“Excitement and depression, fortune and misfortune, pleasure and pain are storms in a tiny private, shell-bound realm – which we take to be the whole of existence. Yet we can break out of this shell and enter a new world.”-- Eknath Easwaran
It's a good question. I don't think we can do it in normal ways, we just have to figure out what works for us. Have you ever read the Helen Keller story? Very fascinating. I remember being amazed when I first read it, just thinking about this girl who had no frame of reference for anything that we consider part of the "real world" other than touch. I found it so curious that she was smart, was able to spell words, but was just unable to understand that the words applied to different objects, that there was such thing as a word. I had first heard the story when I was young and i remember most of my young colleagues seemed less impressed by her. I felt that they didn't really understand that someone could have an entirely different existence than theirs, even in the same world, the same city, the same family even. I think I had my own Helen Keller epiphany-moment when I read her story. Before, I had thought of everyone as being essentially robots existing in a world solely for my interactions and my benefit. The story was such a detailed account of another person and I remember it making me think: different people exist, just like different animals exist, and people can be as different from each other as a fish from a llama or a cow from a parrot. Of course I still thought that most of the people around me were the same-ish, like dolphins (including me, when really i turned out to be a shark). But I think this was a good way to learn the lesson because when I did discover I was a shark, I wasn't horrified. I just thought i was a natural variant, had an entirely different world view from most, like Helen Keller.
I had already learned not to let who I was interfere with who I wanted to become. I had already made the decision not to be defined by my race or my height or my age or my gender or my intellect or anything else. That may sound funny because I refer to myself as a sociopath and have this blog all about what it is like to be a sociopath. I may use the term sociopath as shorthand for the type of person I am, the particular genus and species of human animal, but I do not let it define me. I do what I want to do. I realize that my world, my experiences, my relationships, my love is not the same as anyone else's love, but I have all of those things. Maybe other people want to say, "poor you" (or "you monster," depending on their inclinations), "you'll never have what I have." I just want to say to those people, "yeah, you're right. Thanks for pointing out the obvious." So let them sit at holiday tables eating roast beef while I am eating tofurkey, let them have their emotional dramas and outpourings while I remain blissfully unaffected. I have no shame in who I am, and frankly I find it offensive when people ask, "do you ever wish you were different?" Can you imagine asking that of someone of a different race? or a different gender? or even someone with a disability? I should answer, "yes I wish I was different, I wish I had the ability to completely ignore inane comments."
But to more specifically answer your earlier question, I don't suffer from depression, and I don't even really suffer from loneliness, thanks to a large circle of family and friends. I actually find some meaning and joy in playing my "part" in society. I just think of it as every day is someone else's birthday, so I have to be on my best behavior and be nice to them. I try to get lost in pleasing other people, making them happy, making their world better. It is actually rewarding, and reinforces and maintains personal ties (which I appreciate), and indulges my desire for power as well. I have tried living a lot of different ways, but I have been happiest and most stable when I have been trying to have an others-centered life rather than a self-centered life. I'm not saying that the latter is any sort of "wrong" or a "bad choice," that is just what has worked for me.
Jim Fallon recently made a disquieting discovery: A member of his family has some of the biological traits of a psychopathic killer.The moral of this story to me is be careful how much you preach about genetic testing and forced imprisonment of sociopaths because you may turn out to be one of us.
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Three years ago, as part of a personal project to assess his family's risk of developing Alzheimer's disease, Dr. Fallon collected brain scans and DNA samples from himself and seven relatives. At a barbecue soon thereafter, Dr. Fallon's mother casually mentioned something he had been unaware of: His late father's lineage was drenched in blood.
An early ancestor, Thomas Cornell, was hanged in 1673 for murdering his mother. That was one of the first recorded acts of matricide in the Colonies. Seven other possible killers later emerged in the family tree. The most notorious was distant cousin Lizzie Borden of Fall River, Mass. In 1892, she was accused and then controversially acquitted of killing her father and stepmother with an ax.
As a lark intended to enliven family get-togethers, Dr. Fallon decided to analyze the data from the Alzheimer's project to see whether anyone in his family matched the profiles of killers he had studied. His initial subjects included himself, his three brothers, his wife, and the couple's two daughters and son.
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To his surprise, Dr. Fallon found that the analysis of his own brain showed he had inherited certain high-risk forms of MAOA and other various aggression-and violence-related genes.
"I'm the one who looks most like a serial killer," he says. "It's disturbing."
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"I'm still in balance, but I seem to have low emotional engagement," says Dr. Fallon, noting that the brains of many cold-blooded murderers reveal a similar picture.
Dr. Fallon thinks that one vital factor may have prevented him from becoming a killer. "I had a charmed childhood," he says. "But if I'd been mistreated as a child, who knows what might have happened?"
I have been thinking recently about whether lack of altruism is a sociopathic, but not necessarily sociopath-specific trait. I have also been thinking about whether, if altruism is the result of an excessive amount of empathy, is cruelty necessarily the result of too little empathy?Then again, I do care about my friends and all. I'm not a hundred percent sure, but I think I feel a little bad when I walk over someone's heart. And I never walk over someone with the sole intention of hurting them. So I am definitely not a sociopath. Yet, if your blog is anything to go by, then I can't be too far from being a sociopath (a mild sociopath, of course).My response:
Yeah, I was just going to say, not all sociopaths are out there hurting people just to hurt them. What does that even mean? That you gain pleasure from their pain? I never hurt people to watch them suffer. I do it for my own purposes, to get in a better position, etc. I feel like a good analogy is the stock market. When you short trade stocks you are basically doing a wealth transfer from you to whomever you are buying low from and selling high to. It seems like you would have to be a sociopath to engage in that sort of business, no? But people do it all the time. They just probably don't like to admit that that is what they are doing. Same thing in the emotional/social realm. You make alliances, you may consider certain people "on your team," in a way of self-insuring should disaster strike. But people who are not on your team are people who will either gain from your loss or vice versa. That's just the way of things in this mostly zero sum game.Is my worldview cruel? Does seeing the bulk, if not the entirety, of human relations as a zero sum game part of what makes me a sociopath? Or am I just seeing the world clearly?