- What follows is a discussion of sociopathy (antisocial
personality disorder), and the applications of the psychopathic personal
philosophy, plus its relationship to an increased potential for what is
otherwise a dismissed, ridiculed, and maligned theory of general conspiracy.
A brief anti-history of sociopathy is provided, useful definitions are
included, but the larger remainder of the paper will delineate characteristics
and causes as they exist to provide a fertile bed for endemic conspiracies
of all types and flavors -- even cosmic ones, this writer suspects. It
is, however; the sociopathy that is the medium and the mechanism of a very
real general conspiracy that stealthily plagues us today while the justified
concern about it is too airily dismissed as the paranoid ravings of a lunatic
fringe.
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- To begin, there is no separate history of sociopathy
because, this writer contends, history is itself, in many, many cases,
the obvious chronicle of the sociopath. Pro-social people (socio-philes)
have lived side by side with the sociopath as long as one can look back
into recorded and even unrecorded history. Sociopathy, for better or worse,
fairly inundates history with its poster children -- those infamous faces
that pop into mind when one hears the word. Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, or
Speck, Gilmore, or Manson -- these are the faces that appear unasked as
one hears the word sociopath, but that is misleading. The preceding suggests
that the garden variety sociopath makes itself known. That is far from
the truth.
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- Sociopathy wears a legion of friendly faces. As one is
exposed to the variously posited but ultimately united versions of the
definition, one can easily stretch this condition to include not only the
popular, respected and otherwise revered person no one would suspect, but
to each and every one of us. Preachers don't tell on preachers, cops don't
tell on cops, doctors don't tell on doctors. Politico's don't tell on one
another when there is a *greater* goal to be gained. The rest of us avert
our eyes from the inconvenient obvious... this is the hot-house fecundity
any conspiracy must busily thrive in.
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- The sociopath is defined as one who steals from, lies
to, and cheats on those around him while being unaffected by conscience
and unhampered by responsibility for his or her egregious acts (Morris,
1988). He is someone we have reason to fear and dread because he can so
often be found where he was least expected. Interestingly, Bob Dole and
Bill Clinton could be handily painted as sociopathic personalities, by
way of example. Like "The Simpson,s" Mr. Montgomery Burns --
a classic sociopath, consider that Bob Dole seems unaffected by all the
death and misery his support of big tobacco has caused throughout the years.
Bill Clinton might be a sociopathic lothario who cheated on his wife for
over a decade with no apparent remorse, or crisis of conscience. Ronald
Reagan wouldn't begin to admit to the existence of AIDS as long as he thought
it was a targeted disease that only affected gay people. Consider the stockholders
of the blood banks of Reagan's time men and women who kept on selling
their AIDS tainted blood products when they KNEW they were infecting people
with the killer virus. The radius of affected persons increases. Conspiracy
seems to have a plethora of people that can too readily embrace it make
use of its divergently profitable and autocratic criminal utility.
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- Another definition indicates that the sociopath, a sufferer
of antisocial personality disorder, has no feelings for others, is selfish
and aggressively compassionless, prone to irresponsible behavior, and happily
willing to exploit others for profit of all types (Wood, 1993). Here lies
the spark, tender, and motive for a pervasive conspiracy. In amplification
of this assertion, it is pointed out in another textbook that the preceding
definition included every predator businessman, golf course doctor, slick
mouthed evangelist, Fat cat politician, impostor, cold fish prostitute,
and Furman-like police officer alive on this planet (Coleman 1976). The
point is that, though truly caustic, the definitions that this writer discovered
could be extended to MANY more people than is typically thought. If an
illegal act can be committed for profit or pleasure, there is an ABUNDANCE
of people anxious to take crafty advantage of that act. If conspiracy is
possible, and it is, the preponderance of sociopathy makes it likely.
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- In a sidebar, most people have the concepts of sociopath
and conspiracy wrongly applied. Folks confusingly think psychotic psychopath.
Or that the sociopath is a psychotic crazy. There is no such animal. The
sociopath, or psychopath, is by definition NOT psychotic NOT crazy. Astonishingly,
one has to be certifiably SANE to be a true psychopath. Additionally, a
conspiracy is ALWAYS clearly criminal. Four child pornographers agreeing
to go downtown for burgers and cokes is not a conspiracy, their shared
plan to disseminate their material -- is.
