What Psychopaths Have Taught Me

I've been learning about an eye-opening subject lately: psychopathy. For example, I learned that approximately 1% of the population are psychopaths. That's pretty startling. Of course, they aren't all murderous psychopaths, like Ted Bundy or John Gacy. They are your run of the mill psychopaths: people devoid of empathy, compassion or conscience who prey upon others to get what they want, living emotionally shallow lives of manipulation, lying, and deceit. In fact, there's a checklist of behaviors that psychologists use to identify whether a person has a psychopathic personality, and it is from reading this list that I had a revelation about the way I look at others, and myself.

As I read this list, I experienced what most people do: a tendency to look through my own life and wonder, "Was this person a psychopath?" And I found it especially tempting with people who I haven't liked very well. The behaviors listed include: callous, narcissistic, manipulative, pathological lying, irresponsible, etc. I could think of a lot of people these traits applied to, going back to my earliest memories, and I was tempted to label a lot of people. As I learned, though, I realized that for all of these people, there was some exception that probably ruled out their being psychopaths.

However, what I also realized was, that this list represented the behaviors associated with every action a person had ever taken that had really hurt me. And this is what the revelation was for me. It was someone who didn't care whether they hurt me or not that made me cynical and guarded, it was someone who callously betrayed me that made me not want to trust, it was someone who treated me like a means to their ends that made me resent authority, and so on. It wasn't accidental harm, or sad events, or differences of opinion that left lasting scars. It was the people who behaved in ways that are associated with monsters.

Now, here's the thing. People judge themselves, and each other, over a lot of things. Things that, when you look at what really has brought pain into your life, seem pretty trivial. People worry about their weight, and their crows feet. They worry about whether they have a nice home or car. They worry about the status their job provides them. And all these worries amount to the same thing: what is my worth as a person? Well, ask yourself this: if you add together all the "unacceptable things" that you've ever experienced from others, how much pain have they caused you compared to one act of callous betrayal, or intentional humiliation, or belittlement? I'll bet all the people with shitty jobs, muffin tops, bad breath, crooked teeth, poor social skills, big butts, crappy apartments, and all the rest that you've encountered in your life didn't cause you a tenth of the anguish that being laughed at would... That being publicly humiliated would... That being hurt by someone indifferent to your pain would.

That was what struck me. I am an empathetic person who genuinely cares about people's feelings. If you tell me a secret, I will not use it against you. I am a good friend. I am a safe place for anyone who needs to be seen and listened to. I'm not perfect. I have shitty credit, am overweight, and I make a crappy living. But how can I judge myself negatively, when I know that no matter what superficial flaws I may have, I am part of the solution, not the problem?

There are people out there who feel nothing for others, and see them as objects to be used. Some of them are psychopaths. Others just think it's okay to act like psychopaths sometimes. And they are the reason that sayings like, "Life's a bitch and then you die" are so popular. Not the people who don't "measure up" socially. Those values are just trivia. This realization changed my feelings about myself and others quite deeply, and I haven't had a day with self-doubt since. I am MORE than "good enough" as a person.

I hope that my insights inspire you to reconsider your own negative self-judgments, and to see yourself in a new light. I have known the kindest people who yet felt unworthy, and it is a great tragedy since it is they, and people like them, who are solely responsible for life being worth living, and even, occasionally, wonderful.

Jim

Questioning Ourselves

What makes us unique as animals is our ability to think. That is, our ability to ask ourselves questions about the world, and things in it, and create new information that answers those questions. We look at the sea and ask ourselves, "How can I cross this?" and from that question, the idea of a boat is born. "How can I feed myself, and my family?" and the ideas of hunting and farming are born. "How can I be happy?" and many the many ideas that make a life are born.

However, the real power of asking oneself questions doesn't come to pass until one begins to question oneself. Until that point comes, we are simply using this amazing tool of thinking in a reactive way, to satisfy primitive needs and live the lives of enhanced animals. "How can I defeat my enemy?" is asked, and new weapons are devised for this purpose. For an animal, defeating one's enemy is a matter of survival. However, for a human, it eventually becomes a recipe for disaster.

It is when we ask ourselves questions like, "Why is it so important for me to defeat my enemy?" or "Why does it make me so angry when I lose an argument?" or "Why do I feel the need to judge others?" that we make the leap from enhanced animal to divine being. At that point, we create for ourselves a power of choice that no other animal has ever even conceived of. We can put aside our instincts and operate on a higher plane of being. We not only learn ways to live with the enhanced power our thinking capacity has harnessed for us, we also transcend the confines of an animal nature to live lives that only our imagination could conceive.

When we learn to question ourselves, we gain our true humanity, and our greatest potential.

Jim

It All Points to You

In Chapter 2, we talk about reality as an experiential phenomenon. That is, experience is an essential quality of reality, and without it, there is no reality at all. Quantum physics describes this as superposition, where all possible realities potentially exist together, but none of them actually exists. From a personal level, it means that experience is the outer boundary of reality. There is nothing that is beyond it. Even the idea of something beyond it exists within experience.

But what can we say about experience, and experiencing? What are its significant elements? In the book we talk about experiences which are always present, such as locality in time and space (everything is experienced here and now), but what stands out about experience itself?

Every experience is YOUR experience. The entire Universe exists because YOU are experiencing it. The experience is literally directed toward you. Consider the most distant galaxies, and their light, travelling billions of light years directly toward where you will be when it arrives HERE, NOW. Now you might be inclined to think that there's a lot of light that travels everywhere else, too, but that's not the relevant matter. It's the fact that everything out there has reached out to YOU that matters. From every direction, the Universe comes to you.

You are always in the middle of everything pointing inward, reaching back to here and now and YOU. You might be inclined to think that there are many of us, all subject to equal attention by experience, but the experience is the same for each of us. We all are touched by Everything through the phenomenon of "I experience". The whole of existence is a first-person phenomenon in this way. Even if you forget that we are all one "I", we are all still One in that each of us is at the center of time and space, reached out to from all directions by the entire Universe through the connection of experience.

Remember this the next time you feel insignificant, or like you don't matter. You are God, and you can see it all around you, the Universe pointing at YOU.

Facing Inner Problems

We are often inclined to think that the problems we face within ourselves are not nearly so difficult to overcome as those that come from without. And I believe that most of the advice we receive, be it from friends, self-help books, etc. tends to reinforce this idea.

When we face an outward problem, like looking for a job, solving a dispute with a friend, or coping with a major setback, we are facing not only things that are within our control, but many things that are not. On the other hand, goes the conventional wisdom, inner problems contain only elements we can control, so they should be much easier to deal with. Whether that problem is an addiction, a fear to be overcome, or low self-esteem, it can be dealt with by a simple change in attitude, being willing to take the time to get organized, or "getting off your butt" and changing yourself.

Well, after 44 years of life, I'm fairly convinced that that is nonsense, and that our inner problems are, in fact, the most difficult hurdles we will face in life. And I believe that the idea that they should be easy to solve only contributes to that difficulty.

Consider the alcoholic, or the procrastinator, or the nervous eater. It seems like all they would have to do is stop participating in their bad habits, exert a little willpower, and their problem would be solved. However, if this is the case, why do each of them continue in their self-damaging habits, in spite of a great deal of guilt and painful feelings of failure? These problems are more difficult because they involve our relationship with our self (Ch. 3). We take these behaviors and we identify with them, and if we do not like them, we experience the pain of not liking ourselves. This pain undermines our confidence, which in turn weakens our resolve to battle our bad habits. This pain also demands comforting, which our bad habits, more often than not, were taken up to provide in the first place, setting the stage for a vicious cycle. Adding a belief that it should be easy only adds fuel to the fire.

The good thing is, when we do overcome our inner problems, we move forward toward the greater happiness we desire in our life. And while it does require great courage and determination to win these battles, one shouldn't have to fight unreasonable beliefs that they would be easy to solve if not for some personal shortcoming.

Jim

Emotional Hostility

As a species, we do pretty well when it comes to curtailing our violent impulses. I know this seems strange to say, in light of all we see on the news, but those stories are the exception. When we become angry with others, we generally fight back against any more primitive urge to resort to violence. Even in traffic.

However, we are allot looser in our self-restriction when it comes to emotional hostility. Gossip, sarcasm, insults, eye rolling and qualifications in our choice of words implying something negative about the person we're addressing ("you're going to wear THAT?") are weapons in all of our social arsenals.

Now, here's a question: If emotional pain is generally considered to be worse than physical pain, why is emotional hostility less reviled than physical hostility? Understandably, physical hostility is frowned upon because of the effect it has on social order, and because it can escalate into acts which can cause irreparable harm or death. However, for anyone who has been verbally bullied or degraded (especially as a child) we know the damage from spoken violence can be just as long lasting.

