Thursday, June 5, 2014

What for criticism?

Apart from the rumored "covetous sociopath," I have not found sociopaths to be critics as a rule. They don't adhere to social norms and so often don't have much purpose for upholding the status quo or enforcing rules against other people. I think that sociopaths can be a terrible blow to one's self esteem or ego. People often become aware of facets of their personality that they didn't realize existed. But again, it's not because the sociopath is trying to make them swallow the bitter pill of truth. The sociopath isn't truth police. If they appear that way in one context, perhaps they are the equivalent then of a corrupt cop who uses his position to advance his own interests. Full disclosure -- I don't like to be the subject of fault-finding. Is there some better way to help people develop into the best person they can be, if that were to be our goal? When a sociopath is trying to pull out the best you in the seduction phase, does he do it through criticism, even so-called honest criticism (could there be such a thing? perhaps theoretically, but rarely can someone put aside their own ego so far removed from the content of their speech that the criticism doesn't drip with the critics' personal issues rather than the reality of the situation). No, oddly enough, people don't respond well to criticism, perhaps apart from the short-lived effectiveness of the pick-up artist's "negs", which quickly cease to be effective and become instead annoyingly presumptuous and insulting. Especially from people who apparently feel the pain of others (empathy), I'm amazed at how tearing into people has become the sport and spectacle that it has.

People are down on the devoutly religious for a lot of things, but this is one reason that I am glad that most people have a belief in the soul, an idea that we are all connected, and a realization that none of these little problems matter in the broader scheme of things.  From an LDS/mormon church leader, since deceased, President Gordon B. Hinckley:

[T]here is a terrible ailment of pessimism in the land. It’s almost endemic. We’re constantly fed a steady and sour diet of character assassination, faultfinding, evil speaking of one another. 

The negative becomes the stuff of headlines and long broadsides that, in many cases, caricature the facts and distort the truth—at least the whole truth.

The snide remark, the sarcastic gibe, the cutting down of associates—these too often are the essence of our conversation. 

I’m asking that we look a little deeper for the good, that we still our voices of insult and sarcasm, that we more generously compliment virtue and effort.

I am not asking that all criticism be silent. Growth comes with correction. What I am suggesting and asking is that we turn from the negativism that so permeates our society and look for the remarkable good in the land and times in which we live, that we speak of one another’s virtues more than we speak of one another’s faults, that optimism replace pessimism.

When I was a boy, my father often said to us, “Cynics do not contribute, skeptics do not create, doubters do not achieve.”

Let me urge you to desist from making cutting remarks one to another. Rather, cultivate the art of complimenting, of strengthening, of encouraging. What wonders we can accomplish when others have faith in us. 

Look for the good and build on it. There is so much of the sweet and the decent and the good to build upon.

I do not suggest that you simply put on rosecolored glasses to make the world look rosy. I ask, rather, that you look above and beyond the negative, the critical, the cynical, the doubtful, to the positive. 

Monday, June 2, 2014

Could I be?

A reader engages in self-introspection:

I grew up with an overwhelming sense of being separate from other people. It’s still something I feel to this day. I studied psychological conditions from the time I was a teenager in an attempt to put a label on what made me not like everybody else. I always dismissed antisocial personality disorder because I’ve never done anything criminal, I don’t torture animals (in fact I generally like them), and I’m definitely not promiscuous. In fact, most of the time I can’t be bothered enough with other people to get into anything that leads to a romantic or sexual situation.

For a long time I thought I must have Asperger’s. My brother had it, so I figured I must as well, and I’d somehow stayed below the radar. But that wasn’t right because unlike my brother who has difficulty relating to other people and getting them to trust him, I’ve always been good at gaging other people’s emotions and figuring out what makes them tick. Whenever I take emotional quotient tests I score at the far end of the bell curve. So it’s not that I don’t see other people’s emotions, it’s just that most of the time I think they’re ridiculously stupid.

I can’t stand interpersonal emotional drama because most of the time it’s highly avoidable, and the results are always so predictable. I just don’t have the patience for it. I also detest social niceties and only use them when I have to, to put others at ease. I’ve been called manipulative my whole life by my mother. I guess I am. As a child I used to practice saying things to people and predicting exactly what their response would be, just to see if I could get it right. I usually did. It was a game. Say or do A and watch people react with B. I’d deliberately say something to plant an idea in my friends’ heads, and watch them carry it out. I still do both things. It’s pretty automatic now. I also have a knack for becoming a different person for different people based on their likes, dislikes, personality etc. Whatever their personality is I mimic and reflect it back at them.

Sometimes this gets me into trouble. Most recently I chased someone for almost six months until they liked me back. As soon as I had them I completely lost interest. No longer felt any attraction. In fact they repulsed me, everything about them irritated me. When they finally called me out on my distance and lack of desire for a meaningful relationship I was so irritated by the fact that they’d actually called me out on my behavior. I absolutely hate it when people see through my outer nice girl persona. It’s probably the thing that makes me the angriest. So I called it off. It just takes so much energy. And if I’m honest, I’m sometimes disturbed by my lack of a sense of self. No baseline personality, beliefs, dislikes, likes etc that I can discern. No ability to truly believe in anything.

My emotions have always felt cold and somewhat muted. I feel like I must have them. I get happy, I get sad, I get annoyed etc. But I feel like my responses are so much less powerful than everybody else’s. I used to think that everybody must be faking their exaggerated emotional responses to things. Part of me still thinks they must be. I just can’t fathom being that emotionally engaged in something that doesn’t directly affect me. In high school, when the tsunami happened in Thailand I remember shocking a friend. She was going on about how sad it was, and without thinking I told her that while I could see that it was a sad event, I personally didn’t really care because it had absolutely no bearing on my day to day existence. Maybe I’m just pragmatic, but I’ve never felt particularly moved by distant tragedy. But I am fascinated by it. I like watching traumatic situations unfold. I don’t know why I just do.

But I do care about certain people. Namely immediate family with the exception of my father who is useful insomuch as he provides financial security. If my mother and siblings died I’d be devastated. They’re the only people who raise that sort of emotional response in me. Friends and acquaintances I’ve dropped without problem. I’ve deliberately played people against each other, though not with the intention of hurting them. I’ve actively tried to sabotage work relationships between people I don’t like. And I have actively fantasized about killing people who cross me. I wouldn’t go through with it though. I also try to live by the rule of do unto others as you would have done unto you. I think it’s a good one for judging what you should and shouldn’t do to people. But I think these are things that all people do. I think I just do them with more self-awareness. Whether that’s a byproduct of intelligence or emotional detachment I couldn’t say.

I’m still not convinced I’m a sociopath. I always just chalked my issues up to a somewhat dysfunctional upbringing stunting my emotional development. Maybe that is a sociopath though. But how could I be a sociopath and be able to have strong emotional attachments to my family?

Saturday, May 31, 2014

Guest post: Ayn Rand

I wrote because I've read you've an interest in Ayn Rand; I found this quote from her early private journals, which I thought might interest you:

"Some day I’ll find out whether I’m an unusual specimen of humanity in that my instincts and reason are so inseparably one, with the reason ruling the instincts. Am I unusual or merely normal and healthy? Am I trying to impose my own peculiarities as a philosophical system? Am I unusually intelligent or merely unusually honest? I think this last. Unless—honesty is also a form of superior intelligence."

This was written in 1934, prior to the publication of her novels, and representative of her less respectable "Nietzschean period" characterized by an overt sense of superiority over the human majority. I'm currently reading Anne C. Heller's biography Ayn Rand and the World She Made with a desire to understand Rand's psychology in light of neurodiversity. Rand is clearly a narcissist, and while too affective and inflexible for a perfect psychopath herself, she shows more than a few sociopathic tendencies as well as a consistent admiration for selective psychopathic qualities.

In relation to the above quote, I'm not at all sure that her mature universalism correctly resolved the question of her relation to the rest of her species. I wonder if her intelligence, low empathy, ambitious drive, social distance, public charisma, manipulative dominance, and purely intellectual conscience place her somewhere towards the extremes of the antisocial spectrum. This is certainly not a new idea for her detractors. I can't help but calculate that if 1% (or 4%) or Americans qualify as sociopaths, then Ayn Rand must surely have been more sociopathic by degree than 99% of any population.

Friday, May 30, 2014

I can't think like that

SNL's Oliver skit, is this more sociopathic behavior, or more what normal people do?


Thursday, May 29, 2014

Phenomenal Woman

Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
I’m not cute or built to suit a fashion model’s size  
But when I start to tell them,
They think I’m telling lies.
I say,
It’s in the reach of my arms,
The span of my hips,  
The stride of my step,  
The curl of my lips.  
I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,  
That’s me.

I walk into a room
Just as cool as you please,  
And to a man,
The fellows stand or
Fall down on their knees.  
Then they swarm around me,
A hive of honey bees.  
I say,
It’s the fire in my eyes,  
And the flash of my teeth,  
The swing in my waist,  
And the joy in my feet.  
I’m a woman
Phenomenally.

Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.

Men themselves have wondered  
What they see in me.
They try so much
But they can’t touch
My inner mystery.
When I try to show them,  
They say they still can’t see.  
I say,
It’s in the arch of my back,  
The sun of my smile,
The ride of my breasts,
The grace of my style.
I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.

Now you understand
Just why my head’s not bowed.  
I don’t shout or jump about
Or have to talk real loud.  
When you see me passing,
It ought to make you proud.
I say,
It’s in the click of my heels,  
The bend of my hair,  
the palm of my hand,  
The need for my care.  
’Cause I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.

--Maya Angelou
Join Amazon Prime - Watch Over 40,000 Movies

.

Comments are unmoderated. Blog owner is not responsible for third party content. By leaving comments on the blog, commenters give license to the blog owner to reprint attributed comments in any form.