Monday, October 28, 2013

The Empath's Cheat-Sheet for What a Sociopath Really Means

I love this, from an anonymous reader:
The Empath's Cheat-Sheet for What a Sociopath Really Means

1. I love you: I am fond of your companionship and put you above most, but never above me. Consider it an honor.

2. I'm sorry, forgive me: I really do not enjoy the fact that your mood has altered. Please revert back to normal.

3. I'd do anything for you: I'd do plenty to keep you right where I want you to be

4. My condolences for your loss: *crickets* ... It's just a body. See you later when you aren't being an emotional train-wreck.

5. S/he fills my heart with joy: I haven't had this much fun playing in a long time, and the sex is more than acceptable.

6. I love my family: They're mine.

7. That's simply shocking: You've touched my morbid bone. No need to stop now...

8. Deep down, I feel I'm a good person: I'm not in prison and I stopped abusing animals, mostly. What more can you possibly demand of me?

9. I'm not a monster, I'm a human too: I'm trying to seem human, give me a break. It's not like this is particularly natural for me.
Does anyone have a number 10?


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Sunday, October 27, 2013

Ennui of a puppetmaster

From xkcd:
I was explaining to a friend last night that although part of me likes the fact that she is damaged because her vulnerability gives me a degree of power over her, it is not necessarily something I need to consummate to enjoy. Sometimes, like in physics, potential power can be just as enjoyable as actually exercised power. In the same way that a classic car collector can enjoy cars he never drives or a wine collector enjoys wine he never drinks, sometimes the achievement of some advantage, either known or unknown by the other person, is not a means to an end, but an end in itself.

Saturday, October 26, 2013

Oxytocin debunked?

I've written on oxytocin before -- the connection some researchers have made between oxytocin and empathy, calling it the "moral molecule" or the "kindness hormone", and the odd coincidence that about 5% of the population do not release oxytocin at the usual stimulants and 1-4% of the population is psychopathic, etc. It seems like a wonder hormone and a justification for empathy and social bonding all at once. Or is it? This was an interesting summary of some recent findings that shed more light on oxytocin, suggesting that its affects are much more complicated than some believe, to be filed in the ever-expanding "empathy not all its cracked up to be" file:

It’s been called the cuddle hormone, the holiday hormone, the moral molecule, and more—but new research suggests that oxytocin needs some new nicknames. Like maybe the conformity hormone, or perhaps the America-Number-One! molecule.
***
In the past few years, however, new research is finding that oxytocin doesn’t just bond us to mothers, lovers, and friends—it also seems to play a role in excluding others from that bond. (And perhaps, as one scientist has argued, wanting what other people have.) This just makes oxytocin more interesting—and it points to a fundamental, constantly recurring fact about human beings: Many of the same biological and psychological mechanisms that bond us together can also tear us apart. It all depends on the social and emotional context.

The article breaks the recent research findings into five main categories:

1. It keeps you loyal to your love—and leery of the rest.

2. It makes us poor winners and sore losers.

3. It makes you cooperative with your group—sometimes a little too cooperative.

4. It makes you see your group as better than other groups (to a point).

5. It does make us trusting—but not gullible.

Some of the interesting quotes include:
  • [O]xytocin plays a critical role in helping us become more relaxed, extroverted, generous, and cooperative in our groups. Sounds utopian, doesn’t it? Perhaps a little too utopian. . . . The oxytocin-influenced participants tended to go with the flow of their group, while the placebo-dosed participants hewed to their own individualistic path. Oxytocin is great when you’re out with friends or solving a problem with coworkers. It might not be so great when you need to pick a leader or make some other big decision that requires independence, not conformity.
  • If a group of researchers in the Netherlands dosed you with oxytocin, you might find yourself developing a sudden affection for windmills, tulips, totally legal soft drugs and prostitution, and tall, blonde, multilingual bankers. You might also decide that the life of a Dutch person is more valuable than that of, say, a Canadian. That’s exactly what Carsten De Dreu found in 2011. His study was sternly criticized for overstating its effects—and yet it’s not the only one to find that oxytocin seems to make us really, really, really like our own groups, even at the expense of other groups.
  • The drug “soma” from Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World probably contained some oxytocin. The two-minutes hate in Orwell’s 1984 probably got the oxytocin pumping as well.
  • We may like being part of a group so much that we’re willing to hurt others just to stay in it. The desire to belong can compromise our ethical and empathic instincts. That’s when the conscious mind needs to come online and put the brakes on the pleasures of social affiliation.
I particularly liked this conclusion that along the lines of every-virtue-is-also-vice:

“We do have to be in the right environment to be virtuous.” That might be the bottom line with oxytocin—and, indeed, any neural system that bonds us to other people: The impulse to join and conform in a group is always very strong in human primates, and so the key lies in choosing the right group—and then not getting carried away. 

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.
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