We are a species suffering from the combination of naivety, pack-animal programming, and structures which reward aberrant psychology over all other psychological states. Our educational system, our family dynamics, our cultural norms and our marketplace messaging and structures all inherently encourage and reward psychopathy, sociopathy, personality disorder, and abuse. Our responsibility, then, lies in learning to recognize these traits and patterns, holding boundaries to keep them out of our lives, and healing from the abuse we have received at the hands of these monsters for most of our lives.
The reasons we’ve let ourselves be abused for so long are legion. But, one hard-wired habit we use in order to blind ourselves is this: as humans, we naturally assume about other humans that which is true about ourselves. For example, if you are someone who puts the grocery cart back in the receptacle after unloading your groceries into your vehicle, you are apt to feel disappointment and maybe even shock when others do not do the same. This externalized, default expectation is largely unexamined, in most people, and so a constant, unabashed hope in humanity prevails — and the inevitable counterpart of disappointment and broken expectation continuously rolls out before us.
To the basic assumption of similarity that the pack-animal-known-as-human projects onto our fellow man, we can add the bonus of endless, systemic requirement of blind obedience, a one-for-one and never-for-all mentality, a constant lack-mindset, rewards for those who cheat and lie, the programming and reinforcement that emotions are weak, and the creation of a bully culture and you’ve got the ultimate recipe for a slave mentality with which to control people’s self-imposed imprisonment, in perpetuity. The super-big-bonus is that you’ll be able to reap and harness those 15% or so of people who are psychologically aberrant, yet perfect for leadership, with this sick social structure.
Backing it up a minute, what is a psychopath, anyway? What makes psychopathy different from sociopathy? Why would we even talk about personality disorders at the same time? Let’s break it down:
We’ll start with psychopaths, as they’re kind of the ‘top of the food chain’. These empty husks don’t have a drop of empathy for a single being on the planet. Think about a small toddler who smashes bugs joyfully. Trying to explain to the little tyke why it isn’t nice or why they shouldn’t murder makes NO sense to them. They simply haven’t yet developed the capability of understanding the reality that what lies outside of them are separate, living entities with fully functioning feelings and experiences that are unique to each. The toddler is not a horrible person. The toddler just hasn’t developed this skill set, yet. The psychopath never does. This is why most serial killers can do the awful, torturous things they do: they don’t possess even a tiny bit of themselves that can even begin to pretend to see you or anything else living as autonomous beings. Torturing, raping, and murdering is, to them, just the same as stomping gleefully on bugs as a small child.
“Psychopathy – Psychopathy is a condition characterized by the absence ofempathy and the blunting of other affective states. Callousness, detachment, and a lack of empathy enable psychopaths to be highly manipulative.”
Psychopaths are incredibly capable of high-level manipulation, given that they see no problem with manipulating something that, in their lived experience, isn’t really any more valuable or unique than an inanimate object. This primary trait causes us to hear, in regards to nearly every psychopath ever: “He was such a nice, normal guy. So friendly and personable.” Psychopaths know exactly how to convince the little bugs to come into the stomping grounds — they’ve studied all of us “inanimate objects” for their entire lives. It is estimated that nearly 1% of people are psychopaths. That leaves us 14% of pathological, aberrant psychologies yet.
Sociopaths are the next smallest group of the rotten bunch and make up an estimated 4% of our human population, or at least they do in the West. Sociopathy isn’t quite as horrendous as psychopathy, but it is nowhere near pleasant or good, either. Sociopaths differentiate themselves from psychopaths only inasmuch as they don’t constantly and ubiquitously exhibit actions aligned with a full disassociation from humanity. That is to say, they have all the same tendencies and symptoms, all the same styles of behavior, though they are technically capable of empathy and emotional response at the expense of themselves and for the benefit of another. They just don’t choose to use it very often, if ever. The “pattern” is the central concept in the definition below, highlighting the tendency in these people that is not, otherwise, the rule.
“Sociopathy – Sociopathy refers to a pattern of antisocial behaviors and attitudes, including manipulation, deceit, aggression, and a lack of empathy for others…Sociopaths may or may not break the law, but by exploiting and manipulating others, they violate the trust that the human enterprise runs on.”
Sociopaths will steal your great-grandma’s, one-of-a-kind urn to sell at a pawn shop simply because it was something to fill the time. Sociopaths may or may not murder without regret. Sociopaths are also incredibly manipulative and have also studied you like a subject in school — and so they will often seem like your sudden, best friend who understands you more deeply than anyone ever has! They can be the most fun people to be around because they know how to ply you in order to get you to intimately trust them and, more importantly, in order to do with you what they will. Sociopaths have almost no empathy and almost never show regret or remorse.
The most common disorders of pathological significance to the destructive patterns in our society, however, are the Borderline Personality Disorders. These come in many flavors and are often grouped into three categories. The most pervasive and commonly referred to of these is likely “narcissism”, though hardly anyone understands what that actually means. Most people think it describes an egotistical, self-absorbed person. In a way, this is correct, but these are PATHOLOGICALLY egotistical, self-absorbed people who are described as borderline exactly because their pathology leaves them on the borderline between wellness and psychopathy. They’re a step away from the sociopath and psychopath. The remaining 10% of our 15% of pathologically aberrant psychologies lie here, in the Borderline Personality Disorder realm. Let’s look at narcissism, as it is the least understood and, arguably, most destructive trend:
“Narcissistic Personality Disorder – a mental condition in which people have an inflated sense of their own importance, a deep need for excessive attention and admiration, troubled relationships, and a lack of empathy for others. But behind this mask of extreme confidence lies a fragile self-esteem that’s vulnerable to the slightest criticism.”
