do sociopaths deserve humane treatment?

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Wednesday, August 29, 2007

do sociopaths deserve humane treatment?

(originally posted on my blog Here)

Yes, sociopaths again. A topic that never dies with me.

Look at it this way: after all those that i've dealt with by way of placing myself into their paths (bosses, for example), isn't it comprehensible that i would be enraged by the latest one seeking me out as a target for his hate?

More specifically, Dave Sewell on flickr (see post below), decided to ban me from a public group on flickr.

This is a man i do not know. i heard a few people complain about his abusive treatment of them. i went to his photostream out of curiosity. i liked his photographs. i complimented him on some by posting positive comments. i never once initiated any reference to the people and the complaints they made against him. Days became weeks... weeks became months. Time passed, without event.

A few days ago, flickr sent me a notice that i had been banned from a particular flickr group. Puzzled, i went to the group to find out which one it was (the title meant nothing to me). i located the name of the person who seemed to own the group and who seemed to be the administrator of it. A Mr. Dave Sewell.

The details on what came next are here.


Now, to get to the meat of this posting... i will restate the title and the question i ask:
Do sociopaths deserve humane treatment?

This may be a little like discussing capital punishment. In fact, it may be VERY similar to that topic. Sociopaths, in the long run, do more to harm society than a wild maniac or two going on killing sprees in schools and businesses.

SHOCK!! HORROR!!

HOW could i SAY such a thing???

Today?? With the purple bruises of the most recent(ly publicized) killing sprees still lingering in our society's collective consciousness... how dare i suggest that a sociopath (one who does not commit acts of physical violence directly to people, mostly) could be WORSE than a bunch of NUTTERS who have BRUTALLY MURDERED people with guns, bombs, knives and the US Military?

Oh, but see, there's the key: The US Military. i know i should start small and talk about supervisors and bosses and CEOs at businesses and corporations, but why don't we skip all the hand holding and go straight to the top: our president, and many of those who carry out "his mission," are sociopaths.

What makes this so horrific is that they have horrifying amounts of power over entire societies. For their own personal gain, to accomplish their own personal ego-reinforcing goals, these sociopathic "leaders" have caused the deaths of ... millions?

Who are those deaths?

1. US Citizens, as part of our military branches.
2. US Citizens, as crippled or suicides in direct reaction to item one above (families/friends).
3. "The Bad Guys" in each of the societies that our "leaders" have attacked with violent force.
4. Innocent Citizens in each of the societies that our "leaders" have attacked with violent force.
5. Innocent Citizens in Our society and Other societies who have been murdered out of suspicion and paranoia, directly fueled by (and often generated by) item three above.

Ok, too large a scale for you? Too big a shot to take on all at once? Tired of the whole "Bush Bashing" thing?

Then let's settle on down to the little fish, as mentioned earlier: supervisors, bosses, CEOs, board directors, primary share holders, etc. at businesses and corporations.

The societal damage done by these people exceeds that done by war alone. War is easy. You pick a target, you blow it up. Everyone can see that. The damage done to a society by one greedy corporate "bottom line" decision to not recall a product unleashed upon society with known lethal potentials is incalculable. Worse, there's that whole "corporate personhood" concept that allows "corporate entities" to get away with passing the buck, displacing and spreading the blame, and scape goating standard protocol. The task of "fixing it" and "getting the bad guys" becomes a job no mere military force can tackle. The people who made the decisions that lead to the hands signing the papers and sending the emails, which lead to the inaction are the sociopaths that ought be held responsible for the damage done to the society (and economy) they claim to service in this "free market." These sociopaths have diffused the focus on the actual issue and its consequences that they seemingly have zero interest in cause and effect. i suspect that disinterest is there simply because they are so removed from actual physical contact with their victims that they are assured it will be nothing more than another casual, daily command to a subordinate. Even the subordinates of the subordinate are cushioned and able to "wash their hands" of responsibility.

Watch how the system works:

"I was just following orders."

"They told me to [do it]."

"The workers were instructed to do what was believed to be in the best interests of the company and its share holders."

"The expense to the company to recall the product and re-engineer it would have been greater than the potential litigation against the company by [the victims of the defect]. The least costly of the two possible actions was selected; it was the right thing to do for the company and it's shareholders."

Look at this language.

There is no person or human element present in the language used (except for the poor schmuck who said "because they told me to").

There is nothing tangible. No focus point. Only a vague entity known as "the company." Not "I", "He", "She", "My", "Her", or "His." Not even an "Our", "We", or "Us."

