Monday, September 30, 2013

The Gervais Principle (part 3)

A reader sent me a link to the latest edition of the Gervais Principle. From the reader:

Have you read the final installment of the Gervais Principle? You mentioned the previous installments in older posts, but the last section is much more insightful and relevant to sociopaths than the previous ones. 

Venkat basically describes sociopaths as ultimate social nihilists that progressively learn that every single ideal or moral calculus that gives meaning to human existence as social constructs. In the end, sociopaths find immense freedom in a world that has no meaning except what they create or choose to acknowledge. This means that sociopaths can still coexist peacefully (social contracts), both with empaths and other socios. I identify very strongly with this nihilism, and I have frequently mentioned the idea of an absent god before I read the Gervais Principle, but I also feel that you do not identify very strongly with this description, given your adherence to the tenets of Mormonism, unless I am misinterpreting you. What are your thoughts? 

Here's what I replied (makes the most sense if you read the article first):

Thanks for this! I enjoyed it a lot. I especially liked this part:

"The mask-ripping process itself becomes revealed as an act within the last theater of social reality, the one within which at least manipulating social realities seems to be a meaningful process in some meta-sense. Game design with good and evil behaviors."
I feel like a lot of sociopaths stop at that stage for a while. They give me a hard time for revealing their methods, as if playing a game was any less meaningless than everything the empaths are up to.

I think it is that sort of nihilism that allowed me to write the book and be so flippant about it and possible ramifications. Some people think my zen attitude is from my mormonism. Maybe. It is true that if you believe in religion then a lot of things in life just don't matter much. But if you don't believe in religion, then for sure nothing in life matters much. So that's where I sort of am on Mormonism. I'd like to think that I will continue to exist forever and be a god. If that doesn't work out, oh well, there's really no such thing as "wasting time" doing one thing over another. But I do think my conception of God is really different from most people's, including most Mormons. The Otherwise Occupied God, or the God who might care about us but has the perspective to not really be as caught up as we think he might be in what all we get up to (or he cares about different things than we think).

The article's most basic argument, in reference to the emphasis that the "losers" place on social interactions and the accompanying emotional checks and balances:

But by their very nature, emotions overweight social behavior over material substance. Having a $100 bill thrown contemptuously at you hurts. Being politely handed $10 feels good. The Loser mind, predictably, sees the first act as a slight and seeks revenge, and the second act as nice and seeks to repay it.

We saw an example from the The Office last time. In the sales-commissions episode we find that for the support staff, sharing in the salespeople’s commissions and being thrown a thank-you party are emotionally equivalent. Both heal the emotional rift, but one leaves the salespeople vastly better off.

The Sociopath as Priest

It is this strangely incomplete calculus that creates the shifting Loser world of rifts and alliances. By operating with a more complete calculus, Sociopaths are  able to manipulate this world through the divide-and-conquer mechanisms.  The result is that the Losers end up blaming each other for their losses, seek collective emotional resolution, and fail to adequately address the balance sheet of material rewards and losses.

To succeed, this strategy requires that Losers not look too closely at the non-emotional books. This is why, as we saw last time, divide-and-conquer is the most effective means for dealing with them, since it naturally creates emotional drama that keeps them busy while they are being manipulated.

Sociopaths encourage this mode of processing by framing their own contributions to betrayal situations as necessary and inevitable. They also carefully avoid contributing to the emotional texture of unfolding events, otherwise their roles might come under scrutiny by being included in the emotional computations.

For theatrically skilled Sociopaths, other non-vanilla affects are possible. “Divine anger” (Jan),  ”charming but firm elder” (Jo Bennett) and “unpredictable demigod” (Robert California) are examples. These framing affects are designed to shape outcomes without direct participation, in ways that cannot be achieved by neutral low-reactor affects.
***

These non-vanilla personalities operate by adding to, or subtracting from, the net emotional energy available to go around in Loser emotional calculations, but without intimate involvement. Sociopaths basically create the emotional boundary conditions of Loser life in simple or complex ways, depending on their skill level.
***
Guilt is the one emotion that Losers cannot always resolve for themselves, since it sometimes requires quantities of forgiveness that mere humans cannot dispense, but priests can, as reserve bankers of the fiat currencies of Loser emotional life.

