Consider this extract from a piece by Anthony Daniels in The New Criterion:
In his essay, The Empire of the Ugly, the great Belgian Sinologist and literary essayist Simon Leys recounts the story of how, writing one day in a café, a small incident gave him an insight into the real nature of philistinism.
A radio was playing in the background, a mixture of banal and miscellaneous chatter and equally banal popular music. No one in the café paid any attention to this stream of tepid drivel until suddenly, unexpectedly and inexplicably, the first bars of Mozart’s clarinet quintet were played.
“Mozart,” Leys says, “took possession of our little space with a serene authority, transforming the café into an antechamber of Paradise.”
The other people in the café, who until then were chatting, playing cards, or reading the newspaper, were not deaf to the radio after all. The music silenced them, they looked at each other, disconcerted. “Their disarray lasted only a few seconds: to the relief of all, one of them stood up, changed the radio station and re-established the flow of noise that was more familiar and comforting, which everyone could then properly ignore.”
Here is the conclusion Leys draws:
At that moment, I was struck by an obvious fact that has never left me since: that the real philistines are not those people incapable of recognizing beauty — they recognize it only too well, with a flair as infallible as that of the subtlest aesthete, but only to pounce on it, and smother it before it can take root in their universal empire of ugliness.
Thus philistinism is a positive, not merely a negative force.
In the article Daniels mentions other examples including that of Liberian rebels sawing off the legs of the only Steinway grand piano in the land, thereby rendering it useless. Now maybe this is just about snobs objecting to the blue-collar tastes of regular folks. But let’s take Ley’s thought about philistinism seriously for a minute and then apply it to psychopathy. So,
IF real philistines are not those people incapable of recognizing beauty — they recognize it only too well, with a flair as infallible as that of the subtlest aesthete, but only to pounce on it, and smother it before it can take root in their universal empire of ugliness,
THEN real pychopaths are not those people incapable of recognizing good — they recognize it only too well, with a flair as infallible as that of the saint, but only to pounce on it, and smother it before it can take root in their universal empire of sin.
I have never bought the idea that psychopaths cannot empathise with others; that they’re radically other, either brain-damaged or animals. To me the psychopath’s exquisite ability to know exactly how to hurt others suggests that he is brilliantly attuned to the inner worlds of others. Nor does the idea that psychopaths can’t tell the difference between good and evil stand up. Their infallible nose for doing wrong is evidence that the psychopath is an anti-saint.
One definition of saint is “persons eminent for holiness….those who distinguish themselves by heroic virtue during life”. Turn that on it’s head and you have the psychopath.
In my humble opinion, that is.
My ex sociopath was very religious. I was abused by it. When he left he said that I was not actually his spiritual mate, but this other women was. So I say “good, let her deal with you then!”
“Some of them, however, also knowing good from evil, ENJOY doing evil for the sake of doing evil and the pain that it will inflict upon others” OxDrover
Oxdrover-This was my experience to a T. It is so hard to explain to people-that is why I like this blog so much, so many people get it. Until you experience it, you would never believe it. The only time I have ever seen my ex sociopaths face light up was when he was saying mean things to me and then especially on that fateful night. It is really something to behold! He was obviously causing me so much pain that night as was evident from my massive amount of tears. His eyes were lit up with delight and he had this half curled smile on the side of his mouth. I have NEVER seen anything like it.
The sociopath takes pleasure in his cruelty. There is no other way to describe it. And no other way to believe it, until you see it for yourself.
I, also, firmly believe there is something wrong with my exsociopaths brain. It all fits too well with the studies they have done on sociopath’s brain waves. If I could show you pictures of him, you would understand that this man had the flattest affect. I thought he was just calm at first and I liked that about him. But when he maintained that calm through the extreme turmoil, that is when that calm became creepy! I mean really creepy.
Dear Bird,
I am so sorry that you suffered through this terrible trauma, but you have “faced the devil” and survived. The Bible tells us that no mortal man can see the face of God and survive, but I think we have all had at least a glimpse of SATAN, but we survived—and, THEY ARE GONE!!!!! THAT is the biggest blessing we could have, now we can heal.
My P-son I have absolutely no doubt ENJOYS doing evil, and the Trojan HOrse P as well. To them, even if they get caught and sent to jail or prison, they have still WON if they have inflicted terrible wounds upon you, their victim. Even if they get NOTHING ELSE but this malicious satisfaction from “seeing you bleed” they still feel like they have “won.” And it is all about WINNING and CONTROL and WOUNDING others.
Yes, I also believe that their brains are “hard wired” different from ours and that is part of the problem, but I also think that the intense JOY that they feel in “winning” is a learned response. I base that upon my own observations, maybe Dr. Liane could comment on any studies she knows about.
Many other people I have known or talked to that have been in a relationship with a psychopath all comment about “THE LOOk” that they can give you—one of such intense rage and hatred that once you have seen IT, you can never mistake it for anything else. It is reptilian, penetrating, amost seems like you are really looking Satan in the face…and it may only be there for a few seconds, or it may last for what seems like an eternity. It is the “look of evil” is all I can call it.
