Psycho Salvation?

Greetings good citizen,

It’s Sunday and you know what that means don’t you? It’s time to take a walk on the ‘wild side’.

Um, scratch that, you know every post here is straight from the demented mind of a rabid anarchist and therefore ‘twisted’ when viewed from the pervasive and perverted ‘mainstream point of view’.

Well, this morning’s offering (oops, it’s afternoon already!) provides us with a special treat and a platform for two of my favorite hobby horses, the parasitic scum running the show and their, er, ‘enablers’.

Yessiree Bob, try as they might, they can’t do it alone.

First we have a peek at ‘the tool’:

Let's start with the fascinating and frightening subject of psychopathy. This condition is neither insanity nor a treatable mental illness. It is instead linked to physical abnormalities in the amygdala region of the brain and is perhaps best described by experts as "emotional deafness." While psychopaths can often convincingly feign normal human reactions in order to manipulate others, inside they feel nothing but shark-like self-interest.

This ancient scourge has likely plagued humankind since the dawn of time, undermining our ability to trust each other and build cohesive societies. While sometimes glamourized by Hollywood as a super power, psychopathy shows little evidence of evolutionary advantage even though the condition has a strong genetic signature. After 100,000 years of human history, only one percent of the general population exhibits this affliction -- indicating that it is more parasitic than powerful.

A threat that can be screened

Only recently have scientists developed reliable screening methods to reveal people with this emotional disability, and such tests have been widely adopted in the criminal justice system. And while our jails are filled with people exhibiting this frightening trait, Dr. Robert Hare, a leading researcher in the field warns, "not all psychopaths are in prison.
Some are in the boardroom."

Um, the rest of the article makes interesting reading but it falls short (as usual) in the ‘useful solutions’ department.

It, most unhelpfully, calls for screening and ‘terminating’ people found to afflicted with ‘emotional deafness’…but would this also apply to the ‘emotionally hard of hearing’? (Which accounts for the vast majority of offenders…)

Do the screeners (people with the authority to have others screened) fear testing positive themselves? (Because the potential for this outcome is very high from a logical viewpoint.)

So how likely do you suppose ‘screening’ of top executives will become?

How much do you want to bet it will become the new ‘let’s not and say we did’, it will be our little secret’?

Naturally one can readily see where such a tool could be ‘abused’.

What do you do when the test results conflict? (Assuming the truly demented would be capable of conning somebody into letting them use their DNA to be tested.)

I’ve only had a few minutes with this topic and we’ve already uncovered a veritable ‘minefield’ of ‘what if’.

I’d opine our ‘bigger problem’ is not so much the ‘emotionally deaf’ as it is the emotionally ‘hard of hearing’, people who can ‘turn it off’ when it’s useful to do so.

Worse, we’ve all caught glimpses of this creature in action (because it is so shockingly ‘out of character’ when it occurs.)

Yet we all somewhat ‘instinctively’ know better than to cross these individuals. When it happens you are usually completely unaware they even had an interest in the undertaking that you may not have been involved with at all.

Often asking questions or displaying curiosity is enough to provoke a violent (if not a simply ‘unreasonable’) response.

Which is to ‘differ’ with the author of this piece and opine that screening WILL NOT be ‘the salvation’ of ‘predatory capitalism’.

Capitalism itself is not stable enough to create an equitable society upon…and it NEVER will be.

Any social construct based on ownership and debt is doomed from the start, the ‘owners' end up with everything, every time. (If you weren't there to grab yours in the beginning...you lose!)

Thus was it always ‘good to be king’…how unfortunate was it that the premise of ‘every man a king’ (a.k.a. capitalism) didn’t work (nor will it ever if more than one individual is involved.)

We have precious little space left and I haven’t jumped onto my second hobby horse, Exile. (Which is also to point out that 'exile' is NOT a 'new' idea...)

Seems even the ancients recognized that some people weren’t ‘right in the head’ and came to the conclusion that letting them hang around was a ‘recipe for disaster’, given ‘time and opportunity’ the exiles would fuck it up royally for everyone.

