I agree with the heart of your post but not with the box-sorting and I disagree with the idea of sociopaths being made and not born.
Elsewhere I've said that I think much of the shit we're in comes from the relentless celebration and elevation of "neurodivergence" as a wonderful, wonderful thing, and the use of them as fronts, so to speak, by the actually sociopathic and those who aren't necessarily miswired but merely evil and with the power to be so, successfully.
Rather than "sigma empaths," maybe it's plain essential animal instincts. Look how relentlessly they're trying to get the littlest kids now to ignore their own natural unease with the trespassing of boundaries. Everyone everywhere is being told to ignore anything and everything that just feels off and instead to just "trust the experts."
We got an oversupply of psych grads and they gotta make money and devising fancy ways of naming things is a great way to sell books.
I love your comment. I agree that we're inventing all kinds of new things to exploit. I will say though that these have been helpful to me to further understand - almost put a language - to what I'm trying to process.
One of the things I do appreciate in the Bible is its excellent grasp of metaphor. We come supplied with all the usual mammalian capacities and then there is that "in the image of" part, which I think relates to a particular aspect of consciousness. Animals sort themselves out hierarchically, but we have an extra sense of something above us and it's the struggle to define and explain something we instinctively sense is "there."
And with all those thousands of years of philosophizing we tend to forget about the tools we come equipped with because we have those in common with the purportedly lower animals.
We'd wonder, wouldn't we, if our dog really distrusted someone we're letting into our circle? We'd pay attention if our cat's hackles rose even if we couldn't hear a sound that might have alarmed it.
I've made an awful lot of dumb choices in my life, and most of them happened when I tried to make myself believe something I just knew wasn't really true. But I never went wrong by trusting my instincts even when they might've seemed idiotic. And this is part of my own "spiritual" belief system if one wants to term it that. When I tried to force belief on myself, first with the people I came from, and later with the people I thought I belonged with, there was always that sense that the inner me knew better, but I needed to belong so badly.
Now let's get to true dreams! I've had plenty of those...
1) I fucking hate that commercial, and I hate that our state tax dollars paid for it (not to mention all the propaganda billboards that are still up).
2) At least when I learned about them, the "classical grandiose narcissist" and the "malignant narcissist" weren't understood as "this one is just a worse version of the other." The difference was the presence or absence of misanthropy. Grandiose narcissists weren't misanthropic; they were too self-centered. Malignant narcissists feel their superiority entitles them to immorality, like Rich Sanchez. Grandiose narcissists are capable of behaving at least as badly; in fact, they're more likely to behave explosively. "Covert narcissists" were compared to people like incels or school shooters; they behave explosively because they quietly foster more and more resentment at being treated unfairly, but the core pathology is the same (I deserve better, unequal treatment than I receive). Communal narcissism was the only truly new concept I saw there.
3) I don't think many of the things being described as communal narcissism are rooted in pathology. I think they're fairly typical social characteristics being hijacked and exploited, and I don't think it requires (but it certainly doesn't exclude) the presence of psychopaths. End-stage capitalism is about manipulating such a tiny remaining delta of motivation that ALL of it reads as psychopathic manipulation, because there's really no other ground left but the fundamental distortion of our emotional landscape and free will. People said this about marketing 50 years ago; they were hypersensitive to processes that have, in the intervening time and with the benefit of better data technology, achieved the "meat machines" that Harari loves calling us.
Yeah, the communal one -whether it's real or not - really was the one that gave me a new lens to see through. I think most people don't really know who they are or what they stand for, and so we're inventing ways to be aggrieved, feel "special", etc. Whether it's narcissism or just human nature, it's been turned up to 11.
HAAAATTEEE that commercial. And what a condescending way to message it to adults. It's like we're back in kindergarten. If you read the comments on that video on YT, so many are like "yay! It's so catchy! Reminds me of Schoolhouse Rock!" Yeah, no shit, these people are preying on your by targeting your mental and emotional development and connecting it back to a time where you were vulnerable. It's so insidious.
Big fan of Dr. Ramani here, especially her MedCircle Master Class interviews. Excellent read, and I've come to agree.
One thing I might parse a bit is the word 'sociopath'. I agree it is correct to specify 'psychopath' as different in that there is a strong morphological difference in the way their brain is wired. I have years of productive chatting with self-proclaimed (and I believe rightly so) Athena Walker on Quora because I think the lack of capacity for normal empathetic neural processes has some implications for the moral development of A.I. But 'sociopathic' seems to have at least two distinct conversational meanings:
One is as you brought up, those 'dark-triad' / cluster B personality traits that appear to be more influenced by 'nurture' (or lack of) rather than temperamental nature — such as dysfunctions arising from the trauma of bad parenting, poor education practice, or extreme circumstances such as war or a victim of poverty, crime, or sickness.
But another is 'sociopathic behavior' ... behavior which is negatively effects society. I think this is an important distinction because some evolutionary biology suggests there are some circumstances in which a morphologically defined psychopath (one incapable of experiencing empathy through normal neural pathways( might prove useful to a group.
In prehistoric times when a tribe was threatened with an external enemy or loss of resources, a fearless 'leader' was often necessary for survival of the group. In the modern era, if I need to have brain surgery, I might prefer a cool, calm, though calculating psychopath to an emotionally invested surgeon when the scalpel begins to enter. But as we'e seen in the likes of Josef Mengele, Unit 731, or Anthony Fauci ... that is normally not the kind of 'researcher' we want.
