Saturday, May 26, 2012

Fictional sociopaths: Don't trust the B in Apt 23

A reader sent me this article about a new television show.  From an article entitled: "Chloe From Don’t Trust The B In Apt 23 Could Be The Sociopathic BFF You Always Wanted":

Never in my life did I think I would actively pursue a sociopathic roommate that makes my life more challenging and more dangerous on a weekly basis. But after watching Don’t Trust The B in Apartment 23 this season I’m adding it to my list of “people I want in my life.”
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There’s something magnetic about her character Chloe. Something that makes you root for her even after she does the unthinkable. Like taking in a foster child to use as a personal assistant or secretly selling June’s baking videos to a sexual festish site to make rent money. And yes, by the end of every episode she learns a lesson about morals and human decency. But never quite the right lesson.

It’s like if Danny Tanner lectured DJ Tanner about the evils of smoking cigarettes and she turnd to binge drinking instead. Chloe listens and Chloe comprehends and Chloe interprets the lesson in her own way. It’s magical and it’s slightly wrong and it’s something you rarely see on TV. And that’s exactly what makes it so refreshing.
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How cool is it that there’s a female character on television who puts herself first. She may not always put herself first at the right time or in the right situations, but she always puts herself first. She knows what she wants and she does what she needs to do to get it done. Yes, she has moments where she tires to help June and James.

But if it comes down to her happiness or theirs, she’ll choose her happiness any day of the week. That’s what probably what makes her a sociopath, but it’s also what makes her some kind of backwards role model for women who are so used to pleasing everyone else in their lives.

After watching so many characters on TV like June, who are go-getters sacrificing their youth to acheive their career dreams, it’s so wonderful to see a character just enjoying her life. A character who exemplifies selfishness in its human form and reminds us that it’s okay to look out for yourself. It’s okay to care about yourself more than you care about others.



I confirmed this with my friend, that with regard to being friends with a sociopath, "the pros outweigh the cons."






Friday, May 25, 2012

Sociopaths, loss, and fungibility

I have been thinking about loss recently. I have always thought that I treat people as being more fungible than they are used to being treated. I once warned a friend that i was likely to use her up like a paper napkin and dispose of her. I have always understood what a "friend of convenience" meant to me, and treated those people accordingly. I am unable to care for those people unconditionally. The kindness I show them is directly proportional to the value they have to me.

When I was younger, I was as quick to make "friends" with inanimate objects as they were real people. One particular "friend" has stuck with me through the years. He is as valuable to me as most actual friends, and perhaps even some family members. I lost him once and was able to reclaim him only through hard work, brilliant problem solving, and luck. Since then I have been very careful with him, until recently. I was scheduled for a long trip and wanted my friend to come along, but was worried for his safety. I started searching for a substitute on the internet and chanced upon his twin available for sale. When substitute friend came in the post, he looked different, and I still favored my old friend. Quickly, though, the two have become surprisingly interchangeable. Whatever my faults, I have always considered myself a rather loyal person by nature (Cancerian?), but here I was discarding a lifelong friend for someone who just fit nicely into the mold. But am I so different from empaths? One of the empaths in my life said the following about loss:
"One of the saddest things about death is that the world does go on, and you feel like that devalues the person that they were. Eventually even we move on, we fill the void that was left with other people. We have to, it's human nature."
However, she admits that void fillers won't ever be perfect. She remembers particularly her mother losing her parents, how painful that was, and how she was never able to find that type of relationship again, not like she expected to.
"People come in and out of our lives a lot. That's the nature of the beast. For some reason in our culture, only family sticks around, and even then certain family members will drift apart."
Death has never made me sad, maybe I because I've never cared that much about anyone who has died. I have lost people in other ways and been sad, but am I really sad for their loss? Or am I upset that they have left me? Angry at myself for failing to keep them around?

Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Learning to be sociopathic (part 2)

My reply:

I do think that it is possible to learn to be more sociopathic. I frequently have people from the former Eastern Bloc who write to me and tell me that it seems like everyone in their country is sociopathic. I have visited other countries -- Vietnam, Egypt, Israel, the Netherlands, etc. -- that seem more naturally sociopathic than others. I think people who are raised in abusive situations become almost bilingual in the language of ASPD (if not necessarily sociopathy). And of course everyone can be trained to kill, if pushed to it.

I was actually thinking of how we train our mind to think in particular ways.  For example, I went to a graduate school with a particular philosophical bent.  Today I met someone else who went to the same school and caught up on a recent project that has been keeping me very busy.  I was surprised how easy it was to explain it to him.  I would start a sentence and he would finish it for me.  When I started telling him about a follow up project, I only had to begin giving him the premise and he immediately understood everything.  I was so charmed by the exchange because it reminded me of how pervasive that mentality is that we share.

In contrast, recently I have been trying to learn a new method of analysis and so I talk with people who come from a completely different discipline from mine.  It's so interesting hearing the way they see problems -- the things that interest them and their biases and blindspots are so different from my own.  Sometimes I see them making small errors, but it's actually hard to explain to them because they are, after all, blindspots and some people get so attached to a particular viewpoint.

I always tell people sociopathy is really only a competitive advantage just because its incidence is low.  It's like being left handed in certain sports like boxing.  There is nothing inherently better about left handedness over right handedness.  It's just that people are used to defending against the right handed, not the left.

I have also heard from people who have been raised by sociopathic parents who say that they also grow up bilingual in the language of sociopathy.  I think that is ultimately where most people will end up in their lives, at least the smart ones.  It's good to see things from different perspectives.  

