Friday, September 21, 2012

Human garbage

I found out recently that one of my old school friends has recently been convicted of possession of child pornography. We were pretty good friends, would travel together for work frequently, but we fell out of touch a year or so after I moved jobs. He was very conservative and straight-laced. I think a part of him envied my insouciance regarding all things formal, social, and work. Because he seemed receptive to, even charmed by the cavalier way that I lived my life, I let him see more and more of my real thoughts about things. And he was an interesting guy. I genuinely enjoyed his friendship.

Of course I don't judge him for the sexual objectification of children. If you're sexually attracted to children, there's little that you can do about it. And there is no evidence he ever acted on it. In fact, it's odd that we criminalize possession of child pornography -- seemingly the only outlet for this inclination that doesn't directly harm children (assuming there is a sufficient amount of child pornography in the world such that we do not need to continue making it anymore). Overall, I am pretty empathetic, which is why I haven't been able to stop thinking about the parallels between me and him. I've been talking nonstop with a mutual friend trying to suss out what exactly happened, looking for but hoping there are not further parallels between us and this idea of living separate public vs. private lives and eventually being outted and ostracized.

It's a raw deal, being a convicted sex offender, and his judge doesn't sound like he's sympathetic. Once he gets out of prison, he is basically human garbage, as far as everyone else is concerned. The Woodsman is a really good film that deals with some of these issues. Also this article:


I would like to point out one other thing: our natural resistance to believing the worst of someone.  And "child molester" is the worst.  It is literally the most horrible thing you can do in our society; morally, the child molester sits above only the child molester/serial killer who rapes and kills children.  That makes an accusation of child molesting an extraordinary claim.  And as the saying goes, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

Imagine that your best friend was accused of stealing office supplies from his company.  Now imagine that he was accused of molesting a neighbor's child.  The first one isn't very hard to believe; almost everyone takes a pen or two home occasionally, and most companies go through printer paper much faster than they produce actual documents.

[Y]ou wouldn't need much evidence to believe [your friend] steals office supplies.  Nor would you care much if he did. . . . 

Now if a kid said that your best friend touched their genitals . . . well, if it's true, and he did it deliberately, you're pretty much going to have to end the friendship.  His life will, of course, be completely destroyed.  And you face knowing that this person you thought was your best friend did something indescribably evil.  You're going to want quite a bit of proof.  And if the action is ambiguous--like maybe his hand accidentally grazed the area in question while doing something quite innocent--you're probably going to err on the side of believing your friend (although you might also supervise your kids more closely when they're around him.)

The problem with this sort of wholesale rejection of a person based on one characteristic is that if you really did have a best friend who was a pedophile, there's really no one that he can talk to about it. My friend thinks that, consequently, my pedophile work friend must have been living a completely double life. Whereas my life, he says, is just "complicated:

"I think you have a lot of confliciting issues, a lot of things pushing and pulling you but a double life involves total deception. Like maybe you could have become something like him if you didn't find people who love and accept you as you are because you would've felt a need to hide it and secret indulgence is the most cancerous."

Because I do have friends like this that know pretty much everything about me, because my family is relatively accepting of how I think and what I choose to get up to, because I have found relatively pro-social ways to indulge and incorporate my predilections into a pretty normal life, am I immune to having my life absolutely collapse and being labeled human garbage? I hope so.

Thursday, September 20, 2012

The sociopath's 'due north'

It is often said that sociopaths have no moral compass. But what if there is no such thing as a moral compass? What if instead, there are multiple ‘due norths’?

That seems to be the unspoken implication of an article i read recently about morality. The article features Jonathan Haidt’s ‘Moral Foundations’ theory, which purports to explain why morality varies among different cultures on the one hand while still showing some striking similarities on the other hand. The theory suggests that there are five universal foundations. Each culture in turn 'selects' a few of those foundations and builds traditions, norms and rituals upon them to construct a commonly shared morality. The five foundations in brief are:

1) Harm/care, related to our long evolution as mammals with attachment systems and an ability to feel (and dislike) the pain of others. This foundation underlies virtues of kindness, gentleness, and nurturing.

2) Fairness/reciprocity, related to the evolutionary process of reciprocal altruism. This foundation generates ideas of justice, rights, and autonomy.

3) Ingroup/loyalty, related to our long history as tribal creatures able to form shifting coalitions. This foundation underlies virtues of patriotism and self-sacrifice for the group. It is active anytime people feel that it's "one for all, and all for one."

4) Authority/respect, shaped by our long primate history of hierarchical social interactions. This foundation underlies virtues of leadership and followership, including deference to legitimate authority and respect for traditions.

