This ridiculous fairy story people tell themselves about "sociopaths" (there are no intelligible diagnostic criteria, there is no distinct nor dispositive checklist, it is all pseudoscientific drivel, the realm of glorified self help gurus) is merely a method of othering the sinful. Human beings are all fundamentally evil or at least cap…
This ridiculous fairy story people tell themselves about "sociopaths" (there are no intelligible diagnostic criteria, there is no distinct nor dispositive checklist, it is all pseudoscientific drivel, the realm of glorified self help gurus) is merely a method of othering the sinful. Human beings are all fundamentally evil or at least capable of it at the drop of a hat. War criminals are just like you or me. They are able to be "sociopaths" to their enemies and be full of cameraderie with their own tribe. That is what it is to be human. That is why redemption is beyond almost everyone who commits this kind of crime. But the nightmares plague most of them.
Yes Al . Hannah Arendt's "The Banality of Evil". Hitler's Henchmen were every day ordinary Germans. School teachers, Doctors, Lawyers, Clergy, Tradesmen, Laborer's, Police. I remember the story of a Holocaust survivor who played a personal game in her mind afterwards and the personalities they had. Who would give up and die, who would speak out and be murdered, who would turn quisling or Kapo, who would steal, who would be the survivors and escape knowing they crossed no lines with their humanity still intact. Who would be Death Camp Guards, who would be torturers, who would commit war crimes and slaughter humans in front of mass pits, who would be the propagandists to make it all happen. Goebbels and others were merely former Advertising Men after all. Arendt when seeing Eichmann. Small bespectacled in civilian clothes. Remembering him in uniform as a giant monster with the power of life and death, may have been how she came to the conclusion how Banal humans are if put in the "right" circumstances!
Doing the job assigned - following orders. Banal - ordinary looking. Though I am now horrified that the people who judged Eichmann are the forerunners of those committing the slaughter/genocide in Gaza and the Occupied West Bank/East Jerusalem, Southern Lebanon, and in Iran, Jordan, Syria!
I am just finishing Asa Winstanley's 2023 book "Weaponising Ant-Semitism" essentially how the Israeli govt agents and British Zionists brought down Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the British Labour Party with false charges of being an anti-Semite - and also brought down and hollowed out the Labour Party to the extent that it is now a party of Zionists and those whipped into shape as Zionist supporters - and the dreadful Zionist PM (Sir????) Keir Starmer...one a human rights defender...
I find your point about sociopaths interesting but want to move it from people to institutions. Many institutions (most, almost all?) are sociopathic. Some are because they only maximize profit, some are because they follow bureaucratic rules whatever suffering that causes. Let us not forget that the sniper is part of an institution. Maybe the interesting question is not whether the sniper is a sociopath. Maybe a more interesting question is how we can create institutions that are not sociopathic.
There is an extensive body of literature noting that the "shareholder value at all costs" standard of corporate governance is identical to the way a sociopath operates.
The guy is right from my experience. There is a small percentage of society that aren’t human; they have no human emotion as we currently define it. They are inherently nasty people. I know; my father was one of those people.
I agree with you that there are some people who are inherently nasty. Whether they experienced something growing up that damaged them, or simply grew up with a sense of entitlement coupled with misanthropy and a lust for power-over, they enjoy behaving cruelly towards others. It sounds like your father was one of these, and you have my best wishes for a full and bountiful recovery!
However, I've known dangerous people who had some goodness in them, and I learned compassion from knowing them. This little bit of goodness meant that they could sometimes be reached, but it didn't that they could be trusted.
I've also known people who were virtuous in many ways, most days, but had an aspect of their character that made them dangerous under certain conditions.
I can't speculate which of these the sniper might be. If the first type, as you say, they might never experience repentence.
I think snipers are just extraordinarily good shots with a weapon and are put into the position of killing and after the propaganda has worked its charm on them - they delight in the role - that god-like power of determining who dies and when - surely consumes them - till it doesn't any more? And so Chris Hedges is able to outline for these "monsters" what lies in the nightmarish futures.
Normal folk who are great shots go on to win medals at international events such as the Olympic Games, etc. They don't become snipers murdering the innocents...
