Vengeance and out sun bathing the lizard. Sociopathy is nothing to Envy

[Three]

Hello! I just watched this video and found that it rang true with me on many levels. What I wanted to do in this post is to hopefully add some value to the discussion by sharing with you some information that I found to be very interesting. In this video the argument was made that, 'Evil people, people without conscience, are people who are missing both arms. Thus, the desire, while understandable,  to want to make cruel people feel bad is akin to saying you want to arm wrestle people who don't have arms. It will never work. you cannot make them feel bad because they lack the capacity to feel bad. Sociopathy has been described as about the most pleasant mental problem that their is. I mean how many people would love that from time to time, a lack of conscience, a lack of sensitivity to others, feeling swamped and overwhelmed by the needs and preference of other.they will try to draw you in, but you wont win."


 I couldn't agree more. I think that given those facts, it is not a wise, and even dangerous to seek vengeance against an evil sociopath. And from my own experience, my heart has indeed been crushed in all the attempts I've made to seek vengeance upon others. The best way to protect your heart is to avoid bad people completely. However, while sociopathy might be described as being the most pleasant mental problem that there is, I want to make the case that even so, sociopathy is still a very unpleasant mental problem. Hopefully by sharing these facts, I can not only further help free others from their occasional desire to be without the "burden" of a conscience or for vengeance, but also give you the additional satisfaction from knowing that sociopathy is nothing to envy.  The information that I'm sharing comes from clinical psychologist Martha Stout's fascinating book, "The Sociopath next door."

Many of us imagine that to be without a conscience would mean that we would be without the negative feelings that our conscience inflicts upon us when we compromise our values. Have you ever witnessed a person drop some considerable amount of money, a cell phone or maybe his entire wallet and then with out hesitation picked it up and gave it back to him, except maybe after you returned it you might have thought, "dang, that was a lot of money. I wish I wasn't such a good person. I totally would have kept it." I know I have, even though I know that if I were to keep the money, I'd be miserable from feeling guilty. So, from instances like this it's easy to think that being a sociopath would allow us the benefit of keeping the money without suffering  negative repercussions from our guilt. It sounds like a sweet deal.




In some sense, this is true. A sociopath would not suffer guilt, so it's understandable to think that it would be great to not have a conscience sometimes. To digress a bit, I think that the way many film's portray sociopathy might contribute to re-enforcing this desire. The way that sociopathy is portrayed is that the bad guys are kind like you and me. They enjoy life as much as we do, they are sometimes passionate and they 'love' being evil, hence the maniacal laughter. And if you're watching a Tarantino Film, they look so "cool". In reality, sociopaths are not so obvious or grand. They do not wear dark, hooded cloaks. They do not laugh maniacally. In fact, according to Martha Stout, “the only emotions that sociopaths seem to feel genuinely are the so-called 'primitive' affective reactions that result from immediate physical pain and pleasure, or from short-term frustrations and successes. sociopaths cannot experience love, passion or joy." 


She also states, based on a collection of studies she lists in the book(for the sake of brevity I will not list all of the studies here), that sociopathy "involves an altered processing of emotional stimuli at the level of the cerebral cortex. This neurobiological distinction is at least partially responsible for the still-unfathomed psychological difference between sociopath and all other people, and it implications are startling. Sociopathy is more than just the absence of conscience, which alone would be tragic enough. Sociopathy is the inability to process emotional experience, including love. It is an aberration in the ability to have and appreciate real (noncalculated) emotional experience."


Because of this inability to process emotional experience people who are sociopaths report that they are always bored or understimulated. The kind of painful boredom that a child might experience. They constantly crave extra stimulation to compensate. We don't experience this form of agonizing boredom because we have our emotional life. We are stimulated by our meaningful relationships with other people, sociopaths do not have this emotional life to live. In fact, a major study published in 1990 in the journal of the Medial Association estimate that a many a 75 percent of sociopaths are dependent on alcohol and 50 percent abuse other drugs.


Besides, being bored and loveless, they also are not very comfortable in their own skin. To again use Martha Stout's words, "The absolute elf-involvement of sociopathy create an individual consciousness that is aware of every little ache and twitch in the body, every passing sensation in the head and chest, and ears that orient with acute personalized concern to every radio and television report about everything from bedbugs to ricin. Because his concerns and awareness are geared exclusively toward himself, the person without conscience sometime live in a torment of  
 

 

There is much more detail in the book and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in the topic. In conclusion, what I wanted to help ease the pain of knowing that you'll never be able to make sociopaths feel bad by pointing out that at least they have no capacity to feel Joy like we do. Sociopaths not only do not experience guilt, they cannot feel love or passion either, which is something I wouldn't want to experience no matter how much you paid me!

[Wuzzums]

Thanks for the post, it was a good read.

 

Regarding how one could get back at sociopaths. What about shame and envy? Not so certain about the first one, but envy they have to feel. At least some of them. If they have a need to feel superior to other people and show it, then they will seek validation in the form of climbing the social hierarchy. So if someone is on top of a psychopath's current social status then it's a constant reminder that they're inferior, that their need for superiority is not met and envy must arise.

 

This reminds me of the business card scene in the movie American Psycho. Or the scene in which he starts panicking not because he was covering a murder he did, but because he noticed the person he murdered had a slightly bigger apartment than him.

[Three]

haha oh yeah, I remember that scene. there is example in the book "The Sociopath Next Door" wherein Martha Stout describes what is known as a covetous sociopath,"where covetous has its usual referent: an inordinate desire for the possessions of others. Since it is not possible to steal and have for oneself the most valuable possessions of another person- beauty, intelligence, success, a strong character- the covetous sociopath settles for besmirching or damaging enviable qualities in other so they will not have them, either, or at least not be able to enjoy them a much.The covetous sociopath thinking that life has cheated her somehow, has not given her nearly the same bounty as other people, and how she must even the existential score by robbing people, by secretly causing destruction in other lives. She believes she has been slighted by nature, circumstance and destiny, and that diminishing other people is her only means of being powerful. Retribution, usually against people who have no idea that they have been targeted, is the most important activity in the covetous sociopath's life, her highest priority."So, no I wouldn't use envy as a way to seek vengeance upon a sociopath. If they target you, they will make your life miserable.  They don't have to be violent to do this. And they don't feel shame. The best thing to do is to get away from them, cease contact. 

[cynicist]

Reminds me of what Stefan always says about repressing emotions, that you can't selectively choose what emotions you want to experience, it's all on or off like some huge lever. I didn't think about that in terms of sociopathy, what they must also be losing along with their conscience. Definitely going to be avoiding these people as much as possible.

[Three]

 i made the wrong post and deleted it.