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- Moving on, there is a blending detected in the definitions
of sociopathy to include (surprisingly) every person who for want of some
absent capability... just can,t cut it in our overly harsh global society
(Coleman, 1976), and so cuts monstrous corners with no personal guilt or
regret with regard to those corners. There are, as well, the sociopaths
defined as "criminal", but still another definition (definitions
and characteristics swim through the literature as indistinguishable fishes,
this writer concludes) presents itself with an attendant component to describe
the attractive user type, the social predator (con<woman) that we even
make movies about and allowances for (Coleman 1976). Sweetly charming and
cunningly, mindfully and artfully uncaring -- they might relieve you of
your money, your dignity, or your life. Sometimes, the victim (inexplicably)
still loves the sociopath when the sociopath has relieved them of their
money and their dignity (Morris, 1988). One can see ready parallels in
the leaderships of all major and minor institutions and speculate on the
potentials for insidiously convoluted conspiracy generated in the minds
of psychopaths and supported by the sociophiles who love them. This writer
contends that we have conspiracy of all types known and unknown because
there are so MANY of these unidentified sociopaths on site to take advantage
of them.
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- As mentioned earlier, the definitions swam confusingly
with the characteristics. Again, this writer believes in the non-admitted
ubiquitous-ness of the sociopath, and predicts his presence where one prays
not to encounter him. For Example, Robert Tilton (an "Oral Roberts"
-- cubed!), another gold digging televangelist, might be one of these types.
Convicted of graft, he's back on the early morning southeastern tube speaking
in gainful tongues. Consider the Bush-pardoned banker types that fled the
country with billions of dollars of our mother,s and father,s trusted money
unguarded in Reagan,s frenzy of bank deregulation. More characteristics
of this stealthy psychopath includes a "winning cheerfulness and grace
with social skills" that compels people to ardent trust and doting
consideration to facilitate them (Morris, 1988). There are the ruthless
machiavellian types that rise to terrific power in business and the military
(McConnell, 1980), and there are the women that coldly stand behind them.
These become the fire brand political types like Huey Long, or they refine
sociopathy politically offstage like Nancy Reagan, perhaps.
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- Many of them are smart as a clichéd whip possessing
near genius intelligences (McConnell, 1980). This compounds the problem
with them, and adds a scary dimension because we don,t have a clue how
many there really are (or where they really are) as they make lucrative
use of this criminal intelligence! This is because so few of them are getting
in for professional help, it is estimated (Wood, 1993). Why would they?
They're as happy as proverbial clams as they are, above the law. Indeed,
the only possible idea of prevalence that we have comes from prison studies
which very conservatively put the population at 3% of all men, and 1% of
the all women (Morris, 1988). The reader is reminded that the vast majority
of successful psychopaths are not caught. This writer suspects a lot more.
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- Other characteristics include a complete and utterly
unimaginable (for the majority) lack of guilt (Hallahan, 1994). This is
the person that can perform the most bloodlessly god awful and socially
abusive criminal acts, and not only express guiltlessness, but blame the
consequences of their act on the injured party! These people are easily
frustrated and prone to impulsive thoughts that they act on, mindlessly
uncaring of the consequences of their figurative, or literal, trigger pull
(Coleman 1976). These are the people that can put up a good front as they
shine the victim on with attractive lies, half truths, and manipulations
for their benefit, completely uncaring about the personal cost to the target
victim inevitably incurred (Coleman 1976). Sociopaths share, generally,
a complete lack of respect for any authority or mores save their own, and
FOR that reason end up over and over again in trouble with the law (McConnell,
1980), WHEN they're caught. A sociopath can be a child so viciously, hatefully,
and destructively afflicting that she is completely isolated from family,
peer, church and school groups (Hallahan, 1994). All of this dissolution
might occur, but the sociopath will take no hand in the responsibility
for any of it. It,s just not their fault, they corrosively and conveniently
reason. They are only availing themselves of an opportunity.
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- What causes this sociopathic loathing for one's fellows?
Some believe that while there is a genetic predisposition for a few, the
majority had faulty models to imprint from -- their family experiences
were bad (McConnell, 1980). Others go on to say that there was some kind
of emotional detachment early in life that caused the disconnection of
the sociopathic individual from the society at large (Morris, 1988). The
preceding concludes the view of social learning theorists.
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- The cognitive theorists contend that arrested development
is the culprit for the behavior (Morris, 1988). There is a school that
believes the sociopath is a result of chemically out of whack neurotransmitters
(Morris, 1988). This biophysical paradigm includes defective inhibitory
mechanisms in the brain, or an inability, because of this lack of an inhibitory
mechanism, to arouse the emotions of guilt and remorse in the subject (Coleman,
1976). Some psychologists believe that the sociopath is understimulated,
and performs these horrific, destructive, and socially corrosive acts in
frenetic search for any kind of feeling at all (Coleman, 1976). Conspiracy
seems probable with regard to a person described as such.
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- Family relationships may have more to add than was reflected
in McConnell at the beginning of a previous paragraph. Coleman (1976) breaks
faulty family relationships into three subgroups of (1) early parental
loss ,and emotional deprivation; (2) Parental rejections, and inconsistencies;
and, (3) faulty parental models, and family interactions. Then there are
the supposed sociocultural factors. Easily, the living conditions of the
inner city ghettos may be creating sociopaths out of whole cloth ( Coleman,
1976). This writer considers Charles Manson, knowing how smart he really
is, and wonders what he would have been assuming his removal from the debilitating
social experiences he reportedly had. What strange and undiscovered conspiracies
must exist in the fertile imaginations and implementations of this ARMY
of psychopathic individuals?
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- What IS a sociopath, where are they, and how can they
be detected? How CAN we know, when we can,t really nail down prevalence,
but knowing that they are there with frequently easy regularity provides
easier potential for that too easily dismissed conspiracy. How can we know,
given that the radius of those included in a sphere of sociopathy may be
much bigger than we imagine -- the attendant conspiracies much grander
than we thought?
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- It may be that we, on at least one level, are all sociopathic.
Consider that on any given day, thirty thousand children starve, finally
-- to death, after years of physical wasting disease and cognitive disintegration.
We ALL know this (we see Archie Bunker,s daughter on TV every day -- another
likely profit dodge ), our news media knows, our government knows, you
know, and I know . . . still they starve. They suffer unending torment
in tolerated squalor while we concern ourselves with the cut of a suit
or a shade of a nail.
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- Conspiracy is by definition a criminal act, corrosive
to society at large. The world is filled with an unguessed amount of passionately
engaged and creative criminals consumed and concerned only with the continuance
of their diverse personal agendas. We do ourselves a disservice, it appears,
to reflexively dismiss conspiracy (of any type or flavor) in the mistaken
tradition that our society protects us from these legions of undiscovered
psychopaths. They do not. Verily, they ARE the psychopaths. Every day exposes
the ongoing sociopathic record of these vicious people, people capable
of and perpetrating ANYTHING one can think of (and much more that one would
not) to secure advantage for themselves or their class.
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- We are not served by dismissing conspiracy, we ARE served
by investigating it. Posner has not settled the issue regarding the assassination
of JFK. Klass does not settle the issue regarding UFO's. The admonitions
of institutional leadership do not convince us that they have our best
interests at heart. Doctors want to market drugs and services, lawyers
want to treat their courtrooms like money tree orchids, preachers want
to prosecute their campaigns of intolerance and social hatred while they
fill tax free collection plates we won't even mention the dirty politicians
and the all-business captains of industry or their coteries of pandering
lieutenants. The rest of us are dashed, contused, and senseless on the
slick rocky shores of their disdained, ignored, and dismissed conspiracy.
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- Conspiracy lives, it's not in your mind. Conspiracy's
real. Just look, and you find.
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- References:
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- Coleman, J. (1976). Abnormal psychology and modern life.
Dallas: Scott, Foresman and Company.
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- Hallahan, D. & Kauffman, J. (1994). Exceptional Children.
Boston: Allyn and Bacon.
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- McConnell, J. (1980). Understanding human behavior. New
York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston.
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- Morris, G. (1988). Psychology an introduction. New Jersey:
Prentice Hall.
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- Wood, E. & Wood, S. (1993). The world of psychology.
Boston: Allyn and Bacon.
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