Other good nuggets:

  • manufacturing fake realities is very hard. But subtractive simplification of reality is much easier, and yields just as much power.
  • Sociopaths exercise agency on behalf of others. They do not grab power. Power is simply ceded to them.
  • Sociopathy is not about ripping off a specific mask from the face of social reality. It is about recognizing that there are no social realities. There are only masks.  Social realities exist as a hierarchy of increasingly sophisticated and specialized fictions for those predisposed to believe that there is something special about the human condition, which sets our realities apart from the rest of the universe.
  • There is, to the Sociopath, only one reality governing everything from quarks to galaxies. Humans have no special place within it. Any idea predicated on the special status of the human — such as justice, fairness, equality, talent — is raw material for a theater of mediated realities 
  • Non-Sociopaths dimly recognize the nature of the free Sociopath world through their own categories: “moral hazard” and “principal-agent problem.”  They vaguely sense that the realities being presented to them are bullshit: things said by people who are not lying so much as indifferent to whether or not they are telling the truth. Sociopath freedom of speech is the freedom to bullshit: they are bullshit artists in the truest sense of the phrase.
  • Non-Sociopaths, as Jack Nicholson correctly argued, really cannot handle the truth. . . . The truth of values as crayons in the pockets of unsupervised Sociopaths. The truth of the non-centrality of humans in the larger scheme of things.
  • When these truths are recognized, internalized and turned into default ways of seeing the world, creative-destruction becomes merely the act of living free, not a divinely ordained imperative or a primal urge.  Creative destruction is not a script, but the absence of scripts. The freedom of Sociopaths is the same as the freedom of non-human animals. Those who view it as base merely provide yet another opportunity for Sociopaths to create non-base fictions for them to inhabit.
  • Morality becomes a matter of expressing fundamental dispositions rather than respecting social values. Kindness or cruelty, freely expressed. Those who are amused by suffering use their powers to cause it. Those who enjoy watching happiness theaters, create them through detached benevolence.

Sunday, September 29, 2013

Famous sociopaths: Wernher von Braun

Nazi or opportunist? A reader sent me this video on top rocket scientist Wernher von Braun, widely credited for getting the U.S. to the moon, but at what cost? The reader writes:

skip to 1:29 in --

Charming, clever guy who did what it took to make his dream comes true.  A bit like Steve Jobs.



The video has a charming impression from one of von Braun's contemporaries about what his personality was like: "Here was the man who had created those bombs. He attacked my house. I was not a friend of his. Right from the start I had to resist becoming a close friend of his because he was charming. He could charm the pants off anyone and he was a very clever man. You knew that right away. I had tremendous arguments with him because he maintained that he was only a scientist, that he was not a Nazi and I said, 'That's nonsense, you belonged to the Nazi party.'" Apparently President Eisenhower was one of the few that did not succumb to von Braun's charms, but that did not stop von Braun from manipulating the U.S. Congress to fully fund his space/moon pursuits by preying on the public's fears of the Russian threat.

Chameleon, liar, non-political opportunist? Either way, it's an interesting example of someone who was able to navigate the politics, the mob sentiment (both Nazi Germany and the cold war) and manage to manipulate people who could not understand the importance of his work by using that age old tactic -- playing upon peoples' fears.

If he was a sociopath, would he qualify as a "good" or a "evil" one?

Saturday, September 28, 2013

Seeing the good in the bad

I liked this reader comment on what it was like to be the victim of "ruining":

Calm down on the ruining part. My worldview was totally twisted two years ago by a socioblabath. After the initial shock I was recovering for months. I that I could never experience joy again. In my following psychological quest for answers I became aware of things I was obnoxious to before. Before the path crossed my yellow brick road, my main concern were my looks. I made myself up before an exam as if I was going to Fashion Week. Histrionic. Promiscuous. Superficial. Attention-craving. Self-centered. The only thing I like about my former self that I, even then, felt happiest when making others feel good about themselves and their lives. But I was so busy trying to be a Kim Kardashian, that I hardly took the time to do so. At 24 I was behaving like a deluded child. Then I was hypnotized and drained by that 'thing'. In hindsight, what really broke my heart is that I failed to charm him. I thought I was a bonus in his life. I thought he was lucky to have me be infatuated by him. But the only time he felt good with me was in the end. When I looked at him in pure shock for witnessing the manifestation of evil. You could tell he loved that. And now, two years later? I appreciate my friends and family as never before, I hardly wear make up and it looks like I'm graduating cum laude for my masters. Instead of plotting my new headtwirling look, I'm busy helping my retired neighbours get money from their insurance company for their sinking floor. What I'm trying to say is: because of that asshole I realized I was heading in the wrong direction. Ruined? 

