Monday, October 22, 2012

Power


I love power. I'm fascinated by it. The power over self. The power over others. I think the power over self definitely should preceed the power over others. I've learned this over time of studying and practicing it.

It is interesting to read about world leaders in history who have started powerless and who had been thrust into a position of power without being prepared for it. They start off idealists, wanting only the best for mankind, only to be thrown on a downward spiral committing atrocities for what they perceived as the betterment of mankind or their country. I truly understand them.

I can't tell you that I'm partisan to any particular brand of ideology. I have studied all of them deeply. Communism and fascism are the most interesting when it comes to power, because it thrusts absolute power into the hands of a few people. Indeed capitalism does still keep power in the hands of a few, but not as little as you can count on two hands.

We don't have a lot of fascist leaders to compare, as the idea never gained enough popularity worldwide to have any long standing leaders. I have always found fascism to be power given to the impatent. It's guided by insecurity. As usual the theory actually makes a little sense to anyone who can look at it objectively: It's a structure of government that believes that people don't want freedom. It believes the strong should survive and the weak should perish. Individualism should be sacrificed for the state. Quoting Mussolini, "Anti-individualistic, the Fascist conception of life stresses the importance of the State and accepts the individual only in so far as his interests coincide with those of the State...." Absolute power indeed. The fascists' insecurity, however, is written in their ideology from the gate. They reject liberalism and communism for the fact that they blame these ideologies for their losses in the first world war. This was the platform to which Mussolini and Hitler rose to power. It was the insecurity of the masses in these countries that propelled two insecure people into power.

The claim of supremacy of the Aryan race and throwbacks to a ancient civilization of glory were examples of this. The point the finger attitude of hating Jews, liberals, communists, France, etc. were yet another. I wouldn't claim Hitler a sociopath purely for the fact that his entire campaign and life rested on his insecurity and over-emotionalism. I won't delve deep into his life, as I'm not trying to write a biography on him, however those who have should throw a comment up on your opinion.

Communism is a doctrine that thrusts power into the hands of the powerless. I do believe the intentions of a majority of the leaders of communist revolutions to be genuine. Notice I said majority. People like Pol Pot I believe had no intention of furthering anything, but his lust for power and blood. Why do I think so? The foundation of communism is to create a egalitarian society. One where the workers who produce the products are in control. That's why they call it a dictatorship of the proletariat. For the sociopath at the top, this is a terrible idea. How then would they exploit the workers? For the powerless sociopath, this was a wonderful idea. What better way to gain popular support but to say that you would be giving everyone equality, and control over their own labor? I will use Stalin for a example.

If Stalin wasn't a sociopath I will hand over my control to this website to Love Fraud. Hands down. Stalin's rap sheet as a young revolutionary is long: Armed robbery, kidnapping, assassination, counterfeiting, extortion, racketeering, inciting riots, and finally insurrection. Stalin manipulated his way into power. Such as his alliance with Kamenev and Zinoviev, which he used to make sure that Lenin's testament (Which had orders not to let Stalin in power) would never be revealed. After Stalin's death he shifted his alliance to another party member and had them both ejected from the party. Stalin's path while in power was one of a heroin addict with a unlimited supply of junk. He started executing anyone who opposed him. Even to go as far as having a assassin stab Trotsky (Former party member in exile) to death with a ice pick. He had his armies throw themselves into the enemies' guns in WWII resulting in the largest amount of casualties in a country during the world war. He changed history books to the point of erasing people out of pictures who he deemed counter revolutionary. This would mean erasing people's entire existence for going against him. His own son tried to commit suicide after Stalin told him he was a failure. Upon receiving the news he said, "He can't even shoot straight." After being captured by the Germans Stalin refused to trade for him saying that if he did it would be special treatment and not fair to the rest of the "Sons of Russia." Stalin's son then succeeded in running himself into a electric fence in the concentration camp. I believe Stalin was a sociopath given a cause and as he grew more powerful he lost vision of what exactly that cause was. In the end his cause was staying in power. The funny thing is he died with his only possession being his uniform. His power.