Still, a good read.
A couple of other salient variables which are touched on in the post ... there may be an optimal number of people for empathetic collaboration (Dunbar's number or less), and a corollary that large populations, along with opportunities, bring dysfunctions of scale — that law of diminishing returns thingy, and what I call a resulting 'Tower of Babel' syndrome.
Closely related to an exponential increase in niches in the layers of bureaucracy behind which dark-triads can claim deniable plausibility, is the granularization and commodification of time. While Jeff Bezos and brother could afford their joy ride into space, those who made it possible were timed to the micro-second for their piss breaks, as are curriculums, schedules, agendas, and careers. I can't count the number of times a morally, or even practically, 'questionable' behavior is brushed aside with 'There's not enough time now. Just do it.'
Yesterday, NHK news pontificated on Prime Minister Kishida's plummeting approval rating, and one of the reasons is in how the ruling LDP used tight tax money to bury one of their own, the recently assassinated Shinzo Abe. In typical passive-aggressive fashion, the ruling LDP had already decided on dipping into the tax coffers and use his funeral to fund an international gathering to strategically reinforce and/or make trade partners and elevate the former Prime Minister to saint hood. As voices of the already economically hard hit working class rose in opposition to this use of their money, the ruling LDP followed the near ritualized strategy of saying they will try harder to make the public understand the wisdom of what has already been decided. And when the voice of the opposition grew stronger still, Kishida responded with an intent on listening to those voices, but without any intention of changing what has already been decided. And as decided, the funeral was held, and funded, by taxpayers. A university professor was trotted out to opine that maybe the world 'listen' should include more than a politically ritualized meaning, but also a communicative and responsive dimension. Duh.
Time is weaponized just as surely as social currency in large, hierarchical populations. In Japan, no matter how corrupt the institution (corporate, educational, government, etc.) the individual has no right to a fair and speedy trial. Institutions can, and do, stonewall individual plaintiffs for decades ... and even in the unlikely case a plaintiff wins, the plaintiff is awarded a token sum ... usually not enough to pay court expenses, and those found guilty pay only a minor penalty ... usually a portion of their salary is reduced for a few months, and in extreme cases, early golden parachute retirement. On the other hand, individuals accused of crimes, can, and do, face the death penalty. Pretty much the same as the U.S.
But we individuals e are not completely 'lone wolves' either. Even though I'm 67, living alone and never married, and have been an ethnic minority in Japan for 40 years but without an ethnic ex-pat community ... I still have my lady friends and fishing buddies. We are social primates, otherwise, we would not even bother writing here.
I guess the trick is how to maintain moral autonomy in large populations gone insane with anomie. Even 'authoritarian-harmonious' Japan has a strong culture of 'prosperity theology'. 'Successful Japanese are every bit as good at self-promotion as an American, and the Japanese language also has an idiomatic phrase which is the equivalence of 'the squeaky wheel gets the grease'.
Oops. Gotta run to school to play my part as a textbook stage prop / token foreigner for the local Jr. High.
Hello BHerr. Steven Martin, on another Substack just alerted me to your Substack space, wondered if we were related. I am a Herr by marriage, my husband a Herr through Mennonite lineage.
There is a huge scientific literature on psychopathy, but one general feature of it all is that it breaks down crudely in two subtypes. Primary are born into it showing lack of empathy and psychophysiological distinctions from early age. Secondary learn ruthlessness, perhaps from a history of abuse and trauma or a pathological reward system. One thing persists through decades of scholarship is how difficult it is to treat or modify. Some theories do posit that a small amount of it in societies past benefitted the tribe when the traits were called for in some exceptional challenge. But then the sociopath would be kept in check most times by strong tribal/societal oversight and keeping of boundaries. We seem to have lost that last tradition in modern civilization, and instead even glorified it.
Still reading Lobasczewski's 'Political Ponerology' to get a better handle on what Susan Sontag called 'the cruel 10%', and I want to compare his take with that of 'mass formation psychosis' theorist Mathias Desmet's book. But another triangulation I just picked up from Kindle for my MUST reading list is Isobel Wilkerson's 'Caste'.
For a while now, I have been guessing that the dysfunctional trade-offs for economies of scale include an exponential increase in niche opportunities for those dark-triads to work their mischief, but also pathological excesses of pecking order (e.g. the Nuremberg trials condemnation of following superior orders in chain of command). Bret Weinstein's 2nd interview of two military officers resisting the gene-therapy mandates, especially from about 49 minutes, is especially articulate about the moral dilemma-contradiction in following irresponsible and unaccountable chain of command.
I've been hearing a lot about "narcissism" these past couple of years, but I remain unconvinced that it is a special pigeonhole in human psychology in the way it is described. The original Narcissus was a pretty-boy who became so infatuated by his own reflection that he took no interest in others or any of the more important things in life. This would certainly be a problem, but it has nothing to do with the social predator personality that our current use of "narcissist" implies.
Is "narcissism" really a personality type, or is it just a term for a range of vices to which we are all more or less susceptible, involving lack of consideration for others, whether due to predatory intent, ego, or simple obtusity?
Like I said to SCA above, good points. I'm really just diving into the narcissist/sociopath/psychopath language in a new way, but it is helpful to me to use these terms and ideas to add new layers to what I'm seeing in myself and others. I think it's allowing me to be more self-aware and also more perceptive of others, and in this day and age, I'll take any help I can get!
Yes. Not trying to argue, or stifle layers of learning!
Categorization of people is one way of "layering," and it has the advantage of creating concrete archetypes in our mind, along the lines of "I know the person you're talking about!" It's disadvantage is that it creates distinct species of people who can then be cast out of the human race.
Another way of "layering" might be to analyze our personalities into discrete instincts and perceptions, which vary a bit from one person to another, but which are all part of the human heritage. Then, instead of archetypes, like "Grandiose Narcissist," we would instead think in terms of quantities of common qualities, like "large ego, little empathy." This would keep us humbly human in our assessment of ourselves and others, and give us a clear path toward correction of our own faults.
You've both come across a similar problem that I have when trying to quantify qualities, perhaps even pushing the boundaries of what language and logic can describe and still maintain a semblance of the literal rather than transcend into the metaphorical.
For example, in rhetoric we often run across 'the fundamental attribution fallacy' in trying to identify phenomenon. When we run across this same 'fallacy' in psychology, we tend to attribute errors or successes in others as due to something relatively stable and permanent in their temperament, and failures or successes in ourselves due to circumstances ... hard work or luck. Just an all-too typical human bias, and as a permanent foreigner in Japan, I tend to make the same mistakes in conflating Japanese culture with particular people in specific circumstances.
'Layering' or in the thick of academic research 'quantifying' or 'granularizing' information is one way of dealing with inevitable cognitive dissonance, pushing the analysis and synthesis to its limits, and eventually shifting into another paradigm or language game (in a Wittgenstinian sense of the word) altogether. But we risk leaving the realm of casual conversation or the essay form.
Some other ways I've tried to hedge my language in trying to capture behavior traits with a minimum of tribal 'othering' is to continually remind myself that I am necessarily speaking in terms of data points on continuums, each of which is an intersection between complex temperament and equally complex social contexts.
That being said, some language does this better than others. For example, while we all exhibit narcissistic behavior when primping for a date ... only a few are 'pathologically narcissistic'.
I guess we have to parse 'pathololgy' as behavior that interferes with the continual growth of a morally autonomous social primate — which implies the family or community as the most fundamental unit for analyzing morality among social primates — not the isolated individual or the corporate nation-state. The adult in the room. 'Pathology', in itself is ultimately a subjective judgement call, as even cancer can be thought of as part of the natural ashes-to-ashes process of birth, life, and death. But I think most of us can generally have some implicitly agreed upon social construct of what a 'pathological narcissist' is. Narcissism to a degree destructive of personal growth or sustainability of the community.
Similarly, we all necessarily exhibit some degree of opportunistic behavior, otherwise we would never find a mate or a paying job. On the other hand, there are those along a continuum who consistently exhibit a pathological degree of opportunism. Although many an historian, psychologist, linguist, or sufficiently entitled member of an academic may have legitimate disagreements ... I think 'machiavellian opportunists' is a pretty good euphemism for 'pathological opportunists'.
Psychopathy is a lot easier to distinguish because there appears to be some clear morphological differences in the structure of the brain and/or neural wiring. But this brings out a real thorny problem, which might be retroactively applied to the previously two pathological types of the 'dark triad'. If a psychopath is morphologically determined, how much, if at all, can a psychopath be held accountable for moral responsibility? The best nurturing, education, and mentoring in the world will have no effect on the psychopath's capacity to 'feel' another's pain or joy. Despite some literature saying otherwise, I think 'cognitive empathy' is an oxymoron. Again, another judgement call.
Despite the infinite variables of circumstance and temperament, there still tend to be cross-culturally recognizable patterns ... for example, the story of the frog who agrees to carry the scorpion on his back across the river, and upon being stung and both doomed to drown, the scorpion says 'I could not have done otherwise.' because that is the nature of the scorpion.
I just finished three back-to-back classes as a token-foreigner stage prop for a poorly written textbook and classroom exercises showing very little understanding of learning psychology.
I rotate between three Junior High schools, eight elementary schools, and one special needs school, so at most, I see the students once a month, compared to their regular teachers who see them at least 4 days a week. Today's students had not seen me since before summer vacation, and my throat is visibly wrapped in gauze from recent surgery to remove an enlarged thyroid gland. Yet as part of the mandatory 'greetings-as-a-drill', one of the teachers said she did not think it was important for the students to know why I was in bandages, or care. She had a textbook-driven agenda, and she was center stage for a carefully choreographed dance resembling education ... and I was a mere prop for the scripted and micro-managed agenda ... not a fellow human being.
Other than a total of about 5 minutes during which I was asked to play the role of a helpless foreigner asking for directions to a nearby school, I stood quietly by the window looking down at the floor, while the teacher had the students repeat after the textbook recording, and repeat after herself while reading from the 'textu booku'.
I could not help but to wonder how in the fuck it came to this ... after spending most of my life in Japan, years in graduate school, research, presentations, and publications, and even tenure at a Japanese college until I resigned in protest.
At the end of class, I quietly slipped out of the room and returned to my desk ... saying nothing to the teacher, and nothing to assistant principal and members of the city's board of education who were observing the teacher to make sure she was following the corporate nation-state's program.
These are not bad people ... but 'othering', 'machiavellianism', 'marginalization', and 'dehumanization' are not part of the curriculum, not in their teacher-certification training, and probably not in their personal vocabulary — because they are not personally suffering from those dysfunctions. And if they stick to the institutional rules and heuristics, at least while within the institution ... they probably will never suffer those dysfunctions. Such is part of the contradiction of what it means to be a human being — particularly in rule-driven institutions rather than empathy-driven communities.