Another along similar lines:

I second this. My life too was enhanced by a psychopath. At first I thought he was my ideal man - tall, dark, handsome, rich and charming. I soon found out he was a self-obsessed user. These days I know a thing or two about evaluating a person's character quickly.

I am happier and more joyful than I have ever been because I learned first-hand that all that glisters is not gold. I have re-aligned my values and my life is richer. Plus I can spot an asshole at a thousand paces. Wealth per se no longer impresses me. It's all been quite freeing. I wish I'd met him sooner.

And a sociopath's appreciation of being called out:

Having someone else call you out on your bullshit is beautiful too. The beauty lies in the display of ability and intelligence, whether it's my successful lie or the other person's successful perception of my lie. Seeing someone else be beautiful does not diminish my appreciation of its beauty.

Friday, September 27, 2013

Conscientiousness

I thought this was an interesting sentiment that supported a concept that I have long found helpful in terms of directing your behavior for both sociopaths and non -- imagining the effects of your behavior on your future self.

The tendency to live in the here and now, and the failure to think through the delayed consequences of behavior, is one of the strongest individual-level correlates of delinquency. We tested the hypothesis that this correlation results from a limited ability to imagine one’s self in the future, which leads to opting for immediate gratification. Strengthening the vividness of the future self should therefore reduce involvement in delinquency. We tested and found support for this hypothesis in two studies. In Study 1, compared with participants in a control condition, those who wrote a letter to their future self were less inclined to make delinquent choices. In Study 2, participants who interacted with a realistic digital version of their future, age-progressed self in a virtual environment were less likely than control participants to cheat on a subsequent task.

This supports sociopath researcher Stephanie Mullins-Sweatt's assertion that the main personality trait separating successful sociopaths from the less functioning ones is conscientiousness, or an awareness of and distaste for unpleasant future consequences. In other words, a dynamic version of a cost-benefit analysis. As one sociopathic reader described it:

the only reason i don't act upon my urges is the knowledge of reprisal. i don't necessarily fear consequence; i simply acknowledge it as being more inconvenient than some short-lived gratification. as a matter of fact, the inconvenience of consequences is the only thing that holds me back from my desires. the wants themselves run the gamut of importance... sleeping with a woman who isn't my wife is not ethically or socially objectionable to me. overall, the impact on the world because of 'cheating' is incredibly minimal. the risk-analysis of temporary physical enjoyment Vs long-term stability is more effective in decision making than any kind of ethics. refusing to slow down at an intersection, when i have the right-of-way and someone pulls out in front of me, is not ethically or socially objectionable to me. however, going to jail and being locked in a cage seems especially repugnant- not to mention the hassle of repairing my vehicle.

Thursday, September 26, 2013

Pushback (part 2)

The reader responds:

Thank you for your response, but I think your missing the gist of what I was saying. First off, who says being sexually attracted to the same sex is wrong? That's merely a matter of opinion, so there is no factuality involved in that idea. Secondly, if you read carefully what I wrote you'd see that I never said that thoughts are more important than actions. I said that the only thing that really matters/matters most of all in the end is INTENT and even alleged sociopaths who claim to be devoid of conscience and ignorant of others' feelings have that. Thoughts are the mid-way between actions and intent. One acquires intent, then thinks about how to manifest it and follows through with acting on thoughts bred of intent. What you think or do is subservient to what you are actually trying or intending to think or do. It's a person's intent that shows them for what they really are. Actions fail, thoughts deviate, intent remains from begining till end and is therefore, most relevant and important. Intend-think-act...intentions come first and are the basis for all else. They can be hidden from others, falsely projected as something they are not or used as a justification for any lame thing done but a person knows what they mean to do, even a sociopath. In regards to Mormonism, I'm no expert at all but I have grasped the basic beliefs of the religion. As I said, I was raised in the church, but I am no longer an active member nor do I suscribe to their basic belief system or even consider myself an actual Mormon. While I feel they are good people with all good intentions (the most important thing) I think they are a bit jaded on the workings of the hereafter and I have a big problem with their denying women the privilege of holding the priesthood, something which I believe women are naturally better suited for anyway. And what about the fact that not until the 70's could african american men hold the priesthood? These issues (among numerous others) don't jive with me but that is a whole other subject for a different time. You are the one who claims to be an upstanding Mormon who "even teaches Sunday school" (your words). My question/issue is how can a real sociopath be a truly good Sunday school teacher? That's a bit scary to me. Sociopaths are the epitome of selfishness so why would a sociopath desire to be a teacher of any sort? It's not particularly prestigious and is one of the most selfless positions anyone could wish to hold. Neither of these jive with sociopathy. Why are you a Sunday school teacher if you have no regard or thought of other people's feelings? This again, comes down to intent. What are your motivations/ ultimate intentions for doing good works (like teaching Sunday school)? Are they selfish or selfless? Is it about control? Is it to be a God someday?....because as I said, if that's all it is Good Luck! You're supposed to do something like teach Sunday school in order to help children to be the best that they can be, which is for you, apparently, God. You don't teach it so that YOU can become a God, rather you teach it in order to help THEM become Gods. A pretty basic premise which may have  eluded you. Going through the motions of being a "good person" doesn't mean anyhting if your intentions and motivations are selfish (i.e to be a God). Good works should be born of selflessness, otherwise they're not as good as they should be. On the other hand, if you're a Sunday school teacher for the correct reasons (to help those kids be the best they can and reach God-stage) then I guess you wouldn't really be a sociopath as you would clearly be excersisng a conscience and be caring for the well-being of others. Then what would you have? Your identity would be lost (as it seems to be largely, or wholly, based upon your alleged sociopathy) and you'd be saddled with the responsibility of caring about how you make others feel and selfless actions in order to be a halfway decent person. If cognitive empathy is possible, and it is, perhaps you should try. Your life would be much fuller and you claim intelligence. It sounds like your sociopathy wasn't something you were born with, but rather a coping mechanism that you adopted as a child because you didn't get the kinds of emotional responses and attention from those closest to you (parents) in order for you to feel genuinely cared for, appreciated and loved (and in turn be able to care about and love others). Kids learn mostly through example, so if your mom was the distant detached individual that you paint her as every time things became emotional with the person closest to her (your father) well then, it makes sense that you learned to mimic such behavior and took it to the extreme, as you sound like a pretty thorough person. Everyone needs specific types of attention as a child in order to become the best that we can be (which entails selflessness, not selfishishness). Very few of us get it.You just deal as best you can, which is always possible to do without hurting others. Kids do crazy things in order to get attention (as you did) and even negative attention is attention. When those efforts fail, well, we all deal differently. But, your supposed to look at your parents and figure out exactly what you DON'T want to be, not take on their worst qualities or turn into them. Caring for others is a learned behavior in a big way. It's harder for some than others, but for those with half a brain it's always possible. I have a smart kid who is on the autism spectrum and he's figuring it out. I can see that he's the type of person who, if he never got the correct types of attention from those closest to him, may very well grow up as someone like you. But he won't. He'll definitely easily succeed at whatever he chooses to do, as you claim to have done, but he's going to be happy inside (and have to hurt too) because he can feel other people. Maybe you're using the label of sociopath as an excuse to not have to feel (it hurts) or take responsibility for lame stuff you do/did. You've also created an entire identity through it and a life that, to a big extent, seems to revolve around it. In your case, your parents clearly didn't give you what you needed (emotionally), but get over it. It's done.You're not stupid and claiming to be a sociopath is most likely a cop-out. Yea, there are alot of sociopaths out there, but all of the real ones are weak, ignorant and stupid. All of those conniving and calculating people who are labeled sociopaths are simply people who didn't get everything they needed when they were young and/or were hurt horribly which resulted in them feeling horribly hurt. There vicious and vile actions are responses to the pain that was inflicted on them, their spite. But you  can't feel hurt without a conscience and these people did/do and it's the reason for all of their vile deeds. Real sociopaths aren't created (those are simply kids who've been fucked up by those closest to them) they are born that way (stupid and mentally and consciously lacking). In regards to your motivation for being a Sunday school teacher, if it's to be a God then your acting in an utter opposite manner of godliness. Believe me, I'd love to make it to God status too but I'm pretty sure that it's gonna take alot more than correct actions and a selfish desire. I think you need to care about people too...and those Mormon Sunday School kids are going to be needing someone who really and truly DOES sincerely care in order to end up with healthy heads because the whole Mormon thing is a mind-fuck for a thinking kid.

