The wisdom of Psychopaths

[Showboat]

[Boris Johnson]

Ok remember when I mocked you for thinking american psycho was a good life guide.

I'm actually moderately worried now.

Just to make it 100% clear saz, you do not have psychopathy and no thats not a good thing.

How do I know this? I've actually 'known' a legit one. They don't feel joy (and this is the big thing that really marks it out from "my life sucks, i hate people, f**k people, f**k the world, I justify my existence on success. I'm right everyone else is wrong." Which is just chronic depression talking with a smattering of narcissistic personality disorder), the only thing that works in them is the fight or flight response. No complex emotions, because thats where our morality largely comes from. That I think is what is going neurologically wrong. This person in question, he caused an immense amount of harm, immense simply because people had to live with him and he had essentially no emotions, but on the face of it only appeared to exhibit depression or rage.

For every high functioning one, who just so happens has his goals line up in a vaguely non-sociopathic way. Theres two who don't. Which is why its a mental health issue plain and simple.

And The 'high functioning' ones tend to be those born into fairly wealthy (not just middle class) backgrounds as they have to crush less people and less severely to get their goals. There also a hell of lot rarer than I think modern pop-psychology is making out (remember the golden rule of reporting or writing generally, story>truth). I'd be wary as hell of anything suggesting the incidence is more than 1:100,000 to 1:200,000, maybe at a push 1:50,000. I've also read quite a lot of the litrature on it, and there really is a serious lack of the hard data on the matter (i.e they have little to no idea what causes it and the diagnostic criteria are very hard to apply, often so only to a person after they have killed many people and shown no remorse. Even then that can often be seen as equivalent to it, but its not.) Post-hoc rationalisations can be powerful things indeed, they are not the same as literally having no emotions and no ability to sympathise with anyone who does (in my opinion the best high level psychological description of psychopathy).

You really need to be carefully how far you start pushing this rationalisation. All rivalry aside and shit, you're moving into dangerous territory here. Anyone who starts to idealise a mental illness, well. Very worrying. As it will quite likely cause one or seriously exacerbate any existing conditions. I've seen enough of dealing with mental illness in personal experience now to fear it more than any physical one. I think in a world where we largely only deal with mild depression (as thats the above and beyond common one) and see highly fictionalised version of bi-polarity on the tv, well, IRL its all a hell of alot worse.

Of course if i'm wrong here I apologise. But this is important here, really.. really not something to idealise.

[Showboat]

Who's seen 'Horrible bosses'? Kevin Spacy's character in that is an awesome psychopath.

[The Dharma Bum]

[Nico]

I had a narcissistic, psychopathic best friend of high intelligence not so long ago. While i like my friends smart, his constant manipulation of other people started to wear thin over time. It was interesting seeing how he worked but in the end I was glad to escape his gravitational pull. They all have that, where they suck people into their problems and machinations. It's not alpha so much as an incredible self absorption where they don't actually care about such trivialities as hierarchy, but what everyone can do for them. There is only one person in their team.

For some reason I have had numerous friends who do that. I tend to associate automatically with people who are clinical thinkers, but they are often those who find it easy to exclude emotion, which stacks the odds towards that personality. If I was honest I'd have to say I find them interesting, but ultimately pointless to have around. An empathetic manager with brains will piss on a psycho in any number of business metrics, especially when it comes to forming relationships with equally astute non-psychopathic others, who form the majority of people one will actually be doing business with. Psychopathic top players are over represented in stats when it comes to breaking things where cooperation is key, like the construction industry, and for coming unstuck in the worst way. They usually don't see it coming either because they are checking the mirror.

[Boris Johnson]

[Nico]

[Aaron]

[Aaron]

[The Dharma Bum]