Closing on 2 pm now, haven't had lunch, and nobody sitting at the group table has asked me why, or cares. So I will close my laptop, discretely slip out (probably breaking school rules), and head for a nearby Subway ... perhaps ponder on how I can take the merely anecdotal and amplify it, project it into art. If not for the bread-and-circuses entertainment of others, at least to stave off another round of the social isolation and waves of suicidal depression that come with the job. Besides, I have the neighborhood cat and four crows waiting for their evening meal when I get home.
When I was young my empathy was so strong it was debilitating. It wasn't until I was in my early thirties that I learned some tools to separate other people's emotions from my own, and put up boundaries I can remove at will. I am something of a lone wolf too, but I like people and I am better talking with them than I was.
Your prose is unsparing. I feel much the same about what Covid revealed.
I've been the same way. I used to run myself into the ground, never have boundaries, and feel much more than I was capable of handling. It wasn't until I also learned mechanisms for insulating and protecting myself without losing my humanity that I was able to operate from a place of strength.
I have a friend that said a few things that always stuck out to me:
1. You can't do that to me.
2. I don't own that.
Those two little things helped me to take every thought or interaction and determine whether that was something that I was going to internalize and own or reject.
Every interaction is a transaction. Energy is always being transferred, and I've learned to get really good at what I'm "depositing" and allowing to be "withdrawn" from my being.
''Every interaction is a transaction. Energy is always being transferred, and I've learned to get really good at what I'm "depositing" and allowing to be "withdrawn" from my being.''
A zero-sum game is one way of looking at it. But not the only way. I used to spend a lot of time devising non zero-sum games for the English communication class room, and actually found adapting 'realia' (material meant to appeal to native speakers) with game theory was more useful than applied linguistics. That approach approved to be just as useful for biology labs as Comparative Culture classes.
The applied linguistic influence for me came from Gertrude Moskowitz 'Caring and Sharing in the English Language Classroom', but the reason I'm writing this sub comment is because years earlier, I remember reading about three approaches to leadership ... ''traditional'' as in the village chief or king, 'transactional' as in an exchange of goods or services, and 'transformational' as in unconditional love.
I can't really parse that 3rd style very well without pushing into metaphorical uses of language or art, but a couple of good approximations include Jill Bolte Taylor's TED talk, or the mystic traditions religions such as might be found in Sufi trances, or zen literature (I like Paul Reps translation of 'Zen Flesh, Zen Bones' ... https://terebess.hu/zen/mesterek/Zen-Flesh-Zen-Bones.pdf. But even the more academic logicians and linguists point to that same transcendence of zero-sum games (Wittgenstein's Ladder) or the limits of zero-sum (Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems, Emergence Theory, Fractal Theory, Chaos Theory, etc.).
Not disagreeing with you. Transactional has its place. My job pays the rent. But I can't live by rent alone.
Cheers Bherr, We are thinking along the same lines, so that is why I am commenting so much.
Thanks much BHerr. Without you opening the conversation, I would be either sitting in silence or drowning in a flood of information. It'd be more fun to be doing this over a beer or traipsing through the woods like those old-time philosophers, but we make do with what we can, and digital communities sure take the sting out of impersonal institutions.
My empathy for people believing and then doubling and tripling down again and again has gone to nil. I now think "you're dead to me" a LOT more than I ever have. I'll still care about you on a human level, but certain people and certain topics I just don't have the energy to invest in anymore.
Before the age of "selfies" a dear friend and I would often be discussing the world and society in general. He would always say, "Rob, it all comes down to vanity." And, when one looks around... it really does. Great post.
Go listen to the podcast I did with Simulation Commander! LOL. You can literally hear my voice there! Nothing like Gilbert. Just a blue-collar Pittsburgh guy trying not to talk like a yinzer.
I agree with the heart of your post but not with the box-sorting and I disagree with the idea of sociopaths being made and not born.
Elsewhere I've said that I think much of the shit we're in comes from the relentless celebration and elevation of "neurodivergence" as a wonderful, wonderful thing, and the use of them as fronts, so to speak, by the actually sociopathic and those who aren't necessarily miswired but merely evil and with the power to be so, successfully.
Rather than "sigma empaths," maybe it's plain essential animal instincts. Look how relentlessly they're trying to get the littlest kids now to ignore their own natural unease with the trespassing of boundaries. Everyone everywhere is being told to ignore anything and everything that just feels off and instead to just "trust the experts."
We got an oversupply of psych grads and they gotta make money and devising fancy ways of naming things is a great way to sell books.
I love your comment. I agree that we're inventing all kinds of new things to exploit. I will say though that these have been helpful to me to further understand - almost put a language - to what I'm trying to process.
One of the things I do appreciate in the Bible is its excellent grasp of metaphor. We come supplied with all the usual mammalian capacities and then there is that "in the image of" part, which I think relates to a particular aspect of consciousness. Animals sort themselves out hierarchically, but we have an extra sense of something above us and it's the struggle to define and explain something we instinctively sense is "there."
And with all those thousands of years of philosophizing we tend to forget about the tools we come equipped with because we have those in common with the purportedly lower animals.