5) Purity/sanctity, shaped by the psychology of disgust and contamination. This foundation underlies religious notions of striving to live in an elevated, less carnal, more noble way. It underlies the widespread idea that the body is a temple which can be desecrated by immoral activities and contaminants (an idea not unique to religious traditions).
Using the American political spectrum as a kind of case study, Haidt suggests that liberals tend to value harm/care and fairness above all else, while conservatives emphasize ingroup loyalty, authority and purity. He takes pains to suggest neither value grouping is objectively better than the other, merely different. I agree with him since there's no good evidence to suggest otherwise. What’s more, not only are values and moral biases at least in part, genetically heritable, the particular society a person is born into very often also plays an decisive role. What those two facts make clear is that conscious choice is not a relevant factor when it comes to generating most people’s sense of ‘right’ and ‘wrong.’ As one author puts it, since most people cannot see what comes before (genetics, history and culture), they assume what comes after (their beliefs, biases and morality) are freely chosen. It’s obvious they are not. Moreover, not only are the moral biases that many empaths swear, live and die by not freely chosen, they are not even rational. The evidence coming in from research on morality indicates that emotions, gut reactions, play a leading role in moral judgments and that rationalization of those judgments follow. The human brain is a belief factory, and part of its job is to rationally justify moral feelings.Iif people want to reach a conclusion, they usually find a way to do so that has little to do with anything resembling sound theory or evidence; in short, it has little to do with reality. This partly explains why sociopaths can see the hypocrisy and absurdity that often passes for moral debate.

Which brings us back to the subject. The sociopath is born with much less in the way of moral biases. We don’t need to justify our actions to ourselves, although we may go through the motions of justification with others because we know that’s what they expect and doing so is sometimes useful. More importantly, it’s clear to us in a way that it might not be for most empaths that when it comes to morality, there are as many ‘due norths’ as there are people. Until convincing evidence to the contrary comes in, there’s no reason to fix our so called broken moral compasses. We don’t need no stinkin' moral compass. Reality based thinking works just fine.

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Sociopaths in fiction: Phantastes

But tell me how it is that she could be so beautiful without any heart at all — without any place even for a heart to live in." "I cannot quite tell. . . But the chief thing that makes her beautiful is this: that, although she loves no man, she loves the love of any man; and when she finds one in her power, her desire to bewitch him and gain his love (not for the sake of his love either, but that she may be conscious anew of her own beauty, through the admiration he manifests), makes her very lovely — with a self-destructive beauty, though; for it is that which is constantly wearing her away within, till, at least, the decay will reach her face, and her whole front, when all the lovely mask of nothing will fall to pieces, and she be vanished forever"

--George MacDonald

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Compliance

When I first started learning about statistics, I learned that surveys often reflect a selection bias in that the middle class will gladly sit there and answer questions when asked politely, but for whatever reason the upper and lower classes will not. So what you get with a survey is the opinions of the middle class, and none of the opinions of the upper and lower classes.

I saw a film about the middle class recently while visiting a friend who thought that I would love it. It's called Compliance. It's a fictionalized version of true events. A prankster calls up a fast food establishment (McDonald's in the original story), pretending to be a police officer, and gets the manager of the restaurant to require one of her employees to submit to a strip search, among other things.

I was so glad that I watched this film in the theatre. People were upset. A few groups got up and left. Several times people yelled at the screen, "Stupid!" or "What an idiot!" It was too funny hearing people's reactions. For some reason the audience members seemed to think they were immune to similar acts of stupidity. I think this NY Times article does a good job of describing the phenomenon: 

“It’s the kind of story that’s a blip, a headline you read and go, ‘Wow, that’s crazy,’ ” Mr. Zobel said. “Then you say, ‘That would never happen to me’ and move on. But I was thinking more and more about it, and it seemed to encompass a lot of things about people’s relationship with authority.”
***

To write the ingratiating, threatening lines of the caller — whose appearance and location are revealed about halfway through the film and who’s played by Pat Healy — Mr. Zobel immersed himself in the reality show “Cops.” “I was trying to pick up on the way that cops talk, the way they alternately comfort and assume authority in a situation and also manipulate in certain ways,” he said. “If you watch any one episode of ‘Cops’ you’re like, ‘Wow, they talked that person into doing that crazy thing.’ ”
***
Mr. Zobel has noticed that a common criticism of the film is to write off the characters as implausibly gullible fools. “Everyone plays the part of the hero in their mind and says that they wouldn’t do it,” he said. “But clearly that statistically is not accurate.”

As played by Ms. Dowd, a stage veteran with a long résumé of character roles on screen, Sandra is not simply an idiot nor a clear-cut villain. “When I read it, I knew on a gut level that you could play it in a truthful way,” she said. “I don’t think people want to actually see that part of themselves, it’s too uncomfortable. But for actors, we’re not looking to avoid the feeling, we’re looking to own it.”
***
“Compliance” can certainly be read as an allegory on blind allegiance to authority and the diffusion of responsibility. But Mr. Zobel stressed that the film does not advance a thesis; nor does his cool, controlled approach preclude empathy for his characters. “It all has to be rooted in real people and things,” he said.
***
“It’s been disappointing when I hear that people have problems with the film but don’t want to challenge me,” he said. “It’s intentionally complicated. I’m happy for any sort of conversation.”

