For a lot of spiritual/religious people there is the interesting issue of theodicy, the problem of evil: “how we justify the existence of suffering with belief in a God who created us, who loves us, and who providentially manages the world.” I've noticed that people (here in the comments and in my real life) seem to want to give meaning to bad things, typically in one of a few ways: (1) that God is testing them (and so presumably as long as they hang in there, the bad thing gave them a chance to prove themselves and is at worst neutral), (2) that they suffer to make them stronger (so the bad thing is really a blessing in disguise), or (3) they suffer as a testament to the evil of other men (and those men are going to be condemned or punished, so a net negative). This last reason is the most troubling to me. A lot of people come to the comment section with judgment on their tongue and calls for blood for the sociopaths that have wrecked their lives and so deserve untold horrors.. For some of these people, this one experience has come to define their existence.
When religious people think of someone who really had it rough, they frequently will think of Job. Job not only lost everything, all of his wealth, family, friends, he suffered immense physical pain. Job basically had it about as bad as you can get it. But there was no one for Job to hate except God, which he declined to do. As his reward, God gives him double what he had before. Dostoevsky writes in the Brothers Karamazov:
God raises Job again, gives him wealth again. Many years pass by, and he has other children and loves them. But how could he love those new ones when those first children are no more, when he has lost them? Remembering them, how could he be fully happy with those new ones, however dear the new ones might be? But he could, he could. It's the great mystery of human life that old grief passes gradually into quiet, tender joy.
But I have a feeling that for a lot of the victims that come here, having their lives restored wouldn't be nearly enough for them to relinquish their claims to victimhood. In their mind, giving up their hurt would also mean giving up the meaning and sense of purpose they've assigned to that hurt. Giving up their pain would mean giving up their hopes for justice -- that the wrongdoers will eventually suffer commensurate to their misdeeds. These people would rather live a life of eternal victimhood than they would a world in which things eventually get better.
The Brothers Karamazov is one of my favorite books. One of the characters Ivan struggles with this desire for justice:
I
must have justice, or I will destroy myself. And not justice in some remote
infinite time and space, but here on earth, and that I could see myself. I have
believed in it. I want to see it, and if I am dead by then, let me rise again,
for if it all happens without me, it will be too unfair. I want to see with my
own eyes the hind lie down with the lion and the victim rise up and embrace his
murderer. I want to be there when everyone suddenly understands what it has all
been for. All the religions of the world are built on this longing, and I am a
believer.
Apart from the established health benefits of forgiving and letting go of past hurts, Ivan's position is simply inconsistent with reality. There is no perfect justice. To keep clamoring for it suggests a significant break with reality. This is particularly true of justice against people like me, who don't really believe in “right.” Everything just is. If bad things happen to me, I wouldn't recognize them as any sort of retribution for past wrongs. I do not believe life is "fair" that way. I wouldn't actually feel like I was being punished, so what's the point?
Monday, May 6, 2013
Sunday, May 5, 2013
Saturday, May 4, 2013
Self-medication
I've been thinking recently about things that have helped me without me intending or even realizing it. I'll give you an example of what I mean. I used to watch the television show House. He would always ask the person if there was anything about their life that changed. Sometimes the change was a healthier change, like stop drinking so much. But a frequent plot point of the show was that the patient had been unwittingly self-medicating an underlying condition, so when there was a lifestyle change (even to a seemingly more healthy habit), that triggered a flare up of the underlying condition.
There are a lot of things that, albeit indirectly, have helped me immensely in terms of maintaining decent mental health and behavior control:
There are a lot of things that, albeit indirectly, have helped me immensely in terms of maintaining decent mental health and behavior control:
- I'm a musician. I didn't choose to be a musician. Music did not initially appeal to me, nor did I have a natural talent for it. At one point I wanted to stop music studies to focus on other things that I was better at. My parents refused. I went through the motions for a couple more years until I finally achieved a level of fluency that allowed me to understand and later communicate musically, connecting with people in an unmediated way that I had never experienced in normal social interactions. I have since studied music seriously, which was probably the first hard thing I made myself do. I learned a lot then about my limitations and how to incentivize myself or trick myself into doing things I normally would not. I still play. The abstract logic of music is very good for my mental health and the social aspect of music makes me be nicer to people. Music, to me, is humanity's most redeeming feature and has made me interested in the stability of the human race because a destabilized society means no more music generation.