Learning to be sociopathic (part 1)

A reader asks:

I’d like to raise a topic that I don’t believe has been discussed in full depths on your blog as of yet. I think it’s fair to say in all probability that ‘sociopaths’ can’t learn how to be ‘empathetic’, but can ‘empaths’ learn how to be ‘sociopathic’?

I first stumbled across your blog around 18 months ago, and I really was mesmerised. I scrolled through the pages until I had read every single blog post. Identifying similarities in the traits you discussed with my own. At last I had found the answer, I’d found who I was; I finally knew why I had always felt so different from other people. And it was that online epiphany that changed my life. The struggle I once had with myself; the internal fight I had every day to decipher which decisions to make was no longer there. I no longer undertook the mundane task of choosing between my impulses and what society had told me was ‘the right thing to do.’

I quickly learnt the advantages of manipulation, and I loved it. I manipulated the people around me, not because I wanted the things that they offered, but because I loved the thrill. The constant excitement of just seeing how much you can get out of people, while still having them worship the ground you walk on. On the occasional days I didn’t have evening company; I’d sit in the nearby orchard alone and think about the things I had accomplished, laughing for hours to myself at how ridiculously blind people really are. As crazy as it sounds, to me at that moment, I was God.

Since that initial epiphany all those months ago, a lot has changed in my life. I’ve achieved everything I could have only dreamt of before. I’ve made a successful business from nothing, climbed to the top of the social ladder, and married the girl I’ve been fascinated by since the age of 12. Yet I can’t help but ask myself, at what cost?

I’m going to be the first here to admit, I was a fake. I honestly don’t even know if ‘sociopaths’ even exist. But from the definitions found on this blog, I knew I wasn’t one, even if I liked to believe I share the same traits. At the time of finding your blog, I was in a low place, I had no friends, and I didn’t have a good job. My life was worthless and meant nothing. Then via reading the posts on this blog and finding fake similarities within myself, I was able to willfully delude myself into the belief that my life could mean something. That I could be who I wanted to be, do anything I wanted to, and most importantly just not care what others thought (which had always been what had held me back from achieving beforehand.) So I consciously learnt how to act like a sociopath, and how to shake off (dilute) the remorse and guilt for my negative actions towards others. It got easier and easier, and day by day I got better at it. It really was exhilarating; the most amazing internal experience of my life. Did I learn how to be a sociopath? But now I sit here wondering if I can ever get back what I lost in that pursuit? Will I ever feel my own empathy as I did before? And if I could, would I even want to?



Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Seduction 102: Eye contact

When I am trying to seduce someone, there are myriad different adjustments I make in my demeanor and manner of speech, but I actually think the effect of all of those combined pale in comparison to one single behavior--sustained eye contact.  I noticed this a couple years ago.  I was sitting across the table from my target but we were talking about the most banal things--hypoglycemic indexes or something far from love/seduction.  To change it around, I decided to just stop talking so much and instead sustain eye contact.  It worked like a charm.  It felt like I was staring into the target's soul, at least that is what I was told after a steamy midafternoon hook-up.

I was reading this seduction coach's blog: "Your Amygdala Doesn't Want You to Find Love." She references the book Linchpin: Are you Indispensable?" by Seth Godin, writing:

Halfway through the book is a chapter entitled The Resistance. The Resistance is Godin's name for your amygdala, also known as the lizard brain. It's not just a concept, it's a real organ -- it's a couple of squishy things sitting atop your spine. Millions of years ago, your lizard brain was responsible for your survival -- it told you to be afraid of predators, to keep a low profile, to eat when you needed sustenance, to ensure your safety at all costs. Back then, it was useful. Today, it still does those things, but it's utterly antiquated, because our social evolution happens far faster than our physical and neurological evolution. Biologically, we are still programmed to operate as though we are living in a 100-person tribe with lots of sabertooth tigers hiding in the bushes, even though that's not even remotely what our world looks like today.

In the working world, the contributions of our lizard brain manifest themselves in a desire to play it safe, to hide at our desks, to do whatever it takes not to attract the attention of our superiors (the amygdala hates attention, as attention is a threat to safety).

And specifically about eye contact:

[L]et's remember that the amygdala is even afraid of eye contact that gets too intense. Godin describes a zoo in Rotterdam that gives out special glasses to visitors so that the gorillas won't think they're being looked in the eye and freak out. Considering that intense eye contact is one of the defining characteristics of a romantic relationship (in fact, psychologist Arthur Arun describes it as perhaps one of only a few prerequisites for love -- full article here), it's easy to see why we get the impulse to run away. "The amygdala resists looking people in the eye, because doing so is threatening and exposes it to risk," Godin writes. "Eye contact, all by itself, is enough to throw your lizard brain into a tizzy. Imagine how scary it must be to set out to do something that will get you noticed, or perhaps even criticized."

It's scary, but there is something about fear that is so compelling!  BBC Science discusses interesting research on the effect of eye contact on people's perception of intimacy:

New York psychologist, Professor Arthur Arun, has been studying the dynamics of what happens when people fall in love. He has shown that the simple act of staring into each other's eyes has a powerful impact.

He asked two complete strangers to reveal to each other intimate details about their lives. This carried on for an hour and a half. The two strangers were then made to stare into each others eyes without talking for four minutes. Afterwards many of his couples confessed to feeling deeply attracted to their opposite number and two of his subjects even married afterwards.

I believe that sustained eye contact is one of those seduction tricks that is so effective that almost every sociopath seems to use it.   I believe that it is so common, in fact, that it is what people are referencing when they make comments about a sociopath's "lizard stare" or ant other observations or judgments related to a sociopath's eyes.

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