When we fear death, we are really fearing the realization of our insignificance. Life is a struggle for significance. We often perceive this as a struggle for power, or control. Sometimes we see it as a desperate need to be loved, or at least understood. But beneath all of these is the quest for recognition and significance. And death is the ultimate threat to that quest.
I have sometimes referred to the epiphany that caused me to stop wanting to hurt the people who had hurt me (i.e. society) and consequently stop killing and turn myself over to the authorities of the present world, as the realization that what I was doing WASN'T wrong (as starkly opposed to the realization that it WAS wrong, as one might assume). But, as I have often said, whatever it was that I experienced (or realized) that day was something that I have struggled with ever since to put into words, and saying that I realized that what I was doing WASN'T wrong is an example of one more failed attempt to express what happened in my "heart" (or "inner mind") that day.
What I was trying to convey with those words was the idea that I had somehow come to understand that my attempt to hurt society was futile, because all I was really doing (and later came to further understand that all I, or anyone, was even capable of doing) was hurting myself, and then projecting the pain I caused for myself onto society (i.e. imagining that they would now "feel my pain").
I have since come to understand that this is a very common sickness, exhibited not just by criminals and so-called psychopaths, but by anyone who has ever failed to sincerely forgive their transgressors. Any attempt to punish for the sake of retribution is rooted in this error of perception; this delusion, or outright fantasy, of power and control over those who we blame for our suffering.
And now, with yet more words, I have found a slightly better way to say what I was trying to say before; or at least a way to fail saying what I want to say just a little less:
What I came to realize that day was that all my attempts to make myself SIGNIFICANT were futile. That is what I was really doing by raping and murdering children. I was trying to assert my own significance, which had been repeatedly, and officially, and systematically denied by the society I was born into all my life. I was taking it back, in my mind at least, the only way I knew how; the way we are all taught, with force (i.e. the exertion of power and control).
But in that moment of awakening that I have described many times as I was a mere instant away from crushing the skull of yet another small child I suddenly saw not only the futility of my struggle for significance, but I saw that futility in the light of my TRUE AND ONLY SIGNIFICANCE! In that moment I saw the significance of life itself; a significance that does not depend on anything we do as individuals. It was this true significance that set me free from my self-defeating quest for personal (i.e. selfish) significance. I realized what "seekers" have been realizing for thousands of years or more; that we are only significant when we have eternal life, and we can only have eternal life by surrendering our attachment to the temporal one.
On the day I stopped killing and surrendered to the authorities of this world I had also surrendered to the One True Authority. You can call that "Authority" anything you like. I have given it many names myself (my favorite is still, The Living Truth), but no matter what you call it, IT is the only source of significance any of us will ever have; and we all already have it! (This is why one of the manifestations of my "awakening" had been the repeated insistence that everyone, not just me, is already significant, by virtue of their existence alone! And my struggle ever since has been the one to find that significance for everyone I meet, within myself)
(J.D. 5-25-2014)
Saturday, June 28, 2014
The Intelligence Factor of Psychopathy
If you've read this blog with any understanding at all then you must know by now what I think about the whole idea of "psychopaths": they don't exist. Psychopaths are the witches of our era. They represent nothing more than an intellectual attempt to rationalize and categorize something about ourselves that we deeply fear and do not understand. But they aren't real, at least not in any sense that they are portrayed by the pseudoscience/religious zealots who call themselves psychologists.
But, I'm not going to go into all the reasons I believe so here. Instead I like to simply expound on an elephant in the room of psychopathy that I hadn't really noticed before now (so well ignored it is).
We all know that studies show that so-called psychopaths are usually very intelligent (albeit, not very highly educated). As a matter of fact, Hervey Cleckley (who wrote THE MASK OF SANITY and is considered the founding father of psychopathy) lists intelligence as the first identifying quality of a psychopath. And yet we know from modern brain science that intelligence is a highly emergent phenomenon that relies extensively on the complex relationships between all parts of the brain, not just the intellectual (e.g. prefrontal cortex) and emotional (e.g. amygdala) regions. So, if psychopaths are highly intelligent, as Cleckley and others observe, then they must also be highly functional - not disfunctional at all, not even some mythical social sense.
There is actually a relatively new book out now about psychopaths (THE WISDOM OF PSYCHOPATHS, by Kevin Dutton) that seems to admit this fact. Though Dutton doesn't go so far as to say that psychopathy is no more than an ideology bounded by fear and ignorance (a good definition for religion by the way), he does admit that our current definition of psychopath needs some serious reworking if it is to hold up to the current findings of scientific studies (and if that sounds familiar, it should, since that is exactly what all religions must do in order to survive; that is, redefine their terms and beliefs to fit the times).
But, Dutton's floundering admissions aside, the only point I'm trying to make here is that if psychopaths are more intelligent than most, then perhaps what psychologists are really trying to categorize is a class of people who see and understand more clearly than most other people, and as a result they behave (antisocially) in a manner CONSISTENT WITH this deeper understanding. Not all intelligent people would share this "deeper understanding" of course. It would be something, like all natural phenomena, that combines state of being (e.g. intelligence) with experience (the most intelligent person in the world might have trouble tying his own shoes, a la Einstein, if he never had to do so as a child).
I'm no scientist (or zealot for that matter), but I think this "elephant" is obvious enough to at least be pointed out.
(J.D. 5-23-2014)
But, I'm not going to go into all the reasons I believe so here. Instead I like to simply expound on an elephant in the room of psychopathy that I hadn't really noticed before now (so well ignored it is).
We all know that studies show that so-called psychopaths are usually very intelligent (albeit, not very highly educated). As a matter of fact, Hervey Cleckley (who wrote THE MASK OF SANITY and is considered the founding father of psychopathy) lists intelligence as the first identifying quality of a psychopath. And yet we know from modern brain science that intelligence is a highly emergent phenomenon that relies extensively on the complex relationships between all parts of the brain, not just the intellectual (e.g. prefrontal cortex) and emotional (e.g. amygdala) regions. So, if psychopaths are highly intelligent, as Cleckley and others observe, then they must also be highly functional - not disfunctional at all, not even some mythical social sense.
There is actually a relatively new book out now about psychopaths (THE WISDOM OF PSYCHOPATHS, by Kevin Dutton) that seems to admit this fact. Though Dutton doesn't go so far as to say that psychopathy is no more than an ideology bounded by fear and ignorance (a good definition for religion by the way), he does admit that our current definition of psychopath needs some serious reworking if it is to hold up to the current findings of scientific studies (and if that sounds familiar, it should, since that is exactly what all religions must do in order to survive; that is, redefine their terms and beliefs to fit the times).
But, Dutton's floundering admissions aside, the only point I'm trying to make here is that if psychopaths are more intelligent than most, then perhaps what psychologists are really trying to categorize is a class of people who see and understand more clearly than most other people, and as a result they behave (antisocially) in a manner CONSISTENT WITH this deeper understanding. Not all intelligent people would share this "deeper understanding" of course. It would be something, like all natural phenomena, that combines state of being (e.g. intelligence) with experience (the most intelligent person in the world might have trouble tying his own shoes, a la Einstein, if he never had to do so as a child).
I'm no scientist (or zealot for that matter), but I think this "elephant" is obvious enough to at least be pointed out.
(J.D. 5-23-2014)
Saturday, June 7, 2014
To Those Who Would Hate Something Evil
Hating something evil is like loving something good; the passion only makes the object stronger.
One of my favorite songs that I listened to often when I lived in Fargo, North Dakota, was "Down with The Sickness" by a group called Disturbed. The chorus goes something like this:
"Get up, come on get down with the sickness! Get up, come on get down with the sickness! Get up, come on get down with the sickness! Open up your hate and let it flow into me!"
This song was so close to the truth of the "sickness" that I kept hidden from even my closest friends that I kept it heavily encrypted on my computer and only listened to it in complete privacy for fear that if anyone ever found it in my possession it would point them directly to the "dungeon" where my sickness lay hidden. (To this day the FBI has been unable to crack this encryption code, though they testified in court that they dedicated an entire room full of computers for over a month trying. I laughed when I heard that, because if they had just asked I would have told them that the key was 248 bits, and the algorythm PGP (a program so tough to crack that the NSA tried to get it outlawed). A little math would have then told them that a billion of the most powerful computers in the world couldn't crack the encryption if they tried for the lifetime of a trillion universes like ours. I guess they had to try to make themselves feel better. But, like I said then, it will take a quantum computer to crack the encryption, and my hope is that by the time we have the tech to do that we might also have the wisdom to learn from what those encrypted files contain, instead of using them to propagate the "sickness" that made them in the first place.)
"Open up your hate and let it flow into me!"
The "sickness" (i.e. evil) feeds on hate. I did the horrific things I did specifically to make people hate me. I needed them to hate me in order to feel vindicated, and justified, for what "they" did to me.
I once lay hidden in some bushes down the street from a house that I had just invaded moments before with every intention of raping and killing the children who lived there. But just as I was about to kill the one adult (the mother) who stood between me and my hate feast, the father came in through the front door and I ran out the back then up the street and then panting heavily into these bushes to catch my breath.
My car and my escape was only a few yards away, but I needed to make sure nobody saw me get in and drive away. So I waited.
And while I waited I heard the man scream from the other end of the block. I can only imagine, by the time it took for this scream to happen, that when the man entered his home and found his wife bound hand and foot in the living room, and children (one already naked from the waist down) awaiting my pleasure in the master bedroom, that he probably grabbed a gun (most likely) or some other weapon and run out in the back yard (the direction his wife no doubt told him I had gone) to hunt me down.
But, a quick search turned up no clues of where I was or even which way I had gone (I was long gone, as they say, by the time he even realized what was happening). And that's when the reality of what had just happened finally sunk in, and the hate and rage instantly boiled up to the surface and he screamed.
The scream was nothing coherent. It was a purely primal scream of rage and frustration. It was a scream of powerlessness and helplessness. All that hate had to come out somehow, and it came out in that scream, which he knew, I'm sure, that I would hear. If he couldn't pour his hatred into me directly, then he'd do it indirectly with his yell.
I drank it up. As soon as I heard it I smiled. It told me everything I wanted to know (i.e. that the coast was indeed "clear") and gave me exactly what I needed, his hate!
I remember thinking, "Yeah, motherfucker, now you know how it feels!"
I was spreading the "sickness" by doing the "evil" things I did. I was given "them" (the faceless members of the society that infected me with their hatred) a taste of their own medicine. And that scream was better than sweet buttermilk ass waiting to be violated.
That was then. But on the mountain with Shasta I had an epiphany that made me no longer desire such "justice" or "revenge". I no longer saw that man, or his children, or society, as my victims. Suddenly I realized in the deepest sense, that "they" were ME!
I was only hurting myself. I was only hating myself. I was only projecting my pain and hate, and confusion, and "sickness" onto them. But it all came from inside of me. I was the only one who could stop my suffering, my fear, and my confusion. And the only way to stop it was to stop projecting it onto others. If I wanted peace, I had to learn to embrace the hate, pain and fear as my own; my choice, not theirs.
Now, if only "they" could somehow come to this same realization; then, only then, there might be real peace for everyone, especially our children.
(J.D. 5-16-2014)
One of my favorite songs that I listened to often when I lived in Fargo, North Dakota, was "Down with The Sickness" by a group called Disturbed. The chorus goes something like this:
"Get up, come on get down with the sickness! Get up, come on get down with the sickness! Get up, come on get down with the sickness! Open up your hate and let it flow into me!"
This song was so close to the truth of the "sickness" that I kept hidden from even my closest friends that I kept it heavily encrypted on my computer and only listened to it in complete privacy for fear that if anyone ever found it in my possession it would point them directly to the "dungeon" where my sickness lay hidden. (To this day the FBI has been unable to crack this encryption code, though they testified in court that they dedicated an entire room full of computers for over a month trying. I laughed when I heard that, because if they had just asked I would have told them that the key was 248 bits, and the algorythm PGP (a program so tough to crack that the NSA tried to get it outlawed). A little math would have then told them that a billion of the most powerful computers in the world couldn't crack the encryption if they tried for the lifetime of a trillion universes like ours. I guess they had to try to make themselves feel better. But, like I said then, it will take a quantum computer to crack the encryption, and my hope is that by the time we have the tech to do that we might also have the wisdom to learn from what those encrypted files contain, instead of using them to propagate the "sickness" that made them in the first place.)
"Open up your hate and let it flow into me!"
The "sickness" (i.e. evil) feeds on hate. I did the horrific things I did specifically to make people hate me. I needed them to hate me in order to feel vindicated, and justified, for what "they" did to me.
I once lay hidden in some bushes down the street from a house that I had just invaded moments before with every intention of raping and killing the children who lived there. But just as I was about to kill the one adult (the mother) who stood between me and my hate feast, the father came in through the front door and I ran out the back then up the street and then panting heavily into these bushes to catch my breath.
My car and my escape was only a few yards away, but I needed to make sure nobody saw me get in and drive away. So I waited.
And while I waited I heard the man scream from the other end of the block. I can only imagine, by the time it took for this scream to happen, that when the man entered his home and found his wife bound hand and foot in the living room, and children (one already naked from the waist down) awaiting my pleasure in the master bedroom, that he probably grabbed a gun (most likely) or some other weapon and run out in the back yard (the direction his wife no doubt told him I had gone) to hunt me down.
But, a quick search turned up no clues of where I was or even which way I had gone (I was long gone, as they say, by the time he even realized what was happening). And that's when the reality of what had just happened finally sunk in, and the hate and rage instantly boiled up to the surface and he screamed.
The scream was nothing coherent. It was a purely primal scream of rage and frustration. It was a scream of powerlessness and helplessness. All that hate had to come out somehow, and it came out in that scream, which he knew, I'm sure, that I would hear. If he couldn't pour his hatred into me directly, then he'd do it indirectly with his yell.
I drank it up. As soon as I heard it I smiled. It told me everything I wanted to know (i.e. that the coast was indeed "clear") and gave me exactly what I needed, his hate!
I remember thinking, "Yeah, motherfucker, now you know how it feels!"
I was spreading the "sickness" by doing the "evil" things I did. I was given "them" (the faceless members of the society that infected me with their hatred) a taste of their own medicine. And that scream was better than sweet buttermilk ass waiting to be violated.
That was then. But on the mountain with Shasta I had an epiphany that made me no longer desire such "justice" or "revenge". I no longer saw that man, or his children, or society, as my victims. Suddenly I realized in the deepest sense, that "they" were ME!
I was only hurting myself. I was only hating myself. I was only projecting my pain and hate, and confusion, and "sickness" onto them. But it all came from inside of me. I was the only one who could stop my suffering, my fear, and my confusion. And the only way to stop it was to stop projecting it onto others. If I wanted peace, I had to learn to embrace the hate, pain and fear as my own; my choice, not theirs.
Now, if only "they" could somehow come to this same realization; then, only then, there might be real peace for everyone, especially our children.
(J.D. 5-16-2014)
Tuesday, June 3, 2014
A Proven Alternative To Blame
I once saw a documentary about airplane accident investigations that illustrated an effective alternative to the counterproductive blame game that our System currently plays with crime. The subject of this particular episode was a mid-air incident that nearly cost the pilot his life, and much worse, but fortunately ended well (nobody suffered any permanent injuries). Regardless of the outcome, like all life threatening (and profit threatening) airline incidents, it was taken very seriously and became the focus of a major investigation by private investigators who work for the airlines, not the government.
Now, I emphasize here that the investigators work for the airlines, not the government, because this changes the primary goal of the investigation from pacifying the public to protecting profits, and as a result the string of resulting secondary goals change as well.
Government investigators must ultimately cater to public emotion, which motivates how people vote, and what opinions they hold about various public officials and issues. Because of this they are driven to find someone to blame, rather than a real cause of the problem. Blame, and the superficial cause that it represents, is the most expedient and simplest (i.e. least expensive) means of pacifying the simple mind of the masses.
But private investigators must typically answer to a small board of profit minded directors. They care almost nothing about who is to blame for the accident, they care only that the real cause be found so that steps can be taken to stop the same kind of accident from happening again. Why? Because they know that a repeat, and hence, preventable accident is far worse for profits than a new unavoidable one.
What happened was the windshield on a commercial passenger jet blew out of its frame by the internal cabin pressure as it reach attitude shortly after take off. As a consequence, the pilot was literally suck out of the plane and saved from certain death because his leg got caught on his seat belt strap, giving the co-pilot enough time to grab the pilot before he was blown away by the 500 mile per-hour wind. But, because of the wind, which pressed the captain's unconscious body back against the fuselage, the co-pilot couldn't pull the pilot back into the plane; not even with the navigator's help.
So, the co-pilot radioed in an emergency and quickly turned the plane around and landed it with the pilot still hanging outside the entire time.
The pilot survived, miraculously, and made a complete recovery. But everyone wanted to know how the hell a window just blows out of a plane like that. So the private investigators were called in.
As it turned out, the windshield had recently been replaced for some routine maintenance reason, and the wrong screws were used to bolt the window into its frame. And that's as far as any government investigators would have gotten. They would have blamed the mechanic who replaced the windshield for using the wrong screws, probably have him fired, fined, or maybe even criminally charged, and then act completely surprized the next time a window on another jet blows out in mid-flight.
But, the private investigators were only just getting started. They interviewed not just the mechanic who replaced the window, but also the tool room clerk, the other mechanics in the maintenance hanger, and looked at the design specifications of the plane, especially the windshield, and the maintenance procedures, in theory and practice. What they found out was that the screws that the mechanic used by mistake look almost exactly like the screws he was supposed to use. The only difference was that the wrong screws were just a few centimeters shorter. Maintenance procedure demanded that all the screws be replaced, which is why the old screws weren't used. Maintenance procedure also required that the mechanic verify that he has the correct parts by cross-checking the numbers with the tool room clerks records. But, in practice this was not done because it took too much time and the maintenance supervisors pressed the mechanics to rely on their experience and take short cuts.
So, in the final report to the money bags what do you think the investigators recommended? Fire the mechanic? Fire the tool clerk? Fire the maintenance supervisors? Sue the plane manufacturer and designers?
None of the above. Instead they thanked the mechanics for the information and for helping with the investigation, and made no suggestions than any actions be taken against anyone (i.e. they weren't interested in the blame game). They recommended that maintenance procedures be evaluated, and changed, so that part number confirmation was made practical and not time consuming for the mechanics. They also recommended that the mechanics be given more breaks in their work hours to reduce fatique and the urge to take short cuts.
As I recall, all of these changes were made; not just locally at that one maintenance hanger, but throughout the industry! The mechanic who made the mistake said later that he was always more careful than ever about making sure he had the right parts. By keeping him on as a mechanic, and allowing him to participate actively in the process of finding a solution, the airline not only kept an experienced and highly skilled mechanic, but they also got one who would remain hypervigilant for the rest of his career!
Perhaps there is something to be said after all for profit driven organizations as opposed to bureaucratic ones.
(J.D. 5-20-2014)
Now, I emphasize here that the investigators work for the airlines, not the government, because this changes the primary goal of the investigation from pacifying the public to protecting profits, and as a result the string of resulting secondary goals change as well.
Government investigators must ultimately cater to public emotion, which motivates how people vote, and what opinions they hold about various public officials and issues. Because of this they are driven to find someone to blame, rather than a real cause of the problem. Blame, and the superficial cause that it represents, is the most expedient and simplest (i.e. least expensive) means of pacifying the simple mind of the masses.
But private investigators must typically answer to a small board of profit minded directors. They care almost nothing about who is to blame for the accident, they care only that the real cause be found so that steps can be taken to stop the same kind of accident from happening again. Why? Because they know that a repeat, and hence, preventable accident is far worse for profits than a new unavoidable one.
What happened was the windshield on a commercial passenger jet blew out of its frame by the internal cabin pressure as it reach attitude shortly after take off. As a consequence, the pilot was literally suck out of the plane and saved from certain death because his leg got caught on his seat belt strap, giving the co-pilot enough time to grab the pilot before he was blown away by the 500 mile per-hour wind. But, because of the wind, which pressed the captain's unconscious body back against the fuselage, the co-pilot couldn't pull the pilot back into the plane; not even with the navigator's help.
So, the co-pilot radioed in an emergency and quickly turned the plane around and landed it with the pilot still hanging outside the entire time.
The pilot survived, miraculously, and made a complete recovery. But everyone wanted to know how the hell a window just blows out of a plane like that. So the private investigators were called in.
As it turned out, the windshield had recently been replaced for some routine maintenance reason, and the wrong screws were used to bolt the window into its frame. And that's as far as any government investigators would have gotten. They would have blamed the mechanic who replaced the windshield for using the wrong screws, probably have him fired, fined, or maybe even criminally charged, and then act completely surprized the next time a window on another jet blows out in mid-flight.
But, the private investigators were only just getting started. They interviewed not just the mechanic who replaced the window, but also the tool room clerk, the other mechanics in the maintenance hanger, and looked at the design specifications of the plane, especially the windshield, and the maintenance procedures, in theory and practice. What they found out was that the screws that the mechanic used by mistake look almost exactly like the screws he was supposed to use. The only difference was that the wrong screws were just a few centimeters shorter. Maintenance procedure demanded that all the screws be replaced, which is why the old screws weren't used. Maintenance procedure also required that the mechanic verify that he has the correct parts by cross-checking the numbers with the tool room clerks records. But, in practice this was not done because it took too much time and the maintenance supervisors pressed the mechanics to rely on their experience and take short cuts.
So, in the final report to the money bags what do you think the investigators recommended? Fire the mechanic? Fire the tool clerk? Fire the maintenance supervisors? Sue the plane manufacturer and designers?
None of the above. Instead they thanked the mechanics for the information and for helping with the investigation, and made no suggestions than any actions be taken against anyone (i.e. they weren't interested in the blame game). They recommended that maintenance procedures be evaluated, and changed, so that part number confirmation was made practical and not time consuming for the mechanics. They also recommended that the mechanics be given more breaks in their work hours to reduce fatique and the urge to take short cuts.
As I recall, all of these changes were made; not just locally at that one maintenance hanger, but throughout the industry! The mechanic who made the mistake said later that he was always more careful than ever about making sure he had the right parts. By keeping him on as a mechanic, and allowing him to participate actively in the process of finding a solution, the airline not only kept an experienced and highly skilled mechanic, but they also got one who would remain hypervigilant for the rest of his career!
Perhaps there is something to be said after all for profit driven organizations as opposed to bureaucratic ones.
(J.D. 5-20-2014)
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