- I have a low sugar diet. A lot of food makes me sick, so I mainly eat the same things over and over again, mostly protein and fiber. This also happens to be the most stable diet for mental health -- no sugar spikes, no twinkie-defense, no need.
- Being a woman. I've never really had my megalomaniac fantasies indulged that much because I'm a woman. Men do not consider women a viable threat and women often look down on other women. So even though I felt like I could do absolutely anything, I never had anyone echoing that sentiment, which has forced me to be a little more realistic than I otherwise may have been. Also experiencing hormal swings has taught me that I can feel things that aren't real (emotional hallucinations). And girls are sort of evil with each other, so I could get my kicks through emotional manipulation and not through other riskier behavior.
- Being Mormon. Yes, there is the moral code, but I think some of the more important things about growing up Mormon for me were the endless primary lessons trying to get us to understand our emotions, the emotions of other people (e.g. he hit me, which made me mad, so I hit him back, and now he's sad). and that we can control our emotions ("turn your frown upside down"). I got the sort of "this is a happy face, this other one is a frowny face" explicit emotional instruction that I feel is largely lacking in a lot of formal education nowadays, with our focus on mathematics and reading. And I had to learn to interact with all ages, races, and backgrounds of people.
- Writing in a journal. My religion encouraged it and my narcissism wanted to document the early life of a genius (actual entries in my childhood journal). The side benefit was that it forced me to contemplate who I was and to realize some of the consequences of my behavior.
- Being smart. There are an infinite number of ways this has affected my life, but for now let me just say that being perceived as being smart allowed me to get away with all sorts of things I otherwise would not have. Teachers gave me the benefit of the doubt, even when I was caught redhanded. I was given all of the social goodwill of a "good kid" simply because I scored so well on tests.
There are other things that I feel lucky for -- a middle class upbringing with its de-emphasis on material goods, self-interested neglectful parents who largely left me alone, a superficial but straightforward culture which largely prized surface attributes and accomplishments that made it easy for me to mimic, and being a middle child who benefited from watching the failures of older siblings and was in a prime position to be a powerbroker, both between siblings and between parents and children.
So when people ask me things like how do I maintain my life like I do, I don't know. The answer is complicated. I don't really expect people to learn a musical instrument or convert to Mormonism. But I don't know what else to say besides, it couldn't hurt?
Friday, May 3, 2013
Free will = not what you think it is
This is an interesting lecture from philosopher and neuroscientist Sam Harris about how the common conception of free will is not scientifically supported. Specifically he debunks two assumptions on the popular conception of free will: (1) we are each free to think and act differently than we did in the past ("you became a police man, but you could have become a firefighter") and (2) we are the conscious source of our thoughts and actions, i.e. we feel like we want to do something so we do that thing. The problem with these assumptions is that "Everything that could possibly constitute your will is either the product of a long chain of prior causes, so you're not responsible for them, or it's the product of randomness, and you're not responsible for that, obviously, or it's some combination of the two."
He has an interesting analogy at the beginning about a man sleeping in a park and getting his face bitten off by an alligator versus a man with the axe. The result is the same, but people hate the man and not the crocodile because wWhat else is a crocodile going to do, coming upon you napping in the park" whereas a man is allegedly in control of his actions.
Another interesting assertion: "Most people imagine that a belief in free will is necessary for morality. . . . The difference between happiness and suffering exists without free will." Still, there are a lot of interesting implications for morality. At 46:00 he talks about how we can make reasonable distinctions between premeditated and impulsive crime given that free will doesn't exist. punishment, morality, etc.