My second and last response:

Ah, I see. I guess then that what we largely disagree about is that what "really matters/matters most of all in the end" is intent. As you said regarding whether same sex attraction is wrong, it seems to me to be largely a matter of opinion and not of fact.

I teach Sunday School because they asked me to and I think they asked me to because I'm good at it. I like to perform and teaching is like performing. I like to get people to think about different things or see things in different ways (like I do in the book and the blog). I think I have learned to care for others. I'm not sure what having a conscience has to do with caring for others. As I see it, a conscience is largely built on feelings of guilt, which I don't really have. But I can want to do "good" things for other reasons than just to avoid feelings of guilt. Why not just because I like to? Because it makes me feel good to be liked or to do something well?

I take responsibility for what I do. That's what writing the blog and book is all about, understanding what exactly was the nature of the things that I have done and who I am. I don't necessarily care about the label sociopath. It wouldn't make me sad to not be a sociopath. Spending all of this time writing and thinking about it has been interesting, particularly since I have mainly focused on myself and how the diagnosis does or does not map onto my own perceptions and behavior, however my life has never revolved around the label or diagnosis. The book and the blog are basically just 20% of my life. I have feelings. I feel happy, disappointed, stressed, angry. I just have a hard time giving them meaning or context. I don't feel upset with my parents. I like them, particularly my mother. I don't hold grudges. I like being around my family and friends. I have a normal and happy life. I'm not sure what you think I am trying to avoid in life (cop-out) by identifying with the term sociopath. Do you think it's possible that I am not completely self-deceived?

I'll tell you a quick story. When I scheduled an appointment to get diagnosed, I was very busy at the time. The psychologist sent me several tests ahead of time called self-report tests where you just fill in bubbles that apply to you. There were hundreds of questions and I didn't feel like I had enough time to fill them out before I had to meet with him, so I sent them to my closest friend to fill out for me, who filled them out knowing me as well as she does. It turned out that I did have enough time to fill them out myself, but I was still curious about whether my answers differed from hers so I compared them. Her responses were different from mine in only a handful of the hundreds of responses. I think I was a little surprised at how consistent our responses were with each other. I sent the responses off to the psychologist and ended up scoring in the 99th percentile for psychopath on those tests, even when compared against both genders and all age groups. If I lied and manipulated those tests to score high on sociopathy, I also must have lied and manipulated in the exact same way consistently around my friend for the past decade and more. I must have lied and manipulated before I even knew what the word sociopath meant, since I was a child and all through my adult life. It's possible that the test scores don't accurately reflect my true personality. I probably am smart enough to manipulate the tests to a certain extent, but why would I? And some of the tests I took I was not at all familiar with, so I wouldn't have known what the "sociopath" answer was "supposed" to be. I just answered as I understood myself to be. And according to those tests performed by an expert in the field, my results were consistent with sociopathy. And I teach Sunday School. These things that I've said about myself happen to actually be true. And they can seem like a contradiction, but so do a lot of things (I am both an easy-going and aggressive driver and maybe you are a strict but loving mother).

I disagree with you that the "real ones are weak, ignorant and stupid" and I think a lot of prominent psychologists would disagree with you as well. If not, if you're right, if I have to be weak, ignorant and stupid to be a sociopath then I guess I am not actually a sociopath.

Anyway, I don't know if this has cleared anything up for you. I think I understand what you're saying, I just disagree about a lot of your underlying assumptions, I think. Which is fine. Maybe you're right and I'm wrong.

In any case, best of luck with your son. 
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