Those words are chosen very carefully by "the company" so as to enable the aforementioned blame diffusing and the avoidance of culpability. "The company" has become a faceless noun. This allows all of those sociopaths who were the decision makers to continue on as they were without facing charges of negligence or callous disregard. Their names hardly mentioned in relation to the causes and the effects. Their faces unknown. These sociopathic human beings, these people, can slip out of one "company" and into another. Lateral movement. No loss in ladder climbing position (though one could argue that there is also no upward movement since "The Peter Principle" has established their level of effectiveness to be just good enough to float without sinking, but not good enough to rise any higher).

Does anyone notice the difference in language when you compare a domestic dispute a bar brawl, or a car accident to the language used when "a company" is getting attention in the media for something "naughty?"

Once again, there are no people involved. The language is almost as if the events unfolded themselves without a bit of human action. Event without cause. Embarrassment of "the company's image" but no cuffs around any wrists, no matching of injuries to weapons, no blood on the hands of the attackers, no visible wounds on the victims that can be traced back to any human being of any kind.

Does anyone notice the difference in language between the USA and the UK when their respective media talk about "companies?" Corporate personhood is here again to protect the sociopaths from being named and called out.

In the USA, "a company" is not "a group of people." In the UK, "a company" are people.

Pay close attention:

"is not" as opposed to "are not."

Singular, as opposed to collective.

A US company is a singular entity of its own, with a proper noun to identify it. It has a mission, a goal, an attitude and a name of its own. There is no "we" or "our" in a large and aggressive US company. There is no plural. Just as your cat is "Mr. Sniffles who has a cute wrinkle in his nose" instead of "The Sniffles Group which does most of its business in the cough and cold remedy market."

A less silly example: "The Company HAS aggressively dominated the market for energy products. IT will need to be creative in finding new market avenues in order for IT to grow larger and make more profit in coming years." You also have the language examples above...

Elsewhere in the world, when you hear reporting about companies, the plural (original and proper) use of the word "company" is maintained. The company is a collective. A group of people operating under a title or name that identifies a specific organization of individual human beings all working together for a specific goal... whatever that goal is.

Example: "The company ARE doing really well with THEIR new safety system created for high velocity impact car collisions. THEY are saving lives. With minds like THEIRS at work, we're wondering what THEY will do next."

Talking about goals...

It used to be about doing something useful or better, and then being rewarded for the accomplishment because it benefited people or society in general.

Now, however, it seems to only ever be about money. Money is power. Power is control.

Who do YOU want in control of the bus when you are a passenger? Do you want a polite woman who pays attention to the road, other vehicles and the passengers or do you want a big slab of metal that is calculating speed and angles based on getting to Point B as fast as possible because the schedule will be of greater impact on The Company than a few scares, heart palpitations, cuts, bruises and other inconsequential [collateral damage] like... oh... human deaths?

There have been strides to define corporate criminality, no doubt. Here's a reference:


Corporate Homicide: Definitional Processes in the Creation of Deviance
Victoria Lynn Swigert, Ronald A. Farrell
Law & Society Review, Vol. 15, No. 1 (1980 - 1981), pp. 161-182


i don't see much success in this area. Maybe i am focused on the negative too much, but there is a whole shitload of negative out there. Left and right. We're surrounded by faceless entities that get away with actions that an individual would be prevented from doing or punished for attempting, all because of the diffusion of blame and the wider scale of time and dispersion of the effects of a "group think decision" made behind closed doors and executed by subordinates.

Now, i've deviated from the main topic to an extraordinary level in order to show how sociopaths are horrifically dangerous in many hidden ways; i shall now return to that main topic: does a sociopath deserve humane treatment?

If someone walks into the room and denounces your work ethic to a bunch of your co-workers, several times a week, while you're not around to witness it and defend yourself on the spot or call out your accuser to prove his or her statements or back down... you've just been violated. An act of social and psychological violence has been made against you.

"I don't play the victim mentality role. It doesn't matter what people think, just how good a job you do!"

Sorry, but you are just as much a victim as if your boss walked into your office or cubical and pushed a knife into your chest without provocation. Sidelining again, what kind of provocation would justify that response?? Were you socially and psychologically tormenting your boss by spreading fear, uncertainty and doubt among every member of the workplace to the point that your boss was being shunned, joked about, and at risk of losing his life-sustaining income by losing job simply because you felt it was totally harmless to do smart-ass gossiping because you feel intimidated by his work experience?

