Monday, September 24, 2012

Why I Am M.E.

I search articles on sociopaths all the time. Not just for this blog, but to try to examine the dangers lurking beneath my surface. Sometimes I can't even see them. Up to a few years ago I wasn't even aware they existed. I don't expect normal people to understand. Nor do I expect anything but loathing on their part for who I am. This is M.E.

I used to be self destructive. A daily ritual of thrill seeking. My parents would blame everything around me for it. My teachers. My environment. The police. My friends. How much more easier it was for me to continue the blame. I never fooled myself beyond what I need to in order to keep deceit believable. Like burying the truth deep inside. Just on the edge of self deceit. Only to pull the truth out when I just about believed my own bullshit. I reached a boundary.

This is how I've been able to function. Right on the edge. I've almost killed myself several times. Not by my own hand of course. I love myself far too much for that. Just by the consequences of my actions. The funny thing is I hate gambling, but I love risking everything and finding my way out of it. However I've never destroyed myself. Just when I was on the edge I caught myself and got out of it. I reached a boundary.

Through surviving it all I've learned to how to live in my own kind of balance. As cliche as it sounds, I live two lives. One normal. One not so normal. Almost two people. Sociopaths on this site understand this. The comments reflect what would happen if you don't keep the charade going. Sometimes I feel like telling people how I really feel about them and their petty morals. Throwing the mask into the water. I reached a boundary.

The only way I've made it is by recently developing my own boundaries. It isn't moral like a code of ethics, but more of something to survive my own tendencies. Keeping me alive and free. I think this is essential for sociopaths in their development and this blog can help sociopaths achieve that. It's not hard to see where others have failed and why. The horror stories you read of out-of-control sociopaths running amok. It's what has led normals to develop the term, and has led some (maybe hurt by our peers) to come on this site and criticize us. To justify who you are is pointless. They don't understand. They serve their purpose on knowing what they will view you as when you lose yourself. They don't know you. You know yourself. That is your boundary.

If you are to make it it will be because you learn how to keep the mask on. If you are to make it, it will be because you learned from your mistakes and others. If you are to make it, it is because you understand. Understanding is understanding your boundaries.The problem for sociopaths in the past has always been they can't learn from others mistakes because others are not like them. I had the luxury of living among people who are sociopaths. In the environment I lived it was about yourself. About me. And I can always relate to a narcissist.

I wont go into details about my own boundaries because I know better than to expect a sociopath to live by anyone elses boundaries but their own. I know the fact that most of you have no boundaries because I didn't. Some of you are successful. Some of you aren't. Some of you live among society. Some of you are criminals. All of you are trying with everything you can not to have the mask drop for everyone to see what they think is uglyness and you view as the only true beauty. Your boundaries are the mask. Those boundaries is what makes me M.E.

Sunday, September 23, 2012

Sociopathic pig

Unless this pig experiences emotions and used empathy or altruism to decide to save this goat?

Saturday, September 22, 2012

Halo effect

As a partial continuation of yesterday's post, I found this description of how child molesters target their victims and get away with it to be pretty interesting and relevant to all victims and victimizers. From Malcolm Gladwell via the New Yorker:


The successful pedophile does not select his targets arbitrarily. He culls them from a larger pool, testing and probing until he finds the most vulnerable. Clay, for example, first put himself in a place with easy access to children—an elementary school. Then he worked his way through his class. He began by simply asking boys if they wanted to stay after school. “Those who could not do so without parental permission were screened out,” van Dam writes. Children with vigilant parents are too risky. Those who remained were then caressed on the back, first over the shirt and then, if there was no objection from the child, under the shirt. “The child’s response was evaluated by waiting to see what was reported to the parents,” she goes on. “Parents inquiring about this behavior were told by Mr. Clay that he had simply been checking their child for signs of chicken pox. Those children were not targeted further.” The rest were “selected for more contact,” gradually moving below the belt and then to the genitals.

The child molester’s key strategy is one of escalation, desensitizing the target with an ever-expanding touch. In interviews and autobiographies, pedophiles describe their escalation techniques like fly fishermen comparing lures. Consider the child molester van Dam calls Cook:


Some of the little tricks that always work with younger boys are things like always sitting in a sofa, or a chair with big, soft arms if possible. I would sit with my legs well out and my feet flat on the floor. My arms would always be in an “open” position. The younger kids have not developed a “personal space” yet, and when talking with me, will move in very close. If they are showing me something, particularly on paper, it is easy to hold the object in such a way that the child will move in between my legs or even perch on my knee very early on. If the boy sat on my lap, or very close in, leaning against me, I would put my arm around him loosely. As this became a part of our relationship, I would advance to two arms around him, and hold him closer and tighter. . . . Goodbyes would progress from waves, to brief hugs, to kisses on the cheek, to kisses on the mouth in very short order.
Even when confronted, child molesters frequently get away with it because they seem so charming and likable and molestation is such a horrible thing to believe about someone, much less accuse someone of participating in:

The pedophile is often imagined as the dishevelled old man baldly offering candy to preschoolers. But the truth is that most of the time we have no clue what we are dealing with. A fellow-teacher at Mr. Clay’s school, whose son was one of those who complained of being fondled, went directly to Clay after she heard the allegations. “I didn’t do anything to those little boys,” Clay responded. “I’m innocent. . . . Would you and your husband stand beside me if it goes to court?” Of course, they said. People didn’t believe that Clay was a pedophile because people liked Clay—without realizing that Clay was in the business of being likable.

I thought this was an interesting example of the halo effect, the residual goodwill that accompanies one good trait like physical attractiveness or likability and unduly impacts the viewers ability to accurately assess other aspects of the person. The overall impression of the person as likeable blinds the viewer to evidence that the person does bad things. Take as an example Jerry Sandusky -- so successful and relatively powerful in his own slice of the world that he is able to get away with one of the most unthinkable crimes for decades.

What I don't understand is, how did humans evolve to be this way in the first place? Shortcut thinking? First impressions are actually more accurate than they are inaccurate? Not like I'm complaining. Obviously I have benefited from being able to fly "under the halo" myself.

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.
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