We'd wonder, wouldn't we, if our dog really distrusted someone we're letting into our circle? We'd pay attention if our cat's hackles rose even if we couldn't hear a sound that might have alarmed it.
I've made an awful lot of dumb choices in my life, and most of them happened when I tried to make myself believe something I just knew wasn't really true. But I never went wrong by trusting my instincts even when they might've seemed idiotic. And this is part of my own "spiritual" belief system if one wants to term it that. When I tried to force belief on myself, first with the people I came from, and later with the people I thought I belonged with, there was always that sense that the inner me knew better, but I needed to belong so badly.
Now let's get to true dreams! I've had plenty of those...
1) I fucking hate that commercial, and I hate that our state tax dollars paid for it (not to mention all the propaganda billboards that are still up).
2) At least when I learned about them, the "classical grandiose narcissist" and the "malignant narcissist" weren't understood as "this one is just a worse version of the other." The difference was the presence or absence of misanthropy. Grandiose narcissists weren't misanthropic; they were too self-centered. Malignant narcissists feel their superiority entitles them to immorality, like Rich Sanchez. Grandiose narcissists are capable of behaving at least as badly; in fact, they're more likely to behave explosively. "Covert narcissists" were compared to people like incels or school shooters; they behave explosively because they quietly foster more and more resentment at being treated unfairly, but the core pathology is the same (I deserve better, unequal treatment than I receive). Communal narcissism was the only truly new concept I saw there.
3) I don't think many of the things being described as communal narcissism are rooted in pathology. I think they're fairly typical social characteristics being hijacked and exploited, and I don't think it requires (but it certainly doesn't exclude) the presence of psychopaths. End-stage capitalism is about manipulating such a tiny remaining delta of motivation that ALL of it reads as psychopathic manipulation, because there's really no other ground left but the fundamental distortion of our emotional landscape and free will. People said this about marketing 50 years ago; they were hypersensitive to processes that have, in the intervening time and with the benefit of better data technology, achieved the "meat machines" that Harari loves calling us.
Yeah, the communal one -whether it's real or not - really was the one that gave me a new lens to see through. I think most people don't really know who they are or what they stand for, and so we're inventing ways to be aggrieved, feel "special", etc. Whether it's narcissism or just human nature, it's been turned up to 11.
HAAAATTEEE that commercial. And what a condescending way to message it to adults. It's like we're back in kindergarten. If you read the comments on that video on YT, so many are like "yay! It's so catchy! Reminds me of Schoolhouse Rock!" Yeah, no shit, these people are preying on your by targeting your mental and emotional development and connecting it back to a time where you were vulnerable. It's so insidious.
Hi BHerr
Big fan of Dr. Ramani here, especially her MedCircle Master Class interviews. Excellent read, and I've come to agree.
One thing I might parse a bit is the word 'sociopath'. I agree it is correct to specify 'psychopath' as different in that there is a strong morphological difference in the way their brain is wired. I have years of productive chatting with self-proclaimed (and I believe rightly so) Athena Walker on Quora because I think the lack of capacity for normal empathetic neural processes has some implications for the moral development of A.I. But 'sociopathic' seems to have at least two distinct conversational meanings:
One is as you brought up, those 'dark-triad' / cluster B personality traits that appear to be more influenced by 'nurture' (or lack of) rather than temperamental nature — such as dysfunctions arising from the trauma of bad parenting, poor education practice, or extreme circumstances such as war or a victim of poverty, crime, or sickness.
But another is 'sociopathic behavior' ... behavior which is negatively effects society. I think this is an important distinction because some evolutionary biology suggests there are some circumstances in which a morphologically defined psychopath (one incapable of experiencing empathy through normal neural pathways( might prove useful to a group.
In prehistoric times when a tribe was threatened with an external enemy or loss of resources, a fearless 'leader' was often necessary for survival of the group. In the modern era, if I need to have brain surgery, I might prefer a cool, calm, though calculating psychopath to an emotionally invested surgeon when the scalpel begins to enter. But as we'e seen in the likes of Josef Mengele, Unit 731, or Anthony Fauci ... that is normally not the kind of 'researcher' we want.
Still, a good read.
A couple of other salient variables which are touched on in the post ... there may be an optimal number of people for empathetic collaboration (Dunbar's number or less), and a corollary that large populations, along with opportunities, bring dysfunctions of scale — that law of diminishing returns thingy, and what I call a resulting 'Tower of Babel' syndrome.
Closely related to an exponential increase in niches in the layers of bureaucracy behind which dark-triads can claim deniable plausibility, is the granularization and commodification of time. While Jeff Bezos and brother could afford their joy ride into space, those who made it possible were timed to the micro-second for their piss breaks, as are curriculums, schedules, agendas, and careers. I can't count the number of times a morally, or even practically, 'questionable' behavior is brushed aside with 'There's not enough time now. Just do it.'
Yesterday, NHK news pontificated on Prime Minister Kishida's plummeting approval rating, and one of the reasons is in how the ruling LDP used tight tax money to bury one of their own, the recently assassinated Shinzo Abe. In typical passive-aggressive fashion, the ruling LDP had already decided on dipping into the tax coffers and use his funeral to fund an international gathering to strategically reinforce and/or make trade partners and elevate the former Prime Minister to saint hood. As voices of the already economically hard hit working class rose in opposition to this use of their money, the ruling LDP followed the near ritualized strategy of saying they will try harder to make the public understand the wisdom of what has already been decided. And when the voice of the opposition grew stronger still, Kishida responded with an intent on listening to those voices, but without any intention of changing what has already been decided. And as decided, the funeral was held, and funded, by taxpayers. A university professor was trotted out to opine that maybe the world 'listen' should include more than a politically ritualized meaning, but also a communicative and responsive dimension. Duh.