Thus does modern exile involve banishment from society itself on a permanent basis.

It is not these people’s fault they are ‘broken’ but it is IMPOSSIBLE to ‘fix’ them and attempting to do so will only end in disaster.

So for all of you who eye me suspiciously for advocating exile, I beg your ‘reconsideration’…unless you fear being exiled yourself…then I’d worry.

Although you might test negative...and how would that make you feel?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Whackos!

Greetings good citizen!

It is not often we get to visit both sides of an argument in the same post, even if those two sides are only not ‘directly’ related.

We begin with:

What the three men have in common, [Schwarzenegger, DSK, and Gingrich] aside from wielding more influence than they can handle or deserve, is that their serial misbehavior went unchecked for years. In fact, it was rationalized as mere exuberance, frequently excused in “exceptional” people, when it actually demonstrated something else – ruling class impunity.

Ask yourself: Is it possible that these were isolated lapses in judgment? In other words, was this the only time Dominique Strauss-Kahn went after the help, or the only instance of Arnold Schwarzenegger cheating on his wife and exploiting those beneath him? Not too likely. And it’s surely not the only time Gingrich has excused his own bad behavior as a side effect of patriotism – while simultaneously trashing the basic humanity of a political opponent.

But perhaps more importantly:

If these are patterns, why are millions so fascinated, often even seduced, by people whose behavior actually points to pathology? Perhaps we are wired to be attracted by psychopaths, sociopaths, narcissists, people so focused on their own central role in whatever takes place that the rest of us are sucked into their reality.

Never one to pass up a ‘teaching moment’, you don’t suppose there could be a reason for these obviously disturbed individual’s behavior?

The common thread the article studiously avoids is how all (intentional) ‘public figures’ are ‘pathological liars’. Worse, they are, er, ‘hired’ to both disseminate and defend lies, requiring a certain, er, ‘moral flexibility’ that most people are ill equipped to deal with.

If we take our current set of circumstances, your basic ‘puppet government’ scenario, you’d be correct to observe that most players are indeed accomplished ‘actors’.

The ‘psycho’ part comes from the fact that this is not ‘acting’ in the strictest sense where the player knows the outcome ahead of time, something that can’t help but effect the actor’s overall mental performance/health.

Which is to point out that doing other than what your conscience dictates will, by necessity, fuck you up in the head!

This is not speculation but fact.

However, if we take the original premise and turn it on it’s head (from is the world ‘run’ by psychopaths to is the world ‘filled with psychopaths’) then what does that give us here?

“My mom has told me directly that I’m not going to get into heaven,” Grace Haddad, 16, said. “At first it was really upsetting, but it’s what she honestly believes.”

Thousands of people around the country have spent the last few days taking to the streets and saying final goodbyes before Saturday, Judgment Day, when they expect to be absorbed into heaven in a process known as the rapture. Nonbelievers, they hold, will be left behind to perish along with the world over the next five months.

It will be great fun come Monday when we can rag on the asses of those who are less ‘holier than thou’ because they were ‘left behind’.

Will the next five months be a time of ‘great upheaval’…probably but I seriously doubt ‘spirit in the sky’ has anything to do with it.

Men are ‘evil’ enough without the great Satan!

Then we come to Ivory Towers and the disturbing fact that those inside are still too far up to witness actual circumstances on the ground…

Manufacturing, once America’s greatest strength, seemed to be in terminal decline. But that may be changing. Manufacturing is one of the bright spots of a generally disappointing recovery, and there are signs — preliminary, but hopeful, nonetheless — that a sustained comeback may be under way.

Understand good citizen there is and always will be a WORLD OF DIFFERENCE between ‘Made in the USA’ and ‘Assembled in the USA.’

For those of you who fail to appreciate the distinction, the ‘money’ ISN’T in ‘turning the wrenches’; the money is in the actual fabrication of the parts!

Quite a weekend ahead, let’s see how things turn out.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner