Nesatince

I was brought up and knew my way around the 20th century when much to my surprise the 21st century came along and everyone started making up new confusing rules I was supposed to have memorized (long after it was too late to memorize anything).

Tuesday, February 04, 2014

How Psychotics Are Leading to the Destruction of Civilization



In the Op Ed News article, A World Damaged by Psychopaths and Narcissists—Ian Hughes Interview Transcript Part I, Bob Kall interviews Ian Hughes.  Ian Hughes says "Well I guess the big picture, idea behind my book, Rob, is basically asking the question, are we a peaceable species or are we a war-like species?"

We are a loving, peaceable species.  The problem is usually a combination of our intellect and our gullibility.


Others as far back as Confucious have suggested that the evidence of the goodness in people is exemplified by the 'coming together' of people in an emergency.  I do not believe we are a war-like species, but rather, those psychopaths, using sociopaths, narcissists and paranoids as their tools can create a condition combining comfort and fear to drive societies to instigate death and suffering to satisfy greed and desire

Ian describes the psychopath aptly as not having a conscience.   This seems fairly accepted but I question the accuracy.  Perhaps the definition of conscience varies with perspective.  A psychopath believes that what he or she is doing is desirable or necessary.  While to the 'normal' person the psychopath may appear not to have a conscience, I believe the psychopath does have a conscience.  The difference is the scope of who is included in humanity and perhaps in simpler terms, the notion that if you can’t see someone, they don’t exist.


What is the difference between the narcissist and the psychopath?  The psychopath is convincing, asserting absolutely convinced of their own correctness and truth.  The narcissists’ experiences an emotional sense of being the only one.  The psychopath experiences both the emotional sense and the intellectual sense of being the only one.   The narcissist ignores intellect, the psychopath uses intellect to an advantage.
The psychopathic believes the delusion of superiority.  Just as we don't worry about the bacteria when we take antibiotics, the psychopath sees others as no more than a culture in a petri-dish either useful as an experiment, as fodder or as threatening as a disease.

The sociopath, the narcissist and the paranoid are all easy pawns for the psychopath because of their social presence and their antisocial behaviors.  The closest to the psychopath is the narcissist who shares the quality of placing such great importance on the self that others are excluded.  To the sociopath the importance of others is relative.  To the paranoid others often pose a threat.

Together, they form the power base that creates the war-like culture. 
The psychopath and the narcissist are the result of a biological ‘organic’ condition that is predominately genetic in nature;  they share the lack of consideration for other points of views.  This is different from considering and discounting another point of view for some logical reason.
The sociopath and the paranoid unlike the psychopath and the narcissist are essentially learned behaviors with few exceptions.

For example, if you kick a puppy growing up, and others do also, that puppy will grow into a dog that fears people.  The dog may be violent or may be frightened but by all appearances, the dog is paranoid of people.  Perhaps the dog could be conditioned, shown video’s of dogs being kicked by people and have the paranoia induced.  Americans such as myself, a baby boomer, grew up with a fear of the Russians who were collectively our bogey man.  My parents watched from roof-tops in Michigan with other loyal Americans to help with the early warning in the event of a strike on U.S. soil by the former Soviet Union.  Today we program people in America that Arabs are the bogey man.  We induce paranoia into our society to control people.

In a microcosmic example I give you the imaginary town with a gas station located along a desolate stretch of highway.


The town and the owner of the gas station lack sufficient business being in the middle of nowhere.  The psychopathic/narcissist nature of the owner has no problems retaining someone to put nails in the tires of people’s cars when they stop for gas and are not looking.  People fill up their tanks and drive off, only to get a flat tire a few miles later and require the assistance of the only tow truck for 50 miles, that of the service station they had just previously stopped at.  The gas station owner has now tripled or quadrupled his profits and is happy.

The person putting nails in the tires is a sociopath.  He has a conscience, but approval from the service station owner is more meaningful than the approval of the stranger driving through town.  His/her social conscience is linked to the local social hierarchy.  He knows putting nails in people’s tires is not a nice thing to do, but elevated acceptance, wealth and status within the local society far outweighs the guilt of the crime itself. 


From the general perspective of the inner culture in this desolate rural town on the highway, treating outsiders as ‘Marks’ or ‘suckers’ to be used is OK.

The people who get nails in their tires are the paranoids.  They decide to do something about it.  


They pass a law requiring a security guard at every gas station who'll help the 'owner' deal with these 'vandals'.  The owner argues such a law requires municipal assistance as the cost is too great a burden.  The owner (the psychopath) hires the buddy of the sociopath (another sociopath in the making) who is instructed to overlook the first sociopaths putting nails in tires (racketeering in a socially acceptable context by making  failure to comply with the bosses wishes insubordination) but instructed to turn in anyone else who is caught putting nails in tires.  For appearances other sociopaths are enlisted covertly by yet other sociopaths who are in the employ of the psychopath to put nails in the tires of cars for other reasons: out of state plates, color of skin, manner of dress, etc.  These people are caught by the Security Guard sociopath and everyone believes the system works.  The apprehended criminals proclaim in self-defense that out-of-state people, colored people and people who dress funny threaten their way of life.  

Those caught are in the lower rungs of this inner social order.  Those who are protected are in the higher rungs of this inner social order.  All of the people in this social order feel that they BELONG in this rural town.  If someone should make a fuss about what is going on, that person becomes one of the town's black sheep, shunned from good society and persecuted by whatever whisper campaign can be used to crucify them. The goodness of human nature has been usurped by a psychopath.

The psychopath is happy.  Business is on the rise.

His narcissist spouse is happy, adorned with material wealth, adoration and a new pair of shoes.

The sociopaths are happy and ‘belong’ and have a place in this town.


The paranoids are never happy despite successful endeavors passing laws to whittle away the dangers and their optimists whisper that we are making things safer with our laws.

The sane, honest person who maintains integrity is castigated as a malcontent and a trouble-maker in this little town.  The rest of society really hasn't got a clue. 

In the little town, the gas station owner brings in money to the community and his social hierarchy is protected.  The psychopathic gas station owner is honored and revered as a most upstanding member of the community. 
Some might wonder about what happens after the gas station becomes an empire; some might speculate about what occurs when two of the psychologically aberrant get into a conflict.  The psychopath maintains order throughout the chaos, regardless, by any means necessary.

The previous imaginary anecdote is only a microcosm of how societies operate and how psychopaths rise to wealth and power.

War-like societies are socially programmed by psychopaths who control societies.  Little itsy-bitsy tribes may have their psychopaths, but the scope of their power is limited by their limits to communication and technology.

Our modern day psychopaths have no such limitations except who rises to the top versus who is crushed along the way.

Inherently, human nature is good.  Socially, cultures have the pathology of coming together in dire circumstances.  This reflects the good nature of humanity.  From such coming together evolves a cooperative society that is more successful. 


From this cooperative society emerge opportunities for taking advantage of other people.  The psychopath focuses on these opportunities and uses the sociopath, the narcissist and the paranoid to do the legwork, to deflect attention and occasionally to feed the angry mobs a human offering should the danger of the psychopath getting caught ever arise.  

Society decays until upon the brink of disaster.  When disaster strikes, the goodness in people brings them together and the cycle begins again.  At least that is how it used to be.

This encompasses how psychopaths and narcissists use sociopaths and paranoids to push our global village into decay with the potential for annihilation.  This comes at a time, ironically, when the world could be a better place for everyone.