Time is weaponized just as surely as social currency in large, hierarchical populations. In Japan, no matter how corrupt the institution (corporate, educational, government, etc.) the individual has no right to a fair and speedy trial. Institutions can, and do, stonewall individual plaintiffs for decades ... and even in the unlikely case a plaintiff wins, the plaintiff is awarded a token sum ... usually not enough to pay court expenses, and those found guilty pay only a minor penalty ... usually a portion of their salary is reduced for a few months, and in extreme cases, early golden parachute retirement. On the other hand, individuals accused of crimes, can, and do, face the death penalty. Pretty much the same as the U.S.
But we individuals e are not completely 'lone wolves' either. Even though I'm 67, living alone and never married, and have been an ethnic minority in Japan for 40 years but without an ethnic ex-pat community ... I still have my lady friends and fishing buddies. We are social primates, otherwise, we would not even bother writing here.
I guess the trick is how to maintain moral autonomy in large populations gone insane with anomie. Even 'authoritarian-harmonious' Japan has a strong culture of 'prosperity theology'. 'Successful Japanese are every bit as good at self-promotion as an American, and the Japanese language also has an idiomatic phrase which is the equivalence of 'the squeaky wheel gets the grease'.
Oops. Gotta run to school to play my part as a textbook stage prop / token foreigner for the local Jr. High.
Cheers BHerr
— steve
Thanks for the clarification/feedback! Go be the best stage prop/token foreigner you can be!
Hello BHerr. Steven Martin, on another Substack just alerted me to your Substack space, wondered if we were related. I am a Herr by marriage, my husband a Herr through Mennonite lineage.
There is a huge scientific literature on psychopathy, but one general feature of it all is that it breaks down crudely in two subtypes. Primary are born into it showing lack of empathy and psychophysiological distinctions from early age. Secondary learn ruthlessness, perhaps from a history of abuse and trauma or a pathological reward system. One thing persists through decades of scholarship is how difficult it is to treat or modify. Some theories do posit that a small amount of it in societies past benefitted the tribe when the traits were called for in some exceptional challenge. But then the sociopath would be kept in check most times by strong tribal/societal oversight and keeping of boundaries. We seem to have lost that last tradition in modern civilization, and instead even glorified it.
Hoo wee! What a great summary Betsy!!!
Still reading Lobasczewski's 'Political Ponerology' to get a better handle on what Susan Sontag called 'the cruel 10%', and I want to compare his take with that of 'mass formation psychosis' theorist Mathias Desmet's book. But another triangulation I just picked up from Kindle for my MUST reading list is Isobel Wilkerson's 'Caste'.
For a while now, I have been guessing that the dysfunctional trade-offs for economies of scale include an exponential increase in niche opportunities for those dark-triads to work their mischief, but also pathological excesses of pecking order (e.g. the Nuremberg trials condemnation of following superior orders in chain of command). Bret Weinstein's 2nd interview of two military officers resisting the gene-therapy mandates, especially from about 49 minutes, is especially articulate about the moral dilemma-contradiction in following irresponsible and unaccountable chain of command.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fg_Y7WxfQ48
— Cheers from the bottom of Japan Inc.'s chain of command.
steve
Just finished a much needed edit, but then again, good writing is re-writing. Again and again ... like that Bill Murray Groundhog Day flic.
Wow, nearing 3 pm, and still haven't had lunch.
Cheers!
— steve
I've been hearing a lot about "narcissism" these past couple of years, but I remain unconvinced that it is a special pigeonhole in human psychology in the way it is described. The original Narcissus was a pretty-boy who became so infatuated by his own reflection that he took no interest in others or any of the more important things in life. This would certainly be a problem, but it has nothing to do with the social predator personality that our current use of "narcissist" implies.
Is "narcissism" really a personality type, or is it just a term for a range of vices to which we are all more or less susceptible, involving lack of consideration for others, whether due to predatory intent, ego, or simple obtusity?
Like I said to SCA above, good points. I'm really just diving into the narcissist/sociopath/psychopath language in a new way, but it is helpful to me to use these terms and ideas to add new layers to what I'm seeing in myself and others. I think it's allowing me to be more self-aware and also more perceptive of others, and in this day and age, I'll take any help I can get!
Yes. Not trying to argue, or stifle layers of learning!
Categorization of people is one way of "layering," and it has the advantage of creating concrete archetypes in our mind, along the lines of "I know the person you're talking about!" It's disadvantage is that it creates distinct species of people who can then be cast out of the human race.
Another way of "layering" might be to analyze our personalities into discrete instincts and perceptions, which vary a bit from one person to another, but which are all part of the human heritage. Then, instead of archetypes, like "Grandiose Narcissist," we would instead think in terms of quantities of common qualities, like "large ego, little empathy." This would keep us humbly human in our assessment of ourselves and others, and give us a clear path toward correction of our own faults.
Hi SnowinTheWInd & Bherr
You've both come across a similar problem that I have when trying to quantify qualities, perhaps even pushing the boundaries of what language and logic can describe and still maintain a semblance of the literal rather than transcend into the metaphorical.
For example, in rhetoric we often run across 'the fundamental attribution fallacy' in trying to identify phenomenon. When we run across this same 'fallacy' in psychology, we tend to attribute errors or successes in others as due to something relatively stable and permanent in their temperament, and failures or successes in ourselves due to circumstances ... hard work or luck. Just an all-too typical human bias, and as a permanent foreigner in Japan, I tend to make the same mistakes in conflating Japanese culture with particular people in specific circumstances.
'Layering' or in the thick of academic research 'quantifying' or 'granularizing' information is one way of dealing with inevitable cognitive dissonance, pushing the analysis and synthesis to its limits, and eventually shifting into another paradigm or language game (in a Wittgenstinian sense of the word) altogether. But we risk leaving the realm of casual conversation or the essay form.
Some other ways I've tried to hedge my language in trying to capture behavior traits with a minimum of tribal 'othering' is to continually remind myself that I am necessarily speaking in terms of data points on continuums, each of which is an intersection between complex temperament and equally complex social contexts.
That being said, some language does this better than others. For example, while we all exhibit narcissistic behavior when primping for a date ... only a few are 'pathologically narcissistic'.
I guess we have to parse 'pathololgy' as behavior that interferes with the continual growth of a morally autonomous social primate — which implies the family or community as the most fundamental unit for analyzing morality among social primates — not the isolated individual or the corporate nation-state. The adult in the room. 'Pathology', in itself is ultimately a subjective judgement call, as even cancer can be thought of as part of the natural ashes-to-ashes process of birth, life, and death. But I think most of us can generally have some implicitly agreed upon social construct of what a 'pathological narcissist' is. Narcissism to a degree destructive of personal growth or sustainability of the community.
Similarly, we all necessarily exhibit some degree of opportunistic behavior, otherwise we would never find a mate or a paying job. On the other hand, there are those along a continuum who consistently exhibit a pathological degree of opportunism. Although many an historian, psychologist, linguist, or sufficiently entitled member of an academic may have legitimate disagreements ... I think 'machiavellian opportunists' is a pretty good euphemism for 'pathological opportunists'.
Psychopathy is a lot easier to distinguish because there appears to be some clear morphological differences in the structure of the brain and/or neural wiring. But this brings out a real thorny problem, which might be retroactively applied to the previously two pathological types of the 'dark triad'. If a psychopath is morphologically determined, how much, if at all, can a psychopath be held accountable for moral responsibility? The best nurturing, education, and mentoring in the world will have no effect on the psychopath's capacity to 'feel' another's pain or joy. Despite some literature saying otherwise, I think 'cognitive empathy' is an oxymoron. Again, another judgement call.
Despite the infinite variables of circumstance and temperament, there still tend to be cross-culturally recognizable patterns ... for example, the story of the frog who agrees to carry the scorpion on his back across the river, and upon being stung and both doomed to drown, the scorpion says 'I could not have done otherwise.' because that is the nature of the scorpion.
I just finished three back-to-back classes as a token-foreigner stage prop for a poorly written textbook and classroom exercises showing very little understanding of learning psychology.
I rotate between three Junior High schools, eight elementary schools, and one special needs school, so at most, I see the students once a month, compared to their regular teachers who see them at least 4 days a week. Today's students had not seen me since before summer vacation, and my throat is visibly wrapped in gauze from recent surgery to remove an enlarged thyroid gland. Yet as part of the mandatory 'greetings-as-a-drill', one of the teachers said she did not think it was important for the students to know why I was in bandages, or care. She had a textbook-driven agenda, and she was center stage for a carefully choreographed dance resembling education ... and I was a mere prop for the scripted and micro-managed agenda ... not a fellow human being.
Other than a total of about 5 minutes during which I was asked to play the role of a helpless foreigner asking for directions to a nearby school, I stood quietly by the window looking down at the floor, while the teacher had the students repeat after the textbook recording, and repeat after herself while reading from the 'textu booku'.
I could not help but to wonder how in the fuck it came to this ... after spending most of my life in Japan, years in graduate school, research, presentations, and publications, and even tenure at a Japanese college until I resigned in protest.
At the end of class, I quietly slipped out of the room and returned to my desk ... saying nothing to the teacher, and nothing to assistant principal and members of the city's board of education who were observing the teacher to make sure she was following the corporate nation-state's program.
These are not bad people ... but 'othering', 'machiavellianism', 'marginalization', and 'dehumanization' are not part of the curriculum, not in their teacher-certification training, and probably not in their personal vocabulary — because they are not personally suffering from those dysfunctions. And if they stick to the institutional rules and heuristics, at least while within the institution ... they probably will never suffer those dysfunctions. Such is part of the contradiction of what it means to be a human being — particularly in rule-driven institutions rather than empathy-driven communities.
Closing on 2 pm now, haven't had lunch, and nobody sitting at the group table has asked me why, or cares. So I will close my laptop, discretely slip out (probably breaking school rules), and head for a nearby Subway ... perhaps ponder on how I can take the merely anecdotal and amplify it, project it into art. If not for the bread-and-circuses entertainment of others, at least to stave off another round of the social isolation and waves of suicidal depression that come with the job. Besides, I have the neighborhood cat and four crows waiting for their evening meal when I get home.
Cheers from a dreary Tokyo afternoon,
— steve
When I was young my empathy was so strong it was debilitating. It wasn't until I was in my early thirties that I learned some tools to separate other people's emotions from my own, and put up boundaries I can remove at will. I am something of a lone wolf too, but I like people and I am better talking with them than I was.
Your prose is unsparing. I feel much the same about what Covid revealed.
I've been the same way. I used to run myself into the ground, never have boundaries, and feel much more than I was capable of handling. It wasn't until I also learned mechanisms for insulating and protecting myself without losing my humanity that I was able to operate from a place of strength.
I have a friend that said a few things that always stuck out to me:
1. You can't do that to me.
2. I don't own that.
Those two little things helped me to take every thought or interaction and determine whether that was something that I was going to internalize and own or reject.
Every interaction is a transaction. Energy is always being transferred, and I've learned to get really good at what I'm "depositing" and allowing to be "withdrawn" from my being.
Hmm ...
''Every interaction is a transaction. Energy is always being transferred, and I've learned to get really good at what I'm "depositing" and allowing to be "withdrawn" from my being.''
A zero-sum game is one way of looking at it. But not the only way. I used to spend a lot of time devising non zero-sum games for the English communication class room, and actually found adapting 'realia' (material meant to appeal to native speakers) with game theory was more useful than applied linguistics. That approach approved to be just as useful for biology labs as Comparative Culture classes.
The applied linguistic influence for me came from Gertrude Moskowitz 'Caring and Sharing in the English Language Classroom', but the reason I'm writing this sub comment is because years earlier, I remember reading about three approaches to leadership ... ''traditional'' as in the village chief or king, 'transactional' as in an exchange of goods or services, and 'transformational' as in unconditional love.
I can't really parse that 3rd style very well without pushing into metaphorical uses of language or art, but a couple of good approximations include Jill Bolte Taylor's TED talk, or the mystic traditions religions such as might be found in Sufi trances, or zen literature (I like Paul Reps translation of 'Zen Flesh, Zen Bones' ... https://terebess.hu/zen/mesterek/Zen-Flesh-Zen-Bones.pdf. But even the more academic logicians and linguists point to that same transcendence of zero-sum games (Wittgenstein's Ladder) or the limits of zero-sum (Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems, Emergence Theory, Fractal Theory, Chaos Theory, etc.).
Not disagreeing with you. Transactional has its place. My job pays the rent. But I can't live by rent alone.
Cheers Bherr, We are thinking along the same lines, so that is why I am commenting so much.
— steve
Your perspective is great Steve, and I appreciate you expounding on topics that you clearly have great insight on!
Thanks much BHerr. Without you opening the conversation, I would be either sitting in silence or drowning in a flood of information. It'd be more fun to be doing this over a beer or traipsing through the woods like those old-time philosophers, but we make do with what we can, and digital communities sure take the sting out of impersonal institutions.
Cheers BHerr!
— steve
I do not generally like people and have never needed friends.
That has been a real advantage during the last few years.
That said, I seem to have a lot of empathy with people and used to be too easily taken in by others with an agenda.
That empathy is now a bit more limited and if abused, quickly switches to an absolute lack of concern if they live or die.
Quite a lot of people now occupy that category.
Many, I would help on their way.
My empathy for people believing and then doubling and tripling down again and again has gone to nil. I now think "you're dead to me" a LOT more than I ever have. I'll still care about you on a human level, but certain people and certain topics I just don't have the energy to invest in anymore.
Before the age of "selfies" a dear friend and I would often be discussing the world and society in general. He would always say, "Rob, it all comes down to vanity." And, when one looks around... it really does. Great post.
So is Pedo Pete a Classical or Malignant narcissist?
I'm going with Malignant.
Luckily, the old soiled diaper tyrant, can't have long left, given the frequency of his verbal bullshit announcements.
Just for clarity, who's Pedo Pete?
Pedo Pete is Hunter Bidens nickname for Joe.
Is is really Joe Biden anyway? Could be a body double. Or Nero in disguise.
https://alphaandomegacloud.wordpress.com/2022/09/06/factcheck-is-joe-biden-the-new-nero/
Owwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww-woooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!
Also a lone wolf.
What would it say if I posted on my Social Media accounts that I'm a Sigma Empath. Is there flag I can use? 😊
Wow, get a room you guys. I hear The Ungovernable looks like Bradley Cooper and Guttermouth looks like Teeter. Talk amongst yourselves...😂
This is like one of those crossover comic books. Iron Man shows up in a Dr. Strange comic.
BHerr is an Omega Empath who looks like Gilbert Gottfried. In this week's Woden's Day Thing, human souls are nice or some shit.
I'll go with The Ungovernable's comparison of my looks to Tom Cruise, thank you very much. 😂😂
I actually met Gilbert Gottfried in the Pittsburgh airport once.
The problem is, your Gilbert Gottfried avatar SOUNDS like him, too.
Go listen to the podcast I did with Simulation Commander! LOL. You can literally hear my voice there! Nothing like Gilbert. Just a blue-collar Pittsburgh guy trying not to talk like a yinzer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yinzer
What a loser.
I'm a Double Sigma Empath.
Sigma Empath+++ right here, ladies!
Bah, that's just the one you buy from the Tony Robbins store.
Hey, I didn't pay $10,000 and walk across fire for nothing!
LOL, you actually DID the fire walk? You can just watch the video and still get the badge.
NOW you tell me....
Alright, back to selling these Amway products!
Excellent, thank you. Satan is the ultimate and original narcissist. He is quite mad so I call him Loopy Luci.