Saturday, October 27, 2012

Sociopaths in poetry


On the nature of understanding
Say you hoped to
tame something
wild and stayed
calm and inched up
day by day. Or even
not tame it but
meet it halfway.
Things went along.
You made progress,
understanding
it would be a
lengthy process,
sensing changes
in your hair and nails. So it’s
strange when it
attacks: you thought
you had a deal.

Kay Ryan, The New Yorker July 25, 2011


Friday, October 26, 2012

Famous sociopaths: Louise Nevelson


American sculptress Louise Nevelson (1899-1988): "I knew I was going to become somebody very special. No . . . that I was somebody very special." The article notes that the actress who was playing Nevelson was able to "suggest Nevelson's chilliness as much as her charm, her dead heart as well as the life of her mind."

Thursday, October 25, 2012

Sociopaths the conspiracy theory

From a reader:


It's been a long time. There's a lot going on in my life right now, and I realized that I kind of missed your blog.

I was looking through some articles on the Tikkun Magazine website, and I was surprised to see no less than two articles about the psychopathic percent of the population on the front page. I'm not sure what your perspective would be, so I suggest you take a look for yourself:

http://www.tikkun.org/nextgen/sociopaths-rule

http://www.tikkun.org/nextgen/dealing-with-psychopaths

It was an interesting experience to read them for me. While the second article, at least, is less alarmist than most such narratives, the mention of 'containing' psychopathic behavior, as opposed, presumably, to working with it, coming up over and over again is rather telling. It seems that in both articles antisocial thinking is something not attributed to people the reader may know, but to some mysterious class of demi-human way out there in the economic wilderness. Apparently, both the article-writers seem to be thinking that while possibly 1% of the population has antisocial tendencies, those tendencies couldn't possibly be attributed to the reader or anyone the reader knows personally and has contact with on a regular basis. It's subtle, but I found it intriguing.

I think this sort of thing has become a kind of elephant in the room in society at large. There's a lot of talk about sociopaths, but not really much examination of them as ordinary citizens. Do you get an impression like that?


Both articles are interesting in different ways. The first one seems to equate sociopathy with a list of social ills, without much proof. The second is more thoughtful but is also alarmingly alarmist. But I agree that sociopathic traits are not exclusive to sociopaths.

Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Sociopath quotes: zombies

Do you ever feel as if the world is full of zombies? Mindless people who merely obey the dictates of society and their own emotions, showing no sign of rationality, letting others decide who and what they’re going to be in this life, regurgitating moral nostrums as if they were pearls of the highest wisdom, attacking those who are not like them and wanting desperately to turn all outsiders into exact replicas of themselves... ?

“...The purpose of man's life...is to become an abject zombie who serves a purpose he does not know, for reasons he is not to question.”

-- Ayn Rand

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Famous sociopaths: Mitt Romney?

I was reading a profile about Mitt Romney in the New Yorker. One of the themes was how he doesn't seem to have principles or emotions but how he defines himself as being just an efficiency machine? Or that's sort of what I got from it:

  • Private equity is business on steroids: seek efficiency and economic return, not large social goals (unless you think those are large social goals). 
  • “Most religions come to believe in the Zeus model of God. He was outside the universe and created everything. Latter-Day Saints believe that God is in the universe and his power comes from understanding the rules of the universe perfectly. Everything we learn makes us more like God. The impetus to learn is so strong because it helps us to become more like God.”
  • Kim Clark says that Romney was “very smart, but also great with senior executives, really capable of developing relationships with them. You have to be really good on your feet, good at understanding what people’s concerns are and how they think.”
  • "Mitt is so persuasive. He could get rich selling used bubble gum.
  • Romney has done a lot of meeting and a lot of selling during his rise in business and politics, but mainly indoors, in small groups of peers. He’s as adept in that setting as he is unnatural talking to a big crowd. Unlike most candidates, he did not communicate a sense either of being too restless to give you his full attention or of having to establish that he is the alpha and you the beta. He was direct and pleasant and engaged. His voice sounded husky, rather than flat. His gestures seemed spontaneous, not staged.
  • “Value, in the way I’ve defined it, is the score that shows up on the scoreboard,” he said. “It’s not the objective. It’s not the strategy. 

If that doesn't convince you, this New Yorker article titled "Romney Sets New Personal Best for Faking Empathy"?


“Mitt Romney has the facial expressions of someone who cares about me.”

Moments after the debate, Mr. Romney pronounced himself “thoroughly drained” by the forced display of humanity.

“This empathy stuff is exhausting,” he told reporters. “On Day One, it’s going to stop.”


I actually don't think that Romney is a sociopath, although it's possible. I do think it's funny that people seem to value people who have empathy -- would rather have those people in stressful situations making emotional decisions rather than a sociopath? Or maybe people are actually aware and ok with the fact that politicians tend to be more sociopathic than non?
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