Agree. I mean that being a sniper for the military probably tends to be corrupting, as would any job where part of the job is to kill people whose faces you can see from a distance before you kill them. Any job where the focus of the job (literally in this case) is to be a killer. I'm not saying that simply being a good shot will lead someone down this path, though if the person with this skill is Israeli, and is ordinarily required to perform service in the military, at which point such skill might be discovered and the soldier channeled into sniper training...
Also, not everyone who becomes an efficient killer in the service of their country falls into the moral abyss of becoming a thrill killer. Example: Audie Murphy. After the war he suffered from PTSD, but refused offers to sell cigarettes or alcohol because he had become a matinee idol and didn't want to set a bad example.
It's not that you can't be bothered, it's that you can't. The cargo cult nonsense of "sociopathy" is well established to be pseudoscientific waffle at this point. The reason Nazis only repented when caught isn't "they were sociopaths". The lesson is "they were humans". Repentance is beyond almost everyone, whereas atrocities are within easy reach of almost everyone. That includes you, that includes me.
Way to tell me you wish to reserve to yourself the right to make fantastical and counterfactual assertions, without actually telling me. Claiming that people are "sociopaths" is at this point the exact intellectual equivalent of claiming they've been possessed by demons.
Claiming that we're all child-murdering Israeli snipers in waiting just waiting for an opportunity to murder children seems even more irrational. I can say with absolute confidence that I would never kill a child with a rifle. if you can't, that's on you, not humanity.
I read somewhere recently that becoming a CEO or a power-holding politician wreaks changes within the brain which I think equate with hubris. One's decisions are the best decisions - and generally such people are surrounded by the nodding yes-men/sycophants! And away we go. Not a psychopath/sociopath - until handed or coming into possession of - the levers of power - after which anything can go.
Another interesting comment, Jim. I believe that ego is one of the most corrupting forces there is, and that holding fast to humility helps us to remain sane.
Sure chum, i "proved your point", if only in the fantasy world in which "sociopath" is an actual thing.
"Antisocial Personality Disorder" is just the latest attempt to rebrand debunked old pseudo-diagnoses and to tighten up the arbitrary pick-list of traits that are meant to describe the afflicted. The "criteria" are still self-evidently drivel even in this latest shiny version however, and those who cleave to the concept of "antisocial personality disorder" are demonstrating the same epistemological ineptitude their forebears did. Obviously.
"Before, your argument was that sociopathy didn't have firm diagnostic criteria."
- Not only does it NOT have firm diagnostic criteria, it's not even a diagnosis. Your frantic attempts to hastily conflate Antisocial Personality Disorder with "sociopathy" haven't shown anything to be incorrect... except your reasoning.
"It's obvious, you don't like it"
- I don't like nonsense and make-believe twaddle. I'm surprised anyone does. I'm surprised that you do.
"and throw out rationales so vague as to be unfalsifiable."
- There's nothing vague about my claim that even the contemporary pseudo-scientific term "Antisocial Personality Disorder" is meaningless waffle with no firm diagnostic criteria. Even a cursory glance at the DSM's criteria reveals them to be arbitrary (arbitrary age ranges, arbitrary and vague descriptions of behavior, the classic "pick any three of these random and vague descriptors to complete your diagnosis" facebook-quiz level psychiatric mummery).
If you were dispassionate and logical this would be apparent to you. But then if you were so, you wouldn't have typed out your very first post on this matter, would you.
"twaddle" means "twaddle". Meaningless nonsense, unconnected with reality. Which is both an apt description of the tomfoolery surrounding both the amateur pseudo-diagnoses of "sociopath" beloved of randoms like you on the internet... and also an apt description of the professional pseudo-diagnoses of "antisocial personality disorder" beloved of under-educated and over-qualified professional bead-rattlers from the less illustrious side of the psychiatric profession, for the reasons elucidated in the immediately preceding post.
This ridiculous fairy story people tell themselves about "sociopaths" (there are no intelligible diagnostic criteria, there is no distinct nor dispositive checklist, it is all pseudoscientific drivel, the realm of glorified self help gurus) is merely a method of othering the sinful. Human beings are all fundamentally evil or at least capable of it at the drop of a hat. War criminals are just like you or me. They are able to be "sociopaths" to their enemies and be full of cameraderie with their own tribe. That is what it is to be human. That is why redemption is beyond almost everyone who commits this kind of crime. But the nightmares plague most of them.
Yes Al . Hannah Arendt's "The Banality of Evil". Hitler's Henchmen were every day ordinary Germans. School teachers, Doctors, Lawyers, Clergy, Tradesmen, Laborer's, Police. I remember the story of a Holocaust survivor who played a personal game in her mind afterwards and the personalities they had. Who would give up and die, who would speak out and be murdered, who would turn quisling or Kapo, who would steal, who would be the survivors and escape knowing they crossed no lines with their humanity still intact. Who would be Death Camp Guards, who would be torturers, who would commit war crimes and slaughter humans in front of mass pits, who would be the propagandists to make it all happen. Goebbels and others were merely former Advertising Men after all. Arendt when seeing Eichmann. Small bespectacled in civilian clothes. Remembering him in uniform as a giant monster with the power of life and death, may have been how she came to the conclusion how Banal humans are if put in the "right" circumstances!
Doing the job assigned - following orders. Banal - ordinary looking. Though I am now horrified that the people who judged Eichmann are the forerunners of those committing the slaughter/genocide in Gaza and the Occupied West Bank/East Jerusalem, Southern Lebanon, and in Iran, Jordan, Syria!
I am just finishing Asa Winstanley's 2023 book "Weaponising Ant-Semitism" essentially how the Israeli govt agents and British Zionists brought down Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the British Labour Party with false charges of being an anti-Semite - and also brought down and hollowed out the Labour Party to the extent that it is now a party of Zionists and those whipped into shape as Zionist supporters - and the dreadful Zionist PM (Sir????) Keir Starmer...one a human rights defender...
I find your point about sociopaths interesting but want to move it from people to institutions. Many institutions (most, almost all?) are sociopathic. Some are because they only maximize profit, some are because they follow bureaucratic rules whatever suffering that causes. Let us not forget that the sniper is part of an institution. Maybe the interesting question is not whether the sniper is a sociopath. Maybe a more interesting question is how we can create institutions that are not sociopathic.
There is an extensive body of literature noting that the "shareholder value at all costs" standard of corporate governance is identical to the way a sociopath operates.
Thanks ... anything in particular you would recommend?
The guy is right from my experience. There is a small percentage of society that aren’t human; they have no human emotion as we currently define it. They are inherently nasty people. I know; my father was one of those people.
I agree with you that there are some people who are inherently nasty. Whether they experienced something growing up that damaged them, or simply grew up with a sense of entitlement coupled with misanthropy and a lust for power-over, they enjoy behaving cruelly towards others. It sounds like your father was one of these, and you have my best wishes for a full and bountiful recovery!
However, I've known dangerous people who had some goodness in them, and I learned compassion from knowing them. This little bit of goodness meant that they could sometimes be reached, but it didn't that they could be trusted.
I've also known people who were virtuous in many ways, most days, but had an aspect of their character that made them dangerous under certain conditions.
I can't speculate which of these the sniper might be. If the first type, as you say, they might never experience repentence.
I think snipers are just extraordinarily good shots with a weapon and are put into the position of killing and after the propaganda has worked its charm on them - they delight in the role - that god-like power of determining who dies and when - surely consumes them - till it doesn't any more? And so Chris Hedges is able to outline for these "monsters" what lies in the nightmarish futures.
Such a skill would tend to be corrupting. :( However, if one can set personal moral boundaries, I don't believe that it has to be.
Normal folk who are great shots go on to win medals at international events such as the Olympic Games, etc. They don't become snipers murdering the innocents...
Agree. I mean that being a sniper for the military probably tends to be corrupting, as would any job where part of the job is to kill people whose faces you can see from a distance before you kill them. Any job where the focus of the job (literally in this case) is to be a killer. I'm not saying that simply being a good shot will lead someone down this path, though if the person with this skill is Israeli, and is ordinarily required to perform service in the military, at which point such skill might be discovered and the soldier channeled into sniper training...