One of my favorite movie quotes is from the film "Talk Radio", in which Barry Champlain (played by Eric Bogosian) states:

Sticks and stones
May break my bones,
But words
Cause permanent damage.

I think it's important to consider the effects our words can have, and how little we gain from the hurt they cause, when anger or other hostility-provoking emotions take hold of us.

Jim

What if You Woke Up and Were Someone Else?

The idea that we are all one, and that YOU are the one that we all are, can be a difficult thing to wrap your mind around. The notion that, for example, you (Carol) are having a conversation with a friend (Bob) is also true the other way around (You, Bob, are having a conversation with a friend, Carol), can be confusing. We are so used to seeing thing in terms of our one self, separate and distinct from all other selves, that it feels like one is attempting mental contortions in order to picture it.

And that is understandable. All of our experiences, be they sights and sounds or thoughts and feelings, are local to your body. You never experience the feelings or sensory impressions of others. So why should you consider the possibility that you are anything but an isolated cell of consciousness?

Well, there is the argument in Chapter four that consciousness cannot be a product of any process, that it cannot be an effect to any cause that can be brought into being in this Universe. Not without bringing a contradiction into being; namely, that you would be you, and not you, at the same time. So, if you're a logical being you're kind of forced to accept it, because one consciousness, with all sentient beings being different experiences it is having, is the only explanation that is compatible with the Universe we live in.

So, how do you wrap your mind around it?

I use this example: What if you woke up and were someone else? How would you know that you were one person yesterday, but now an entirely different person? You would only know if you took some memory with you in the change. Unfortunately, there is no means for this to occur, so, when you woke up as someone else, you would think you had been that person all along! In fact, last night, you could have gone to bed as someone entirely different, and you would never have known it this morning when you woke up.

Well, what if you woke up in the morning, and you were EVERYONE! Again, there's no mechanism there for each body to perceive the sensations of another, so you would have no idea. You would experience being you as Bob, and Carol, and President Obama, and Gadafi, and everyone else in the world. But with no mechanism to perceive the connection, it would feel like you were trapped in one body, looking out at a multitude of other souls in theirs, all the while never realizing that there was no separation at all, that you were each of them, every single one.

I hope this helps provide a wedge into this idea of one shared "I", as I describe in Chapter 4. It's not an idea we can understand intuitively, because we have no direct experience that points that way. However, we have a great gift in our imagination to reach beyond our limitations and see what has never been seen. I hope that I have made this picture a bit clearer to the mind's eye.

Jim

Responsibility and Blame

We are heavily into blame as a species, I think. Accountability is a favorite buzzword, and whenever something bad happens (if we can) we look for someone, or some party, to hold accountable. Even if the problem is largely the result of forces outside our control, there will be someone looking for why more preparation for forces outside our control weren't taken, and whose fault it was.

However, for as dearly as we cling to blame, how much thought is actually given to what constitutes responsibility, and what has to happen before a person can really be blamed for something?

In chapter 1 I talk about Karma. In the Universe, there are two kinds of actions: acts of will, and acts of karma. In terms of cause and effect, acts of will are causes that are not effects, but flow from intent, while Karma is all action which is effect. And from this perspective, it seems only reasonable to assign responsibility solely to those who brought about the blameworthy result by an act of will.

That is, they took the action by conscious choice, and with the intention of the result for which they are blamed.

A good example is a car accident. If you turned into oncoming traffic intending to cause a collision, it's no accident, and you're to blame. If it was not intended, then it was accidental, and you are not to blame.

This is simple. However, the rest of it is not. For example, what about someone who loses their head in the heat of an argument, and says something hurtful they later regret? Is it willful (that is, a product of conscious choice with the intent of being hurtful), or is it karmic (an unintended reaction to anger)? Does a person choose to lose their cool? Or what about a person who commits a crime, such as assault? He hits another person. Later, he considers his actions and feels regret, however, he cannot change the past. Is he to be blamed for the crime? Think about it. He acted willfully in the past, but now his will is to erase the wrongdoing. Is it not reasonable to say the act of the past is against his will of the present? If so, he cannot be blamed.

These are the kinds of questions that, while not always easily or unequivocally answerable, should be taken into consideration by everyone before passing judgment. We are quick to blame, but blame often leads to harm and suffering, and they do not often lead to an improvement in the human condition.

Jim