It matters what people think of you if they control, socially, your accessibility to the pursuit of success, or even happiness.

True Victims do not choose themselves. It is not shameful to be a victim.

Victimizers choose their victims. Most often by way of jealousy and self-esteem issues. They seek those who they feel are not a threat to them. Those they feel they can control or with whom they can control the situation and the perception of events. This is shameful.

True shameful "victim mentality" is justifying your inhumane, cruel and violent actions by saying "He/she did this-and-that to me, so I am responding in kind. If others get in my way, that's just too bad. It's not like I'm targeting anyone innocent."

True shameful "victim mentality" is "I'm going to be rude, cold and judgmental to you because that's what everyone has done to me my whole life. Why should I be sensitive to YOU when no one was sensitive to ME??"

THAT, my readers, is what shameful "victim mentality" is. Point the fingers, and your knives where they belong.

Who's doing the pointing, anyway? In who's best interest might it be to make victimization into something the victim should be shameful and held responsible for?

The victimizers. The one's who have control over the situation and over you. Victimizers are the ones who devised the concept that being a victim is "your own damn fault." It's in their best interest that you be "ashamed for letting it happen to you." As though to defeat rational observation (and discussion) of true cause and effect, they seek to make the effect have no cause but itself.

"You worked with him before, so why would you work for him again if he's so bad??"

Yes, that one is DIRECTLY from my OWN personal experience. The complacent gossipers and the ignorant and naive bystanders trying to cover up the "unbelievable" fact that they have missed something and that they think you want special treatment (or have been getting it). The people who were not (yet) victims of the sociopathic victimizer.

This isn't philosophy. This is concrete reality. This is human behavior on the macro and microscopic level. From the individual to the group mind.

The the most critical concept to understand here is on the macro level:

The more sociopaths are allowed to shape the world around them to best suit their own interests (not the interests of the group, the society or the species), the more damage they do (to the society) and the more sociopaths they CREATE.

You've heard the rhetoric about what growing up in a war zone, or in prison, or being a child of molestation creates: it creates a replication of the stimuli. The victim becomes hardened from constant assaults. A hostile environment creates a defensive individual. Constant exposure to hostility turns defensiveness into hostility. Hostility acts outwardly against those who appear to be the cause of the hostile environment... or maybe anyone... because "HE didn't stop it from happening" and "SHE didn't tell the boss about the gossip about me."

A hostile and toxic environment creates a hostile and toxic person. It can do nothing else. You either harden or you weaken. Those who weaken are frequently used by other people as a comparison or consolation agent; to ease their own suffering or make it pale in comparison. What better way to make your problems pale in comparison to someone else's than by MAKING someone else's problems worse?

Yes, you may think it's all fun and games. Harmless talk. Chit chat. Gossip. Play. Ribbing.

Play leads to exhaustion. Exhaustion leads to lowered stamina. Lowered stamina leads to sensitivity. Sensitivity leads to vulnerability. Vulnerability leads to being damaged by "lesser offenses."

The more damage, the more easily damaged.

Here we are. At the crux:

Human beings exposed to toxic experiences during their developmental stages very often become "rugged" or "tough" as a defensive mechanism. It's automatic part way, but then it also becomes part of the personality. That's when it becomes choice. Many people at this point choose to "take it like a man/woman" and "give as good as they get" ...

.. but on the inside... they're rotting out and becoming a shell of armor which protects a wounded child that never grew up and never learned appropriate and healthy ways of defending or avoiding the toxic and hostile experiences. These people end up with Borderline Personality Disorder.

BPD.

Anyone reading me on a regular basis knows that i struggle with the understanding that those who have abused me have become abusive because they themselves were abused. i empathize with these people because i know suffering well enough. At first, they like this. Later, they feel vulnerable because i see and know too much. Then i become a threat. To their egos. Their "hearts." Their agendas.

A person with BPD still can make distinctions between good and bad behavior. i've seen it demonstrated many times by many people with the condition. They admit to feelings of guilt. The problem is, they feel guilt because they know what they have done is harsh, cruel, rude, or just plain wrong... but they never learned how to empathize with those they have hurt. Most likely, no one empathized with their own suffering as it was forming their defense mechanisms years previous.

But they KNOW. They CAN distinguish the difference. They can CHOOSE to take an active role in their behavior patterns if they see value in it.

The value, ideally, should be "because it's best for everyone."