After I watched it, I was sort of thrilled -- it was such a good example of the sort of herd mentality that I find so distasteful in most people. Sheeple! A link to this film should be next to the dictionary definition of the word sheeple, because it basically encapsulated everything there is to know or think about what it means to be a sheeple. It reminded me of a comment I saw once on this blog. I wish I could remember it. I feel like I included it in the twitter. It said something like -- "you always say we deserve what we get? how do we deserve it? for trusting people? for expecting the best from people and not expecting to get taken by everyone we meet?"

Of course while I was watching, I was just as disturbed as everyone else, probably more disturbed because I understood all of the horrible implications sooner than they did. I knew what would happen and I knew that the audience members would decry this as being an isolated incident of preying upon idiots, but I knew better. I know how fragile the social status quo is and how desperate people are to maintain that status quo, particularly those that think they benefit the most from it. The middle class! 

They think that they are being unselfish. They are working hard while the poor people don't and the rich people don't and it's upon their shoulders that society is run. And it's also the middle class that will die (or kill) to defend the status quo. Martyrdom in the guise of patriotism or some other nonsense virtue. But they're not behaving unselfishly. Their behavior is motivated by fear and greed. People cling to the facade of predictability that the status quo provides them, distracting them from the possibility that life is meaningless or that they really aren't as good as they had hoped. This represents en masse what sociopaths are always targeting in individuals -- self deception and self justification. I don't mind them being martyrs. It's more this "kill" element that I'm worried about. The "let's all take up arms to defend this oppressive status quo for the good of humanity" mentality is what scares me. This is the fragility in the human mind and the social order that allows for mob mentality

But to answer the person, why do you deserve what you get? When you get taken by a sociopath? Or pranked? If you can't see it, I don't know if I can really explain it to you. But watch the movie and realize that the only people that the prank caller is able to control are the people who are invested in the status quo enough to be afraid what would happen if the status quo was disturbed. It is this fear that the prankster preyed on, and anyone who wasn't similarly invested in maintaining the status quo was magically immune.

By the way, my friend who saw the movie with me says he hates the word "sheeple." He says only stupid people use it. I guess the implication was that I am stupid for having used it. I don't like it that much either because I think it is often misused, like "nonplussed" or certain swear words. But if there was ever an application of that word, it applies to anyone who blindly struggles to maintain the status quo at all costs.    

Monday, September 17, 2012

The outsider

I’ve always known I was an outsider. It started from my very first days in school. I wasn’t able to articulate that then of course, but I knew it in my bones. I alternated between being an observer and playing the role of insider. In the years when I played observer, I’d watch with disgust as the kids who weren’t popular fawned all over the kids who were. I’d see them for the weaklings they were and wonder why they thought belonging mattered so much that they were willing to debase themselves. I couldn’t even conceive of the idea that anyone or any group was important enough for me to humiliate myself for. So I’d watch and I’d observe. I was never bullied or treated like a reject. I watched other outsiders be picked on with interest, but I was invisible until I was ready to change that. After I had observed long enough, I easily became one of the popular kids. But even when I was schmoozing with the jocks and the cheerleaders and the class clowns who everybody loved, even when kids from lower grades wanted my attention, I knew I was not one of them. I’d known that I would never really belong no matter how many people claimed to love hanging out with me. I did however enjoy playing my games with them and with teachers from time to time. From the outside, I made myself an expert on the staff in charge, always with the understanding that my friendly overtures and “good kid” image would be useful in the event any of my games were exposed. That never happened though. I was never caught, never exposed, and never held accountable -- all because I’d taken the time to watch, to take careful note of environment from top to bottom, and then acted accordingly.

I’ve never thought of myself as a predator because I’ve never raped or killed anyone. But looking back, I wonder if the internal understanding of my outsider status combined with the instinctive sense that I had to carefully observe other people in order to both survive and thrive is how the human predator thinks. I’ve always known that I wasn’t one of them, them being most of humanity. This wasn’t a choice; it was a realization. I didn’t know terms like "sociopath" or "psychopath." But I did know that since I wasn’t an “insider,” I had to figure out what to say and how to behave in ways that would guarantee a place among them as their leader. In other words, as a child I knew I had to wear a mask, one that would grant me power. Again, as a child, I could not articulate any of this and did not have the psychological sophistication to comprehend what I was. I just knew this is how the world worked, and how I had to work within it.

If you’re new to this blog and you’re wondering if you are a sociopath or have sociopathic tendencies, ask yourself if this story describes your experience. That’s not to say that thinking or behaving this way as a child and a teenager proves beyond any doubt that you are a sociopath. It could, however, serve as a starting place for further investigation and a validation of how you experienced your childhood.

If you were always on the outside looking in, separated from the other kids and maybe even from your family by a wall of emotions that they seemed to feel effortlessly while you did not; if you could instinctively get a sense of how power flowed between various cliques, between the students and the staff and within your family; if belonging never meant anything to you yet you found you could easily enter and then manipulate any group at will; then maybe, just maybe, you were a tiny wolf in lamb’s wool, a young sociopath without knowing it.
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