Power is raw and uncut. Its lure is subtle, but its taste is explosive. You have a little and you keep wanting more. The more you have it, the more you will excuse using it vicariously. You'll justify your every callous action with vigour. Soon you are nothing but a embodiment of fear and manipulation. You still think you are fighting for what you were in the beginning, but you're only fighting to maintain your position. As all the threats real and perceived mount, you become more awful in your preservation of it. In the end it's easy to lose sight, or is the real intention deep down inside everyone of us power itself? Sometimes it's hard to know. Even for the person fighting it.

Raw

Someone once remarked that I rarely discuss any negative emotions I experience -- joy, elation, success, but rarely sadness. Maybe it's because I frequently forget my negative emotions soon after I've experienced them. Because apart from feelings of disappointment, most of my negative feelings seem to be without context or meaning. If anything, the dominant sensation of them is a sense of meaningless, typically brought on by a lack of sleep or mental exhaustion. I call it feeling "raw." It is a feeling of introspection but without any real thing to introspect upon. The result is a loop of thinking about nothing, which gives me a sensation of nothingness.

Today I feel raw. I knew I would. I have had a murderous travel schedule recently. I've moved and am alone in a new city. Instead of going outside, I spent most of the day watching trite television dramas. I like to watch bad television with unrealistic interpersonal situations in which it feels like the writers are forcing the characters to endure awkward and unnecessary drama as if the writer were an ancient god playing humans like puppets. (For this reason, I have also become a surprising fan of fanfiction.) It reminds me of my own desire to play god and to pit people against each other just to see what sort of effect I might have upon the unsuspecting. This was fine, but one of the main characters died. I had just had a conversation with one of my friends about a mutual friend dying. The death was expected but came unexpectedly soon. We had both planned to visit her before she died, but she slipped away without saying goodbye to anyone, like she did in "real life" at parties, I had joked with my friend. I like to do that at parties too, I thought privately to myself. Maybe I wouldn't mind doing that in "real life" as well. I kept watching the television drama, to see how and why the story arc needed this particular character death, and apparently it was just to throw all of the other characters completely off-kilter and into a spiral of self-destructive depression.

I got up and walked to the (dog) park in my new neighborhood. I have been there often enough to know the perfect place to escape the encroaching shadows of the trees as the seasons change in the northern hemisphere. I listened to music until I just listened to one piece over and over again, from one of my favorite works to play. A small dog came and snuggled up next to me for several minutes. I didn't shoo him away. I took a photo of a crescent moon in blue sky surrounded by streaks of clouds and made it the "wallpaper" for my phone. Maybe seeing it tomorrow (this time) I will remember how it feels to be sad.

Sunday, October 21, 2012

Dehumanization

I realized something about myself the other day. It was how I look at people. I have a tendency to break down someone's humanity one step at a time when I talk to them. Not to them of course. They are blabbering on, talking about their lives, while I sit there and smile. I like to ask people questions. They like to talk about themselves. I'm a networker of sorts.

I have one friend who I'm honest with. This person understands me, and doesn't judge me. So, recently I've been thinking out loud to this person, and it's been helping me understand myself a lot better. After I'm done talking to several people I'll go home and talk to my friend about them. Yesterday I came to a realization of the way I break all the negatives about each person down till I get to the point in the conversation of calling them something. I talk about how weak they are. I hate people who are victims. I talk about their addictive past on drugs. I hate addicts. I talk about their boyfriends or girlfriends controlling them. I hate pushovers. They talk about their meaningless boring lives, unfunny jokes, silly ideas, and their watered down opinions that can be changed at the drop of a hat. The most funny part about all of this is the fact that everybody thinks I'm the nicest and most honest person they've met, and as they are telling me that I'm smiling. Thinking. Scheming.

Next I'll go into how they will be useful for me. What they have that I want, or who they know (who I can get to through them) who has something I want. This is how I work. People are tools. They are sheep looking for a shepherd. Sometimes I dabble with the idea that some people were put on this earth to do me a favor. Everything before and after is just their pitiful meaningless life. It's my inside joke. It's actually what I tell people when they do me a favor and I'm done with them.

"You have now served your purpose."

They laugh. Nobody can tell when I'm serious, or whether I'm joking. Mostly because I think they are a joke and I'm laughing at them most of the time. People can't tell when they are the punchline.