"In specific cases we have already changed our view of evil. Whenever we see the cause of someone's behavior, when we see for instance that a murderer had a brain tumor . . . so as to explain his violent impulses, that person suddenly becomes a victim of biology. Our moral intuitions shift utterly. Now I'm arguing that a brain tumor is just a special case of physical events giving rise to thoughts and actions. If we fully understood the neurophysiology of any murderer's brain, it would be as exculpatory as finding a tumor in it. If we could see how the wrong genes were being relentlessly transcribed, if we could see how his early life experience had sculpted the micro structure in his brain in just such a way as to give rise to violent impulses, the whole conception of placing blame on him would erode."
Thursday, May 2, 2013
What you can learn from sociopaths (part 2)
Continued from the same reader, on the inauthenticity of neurotypicals, the downside of constantly looking to some uncertain future rather than living in the moment, the folly of "setting goals" for oneself, how empath wishful-thinking is a sociopath's playground, how the empath feeds the sociopath his lines, the impermeability of authentic empaths, and what you can learn from sociopaths:
The average neurotypical person is not in touch with his primal desires. He is not authentic. Instead he is concerned with some future benchmark that will bring in societal approval. This constant looking to the future prevents a realistic assessment and experience of the moment. Instead the average neurotypical is constantly attempting to adjust and improve his character to something that will garner a legacy, social proof and close relationships. Look at Facebook and see how many people are making plans for 5 years from now. Then look at how they quote a famous philosopher whose words they have just read. They haven't dwelled on these ideas long enough to comprehend them, let alone internalize them, and yet they think that by merely stating something that they will make it so. Then before they are one step forward into living that quote they are quoting someone else.
It's a character issue, average people constantly adjust their character in a Kentucky windage manner(also resembling the narcissist, albeit less extreme) leaving their authenticity just as muddled as before. They lack a single-minded focus. They are not in touch with their character because they don't know what it should be. They are concerned with the future condition of their character and the acclaim that it will garner. They are not concerned with where it is right now. They don't know what it is because they see character as something to optimize. They don't see it as something that just is--something that grows slowly, methodically and subconsciously through habit. And since they are not interested in where their character is at present they are unlikely to figure out exactly what they truly feel or how they truly are at any given moment. The average neurotypical thinks he can just wish a new and better character into existence. No wonder team-building workshops and self improvement seminars are always booked. This wishfulness and lack of present-mindedness opens up weaknesses in the average person. These weaknesses are ripe for the sociopath with his single-minded drive to exploit.
Character exists in the present, is personal and isn't subject to the reactions of others. Socially brave/adept neurotypicals know this secret and so do sociopaths.
The sociopath uses this character flux against the neurotypical and easily permeates the guard. The sociopath can easily establish a strong rapport. They just compliment the neurotypical on his/her latent gifts, brilliant opinions, great personality, groundedness, and his/her level-headed approach to life (which the sociopath also claims to share). This validation of "I like you because I'm like you" feeds the social-proof need of the neurotypical. The neurotypical leaves the interaction with the sociopath feeling better understood and more validated. To improve the high the sociopath gave him the neurotypical doesn't apply a scientific eye to what just happened. Looking at the rapport realistically would make it lose some of its wonder. This lack of realism accompanied with desire for more validation makes him drop his guard to the sociopath. Once charmed the neurotypical will telegraph what he wants to hear before he asks. The sociopath can just sit back and be coached into the right lines.
If the average person had more authenticity and a stronger sense of self than he wouldn't be as easily placated with the praise and agreement of the sociopath.
Outgoing authentic neurotypicals, or even cantankerous Clint Eastwood-types are not easily impressed by agreement and outside validation. Authentic neurotypicals are adept neurotypicals. I have great respect for them. They are confident and have the sociopath's level of calm. They are authentic both inside and outside. This manifests itself when they are not gun-shy on opinions (the way a sociopath is). Their opinions are uniquely their own and not solely a means to impress. In turn this means when they say something they validate themselves through consistency within themselves. Adept people validate themselves through consistency and authenticity. These kind of people become comfortable enough in conversation to take strong stances and open themselves up to argument and rejection. They let others know where they stand regardless of the chances for rejection. This authenticity is a commodity to them and it works best when they project it. They make what they think strongly apparent to others. They project honesty, authenticity their personal brand into the environment. They attract strong allies and make it clear that dissenters, and sociopaths, should stay out of their way.