The value, more often in the real world is "so i can have friends and keep jobs."

It's still a value.

But some people choose an even more selfish and cold value for external self-control:

POWER.

Who wants power the most? Those who feel they have been powerless. Those who have had so much done to them beyond their control.

People with BPD naturally seek connection to and with other human beings. They also defensively seek control. Control over the interactions with others and the perceptions of them by others. If the satisfaction of the human connection eases the fears that demand control, these people can move towards a much better life.

A better path than those who get no satisfaction at all from connection to other human beings.

Anti-social personality disorders. That's what we're talking about. Personalities that work against the collective good and which tear apart the fabric of society and human connection.

When the only motivation left for someone with BPD is to seek power and control over everything and anything... they have stepped into sociopathy.

Is there a road back from sociopathy?

BPD is itself considered a massive and frightening challenge by the psychiatric world. The DSM-IV-TR does not even "want" to consider sociopathy because it is too complex a situation of cause and effect and no one has "an easy solution" or a clear cut delineation between the anti-social personality disorders. Though, it seems pretty clear to me... but i'm not sitting on "The Committee" that determines what will be written in "The Bible of Psychiatry." The book upon which seemingly all doctors of psychiatric "medicine" defer to. The group mind in academia and "The Healthcare Industry " demands deference to this most holy of ancient relics called DSM. Those who use it as it was originally intended (a guide and a reference from which to build study of things) tend to be looked at as refusing to accept DEFINED ABSOLUTES and are shunned by academia and "proper professionals." In fact, you may never get a license to practice your specialized doctorate as a vocation if you don't swear to be held by that book's determinations.

When the politics dictate obedience and subservience to certain rules, process and procedure in order for you to pursue your goals, who is going to actively fight the system if it means they may never accomplish their goal? Even the scientific method is abused this way, why not the "mental health system?"

So, i reduce the great, grand DSM down to what it really is: politics. i say a redundant "fuck you" to the DSM and i continue with my questions to you:

Is there a way back from the brink for a sociopath?

Should energy and time be spent seeking it?

Do sociopaths deserve that effort?

The one thing sociopaths have going against them is that they cannot form solid and meaningful relationships with others. Surface contact only. Usually when people get too close, the real personality shows through the layers of plastic and decorative talk. Then those people move away.

Sociopaths can only work together when they are each doing what each other wants them to do. Kind of crazy, but there's our royal family- sorry, government in action with blowing up children and nurturing hatred for the USA amongst the rest of the world.

You see the damage sociopaths can do en mass?

Our society is at risk from the outside because we have put the outside on such a level of heightened vigilance. The US Government has created worldwide Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

But again... do you execute murderers?

If yes, do you execute sociopaths for the deeper, wider-ranging and longer lasting toxic effects they have on entire social structures?

You try to filter "criminals" out of society, but what do you do about the anti-social people who have no interest in society or who actively seek to control and manipulate it? Do you try to filter them out of society?

Most likely you don't even notice them.

Some of you might be becoming one of them right now... growing harder, colder, more selfish, more power-hungry, more obsessed with control and "having it YOUR WAY."

Maybe you're already one of them.

That's when you choose to vote for charity to known sociopaths: you want to protect your own interests, after all, and if you're found out...

No, i'm not demanding a terrorist report hot-line or a witch hunt. Maybe application of the kinds of psychiatric evaluation done with applicants for childcare work... but for ALL positions of power and influence over others. The more influence and the more power, the more stringent the analysis and evaluation.

But what do you do with 'em once you've tagged 'em?

Do you let them hide their potential for death and destruction behind sweet talk and "pity me" complaints?

Do they even deserve my empathy as having once been human beings who suffered terribly?

Do they deserve yours?

What do you make of yourself if you choose to shun them for what they've done? Does that continue the cycle of violence?

Psychopathic killers can be seen and caged.

Sociopaths...

Like i said: most likely you don't even notice them. But, on some level, you feel their effects. The way you got screwed by the insurance company for giving you the "book value" of your car when some drunk driver smashed into and totaled it instead of giving you the True Value of that vehicle in your web of life activities: transportation to the job that pays for the food that feeds the family... freedom!

If you feel oppressed enough, maybe you're sitting there rah rah rahing against the man. But be careful just how far you push those "fight the power" and "break the rules" desires.

Maybe that's part of you growing harder

colder

more selfish

power-hungry

obsessed with control and

"having it YOUR WAY."


But, yet again...

Maybe you're already one of them.