I realize what this is. The disgust I have for most people makes me dehumanize them. When I dehumanize someone, their feelings, emotions, and lives are worthless to me. I have no respect for them at all. And they'll never know. They are nothing more than a tool to be used and thrown away. I know it sounds harsh, but that's how it goes. A lot of people want to be used. They seek us out. They find us and throw themselves on our railway track. I can't stop the train.

This is why sometimes I laugh at the comments page on this blog. It tickles me to see anti-sociopaths. Especially ones that are so scared of sociopaths that they comment anonymously. I meet people exactly like them off this blog all the time in my life day to day. I hear them talk about sociopaths sometimes. How they would never fall for their ploys. How they aren't human. Maybe we have more in common than I thought. I've dehumanized them too, only they don't know that yet.

I don't apologize for who I am, or how I feel about people in general. I never will. I think it's pitiful when people apologize for who they are when it can't be changed. Yes, I despise most of you. No, you will not know it. Yes, you will say you never get manipulated. No, it's not true. You are day to day. Hour to hour. You just justify it to yourselves just like we justify our manipulating you.

Friday, October 19, 2012

Sociopaths in literature: Washington Square

“Do you think it is better to be clever than to be good?”

“Good for what?” asked the Doctor. “You are good for nothing unless you are clever.”

Thursday, October 18, 2012

Outrageous behavior

I can lose my temper sometimes. When I do, it can flip me from normal, even easy going, into someone possessed by a murderous rage. It's not hotheaded, it's coldhearted. It's also predictable, to an extent. Like everyone, it happens more when I am tired, frustrated, or distracted. Through the use of sleeping medications, I force myself to sleep more than my body naturally wants to, partly to keep a more level head when I am actually awake. I also try to avoid situations in which someone may unpredictably provoke me, typically strangers who don't know me or my triggers, and I am careful to schedule in a lot of downtime and alone time in which to decompress. I've gotten so good at this, it's been a while since my last rage attack. And all of the recent ones have been while I am traveling, when I am most likely to be forced to deal with strangers.

The most predictable aspect of these rages, though, is when someone "calls" me on something that I have done "wrong" when I feel like I have done nothing that would warrant their disapproval. I get angry at the flight attendant who tells me to turn off my electronic device, the metro worker who tells me to not use a particular set of stairs, etc. I know why, I feel like it is underhanded, that they are trying to force me to follow a particular set of rules that I think don't acknowledge, for whatever reason.

The particular set of rules, I realized, are called "social exchange rules." From a Wall Street Journal article about why folks throw temper tantrums when these rules are broken (try Googling the title "Big Explosions, Small Reasons" to get past the subscriber only):

Researchers at Duke University, in a yet-to-be-published study, looked for explanations of why people melt down over small things. Their findings suggest we are reacting to a perceived violation of an unwritten yet fundamental rule. It's the old, childhood wail: "It's not fair!"

Researchers call these unwritten laws of behavior "social exchange rules." We're not supposed to be rude or inconsiderate; we are supposed to be polite, fair, honest and caring. Don't cut in line. Drive safely. Clean up after yourself.

"We can't have successful interactions in relationships, mutually beneficial to both people involved, if one person violates these rules," says Mark Leary, professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke and lead author of the study. "And we can't have a beneficial society if we can't trust each other not to lie, not to be unethical, not to watch out for our general well-being."

What makes my losses of temper different, I wondered. Am I the same as these people? I behave civilized, even charmingly. I say please and thank you, wait my turn in line, etc., but largely because this is the best way to get what I want. These are some of the most obvious social rules, whether kept or broken, so I am sure to be seen as a rule follower particularly for these little niceties.

No, when I lose my temper, it's not because I feel like someone has not held up their end of a social bargain, it is because I have been reminded about how powerless I am. The flight attendant has power over me. I try to pretend that we are equals and I could ruin her if I wanted to, but ultimately she could get me kicked off a flight and I would have no recourse. The metro worker looked like God's mistake, but he also has a certain sort of power over me, power to tell me where I can walk and where I can't or else he'll call security. I hate feeling like someone has power over me, hate it so much that I will almost always try to flip the power dynamic in whatever way I can. And apparently get really angry about it when I'm reminded how many people have control over me in countless ways in my daily life. I don't know, it was interesting seeing how the reasons I lose my temper are both similar and different from the way that other people lose their temper. And now I know better how to provoke people (or not) when I choose.

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