The last time I visited my P-son, one minute he is in control spouting his “but mom, what would Jeeeesus do?” and when he became frustrated with me not buying his crap, he got “the look” and immediately switched to bragging about how horrible his crime was. Then in only a few seconds, BACK to “But Mom, what would Jeeesus do?” It was so disconcerting, and for just a moment, he lost control and let his MASK of sweetness slip and let me see what was really behind it. It was SCARY beyond belief. The closest I can describe it is the LOOK on Charlie Manson’s face in that photo that was in all the books and newspaper articles about him. It is bone chilling. MOst people DON’T get it except for the people that make the news for serial crimes of murder etc.
It is good to have people here who DO get it, so you don’t feel like YOU are the “crazy” one—Bird, we are ALL blessed to be away from them. The pain is awful, but it is in the END, a small price to pay for the freedom from their abuse and their FOG. Even knowing what I know now, if that was the price I had to pay, I would pay it again. It’s like “reverse child birth” and instead of GETTING a wonderful baby, you get RID of “Rosemary’s BAby” (that is a movie for you youngsters where Mia Farrow was tricked into having Satan’s child)
ohhh….How I relate to Rosemarys Baby. Although I have not seen the movie in decades.
The stories from Rosemarys baby and Vampires are not just pulled out of thin air. I am convinced that they come from experience with a sociopath/psychopath.
Oh, Bird, I hope I didn’t hurt your feelings about the comment of Rosemary’s baby, I forgot you are pregnant. Sometimes I let my mouth over run my brain.
It just kind of dawned on me that our pains from the P-relationship are as painful or worse than labor pains, and at the end we GET RID of the DEvil, which is almost as good as having a baby after child birth pains.
Funny thing too, I was told before I had my first child that we could not “remember” the pain, and you know, that is true. I remember that I HAD pain, but not THE pain, and I think I am getting to that point with the psychopathicly-induced pain, I remember that I HAD pain, I can even describe it in minute detail, but I am getting to where I cant REMEMBER IT, if it makes any sense to you women who have given birth out there.
My son D says that is the way he thinks/feels about the pain from his burns from the airplane crash in which my husband died. He says he KNOWS it hurt, and he can describe it, but he can’t REMEMBER or RECALL it any more. He could for quite some time as he pretty much had PTSD from his close encounter to death by burning, but now it is receeding behind “memory”—
I hadn’t thought about that movie for decades either until yesterday and when I go back over it in my memomry, with her husband and her neighbors using her as a VICTIM, it is all so much like a relationship with a psychopath or a family of them or group of them working together. You get suspicious as Rosemary did, you wonder, as rosemary did, and yet you don’t accept the red flags. They just CAN’T be TRUE, nothing “that wild” could be true—and yet it IS TRUE.
The character of Rosemary I think represents us all in so many ways. She was used and duped by the evil forces of the psychopaths in her world without the least concern for her welfare, she was simply a pawn, a means to an end, and boy can we all relate to that.
No offense meant Bird. (((Hugs))))
I need support today. I spent last night explaining to someone who knows the Psycho thay they are indeed evil and no,not changed. I ended up writing three follow-up emails and I feel stupid. As if I am over-reacting, not being taken serioulsy. I want to drop this, but it reappears over and over an dhow am I to roll over when I am told the psycho seems to be better based on conversations. We all know they can talk the talk. I feel sick, stupid and embarrassed. As if I am the crazy, judgmental one….
DEar HWS,
You know the “drill”—they make us appear “crazy” and “no one wants to believe us”—as LONG AS YOU TRY TO EXPLAIN the TRUTH to others he has in a FOG, you will APPEAR crazy in their minds. They CANNOT GET IT—any more than my mother could “get it”—even if they could, they DON’T WANT TO.
The ONLY solution that I know of is to STOP trying to tell people about how evil he is.
It is like trying to teach a pig to sing, it irritates the pig and frustrates you!
BEing VERY SELECTIVE about who you talk to about him, and knowing that the person IS REALLY INTERESTED is the ONLY way you can tell the story and NOT come off as the “evil” one yourself.
It is a shame, but that is the way I have found it all my life. My mother and other people in the FOG just don’t want to hear the truth.
There are none so blind as he who will not see, and none so deaf as he who will not hear.
Jesus preached to the Pharisees continually and they didn’t “get it” either. Because to “get it” they would have had to admit their own wrong attitudes. He also preached to others that even though they “got it” didn’t want to accept it because it would mean they had to ACT on it. You are “preaching” to the same kinds of people.
My advise on that is to “quit casting your pearls before swine, lest they trample them underfood and turn and rend you”
(((hugs))))
Also, I hate to say this, but as long as you interact with the P and the ones he has in a FOG I don’t see how you can completely heal from this with the wounds having the scabs torn off on a fairly regular basis. Can you go to another congregation instead of that one church? Make new friends? Just get away from him completely?
