Friday, October 25, 2013

Overgeneralizing

I chose that title instead of demonizing or stereotyping or scapegoating, but they are all getting at the same basic human impulse. I really liked how this recent comment stated it, in response to this assertion: "People’s memory is the biggest resource towards learning and avoiding people that will hurt them again":

No two people are exactly alike, but we all share common traits. You've learned to identify and avoid the people who have hurt you, and that is good. However, that memory only relates to the specific people who have harmed you. Expanding that experience to cover large groups of mostly unrelated people will lead to racism, scapegoating, and stereotyping. That makes you the aggressor and them your victims, and you'll find that the people you harm will learn to avoid you as well. 

The rest of the comment is also interesting:

You didn't seem to catch this, but "The one thing I know is we are constantly being born" is a metaphor. My interpretation is that we are always facing new circumstances, and in facing them we enter a new world every day.

Animals are capable of learning, especially when the stimuli are rewards and pain. Animals live in the wild, hunting or foraging, searching for mates, bearing and caring for offspring. If their offspring survive to become self-sufficient, then they have lived full lives. The gift of intelligence merely allows people to be alive without living, doing none of the things they were born to do.

Thursday, October 24, 2013

The valuable sociopath

A reader discusses what she appreciated about her sociopathic ex:

your site has been such an amazing source of information. it's been a learning curve for me and i feel like i've reached the part of the curve where i can say, "oh, i get it! i get what that must be like!" i think i am an extreme empath and want to understand others "from the inside out". i have an almost need to enter that person's mindset and feel it for myself. really interesting, your goal of making the world a bit "safer" for sociopaths to make themselves more known. wow. 

i had a sociopathic boyfriend for a few months, he was non-violent but definitely expressed desires to kill and i know that he could. and yet, as i told a friend once, it was the most freeing person to be around. because he had no filter and no care, i could tell him any darker thoughts or any politically and socially incorrect thoughts and the conversation would just flow. there was no punishment for thinking "incorrectly." that felt valuable. he also taught me to be very wary of people's motivations, he read them like an open book. empaths can be just as clandestine as sociopaths, though for different, less malicious ends.

I liked how this reader mentioned that he had no judgment for thinking incorrectly. I think that is one of the biggest things that my friends and paramours like about me. Apparently closed-mindedness is quite common, and exists within every belief system, conservative/liberal, religious/non, etc.

The relationships that tend to not work out are the ones where the person doesn't realize how tolerant I am being of their opinions and idiosyncrasies. Instead, they have this weird notion that I must just agree with them on every point (and of course why wouldn't I, because their opinions are always correct). I would say this is true (at least to some extent) with 80% of the population that I encounter.

Wednesday, October 23, 2013

Fleeting emotions

My sister and sister-in-law have several children that are the same ages as each other. Children all have different personalities, but I have also seen some trends in how these particular children act based on their mothers' parenting styles. My sister is a little emotionally detached herself and is not an overly emotional parent. Her parenting style fosters independence. Her children go places by themselves before they are in the double digits of age. The children have a lot of autonomy, responsibilities, and experience real consequences for their actions. My sister-in-law is more the typical, doting mother. She is anxious and her children live in a safe bubble of love and protection. When her children speak, we stop and listen. They get choices about certain things like what to eat for dinner, but most of the time they are being told what to do from hour to hour. It's easy to see that there is not a one-style-fits-all approach to parenting. Both approaches have their plusses and minuses.

I am grateful for the way I was raised. Some people have called it borderline (or just plain) abusive, but to me it was mainly characterized by freedom and creativity. Even the unpredictable outbursts from my parents had a use, they helped bond me and my siblings together in a way that is still remarkably tight into adulthood. We got along not just because we had to, but because we wanted to -- everyone recognized that it was better that way. We would play music together, play games together, play sports together, and do projects together -- all of which we recognized would have been impossible to do alone. Together we were better, stronger, and happier than we were as individuals. Consequently, my family does certain things very well. We're very good at subjugating our will to the utilitarian needs of the whole. We joke that we're a little like the Borg from Star Trek -- assimilation for the needs of the hive. That might sound like a nightmare for some, but it's really efficient and no one ever feels like they're held hostage to the potential drama and demands of divas and tyrants. Each member of the family has their role and expertise, and the rest of us defer to them on those points when we're together. Because this state is completely voluntary, we're also careful to make sure that no one gets overly disgruntled and opts out completely. If someone is feeling put upon, we address the issue openly and efficiently. People who cheat get informal social sanctions, typically in the form of my sister's wrath. But to make things work this way, no one is really allowed to take things personally or have "unreasonable" emotional reactions and expect to have those feelings validated. Someone can be upset and cry and no one will give him a hard time about it, but unless he can verbalize his problem and propose a solution, no one is really invested in anyone's fleeting emotions.

