Wednesday, November 7, 2012

Truly smart?

A reader who identifies as sociopath sent me this passage from a teenage journal:

What makes someone smart, truly smart, in my opinion is someone who is self-aware. Someone who recognizes their place in the world and who recognizes the place of others. They see things as they are. A smart person realizes they're smart but can fool the rest of the world into believing that they are just like them. By doing so, they can feed off and learn from these people. They do not need to harm them but merely take in as much as they can in order to survive in the best, most logical, and beneficial way. I guess it's like using resources, but a different kind of resources, not tangible ones that anybody can see or use, and they are able to do so without a soul figuring out what they are doing. That is being smart.



Tuesday, November 6, 2012

Why we need wolves

This was a fascinating NY Times article entitled "Why the Beaver Should Thank the Wolf" that is worth reading in its entirety, but here is the first part:


THIS month, a group of environmental nonprofits said they would challenge the federal government’s removal of Endangered Species Act protections for wolves in Wyoming. Since there are only about 328 wolves in a state with a historic blood thirst for the hides of these top predators, the nonprofits are probably right that lacking protection, Wyoming wolves are toast.

Many Americans, even as they view the extermination of a species as morally anathema, struggle to grasp the tangible effects of the loss of wolves. It turns out that, far from being freeloaders on the top of the food chain, wolves have a powerful effect on the well-being of the ecosystems around them — from the survival of trees and riverbank vegetation to, perhaps surprisingly, the health of the populations of their prey.

An example of this can be found in Wyoming’s Yellowstone National Park, where wolves were virtually wiped out in the 1920s and reintroduced in the ’90s. Since the wolves have come back, scientists have noted an unexpected improvement in many of the park’s degraded stream areas.

Stands of aspen and other native vegetation, once decimated by overgrazing, are now growing up along the banks. This may have something to do with changing fire patterns, but it is also probably because elk and other browsing animals behave differently when wolves are around. Instead of eating greenery down to the soil, they take a bite or two, look up to check for threats, and keep moving. The greenery can grow tall enough to reproduce.

Beavers, despite being on the wolf’s menu, also benefit when their predators are around. The healthy vegetation encouraged by the presence of wolves provides food and shelter to beavers. Beavers in turn go on to create dams that help keep rivers clean and lessen the effects of drought. Beaver activity also spreads a welcome mat for thronging biodiversity. Bugs, amphibians, fish, birds and small mammals find the water around dams to be an ideal habitat.

So the beavers keep the rivers from drying up while, at the same time, healthy vegetation keeps the rivers from flooding, and all this biological interaction helps maintain rich soil that better sequesters carbon — that stuff we want to get out of the atmosphere and back into the ground. In other words, by helping to maintain a healthy ecosystem, wolves are connected to climate change: without them, these landscapes would be more vulnerable to the effects of those big weather events we will increasingly experience as the planet warms.

Scientists call this sequence of impacts down the food chain a “trophic cascade.” The wolf is connected to the elk is connected to the aspen is connected to the beaver. Keeping these connections going ensures healthy, functioning ecosystems, which in turn support human life.


I was reading one of the recent comments: "whist I'm all in favour of integrating such people into society as well as possible, I have serious concerns about situations were sociopaths have this kind of power over others." The thing is that sociopaths have always been a part of society. There is no need to integrate us. We are as integrated as any group can be perhaps, scattered as we are throughout every continent and culture, every religion or political group, every family and tribe. People may wonder what our net effect is on society when you add us all up together. I also wonder that. But I think it's not crazy to suggest that, just like any predator, although we may have a somewhat negative effect in the micro, our effect on the larger ecosystem is overall positive.

Monday, November 5, 2012

Loyalty

I've said before that I use principles of economic efficiency to substitute for my pygmy moral compass. For interpersonal relationships, though, efficiency doesn't work as well. Instead I rely on loyalty. I am fiercely loyal. I am quick to adopt someone else's reality for the sake of the relationship. I never blame things on the other person when something goes wrong. I always assume that there was something I could have done better. It's why I can seem so devoted, a perfect mate. When the other person criticizes me, I am not offended, rather I gratefully welcome the feedback as additional information on which to base my behavior. I'm only as good as the information I receive.

I will, however, get very angry when I am not criticized, but rather rejected. It is one thing to say that I made a bad decision, or that you don't like it when I make certain jokes, or whatever it is that you find offensive about my behavior. It is quite another thing to think that I am a bad person, that you are disgusted with me, or appalled, or can't understand why I could ever think that my behavior was acceptable. If your feelings about me change from occasional annoyance or hurt to blanket disapproval, then you are no longer on my team. If you are no longer on my team, then there is nothing insulating you from my anger. And I am angry. If you have rejected who I am, I will have to fight back a white hot feeling of rage. I lose control in the rage.

The people who are able to talk me down from the rage and make things better, who watch after me and make sure I don't hurt myself or others -- those people are my inner circle. I don't really wish for fame, fortune, success, or whatever. But I do sometimes wish I could do more for those who show the same amount of loyalty to me that I show to them.

Sunday, November 4, 2012

Perspectives on power

An "uber empath" friend writes:
I have been reading your sociopath blog and read the recent entry on power. I have a couple of thoughts.

When I was reading it, it made me think of a scene in Lords of the Rings. It's where Frodo and Sam end up "visiting" the wood elves. There is a scene with Galadriel, the queen of the wood elves. She is tested when Frodo offers to place the One Ring (the Ring of Power) in her keeping. In response to his offer, she presents an image of herself corrupted by the ring declaring; "And now it comes to it at last. You will give me the One Ring freely! In place of the Dark Lord you will set up a Queen. And I shall not be dark, but beautiful and terrible as the Morning and the Night. Fair as the Sea and the Sun and the Snow upon the Mountain...all shall love me and despair!" But then, after appearing to Frodo both beautiful and terrible to behold, she fades and once again becomes Galadriel. Recalling the ambitions that had once brought her to Middle-earth, she declares, "I pass the test," and refuses the Ring, accepting her fate of diminishing (as the time of the dominion of men had come) and returning at last to Valinor (the Elf version of Valhalla).
You called me a super-empath once, but if I had power, this is kind of how I would envision myself. A seemingly benevolent but somewhat dark queen, who would demand that everyone love and be kind to one another (or else, of course, off with their heads!!).

With regard to your comments about power and communism/facism, I say this. The history of the world is essentially that of "the People," "the Fuhrer" and "the Poet." The People are the sheep. In order to function, they need to have the Fuhrer in place to direct them and tell them how to live their lives. Dictators and sociopaths achieve power because the People give it to them. They NEED the Fuhrer, for they secretly suspect they are incapable of living without him/her. Occasionally in history, a Poet figure comes along (Socrates, Jesus of Nazareth, etc. etc.). The Poet presents the People with the possibility of human freedom. He or she is initially greeted with enthusiasm and some of the People may even begin to embrace their freedom. But eventually, always, the People panic and reject the possibility of freedom. Then they turn on the Poet and destroy him/her, or turn the Poet over to the Fuhrer to imprison/destroy.

What do you think?

Saturday, November 3, 2012

Sociopath quotes: fitting in

Sane people did what their neighbors did, so that if any lunatics were at large, one might know and avoid them.

-- George Eliot, Middlemarch
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