True narcissists cannot stand a few things that are dead giveaways. What drives them most insane are both people who don’t act, think and feel how they have determined those people “should” and people who refuse to agree with them, no matter how small or large the issue at hand. If you know someone who literally cannot accept that you simply don’t look at something in the world the same as them, they are showing you their narcissism. Can we diagnose them based on this symptom? No, absolutely not. Everyone has some level of this trait, inasmuch as there are some issues or some moments where we are shocked to not be agreed with or surprised to find someone doesn’t see something the same as us. In general, however, what is the pattern? Does the person get angry when you speak your mind? If you are feeling emotional in a way they are not, do they attempt to change your emotion? Are you allowed to behave how you choose, or are you criticized and bullied into choosing other actions and behaviors that are more in line with the person’s expectations?
Narcissists are similar to sociopaths and psychopaths in that they are excellent manipulators. They’ve often learned that it isn’t actually ok to bully people. They’ve also often learned that they’re supposed to let people be, do, and say exactly what they want. So, instead of outright forcing people to do otherwise, they have found a million little ways to coerce you to seem to choose it for yourself. It is pretty genius, to watch a true narcissist work on whittling away at someone’s self esteem and sense of confidence in themselves in order to twist them into something easier for the narcissist to see themselves within, because, when it comes down to it, the narcissist only ever wants to look at reflections of themselves in the world, whether in thought, deed, or emotional expression.
The 85% of us who don’t suffer from these afflictions to our empathic abilities, exactly because we experience and value our empathy, tend not to commit acts of violence against others, tend not to manipulate unless under duress, tend not to abuse others, and tend not to act forcefully or in a bullying way toward others. We all possess the potential to behave in these ways, we simply don’t often choose to act without compassion and empathy, not as a pattern and mostly because we are essentially well-adjusted and care about other living beings in a way that we can imagine their pain if we were to hurt them. We are ‘good’ people.
But the 15% who don’t and can’t care because they are fully incapable in every sense of the word, those 15% have been groomed and rewarded for so long that the rest of us have learned that it is best and easiest if we go along to get along, bow to the loudest and strongest seeming person, give up our will and desire easily if we are asked or pushed… and, worst of all? We end up WANTING someone to control us: to tell us what to do, how to feel, and what to think. We are conditioned into accepting and even welcoming the psychopaths and narcissists in a sort of sick and twisted Stockholm Syndrome.
Our schools reward bullies by making them our teachers and principals. Dunning-Kruger shows us that the leaders in these hierarchies are almost always idiots who are loud and proud enough to gain the automatic respect of the masses while remaining fully or nearly incompetent, but without scrutiny because of their convincing facade. They may not always suffer from personality disorder, but they do so enough of the time to train us for the 14 years we are caged within their institutions to bow to the will of the strongest, more remorseless among them. The bullies within our ranks reinforce this as we see them get away with their bullying by a system too overtaxed to effectively address problems of the soul.
The saturation of the psychopath mindset in our media may appear subtle, at first, but once you see it, you can’t unsee it. Music, videos, tv episodics, and movies as well as the books that tend to make the lists often carry the messages: “shut your mouth and get along”, “be accepted by being the same and doing what you’re told”, “strength and will become targets for attack”, and “nobody likes a mirror”. A great example is Lady Gaga, who tells us to be empowered women who love ourselves, then drapes herself in bloody meatsuits and promotes her own sexuality as her highest asset. This constant opposing of intrinsic value and externalization of self-hate is ubiquitous, in our media, and degrades us until we are easily manipulatable, empty meatsuits ourselves.
If heavy indoctrination for your entire formative life combined with copious slathering of the filthy messaging in spheres of popular culture weren’t enough, we’ve always got Big Daddy Government on our backs, telling us what to do, how to do it, and threatening our lives if we do not comply. Just enough people are shot by cops to keep you wondering how far you’re willing to exert your rights. Just enough people are sent to prison for decades on grounds of tax evasion to keep you paying for wars in foreign lands, the official reasoning for bombing of which you’re not even sure. You just know that if you don’t pay off the government, the Mafia Goons of the IRS and FBI will seize upon you and hound you to death. So you submit. It’s easier, that way.
No wonder, then, we see nearly everyone in society begging to wear three masks at once at all times, literally bending over to get anal swabs, and generally loving their oppression. We were born of psychopathy, bred by sociopathy, and beset by narcissists on all sides. We never had a chance. Given that masks will reduce the ability of small children to develop empathy, which comes almost exclusively from our ability to read facial expression, it is bound to get much worse, in the future.
And because of our constant chains, we often feel most comfortable when being told what to do. If we weren’t, how could we be sure we wouldn’t be whipped? We often feel best when someone is emotionally screaming about what they know for absolute fact is the truth. Otherwise, how could we tell it mattered? We too little find ourselves quiet, in a field of acceptance, and able to speak our own truths. If we were, how could we assure ourselves we wouldn’t be abandoned for being different?
The sad truth is, no one can save us from this cycle but ourselves. The abused and absolutely mind-fucked amongst us have to make the choice to stop laying over the barrel, waiting for the carnage and pretending it is good. We have to turn off the tv and put our bare feet on the earth outside and remember the only truth that ever mattered: our souls were born of love and they return to love and, in the middle, this thing called life exists only so we can practice BEING that love. Don’t let the psychopaths and their endless minions take that from you. It is all you have.
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