Psychopaths, Sociopaths, and the Stoic Sage

Ability to focus on the job at hand, set aside fear and empathy when the need arises, recognizing that rejection does not hurt you, confidence in one's self?  If you've read much popular literature recently, you would think that those are the traits of a psychopath.

We always called that being an adult or, if the group was all male, being a man.

"There’s no one thing that makes a psychopath,” Dutton explains. “You want to think of those traits being like the dials on a studio mixing desk, that you can turn up and down in different situations – if they’re all turned up to maximum, then you’re a dysfunctional psychopath. “Being a psychopath isn’t black and white; it’s a spectrum, like height and weight.”

As one dysfunctional psychopath – who was serving a life sentence for multiple murders – put it to Dutton: “It’s not that we’re bad, it’s that we’ve got too much of a good thing.” How, then, can you act more like a psychopath in your everyday life?

I am thinking this whole being in touch with your feelings, new age sensitive guy thing has gone a bit far.  The way to address living in denial of your emotions is not to become ruled by them but rather understand and harness them.  If we are ruled by our emotions they have a tendency to drive you off a cliff.  If you try to deny them they just drive you over a cliff in a sideways motion.

Consider the problem of when we are forced to decide if a parent or spouse should either be allowed to die or if we should sentence them to years in a nursing home unable to move or interact with the world.  Some would call the decision to let their life end, often as they would wish it to end, psychopathic.  Some would be wrong it merely an ability to understand and deny the impulse to act for our own selfish need, to not say goodbye to our loved one, and having understood it make a decision in the best interest of our loved one, whatever that decision may be.

Sociopath or Stoic Sage?  

Mother's die.  Projects fail.  Wars must be fought.  Wars must be resisted.  Work must be done even if it rains.  Finances are limited and choices need to be made.  Should those choices be made based on the tyrannical rule of emotion or rational thought?

Emotions should be accounted for but they should not do the accounting.

The use of the terms psychopath (a person suffering from chronic mental disorder with abnormal or violent social behavior) and sociopath (a person with a personality disorder manifesting itself in extreme antisocial attitudes and behavior and a lack of conscience) have degraded to include anyone who is not whipped this way or that by their emotions.  This societal standard is welcomed as a form of progress when it is, in reality, a societal weakness.

In diversity of opinion there is strength but in the name of standardizing psychological health with a certain expression of emotion, we have reduced that strength.  The stoic has never really experienced social integration but now we have sought to define, and thereby discredit her, as mentally ill.  We'll worship the idealized form on the television screen (especially if they have a British accent) and revile them in our workmates or our politicians.

It could even be argued that feeling the right way, and expressing that feeling has replaced actually doing anything useful.  It is alright to impotent, as long as you feel bad about it.  Helplessness is not a state to be escaped, but a reason for sympathy.  We feel bad not only for the kidnapped girls being sold into a life of rape and servitude, but the first lady as well.  Those victims of rape look like her daughters after all.


Here is an idea.  Instead of weeping and gnashing of teeth, why don't we do something?  Unless, of course, we do not care about these kidnapped girls enough to actually do anything about it, just enough to feel bad about it.  But, then let's be honest about that as well.  Now we are more likely to act in denial of our own abilities, psychologically hamstrung by overwrought emotions.  Who is more useful to society, the self-centered neurotic who is more concerned with their feelings at the plight of these girls or the Son-of-a-Bitch who shows no emotion but is willing to put bullets in chests to bring those girls back to their families?  Who would be more useful to these girls?

There is all kind of foolish talk about "what we can learn from psychopaths."  The truth is there is a whole lot we can learn from not being immobilized by our emotions.  There is power in setting aside our disappointment that the world does not live up to our expectations and conform ourselves to how the world really is.  That is not being a psychopath.  It is merely stoicism.

Nagging Spouse Syndrome

There should be a colored ribbon, a 5K race, or something.

For most men a nagging wife can be little more than an irritation, but the arguments and worries that stem from a demanding partner may actually be a health hazard. New research has found that the burden of a demanding partner is linked to hundreds of extra deaths each year. Men who were subjected to 'nagging', constant demands and worries from their partners, were 2.5 as likely to die within ten years than those with less stressful relationships. The effect is so strong it could account for hundreds of deaths a year, the researchers suggested.

Near Death Experience

Me: Yeah, I sort of, vaguely, kinda remember when that happened.
Wife: That was kind of an important event.
Me:  I'm not saying it wasn't an important event.  I showed up because it was important.  It just wasn't worth remembering afterward. 
Wife: I love you and by that I mean, "There are days I want to kill you."

MH 370: Looking in the wrong ocean?

File this under "you don't know as much as you think you know" or as more "settled science" that isn't.