My sister's family is the only one that approximates this approach with her own children. The results are interesting. Her children are definitely more ruthless, calculating, and calloused than most of their peers (more than they should be?). But they're also really easy to reason with. They understand better than a lot of adults that just because they are feeling an emotion does not mean that it was caused by any particular thing or person -- that they can't control what happens to them, but they actually do have a lot of control over how they feel about things or how they interpret those feelings. They learn this from their parents. When my sister is in a bad mood, she tells her children that she's just "grumpy," so they shouldn't take her reactions personally. My niece picked up on this phrase when she was just a toddler. If you asked her why she was sad, she would frequently say "I'm not sad, I'm just grumpy." She meant that there was nothing in particular that she wanted solved, she was just not feeling happy and to leave her alone about it. My sister's family even plays at emotions, taking "grumpy" family photos the same way that some families take silly photos. They understand that their emotions are labile and often fleeting. The children are not as offended when people don't take their emotions "seriously" because they understand the difference between raw emotional reactions and actual problems that can be verbalized.

I'm sure this isn't the only way to teach children this particular skill and maybe this approach would be impossible for most parents to pull off or would harm most children more than it would help. But I thought that it was an interesting approach, and would be helpful to serve as common ground for parents of sociopaths (particularly if the sociopathic child had normal siblings). 

Tuesday, October 22, 2013

Nature wills discord

Truth: nature wills discord. From Immanuel Kant's "Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View" (1784):

The means employed by Nature to bring about the development of all the capacities of men is their antagonism in society, so far as this is, in the end, the cause of a lawful order among men.

By “antagonism” I mean the unsocial sociability of men, i.e., their propensity to enter into society, bound together with a mutual opposition which constantly threatens to break up the society. Man has an inclination to associate with others, because in society he feels himself to be more than man, i.e., as more than the developed form of his natural capacities. But he also has a strong propensity to isolate himself from others, because he finds in himself at the same time the unsocial characteristic of wishing to have everything go according to his own wish. Thus he expects opposition on all sides because, in knowing himself, he knows that he, on his own part, is inclined to oppose others. This opposition it is which awakens all his powers, brings him to conquer his inclination to laziness and, propelled by vainglory, lust for power, and avarice, to achieve a rank among his fellows whom he cannot tolerate but from whom he cannot withdraw. 

Thus are taken the first true steps from barbarism to culture, which consists in the social worth of man; thence gradually develop all talents, and taste is refined; through continued enlightenment the beginnings are laid for a way of thought which can in time convert the coarse, natural disposition for moral discrimination into definite practical principles, and thereby change a society of men driven together by their natural feelings into a moral whole. Without those in themselves unamiable characteristics of unsociability from whence opposition springs-characteristics each man must find in his own selfish pretensions-all talents would remain hidden, unborn in an Arcadian shepherd’s life, with all its concord, contentment, and mutual affection. Men, good-natured as the sheep they herd, would hardly reach a higher worth than their beasts; they would not fill the empty place in creation by achieving their end, which is rational nature. 

Thanks be to Nature, then, for the incompatibility, for heartless competitive vanity, for the insatiable desire to possess and to rule! Without them, all the excellent natural capacities of humanity would forever sleep, undeveloped. Man wishes concord; but Nature knows better what is good for the race; she wills discord. He wishes to live comfortably and pleasantly; Nature wills that he should be plunged from sloth and passive contentment into labor and trouble, in order that he may find means of extricating himself from them. The natural urges to this, the sources of unsociableness and mutual opposition from which so many evils arise, drive men to new exertions of their forces and thus to the manifold development of their capacities. They thereby perhaps show the ordering of a wise Creator and not the hand of an evil spirit, who bungled in his great work or spoiled it out of envy.

