Sociopaths

Discussion in 'Human Science' started by skaught, Feb 20, 2011.

  1. KilljoyKlown Whatever Valued Senior Member

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    I suspect our capitalistic society promotes greed and a lack of empathy for the suckers that get taken in by the schemes of others. After all the sucker should have known better and wouldn't have gotten burned except for his own greed. On a national level, every time we have a boom then a bust, we have millions of suckers. The problem is our government has people that knows what's happening and they just plain don't do enough to stop it. It's natural that many average people see and hear stories of people getting rich in the stock market or buying property, will want to get some of the action too. After all everybody else is doing it.

    The next big ripoff is inflation. How long has the government had to get the problem under control? At a quick guess I'd say about 100 years and another quick guess is they don't want to solve the problem. After all it only affects low income people on a fixed income and who cares about them, there old and don't have long to live anyway right? If you had to diagnose our society, what kind of a sociopath would it be?
     
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  3. Me-Ki-Gal Banned Banned

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    I don't know . Takers is what I call society . I am one of those suckers that get taken and I let it happen . Except I am going to change it all. Are you with Me !! I learned a few things while being taken for so long . This time around is a little different for the pain is going to be much greater . Not so much physically , but mentally it is going to be a friggen night mare . It already is for lots of people . The burdens of the common people are to much to bare and it is getting worse by the day. You got to be wondering what is going on in the world . Consider now that gas is going back up, how that will effect every thing . The world has never been so dependent on a resource like that . Well maybe when the world went into the Ice Age and there was no wood to burn to stay warm . Not in modern times with such a huge population.
     
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  5. KilljoyKlown Whatever Valued Senior Member

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    I agree that real bad times are coming for this world, but I'm fairly confident I won't be around to experience it or say I told you so. Best I can do is express my lonely opinion on forums such as this one, and you just have to know these forums are full of very opinionated people doing the same thing. But occasionally you bump into someone with like feelings about things and that's a feel good start.
     
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  7. Me-Ki-Gal Banned Banned

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    That is big in it self for even if you feel people are different than you, just by inner action part of you becomes them . We change each other as we strive for the truth . You make a difference bro. The change is going to come whether people like it or not. It is what Malcolm McDowell would call a tipping point. Common people are standing all over the world as we speak. Why you might ask? Because common people are speaking would be my guess and you know what . The Status Quo don't quite know what to make of it yet . It is going to hit them like a lead brick here in not to ( Let Me look at my clock ) Right about now. Why do you think they talk about controlling the internet? except they are afraid of the backlash if they do . I think that is why they are in a holding pattern . Like Antelope at a fence . There all bunched up and can't get threw the fence
     
  8. WillNever Valued Senior Member

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    They don't call them psychopaths much anymore, for one thing. So they may have thought you were talking about something besides people with antisocial personality types. They tend to have more of a flat affect than regular people, which they may have interpreted as "coldness."

    They are treatable but not curable. That holds true for all the personality disorders and it is partially how they are defined. Very hard to treat illnesses that are mild enough for people to function in their everyday lives without treatment -- most of the time.
     
  9. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    Greed has been a part of human society since the Neolithic Revolution, when tribes combined into larger communities and people had to learn to live in harmony and cooperation with someone other than their extended family members--i.e., to transcend our pack-social nature.

    There was very little surplus wealth in those days because a Stone Age "economy" doesn't generate much of a surplus. Just enough extra food to survive a drought, and enough extra labor (i.e., labor not allocated to food production and distribution) to make houses, clothes, pottery, furniture, and a few other artifacts that made life somewhat more pleasant than in the Paleolithic hunter-gatherer era. So the greed people felt for non-family members could only be acted out by stealing their food and other basic necessities. Taking away their means of survival. Anyone who did this would have been ostracized, if not summarily executed.

    Each successive Paradigm Shift--Civilization, the Bronze Age, the Iron Age--generated a modest increase in division of labor and economies of scale, and therefore a modest increase in surplus wealth. Yet still 99% of the population were farmers. So a greedy person had to focus on the merchants, the priests and the ruling class, where most of that little bit of surplus wealth was concentrated. These people had guards.

    It wasn't until the Industrial Revolution that this old paradigm was turned on its head. Within a couple of centuries the percentage of the population employed in the food industry fell to less than 10%, and by the 1890s (in the USA) the economy toggled from scarcity-driven to surplus-driven. The advertising industry arose, to convince us to buy things we never knew we needed; Christmas transformed from a religious holiday to an excuse to buy things for other people that they didn't know they needed; most people had at least some discretionary income and some leisure time in which to spend it.

    Capitalism arose as a way to manage surplus wealth, or "capital" as it is now known, and an activity that produces absolutely nothing but merely keeps track of surplus wealth became the world's dominant industry: banking. Today most of us spend the majority of our income on products and services that aren't directly (if at all) concerned with our survival.

    In other words, after biding their time for more than ten thousand years, it is finally the Golden Age for the greedy. It's possible to take things away from people, lots and lots of things, without endangering their survival and becoming a pariah whom anyone would be justified to kill on sight.
    That's too facile an explanation. Civilization has only had a surplus-driven economy for four generations. That's just not enough time for us to adapt Adam Smith's model of the nascent Industrial Era economy to what is, basically, the Post-Industrial Era. Our model does not stand up to instant electronic communication, computers, and to digital information, which can be reproduced and distributed at almost literally no cost, becoming the most "valuable" commodity.

    Our species had thousands of years to adapt to the shift from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to agriculture-based sedentism. We had a couple of thousand years to adapt to bronze metallurgy and the trading networks it necessitated since tin and copper ore are never found close together, and a couple thousand more to adapt to iron metallurgy and the wars it made possible. We've had only a few hundred years to adapt to industry--mass production, the harnessing of chemical energy, and the overnight dominance of non-food-related work--and there are still vast swaths of the planet where the adaptation is barely underway. And now, before this transition is even complete, we have to adapt to the Electronic Revolution.

    So maybe you can cut us some slack?

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    All things considered, we're doing the best we can. The murder rate is something like one one-hundredth of what it was in medieval Europe; the scale of warfare has been reduced to the point that we are outraged in a year when the death toll is a few hundredths of one percent of the earth's population (Genghis Khan killed ten percent of the people his armies could reach); the number of people living in poverty has dropped by almost half in just fifteen years; democracy is spreading like wildfire; in a growing number of regions people who take religion seriously (one of the greatest motivators of violence throughout history) are a shrinking minority.

    Greed may still be with us, but it is hardly as dire an evil as those of previous eras.
    I would remind the diagnostician that twelve thousand years is not long enough for a species that reproduces as slowly as ours to evolve new instincts, so each one of us still has a caveman living deep down inside. We do our best to show him that stifling his pack-social instinct and behaving like a herd-social species makes his life so much more pleasant that it's worth the sacrifice: furniture, beer, air conditioning, TV, pets, gourmet food, hundreds of friends, etc. Most of the time he goes along with it. But some days he just loses his cool and does something antisocial.

    Let's cut him some slack. He--that is to say we--are doing pretty damn well considering how difficult this is!

    Dogs are lucky. They have a six-month breeding cycle, so in those 12,000 years during which we've given birth to about 500 new generations with only slight genetic modifications, they have passed through twenty-four thousand generations. Their DNA has undergone significant evolution from their wolf ancestors, particularly in the instincts they use for interacting with each other, and with other species such as Homo sapiens.

    Dogs are much better adapted to civilization than humans are!!! Maybe the solution is to put them in charge?
     
  10. KilljoyKlown Whatever Valued Senior Member

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    @ Fraggle Rocker

    Wow! What a response. As part of my response I do believe we are currently living in maybe the best of times for the most human beings that has ever been. That doesn't mean I don't think we could be doing a lot better. I think a better question is how long can we sustain and improve the standard of living for more humans? Do we really have the time to take it slow and easy?

    Some of our major resources are running out and if we can't find suitable replacements very bad things are going to happen to the humans on this planet. If global warming continues without some mitigating solution, we will become very distracted to the point where just staying alive could be back at the top of most peoples list. Not a very good place to be.

    Some might say I'm a bit of a pessimist, but it's a job somebodies got to do even if they don't get paid for it. Sorry if I got off topic for a bit.
     
  11. birch Valued Senior Member

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    you're more on the money and closer to accurate. those in the mental health profession may think they meet more of the mentally ill but it's largely a certain class which are mostly victims more or less. sociopaths rarely seek help or never and if they do seek mental health help, it's usually for something else (possibly a depressive episode) and if they were ever classified as a sociopath or psycopath, you can BET they would never come back. why? because they don't think they are wrong and have no remorse. even if they know they are wrong, they don't have remorse which would stem from a combination of conscience and ethics. sociopaths don't respect other's boundaries, only theirs. anyone can be deemed prey, as they see themselves judge, jury and executioner. also, the mental health sector is largely a hit and miss and many people are misdiagnosed except for very obvious disorders such as schizophrenia.

    most people who seek help from mental health facilities are victims, not perpetrators though some will be but not the majority. that's the present imbalance, unfortunately. it's just the way it is.

    one would have to be humble or be able to admit they have a problem which a psycopath but especially a true sociopath would almost never admit to. that just isn't going to happen. when sociopaths are classified is usually when they do something where they get caught by the law and are forced to be evaluated which would leave out a lot of sociopaths in general. still, the only reason they can't escape detection as much will be because of the overwhelming evidence that will be poured forth from usually the victims and what the perpetrator has done, their behavior, how they operate etc. then the perpetrator will be confronted to dissect what motivated them and so forth. without that, there is really no way to always distinguish them from anyone else just based on the superficial appearance or personality.

    i know this because i've lived with them and they would NEVER go anywhere to seek 'help' as it would offend their ego. why would they? that is their modus operandi. that is how they gain, get their kicks, or their coping mechanism. they may join a church or some social function though. churches are good hiding places as well as it feeds the holier than thou ego of sociopaths. hypothetically, even if for some far-fetched reason they couldn't do that anymore, that doesn't mean they would feel sorry for what they did anyways or at least not truly because it was basically intentional. it's not some mistake or habit that horrifies them. they do NOT self-examine or question themselves as 'i have a problem and maybe i need to change' or 'help me to change'. that is the direct antithesis of who they are.

    when seeking mental health help, you are interviewed asking what is bothering you. that's pretty much it and they treat that. there may be some tests but they are easily fooled by a sociopath as they are going to know the right answers since they are aware of what society expects from them as well as social norms. that's what most people don't understand, sociopaths do fit into the mainstream. how else are they going to be a socio-path? of course they are also aware of emotions too. they aren't going to admit they predated on people or currently doing that! sociopaths fly under the radar easily. realistically, society will not find them out unless they are caught by the law or unless there is technology to further study the brain or it's memory banks as to what the person is hiding or have done/doing.
     
    Last edited: Mar 14, 2011
  12. chimpkin C'mon, get happy! Registered Senior Member

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    Yep...summasis of neurosis: "I have a problem!"
    Summasis of personality disorders "I'm fine! everybody else is the problem!" :facepalm:
     
  13. birch Valued Senior Member

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    they call them personality disorders but the problem is much deeper than that. after all, sociopaths can act just like anyone else. it's not really a 'personality' problem. they have differing personalities just like anyone else. their issue is the narcissism and ethics mainly.
     
  14. quinnsong Valued Senior Member

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    Hmmm, I wonder if the more collective societies have lesser occurrences of sociopathy than individualistic societies? Without even researching this I am going to bet this is true! Now off to research this wild speculation. Ha!
     
  15. chimpkin C'mon, get happy! Registered Senior Member

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    Well, BPD's more trauma-induced...then there's some other ones that, well, still ethically challenged at times, but not as malignant...
    But that's one of the hallmarks-defines all problems externally.

    Probably so. They have less incidence of depression, too, even though they are more likely to carry the gene for depression.
    (Please don't make me go find the article, I HAVE to stop screwing off and do dishes, it's my day to clean.)
     
  16. birch Valued Senior Member

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    i don't agree. borderline personality disorder is not as malignant as sociopaths. they are more a danger to themself similar to bipolar disorder but not as much as to others as a sociopath or psycopath. and if they are a danger to others in some way, it's not intentional.

    borderline and bipolar usually have a difficult time distinguishing proper levels of boundaries in relation to others or risk-taking from poor judgement which often ends up with them being victimized or putting themselves in more harmful or adverse situations. this doesn't mean they are ethically as challenged though. they are not necessarily predatorial either. one has to remember that it's not that sociopaths (which is different from borderline and bipolar) don't know right from wrong, they just don't respect it when it comes to others.
     