 Investigators searching for the missing Malaysian Airlines flight were ebullient when they detected what sounded like signals from the plane’s black boxes. This was a month ago, and it seemed just a matter of time before the plane was finally discovered. 

But now the search of 154 square miles of ocean floor around the signals has concluded with no trace of wreckage found. Pessimism is growing as to whether those signals actually had anything to do with Flight 370. If they didn’t, the search area would return to a size of tens of thousands of square miles. 

Even before the black-box search turned up empty, observers had begun to raise doubts about whether searchers were looking in the right place. Authorities have treated the conclusion that the plane crashed in the ocean west of Australia as definitive, owing to a much-vaunted mathematical analysis of satellite signals sent by the plane. But scientists and engineers outside of the investigation have been working to verify that analysis, and many say that it just doesn’t hold up.

Musket Digs (more) Sculpture

I like museums under the same conditions that I like church services: the presentation and ambiance should blend together in an artful whole and the weather outside should present neither a better sermon nor exhibit than the one going on indoors.  Consequently in the summer months I prefer architecture and sculpture for my art and I am more likely to be found in church on a rainy Sunday than a sunny one.

Easter Sunday found the dog and I taking a walk through Minneapolis and, as we've done before, I indulged in having Musket pose around the sculptures that we found.

That was what? 200 dog years ago?

What does the bird see?

I don't know boss, this one seems kind of sensual.

Standing in the shadow of the real deal.

Just another empty suit.

Squirrel!

I think Chipotle was back the other way.

Eat your heart out Snoopy.

Yes its iconic but becoming a bit overdone don't you think?

Three Fishing Haiku

Stepping gingerly,
does picking a way forward;
      bobber drops, drag whines.

Thrashing amidst weeds,
hen duck struggles to gain air;
      a drake in pursuit.

Black cloak drifting high.
Red head scanning all below.
     One man's carrion...

The world is full of wonders

Overheard:

     We should also pause to consider how charming and graceful are the unexpected effects of nature's work.  When bread is baking, for example, cracks appear in the crust.  Although these would seem to confound the baker's design, they attract our attention and help to arouse our appetite.  Figs too burst open just when they are best to ear, and olives left on the tree to rot achieve a most exquisite beauty.  Similarly, the golden grain's drooping heard, the lion's furrowed brow, the boar's foaming snout, and so many other details, if taken out of context, are not all that attractive, but when seen in their natural setting, they complete a picture and please the eye.
     In this way, the perceptive man, profoundly curious about the workings of nature, will take a peculiar pleasure in everything, even in the humble or ungainly parts that contribute to the making of the whole.  The actual jaws of living beasts will delight him as much as their representations by artists and sculptors.  With a discerning eye, he will warm to an old man's strength or an old woman's beauty while admiring with cool detachment the seductive charms of youth.  The world is full of wonders like these that will appeal only to those who study nature closely and develop a real affinity for her works. 

The Emperor's Handbook 3.2

Happy Birthday Friedrich Hayek

The man would have been one hundred and fifteen years young.

    The ideas are still as as ever relevant.

If you'd just taken the basic courses in High School and College, you were probably spoon fed Keynes and never heard the other side of the debate.  It isn't because his ideas were not valuable, but because they stand as a threat to the received wisdom government competence and human hubris.

You don't have to be an economist to "get it."  If you are smart enough to vote, you are smart enough to have an opinion.  Let these guys break the differences down:

My favorite line:

The lesson I’ve learned is how little we know.
The world is complex, not some circular flow.
The economy is not a class you master in college,
to think otherwise is the pretense of knowledge. 

Zombie Movies

Zombie movies never really scared me. 

I grew up in Illinois.  As a kid I witness a night of the living dead every time there was an election. 

Get your mind off wintertime,

The weather is getting nice but there is a chance of getting distracted by the things that need to get done.  Winter is coming, and there is much to do while the temperature allows it.

Yes, fix that gate and cut that hay but read a story to your kids too.  Get up early but take time to watch the sunrise.  Work hard but at the end of the day cuddle up in the easy chair with the one you love. 

A hard winter

The feist and I took a walk to scout out a local trout stream and hunt some shed antlers.  The first hour or two was frustrating as we found nothing but shallow holes housing six inch Brookies.  Thereafter we started to see that there actually were a few holes where a man might be able to catch some decent sized fish.  An eighteen inch trout could be seen in one six foot deep hole.  He was chilling there without a care in the world.

I did wander off a few times to check out the surrounding area.  This part of spring, before the grass and brush really start to grow, is one of my favorite times of the years to tramp through creek bottoms and forest.  Winter's work is laid bare with the melting snow and not yet covered over with the green that will feed itself off of the remains of things made dead. 

Contrary to the message in Dreamworks' Rise of the Guardians, the "the center of Jack Frost is not playfulness or fun but rather the starvation and death which sustains life.