So neurotypicals can say what they will of the sociopath's mask but at least the sociopath is internally consistent and that is something they should learn.
The average neurotypical person is not in touch with his primal desires. He is not authentic. Instead he is concerned with some future benchmark that will bring in societal approval. This constant looking to the future prevents a realistic assessment and experience of the moment. Instead the average neurotypical is constantly attempting to adjust and improve his character to something that will garner a legacy, social proof and close relationships. Look at Facebook and see how many people are making plans for 5 years from now. Then look at how they quote a famous philosopher whose words they have just read. They haven't dwelled on these ideas long enough to comprehend them, let alone internalize them, and yet they think that by merely stating something that they will make it so. Then before they are one step forward into living that quote they are quoting someone else.
It's a character issue, average people constantly adjust their character in a Kentucky windage manner(also resembling the narcissist, albeit less extreme) leaving their authenticity just as muddled as before. They lack a single-minded focus. They are not in touch with their character because they don't know what it should be. They are concerned with the future condition of their character and the acclaim that it will garner. They are not concerned with where it is right now. They don't know what it is because they see character as something to optimize. They don't see it as something that just is--something that grows slowly, methodically and subconsciously through habit. And since they are not interested in where their character is at present they are unlikely to figure out exactly what they truly feel or how they truly are at any given moment. The average neurotypical thinks he can just wish a new and better character into existence. No wonder team-building workshops and self improvement seminars are always booked. This wishfulness and lack of present-mindedness opens up weaknesses in the average person. These weaknesses are ripe for the sociopath with his single-minded drive to exploit.
Character exists in the present, is personal and isn't subject to the reactions of others. Socially brave/adept neurotypicals know this secret and so do sociopaths.
The sociopath uses this character flux against the neurotypical and easily permeates the guard. The sociopath can easily establish a strong rapport. They just compliment the neurotypical on his/her latent gifts, brilliant opinions, great personality, groundedness, and his/her level-headed approach to life (which the sociopath also claims to share). This validation of "I like you because I'm like you" feeds the social-proof need of the neurotypical. The neurotypical leaves the interaction with the sociopath feeling better understood and more validated. To improve the high the sociopath gave him the neurotypical doesn't apply a scientific eye to what just happened. Looking at the rapport realistically would make it lose some of its wonder. This lack of realism accompanied with desire for more validation makes him drop his guard to the sociopath. Once charmed the neurotypical will telegraph what he wants to hear before he asks. The sociopath can just sit back and be coached into the right lines.
If the average person had more authenticity and a stronger sense of self than he wouldn't be as easily placated with the praise and agreement of the sociopath.
Outgoing authentic neurotypicals, or even cantankerous Clint Eastwood-types are not easily impressed by agreement and outside validation. Authentic neurotypicals are adept neurotypicals. I have great respect for them. They are confident and have the sociopath's level of calm. They are authentic both inside and outside. This manifests itself when they are not gun-shy on opinions (the way a sociopath is). Their opinions are uniquely their own and not solely a means to impress. In turn this means when they say something they validate themselves through consistency within themselves. Adept people validate themselves through consistency and authenticity. These kind of people become comfortable enough in conversation to take strong stances and open themselves up to argument and rejection. They let others know where they stand regardless of the chances for rejection. This authenticity is a commodity to them and it works best when they project it. They make what they think strongly apparent to others. They project honesty, authenticity their personal brand into the environment. They attract strong allies and make it clear that dissenters, and sociopaths, should stay out of their way.
So neurotypicals can say what they will of the sociopath's mask but at least the sociopath is internally consistent and that is something they should learn.
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