    Last edited: Mar 14, 2011
  17. chimpkin C'mon, get happy! Registered Senior Member

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    That's what I said, I thought...ethically challenged but not as malignant. *scratches head*

    Borderlines do tend to be worse for themselves than others.
    And borderlines can and do get better-in fact they tend to stabilize in their thirties and forties.
    ...Sociopaths...I haven't heard that they magically grow a conscience, usually.
     
  18. birch Valued Senior Member

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    no. borderlines are usually victims of sociopaths/psycopaths who are having a hard time distinguishing proper levels of boundaries for themselves and have low self-esteem but they are not predators. they are not necessarily ethically challenged, it's the damage and from being associated with those who have confused or violated their boundaries that is the real problem. it is a terrible insult and not true that they are unethical, though it may appear they are ethically challenged. for instance, those who are victimized usually get revictimized for this reason.

    the 'reason' they get better as they get older is because they reclaim their personal power and sense of self and establish healthier boundaries.
     
  19. quinnsong Valued Senior Member

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  20. birch Valued Senior Member

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    this statement tells me clearly that you are twisted besides not knowing what the hell you are talking about. i don't care if you are in the mental health profession as you must be one of the idiotic ones. it's you who is perhaps the true sociopath. is up down and down up to you?

    for someone to say that everyone else which would include sociopaths is more easily 'herded' than borderline personality types smacks of downright stupidity besides being totally backward. it's sociopaths that can't be herded or manipulated by the staff as easily and that is if you even come into contact with one as they are few that would turn themselves in or seek help.

    also, intelligence has got NOTHING to do with it. all these people vary in intelligence. what a complete load of shit!
     
  21. chimpkin C'mon, get happy! Registered Senior Member

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    And there's little to no Borderline Personality Disorder without significant trauma.

    What I said about borderlines a few pages back in this thread is that their internal distress causes them to not hear feedback and occasionally not behave in an ethical fashion, be manipulative, lie compulsively, attention-seeking or whatnot...

    but they aren't doing this out of lack of ethics, it's just that their internal distress overwhelms everything for them. It's a very unfun place to be in...whereas the sociopath is having a blast.

    So lower the Borderline person's internal distress, teach them to tolerate the remaining internal distress, and you have a person who has a fine set of ethics.

    If you got the impression I was saying anything else, I beg pardon.
     
  22. birch Valued Senior Member

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    5,077
    http://www.webmd.com/mental-health/tc/borderline-personality-disorder-symptoms

    you misunderstand my point. what i'm trying to get people to understand is that when it comes to behavioral issues, there is quite a fine line. it's very easy to put people into one category and the rest in another.

    for instance, a lot of what you list as symptoms are what also people readily engage in who don't have a disorder. you don't have to 'have' a disorder to lie a lot, be attention-seeking or a lot of other behaviors. society would like to believe everything negative people exhibit must be a disorder which is not true. they don't want to admit that people can just be opportunistic assholes. it's as simple as opportunism for some people and if they get away with it or get what they want, they will continue. many people want attention, many people lie but no one does it for no reason and if they did, that's not within the realm of these particular disorders. a 'compulsive' liar is one who can't help it, that would be a very specialized disorder. one who is attention-seeking is doing it for a reason, so one needs to find out why. people just don't do these things because their wiring is off which you make it seem which is kind of funny.

    the symptoms you list are not very accurate either but rather caricaturized which is insulting. they don't even coincide that much to borderline or even bipolar. it's rather easy to understand borderlines, schizophrenics and bipolars especially as the latter two are not necessarily related to personal trauma. borderlines distrust of people as well as poor judgement is easy to understand as these disorders show itself after severe trauma in interpersonal relationships.

    it is also falsely self-righteous to pin these attributes on people labeled with a disorder even if they do have one and the 'rest' as not. that's unrealistic and cognitive dissonance.

    also, people with borderline just like schizophrenia or bipolar or any disorder will also vary in their degree of ethics. so it's also unrealistic to say that once their distress level is down, they will ALL have a 'fine set of ethics'. what??? that will vary amongst them just like anyone else. get real. that is essentially equating ethics to how calm or disheveled one feels which is not true and superficial. there are calm or comfortable individuals with horrible ethics as well. besides, their ethics is not the issue. these disorders are stemming from low self-esteem and internal dissaray/confusion/loss of balance and they usually are self-inflicting or self-sabotaging. there are schizophrenics, borderlines and bipolars who are ethical but personally tortured. having low self-esteem or acting out does not mean those behaviors are unethical anymore than others who do that. not all of them exhibit the same traits to the same degree either with the same disorder. it would depend on the personality, what exactly happened to them, their situation and so forth.