One Tough Mudder

News Flash: Germs Discovered in Mud

On October 12, 2012, public health officials at Nellis Air Force Base outside Las Vegas, got an unsettling call. Their medical center’s emergency department reported that in the last three days, three active-duty military had come in with vomiting and bloody diarrhea. All said they had recently fallen face-first in mud, during a Tough Mudder obstacle-course event on a nearby cattle ranch in the town of Beatty the week prior.

That's right folks wallowing in mud with hundreds of complete strangers might expose you to bacteria and if certain bacteria get into your digestive tract, you will experience digestive distress.

That so few people consider the possibility demonstrates the degree to which homo sapiens are not natural born scientists.  We are tribal, however, and if there is enough tribal status to be gained but wallowing in the mud, we'll brave the explosive diarrhea to take hold of our reward. 

Our ancestors who demonstrated their toughness through their work and not as a form of recreation, would have the good sense to walk around the mud hole.

Alchemy's Holy Grail

When I was first introduced to the idea of elements, it seemed very straight-forward, I never thought to ask where they came from.

Then I learned about synthetic elements and my mind was officially blown.  Previously my understanding was that elements were natural and all the things we had or made came from combining or recombining them through one process or another.  That an element could be created was horizon expanding and left me a little in awe of my fellow homo sapiens who had accomplished such a feat.

Even later in my scientific education did I come to realize that all the elements that we have did not just appear with the Big Bang (which is more a commentary on the kind of student I was than anything about my instructors) but were themselves the products of various natural processes present in the universe that made new thing out of the old.

Researchers have recently announced that one process, one kind of event between stars, can account for all of the gold present in the universe as well as much of the other heavy elements like lead, platinum, and uranium.  Neutron stars collide about once every 10,000 to 100,000 years in our galaxy and those collisions create that yellow metal we value so much.  An info-graphic, created by those preeminent gold top dollar pawn brokers, breaks down the process.

If we start with the overused Carl Sagan line about each of us being made of stardust we could say that marriage is symbolized by the creative energy of the crashing together of two burned out stars.  I can't help taking off the wedding ring, holding it, and leaning back with no small measure of awe at how it came to be. 

No More Popes!

In response to the firing of the CEO of Mozilla because he refused to repent of making a campaign contribution to California's "Proposition 8," which sought to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman, fifty supporters of same-sex marriage have made an important stand against gay-rights puritanism. 

Their common-sense proposal called on civil society to recognize the value in the freedom to dissent from popular opinion, in this case to oppose same-sex marriage.  Freedom of speech, what a concept!  Freedom to dissent on religious matters (and marriage is and always has been a religious matter, even if it is a secular religion) without fear. How novel! 

I'm not too interested in having anyone's Pope tell me how to think about marriage, let alone fire me if my ideas do not conform to local orthodoxy.

Opponents of same-sex marriage have, with just a small bit of defensiveness, recognized the gesture.  If we could get such attitudes into the mainstream culture we could have the makings of a revolution.

Reading Plato for Citizenship and Fulfillment

Why teach Plato to plumbers, construction workers, technicians, and nurses?  The short answer is because each of us is more than our occupation, we are citizens. 

If the citizen has any defense against the opinion makers who would herd us in this direction or that, it is the critical thinking skills and independence exhibited in Plato's Socrates.  He teaches us to recognize that the confident speaker may not be worthy of our confidence.  He teaches us the kinds of questions to ask. As witnesses to his dialogues we see that most people may be well-intended but that they do not know as much as they think they know.

Plato has long been taught in the nation's universities and community colleges and many translations are available in bookstores and libraries, but instruction is not always made relevant and some translations can be intimidating.  If you have an internet connection the engaging instruction from around the world is as close as your personal computer or smartphone. 

I am just finishing John Holbo's Reason and Persuasion: Thinking Through Three Dialogues by Plato and have found myself engaged at a whole new level.  When I first read Plato twenty years ago, the novelty was enough to hold my attention despite uninspired classroom instruction.  John Holbo's presentation is first rate, relevant to how we live in the present and, importantly, totally free. 

Why read Plato?  It is a good way to be less of a chump and live a more reflective life.  That is one of the places that patriotism and self-fulfillment overlap. 

Critical thinking provides benefits in all areas of life: work and business as well interacting with government from the level of your average traffic stop to national elections.  Yes, you can live a reflective without reading Plato but it is no exaggeration to say you are reinventing the wheel.   Hell, some optimists believe Plato might even be able to expand the minds of MBA students.

I almost forgot, there is one cost to reading Plato and meeting Socrates through a couple of his dialogues.  Not only do many people "out there" not know as much as they think they know, there is a good chance you will be forced at address that possibility that neither do you.