I have gotten a lot of flack for being ruthless, for ruining people, for going after my enemies with full force of mind and spirit, and particularly for enjoying it all (would Jesus do that? the God of the Old Testament seems to). What do we think of soldiers who enjoy killing? Monsters? What do we think of people who love beating their opponent soundly? Antisocial? What do we think of people who think that they are the best at what they do? Narcissists? Delusional? What do we think of people who are willing to get their hands dirty in order to achieve their goals? Primitive? Evil? One of my favorite things is to be beaten by a worthy opponent, so I have a hard time understanding when other people claim to be the "victim" of a sociopath who happened to, for example, outplay them at politics at work, or in a child custody battle, or business partnership, or any number of skirmishes that are necessary for the world to function as it currently does. I know that some people loathe the fact that this is life, that it makes us no better than animals. I love Kant's suggestion that it is exactly the opposite -- this antagonism is what prompts humans to strive to achieve something more than living like animals.

Along those same lines, from this NY Times article "Are the Roma Primitive, or Just Poor?" (which hilariously suggests that primitive/poor are the only possible explanations for their particular brand of "antisocial" living):

 “It is very difficult to interpret their behavior based on our own 20th-century standards,” Alain Behr, a defense lawyer who represented two of the accused clan chiefs, explained by telephone from Nancy. “This community crosses time and space with its traditions, and we in Europe have trouble to integrate them. Yet they have preserved their tradition, which is one of survival.”

Monday, October 21, 2013

The drama/static of our minds

From a reader:

I just finished reading your memoir and I wanted to take a moment to thank you.  I am a clinical psychologist and am continually interested in expanding my mind and understanding of the human experience.  Your book helped me think differently about sociopathy, empathy, logic and choice.  Many people (especially clinicians) would like to think that there is a firm line between those who are "personality disordered" and the rest of them.  This presupposes that they are perfectly ordered in their own personalities.  Why is it that we allow ourselves to be 'a little depressed' or 'have some problems with anxiety' but the notion that we may all be on a spectrum of orderliness to disorderliness in regard to personality is so challenging?  While I do not identify with any one personality disorder per se (other than general traits of cluster B), your worldview and approach to life resonated with me at times.  I believe that working within one's system of thought and affect instead of against the grain will yield greater results.  This is especially true when I apply this to the clients I see in my private practice.  There is a difference between the drama that unfolds in our minds and the behavior we choose to enact in the world.  I teach my clients to remove (emotional) judgment from choices and evaluate different paths according to the cost benefit ratio.

I asked what she meant about the "drama that unfolds in our minds and the behavior we choose to enact" and whether her patients push back when she tries to get them to be less emotional in their decision-making:

As far as my comment goes, everyone has dark thoughts; some are more willing to admit them.  I believe that having the freedom to fantasize and think about whatever you want is freeing and allows you to work out other issues.  I actively promote this with my clients and generally find that even the most violent of fantasizing does not lead to action for those that I see.  In fact, it usually has deeper, symbolic meaning.  I don't believe in judging anyone if I can help it - natural consequences shape behavior.  If one is generally an asshole to others, that person will find he or she has few friends.  If that works for that person, then great.  Otherwise, it's time to review one's strategies and weigh the pros and cons.  Personally, I draw the line at not encroaching on the rights of others (even though I would often like to and most of the time don't really care about the rights of people I don't know or who wouldn't affect me).  I do this because of the natural consequences of not doing so (i.e. having to deal with pissed off people, losing friends, legal issues) but also because I believe this sort of discipline keeps me mentally fit and in control.  

As far as taking emotion out of decision making, I usually give clients a logical reason for examining issues in a particular way. Emotion tends to act as static for our cognitive minds.  I look at it like two data streams - one leans towards facts and the other towards instinct.  Both hold good information but since emotion is processed by an older part of our brain and doesn't work with information in the same way, we can't rely solely on it as a source of decision making and is better used as an adjunct.  Clients tend to see what I mean so it's not a hard sell.
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