    for instance, there is a conventional belief that all biplolars go into a cleaning frenzy when there energy is out of control. well, that's not true because some people don't like to clean but they may act out of control in other ways. there is a lot of misconceptions even within the mental health community as not all of them are the brightest tools in the shed either or not necessarily that insightful even if they are in that profession. some psychiatrists are very good and more accurate while others can be textbook learned but not very insightful or can't understand unless it coincides with what they've been taught.

    the problem with borderlines are usually much deeper than bipolars which the latter can just be a chemical imbalance. borderlines need therapy and inner healing. medication is a start to feel more in control or to lessen the distress so they can think more clearly but that's just treating the symptoms.
     
    Last edited: Mar 14, 2011
  23. chimpkin C'mon, get happy! Registered Senior Member

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    True that...it's just that they empathize with other people's distress when their own is reduced.

    Ethics ...well, I guess at least my version of it, comes from empathizing with others. Basically if you empathize with others, you tend not to run around hurting them.

    Obviously more complicated than that, but that's the basis of ethics in my view-I don't want to cause suffering....so....

    Borderlines are in an extreme amount of distress all the time...when they stop being in extreme distress they start empathizing.

    Which makes them normal, just like those who never were borderline, muddling along like the rest of us, trying not to hurt people, because they are now empathizing.

    Part of Dialectical Behavioral Therapy is dealing with ethical responsibility in a good way, and that therapy system was created specifically for borderlines, by someone who is a recovered BPD sufferer. The key is to make effective amends or atonement without beating oneself up-something the BPD sufferer's prone to do (beat themselves up, that is)

    It's been my experience with the borderline people I've been friends with...that they create chaos...not out of mean-spiritedness or anything, it's just that they are overwhelmed with their own internal distress.
    From what I'm given to understand they often feel a sense of very profound emptiness...I used to feel like that as an adolescent, so I do get that feeling.
    Also when my happy pills aren't working I'm suicidal-and often an asshole despite trying really hard not to be, I can empathize with being in that much distress.( I basically hide when I feel bad so as not to alienate my friends...then end up alienating them because I never call. Which may have a little bit to do with my Borderline friend being dead...I didn't know what to do with her, I was leaving her alone until I got over being annoyed, and that's when she decided to eat all her pills and call it a life.)

    In fact, I do find the diagnosis of BPD itself a bit iffy, because it's (a) almost always a trauma-induced thing and (b) seems to share some characteristics of mood disorders, and possibly sometimes (c) given to patients who are just real pains in the butt to the clinician...sometimes I wonder if CPTSD might fit better?

    A sociopath just won't empathize-they are a universe of one...although there's a matter of degree. Some empathize with their friends and family, but are completely ruthless with outsiders.

    It almost makes me want to pitch a initiatory manic episode, it does-I mean, I'm already mood-disordered anyway...I forgot to pick up one of my three-drug cocktail, feel like battered batcrap and the house is a wreck.
    If I got manic I think I'd clean, and clean and...HANG THOSE CABINETS! OOH! AND PUT DOWN LINOLEUM, YEAH! :xctd: Fix the floor, and repair the air duct, and the roof, and paint the walls and...
    Right now, just thinking about that makes me tired.

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    And it all has to eventually get done anyway.

    I dunno, my wiring's definitely off, and I still do some pretty weird things because of it. Things other people would find disturbing, so I've learned to keep them to myself.
    Perhaps that falls under the heading of "projection" then...I do what I do out of internal distress, so I assume it's more common to act like an ass out of internal issues than it really is. But no, some people don't do what's right and they aren't disordered either, just normal scuzzy people.

    Oh(one more edit)...regarding wiring? Physical abuse, sexual abuse, and neglect actually cause variant negative neurological changes: http://mentalhealth.about.com/cs/abuse/a/abusebarin.htm
    As a PTSD person, it's the hippocampal changes that interested me, though.
     
    Last edited: Mar 14, 2011

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