THE PSYCHOPATH - The Mask of Sanity
Special Research Project of the Quantum Future School
Imagine - if you can - not having a conscience, none at all, no
feelings of guilt or remorse no matter what you do, no limiting
sense of concern for the well-being of strangers, friends, or even
family members. Imagine no struggles with shame, not a single one
in your whole life, no matter what kind of selfish, lazy, harmful,
or immoral action you had taken.
And pretend that the concept of responsibility is unknown to you,
except as a burden others seem to accept without question, like
gullible fools.
Now add to this strange fantasy the ability to conceal from other
people that your psychological makeup is radically different from
theirs. Since everyone simply assumes that conscience is universal
among human beings, hiding the fact that you are conscience-free is
nearly effortless.
You are not held back from any of your desires by guilt or shame,
and you are never confronted by others for your cold-bloodedness.
The ice water in your veins is so bizarre, so completely outside of
their personal experience, that they seldom even guess at your
condition.
In other words, you are completely free of internal restraints, and
your unhampered liberty to do just as you please, with no pangs of
conscience, is conveniently invisible to the world.
You can do anything at all, and still your strange advantage over
the majority of people, who are kept in line by their consciences
will most likely remain undiscovered.
How will you live your life?
What will you do with your huge and secret advantage, and with the
corresponding handicap of other people (conscience)?
The answer will depend largely on just what your desires happen to
be, because people are not all the same. Even the profoundly
unscrupulous are not all the same. Some people - whether they have
a conscience or not - favor the ease of inertia, while others are
filled with dreams and wild ambitions. Some human beings are
brilliant and talented, some are dull-witted, and most, conscience
or not, are somewhere in between. There are violent people and
nonviolent ones, individuals who are motivated by blood lust and
those who have no such appetites. [...]
Provided you are not forcibly stopped, you can do anything at
all.
If you are born at the right time, with some access to family
fortune, and you have a special talent for whipping up other
people's hatred and sense of deprivation, you can arrange to kill
large numbers of unsuspecting people. With enough money, you can
accomplish this from far away, and you can sit back safely and
watch in satisfaction. [...]
Crazy and frightening - and real, in about 4 percent of the
population....
The prevalence rate for anorexic eating disorders is estimated a
3.43 percent, deemed to be nearly epidemic, and yet this figure is
a fraction lower than the rate for antisocial personality. The
high-profile disorders classed as schizophrenia occur in only about
1 percent of [the population] - a mere quarter of the rate of
antisocial personality - and the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention say that the rate of colon cancer in the United States,
considered "alarmingly high," is about 40 per 100,000 - one hundred
times lower than the rate of antisocial personality.
The high incidence of sociopathy in human society has a profound
effect on the rest of us who must live on this planet, too, even
those of us who have not been clinically traumatized. The
individuals who constitute this 4 percent drain our relationships,
our bank accounts, our accomplishments, our self-esteem, our very
peace on earth.
Yet surprisingly, many people know nothing about this disorder, or
if they do, they think only in terms of violent psychopathy -
murderers, serial killers, mass murderers - people who have
conspicuously broken the law many times over, and who, if caught,
will be imprisoned, maybe even put to death by our legal
system.
We are not commonly aware of, nor do we usually identify, the
larger number of nonviolent sociopaths among us, people who often
are not blatant lawbreakers, and against whom our formal legal
system provides little defense.
Most of us would not imagine any correspondence between conceiving
an ethnic genocide and, say, guiltlessly lying to one's boss about
a coworker. But the psychological correspondence is not only there;
it is chilling. Simple and profound, the link is the absence of the
inner mechanism that beats up on us, emotionally speaking, when we
make a choice we view as immoral, unethical, neglectful, or
selfish.
Most of us feel mildly guilty if we eat the last piece of cake in
the kitchen, let alone what we would feel if we intentionally and
methodically set about to hurt another person.
Those who have no conscience at all are a group unto themselves,
whether they be homicidal tyrants or merely ruthless social
snipers.
The presence or absence of conscience is a deep human division,
arguably more significant than intelligence, race, or even
gender.
What differentiates a sociopath who lives off the labors of others
from one who occasionally robs convenience stores, or from one who
is a contemporary robber baron - or what makes the difference
betwen an ordinary bully and a sociopathic murderer - is nothing
more than social status, drive, intellect, blood lust, or simple
opportunity.