You know the drill by now.  The last day of the month is set aside to recap, with bonus commentary, what I consider to be “required reading” from the past month.  Let’s jump right in:

Denial – I’ve never wanted to be a psychopath or to be not one.  I just want my life to be as fulfilling as possible with as much success as possible.  If having a label associated with my demons helps me understand myself better as a whole, so be it.

LD-50 – The parasite that kills their host ensures their own extinction.  A balancing act for any parasitic person must be to ensure that the host is kept reasonably happy while still providing the benefit that makes the acquaintanceship worthwhile.

Disgust – The overly emotional make my blood boil.  My life is spent seeking solutions for my own inconveniences.  Why would I want to surround myself with those that cannot find any such solutions for their own lives?

Abandoned – A detour into the interaction of Borderline Personality Disorder and psychopathy. As one who has both conditions, I find it especially difficult to rein in my behavior to ensure that those I’ve snared do not leave me.  The only acceptable exit is the one that I initiate.

Judge, Jury, and Executioner – Society, which is made primarily of non-psychopaths, abandons restraint and ethics when it comes to their treatment of, and stigma towards, psychopaths.  They’ve decide out fate, given us our sentence, and would gleefully execute the sentence if they could.

Some Kind of Monster – The companion post to “Judge, Jury, and Executioner”.  Society often persecutes because those that came before did the same or for any number of other idiotic reasons.  They do not stop to think whether the persecuted really deserve it.  Even “monsters” may have merit.

Desecration – Society wants a binary, but binaries are few and far between.  Those closer to the middle than the edges suffer the worst because of it.

Cookie Jar – How does one determine that they do not have a conscience?  I had to ask several non-psychopaths.  Their commentary is present in this post.

A non-psychopathic individual asked the following question a few days ago on my tumblr page:

Why should society try to change the stigma attached to psychopathy? Shouldn’t we keep you at arm’s length to protect ourselves? You will hurt others for your own benefit and feel nothing of their pain – that makes you dangerous to us, and it is unwise to allow you into our lives.

I answered with the following brief response:

Yes, I could take advantage of others for gain.  I would not feel regret or remorse over it.  However, I could just as easily do good for others or even just be a completely neutral force, which is more likely.  The intent is not to hurt, but to gain benefit.  Wrongdoing is just one avenue of many for such an end.

Society wants to paint the condition as one of bloodlust, but really it is of gamesmanship.  If the purely destructive potential is just that, potential, then why should there be an arbitrary stigma when the rest is just a zero-sum game?  Shouldn’t the players be the sole force in determining who wins and loses?

I have thought about their all too common concerns a lot since then.  I like to think that the concern listed above is an example of the selective morality of the non-psychopath.  Psychopaths, in general, are not concerned about the morality of a situation, but rather the benefits that could be had as well as how the situation in question effects the “rules” of the larger game.  For example, I may be transgender, but my concern of the transgender plight, in general, is limited to the effect it has on me and my ability to succeed in this life.  To the person that battles homicidal thoughts and desires, I have no fear.  Thoughts are not actions.  I don’t have the double standard that the non-psychopath has when it comes to choosing groups to demonize in one fell swoop.  I treat individuals as individuals and let their own actions shape my perception.

Continue reading Selective Morality →

Baaaaaaaaaaaargh.   Baaaarrg.   Baaagh.   Baaa.  Baaa.  There, I’ve got it down.  The most difficult part of being a psychopath in a non-psychopath’s world is approximating normality to the point where no one can tell that I am different than them.  It’s not just difference but the frightening, to others, difference that makes such so important.  Maybe the wolf is full and has no need to feast, but nonetheless there is a wolf among the sheep.  And like a wolf in sheep’s clothing, I must learn how to mimic everything sheep do.  The emotional responses, the words chosen, and the bonds created with others are just the tip of the iceberg.  Baaaargh.  Baaaagh. Baa. Baa. Baa.

Continue reading Sheep’s Clothing →

After I was first diagnosed as psychopathic, I began to search more deeply as to which facets of the condition fit and which did not.  As I’ve said before, I neither wanted to be psychopathic nor not psychopathic.  I just wanted to understand better the way in which I function.  One area I focused heavily on was the presence or absence of conscience.  When the psychologist asked me to define conscience, I gave an answer that floored them.  It was like a three year old was being asked the question:

Conscience is made up the thoughts that prevent me from doing some action, right?

I was confusing my internal calculus of determining what actions to take as a synonym for conscience.  There was clearly something much deeper that I just did not understand.

Continue reading Cookie Jar →

It has been quite a while since I wrote about gender versus writing about psychopathy.

One thing that always intrigues me about gender, and especially those who are transgender, is how deviation from the accepted gender roles and norms causes great distress in others, especially the religious.  They see it as desecration of the natural order, the natural segregation and differentiation of the sexes.  The religious see such desecration as an affront to God’s will and creative energies.  Neither argument makes sense to me.  Life is all about shades or combinations of features.  Being atheist, the call to a non-present entity seems hollow.  How can something so arbitrary, such as the sex one is born as, be desecrated when it has no intrinsic meaning?

Continue reading Desecration →

Being both transgender and psychopathic means that I have to intentionally keep my past obfuscated.  I do this for two reasons.  The first is to secure my mask: by eliminating data that runs contrary to the person my acquaintances know me as, they will not be able to see that I am transgender for instance.  The second reason is to maximize the information I can get from others.  By revealing very little and asking a lot, I can use what the other person reveals for maximum benefit.

Continue reading Rewriting History →

A reader shared the following comment a few days ago:

I’ve been stalking your blog/ftumblr for a few days. I must say that I’ve never found someone else that I can relate as much as you.
I like the way you see the world because we pretty much have the same view.
I think that’s pretty interesting.
And have a question for you? My therapist made it yesterday: If you we’re driving and crossed the red sign, hitting another car with a mother and child inside and you killed then in the process. What would you feel?

I wasn’t able to answer this for some reason. That’s not a practical question. I don’t drive and I think the whole scene is a unnecessary risk. I hate taking unnecessary risks(kind of). And I never hurt someone, accidentally. I think I’d probably get angry at myself for being stupid and doing something that will get me arrested.
I don’t know if you already talked about something like that before, but I’m curious about accidentally hurting unknown innocent people.

First, before answering their question: always feel free to leave feedback and/or questions in the comments or via email.  I am glad to correspond with my readers and the topics can also lead to new material, which benefits both of us.

So the question posed is: how do I react to the times that I harm “innocent” people?  It really comes down to the effect on me.  If there is no effect on me, I simply do not care and I chalk it up, usually, to recklessness.  That assumes that I wasn’t seeking some gain in using or harming that person.  If I was seeking out that “victim”, then I certainly would feel nothing regarding it.  It’s just business.  However, that all changes if there are consequences for my actions.

Continue reading Inconvenience →

On one hand, the thought of consequences can be enough to deter me from acting poorly.  On the other, if I fail to “feel” the potential consequences, how can they really deter me from anything?  The same can be said about positive consequences.  An honest day’s pay for an honest day’s work is appealing, in theory.  If I do a good job at what I do, then I will be appropriately compensated.  However, if I cannot discern between a hard day’s work and a shoddy day’s work both leading toward a paycheck, how can I be sufficiently motivated to put more than the minimal effort required to maintain a job?  Thus, I am often skirting the line in all of my daily functions; I put in the minimal amount of effort, or restraint, needed to achieve a pleasant outcome.  This can be dangerous as I am always teetering on the boundary between reward and punishment.

Continue reading Consequences →

‘Just be yourself’ is good advice to probably 5% of people. – Tweet from @GSElevator

The tweet quoted above may or may not be intended for humor, but the advice is all too true for many.  We are taught at a young age to value our individuality; that we should not take into account others expectations of ourselves when crafting and presenting our identity.  This is a lie.  Its sincerity is measured by how closely your individuality matches the expectation and falls within the boundaries set by others.

Continue reading Honor Thyself … The Lies We Are Told →

I was afraid during my first vivisection, but the second time around, it was much easier. By the third time, I was willing to do it. – Japanese Army Surgeon Ken Yuasa, Unit 731

Unit 731 was capable for some of the most horrifying war crimes in the history of the world.  The unit operated between the Second Sino-Japanese War and World War II and human experimentation was its specialty.  Subjects were operated on without anesthesia, limbs were reattached to foreign positions, biological weapons were used, flamethrowers were used on the living, and so on.  The unit was good at what it did; valuable (eventually to other countries) information was gathered of the darker weapons of war.  However, no one would argue that what they did was anything but reaching the highest echelons of cruelty and immorality.  Certainly, by sheer probability alone, the majority of those involved were not psychopathic.  As with the Nazis and their genocide, many involved merely went with the flow, afraid of disobedience, and willingly partook in the killings.  The conditions were right for “good” men to do evil acts.

Continue reading Unit 731 … The Right Conditions →