thinking about your blog lately though I haven't been there that often in the last year. Listen, about me, I am not so sure I am sociopath. I have tendencies but they are because of the fact that I am from [Eastern Europe] and it's a pretty harsh environment around here socially. Actually I was thinking at some point that I am on the other side of the spectrum - borderline - but I not so sure about that either. Maybe I just fucked up emotionally and stuff, you know?
What I wanted to tell you in this mail was about [Eastern Europe]. Around here, a lot if not most of the people, act as if they are sociopaths. I mean, the things that you and around your blog are signs of empathy and normality, don't show very much around here. A couple of weeks ago I had to give directions to a girl from America while walking on the street. She showed me some directions she got from another guy and I had to give her a whole new path to follow to reach her destination. I remember telling her after she showed me her directions "I am not sure that this is actually a thing *raised eyebrow*". You know? I mean, around here people aren't at all compassionate because of the environment and the general bad conditions. Though people do show emotions and are compassionate to one another, but only within their groups, never to random people. You can always expect to be cheated somehow around here. Anyway, there's a BIG antisocial vibe all around the country. And I am asking myself, what's the difference between petty criminals like I see here, blunted emotions that people have and an actual sociopath. You know? Because around here, stealing from public funds and cheating people out of their money is a present thing going on, not some "maybe" like in a civilized country.
I mean, if you take Hare's checklist and go around the street here and rate people, you would get a lot of sociopaths. Though none of them can actually be labeled as one, none or too few.
So, is your blog just that? Just a place where some people that cheat and lie can exhibit their actions? I mean, anything is possible given the right circumstances, you know? What makes a sociopath special? Everybody can lie and steal and cheat, what is behind that? What is behind the antisocial behavior? What's the sociopath's "soul" like? I would very much like to understand that.
Tuesday, March 6, 2012
Anti-sociopath insurance (part 2)
Good question. My first idea while reading your email was to neutralize his power over you. In interpersonal relationships, information is only powerful if/when someone has it and the other person doesn't know or doesn't want it disclosed. Someone sent me this clip recently from the Stephen Colbert show. The gist was that the guest was a "person of interest" in the United States' war on terror. Although not charged with anything concrete, the POI was asked to remain in touch with the FBI. In part in compliance but more in protest, the POI began sending the FBI many emails a day with photos and other information about his daily activities, including pictures of his meals and toilet breaks. At the end of the clip, the POI advocates a "market approach" to combatting government overreaching for information. Specifically he argues that information is only valuable to intelligence agencies if they are the only ones who know that information or if the party that is the subject of that information does not know that they have the information or does not want it disclosed. By making his information not only available to the FBI, but publicly available on his website, he has robbed that information of any value.
Similarly, a lot of people have tried to identify me from the blog. I know that it is basically inevitable that I will be outted in some way, so I have plans to sort of out myself -- or a glass closet. By outting myself in a way that I am comfortable with, I hope to remove the temptation for others to out me.
Other than that, ways of getting one up on him are probably context specific and situational. Just being aware of opportunities will help out a lot. But it's good you're doing this. He's much less likely to keep you in the toy box if he sees you as a playmate rather than a toy.
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