Also, not everyone who becomes an efficient killer in the service of their country falls into the moral abyss of becoming a thrill killer. Example: Audie Murphy. After the war he suffered from PTSD, but refused offers to sell cigarettes or alcohol because he had become a matinee idol and didn't want to set a bad example.
I'm sorry you had to go through that.
Without bothering to address your point in detail, the only Nazis who repented were the ones who were caught.
It's not that you can't be bothered, it's that you can't. The cargo cult nonsense of "sociopathy" is well established to be pseudoscientific waffle at this point. The reason Nazis only repented when caught isn't "they were sociopaths". The lesson is "they were humans". Repentance is beyond almost everyone, whereas atrocities are within easy reach of almost everyone. That includes you, that includes me.
I forgot that if you can't quantify it, then it doesn't exist.
Way to tell me you wish to reserve to yourself the right to make fantastical and counterfactual assertions, without actually telling me. Claiming that people are "sociopaths" is at this point the exact intellectual equivalent of claiming they've been possessed by demons.
Claiming that we're all child-murdering Israeli snipers in waiting just waiting for an opportunity to murder children seems even more irrational. I can say with absolute confidence that I would never kill a child with a rifle. if you can't, that's on you, not humanity.
I read somewhere recently that becoming a CEO or a power-holding politician wreaks changes within the brain which I think equate with hubris. One's decisions are the best decisions - and generally such people are surrounded by the nodding yes-men/sycophants! And away we go. Not a psychopath/sociopath - until handed or coming into possession of - the levers of power - after which anything can go.
Another interesting comment, Jim. I believe that ego is one of the most corrupting forces there is, and that holding fast to humility helps us to remain sane.
You prove my point, although apparently the latest DSM uses the term "antisocial personality disorder" and provides diagnostic criteria.
Sure chum, i "proved your point", if only in the fantasy world in which "sociopath" is an actual thing.
"Antisocial Personality Disorder" is just the latest attempt to rebrand debunked old pseudo-diagnoses and to tighten up the arbitrary pick-list of traits that are meant to describe the afflicted. The "criteria" are still self-evidently drivel even in this latest shiny version however, and those who cleave to the concept of "antisocial personality disorder" are demonstrating the same epistemological ineptitude their forebears did. Obviously.
Before, your argument was that sociopathy didn't have firm diagnostic criteria. This was shown to be incorrect.
It's obvious, you don't like it and throw out rationales so vague as to be unfalsifiable. In other words, you argue for the sake of argument.
"Before, your argument was that sociopathy didn't have firm diagnostic criteria."
- Not only does it NOT have firm diagnostic criteria, it's not even a diagnosis. Your frantic attempts to hastily conflate Antisocial Personality Disorder with "sociopathy" haven't shown anything to be incorrect... except your reasoning.
"It's obvious, you don't like it"
- I don't like nonsense and make-believe twaddle. I'm surprised anyone does. I'm surprised that you do.
"and throw out rationales so vague as to be unfalsifiable."
- There's nothing vague about my claim that even the contemporary pseudo-scientific term "Antisocial Personality Disorder" is meaningless waffle with no firm diagnostic criteria. Even a cursory glance at the DSM's criteria reveals them to be arbitrary (arbitrary age ranges, arbitrary and vague descriptions of behavior, the classic "pick any three of these random and vague descriptors to complete your diagnosis" facebook-quiz level psychiatric mummery).
If you were dispassionate and logical this would be apparent to you. But then if you were so, you wouldn't have typed out your very first post on this matter, would you.
Apparently "twaddle" and "dispassionate and rational" just means "agrees with Al".
"twaddle" means "twaddle". Meaningless nonsense, unconnected with reality. Which is both an apt description of the tomfoolery surrounding both the amateur pseudo-diagnoses of "sociopath" beloved of randoms like you on the internet... and also an apt description of the professional pseudo-diagnoses of "antisocial personality disorder" beloved of under-educated and over-qualified professional bead-rattlers from the less illustrious side of the psychiatric profession, for the reasons elucidated in the immediately preceding post.
Well said.