Thanks OxD-
Your reply means alot. It’s a cost-average thing….I go to a different Mass, and avoid much he does…yet stuff like this comes up. But I have been sucessful getting him warned as other people have complained. He was warned repeatedly actually. It’s just hard- as we all know. He just rolls with it as psychos do….he’s a freaking textbook where anyone else would run in shame….I am suprised he doesn’t wear neon to stickout more.
I think I need to accept my justice in not on this side of eternity.People believe what they believe…and no one can say now I didn’t say something.
Thank God for this place.
I saw this post on Kathy Krajco’s site. She was talking about character assignation, and it being a fate worse than death. That is what happens in a sociopathic relationship, where evil appears good and good appears evil. She said every person’s most precious possession is your self-image that you carry inside. She had been discussing both the murder of Hamet’s father and the murder of Jesus Christ, both innocents who had their character assignated falsely.
“You needn’t be a Christian to get the import of this story. The narcissist plays the part of the Sanhedrin (which was indeed narcissistic and envious of Jesus). The people of Jerusalem play the part of everyone who listens to his slander and calumny of you, even though it flies in face of the facts of your known conduct, gobbling it up just because it’s juicy and because condemning others makes them feel righteous. If, say, this happens in the workplace, Pontius Pilate plays the part of the boss.
There is nothing worse you can do to a human being.
So, if this has happened to you, your feelings are natural. Don’t make it worse by feeling guilty about them and trying to bury them. You cannot accept it. But you can accept your feelings. So do. You just hunger and thirst for justice. What’s so bad about that?”
I agree HWS, and I applaud your effort.
Benz
Sorry for the type, Hamlet not Hamet.
Benz,
I think WE ALL “hunger and thirst for justice”—we wouldn’t be human if we didn’t.
Unfortunately just as Jesus didn’t get “justice” from Pilate even though Pilate knew the truth he didn’t have the back bone to stand up to the “popular” outcry, which he COULD have done. Like many people who KNOW the truth, they do nothing, and his name has been an anathama ever since.
Even for non-believers I think that the Bible has SO many good examples of psychopaths and narcissists and their behaviors… Jezebel for one, Abalsom, King DAvid’s son for another, and King DAvid as an enabler of his psychopathic son, etc. David like most of us was human and made some pretty nasty bad choices from adultery to murder, but God still said “he is a man after my own heart”—WHY? Because when David was confronted with his own bad deeds, he REPENTED AND TRIED TO IMPROVE HIMSELF—he did NOT take revenge against King Saul though he had multiple opportunities to kill Saul who was at that time trying to kill him, but DAvid refrained from revenge and let God handle the problem
Jesus confronted the Pharisees and the Jewish “rulers” at the time and you see what He got for his trouble, the typical “whistle blower” character assisination of the Psychopaths who are called out on their own abusive behavior, and when that didn’t work, they crucified him to try to shut Him up. They paid witnesses to lie, paid his friend to betray him, and then discarded the very person they had hired to betray Jesus.
The humble, kind and caring people have always been abused by the psychopaths of this world, and I doubt that it will change any time soon.
I think it was Abraham Lincoln who said “you can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool ALL of the people ALL of the time.”
There are some people we will never be able to convince that there is even such a thing as a psychopath who appears to be “Mr/Ms. Nice Guy/Gal” no matter how much evidence we have to prove it. People ultimately believe what they WANT to believe, just as WE did back when we believed the psychopath….most/many of us with evidence to the contrary.
I had to get my OWN validation, and I did get SOME legal validation when the psychopaths tried to kill my son C and got arrested, but all in all, until they “shot themselves in the foot” figuratively, I WAS BRANDED A LIAR by my mother, my son C, by his P-wife, the P-son, the Trojan Horse P, and some of my mother’s friends and my neighbors. A very few people trusted me enough to believe what I said was true, and knew me well enough to know I was neither a fool nor a liar, but the PEOPLE WHO COUNTED AT THAT TIME did not.
It was ONLY by God’s Goodness and Grace that my son C and I are alive today, and probably my mother as well. She still does not appreciate or acknowledge that the “hell I raised” did pay off in the end. It is only by God’s grace that my pounding on the parole board’s door got them to rescind the ILLEGAL transfer of him from prison to a half-way house where NO SEXUAL OFFENDER IS ALLOWED TO LIVE—and they KNEW what they were doing was illgal, and only the prospect of a loud mouthed old biddy (ME!!!) standing on the State capitol steps with the media made them take back the parole that they had granted, again, witout giving me the RIGHT afforded to me to speak in person to their “review.”
Because they knew that the media would KNOW that what they did was WRONG and ILLEGAL they “back peddled.” But, whatever it takes to keep him in prison as long as possible.
So, sometimes, but infrequently, I have found in dealing with Ps most of my life, you DO get “justice” to feed your hunger for it, but most of the time, I have never gotten “justice” on this side of the Jordan River. I have no doubt that there will be justice on the other side, though. “Vengence is mine saith the Lord.”
In the meantime, I do my best to “clean up my own act” and do what I can, and trust God for the rest, and accept whatever happens as what is intended. Sometimes my faith is tested, but so was Job’s and he had a lot bigger and meaner Psychopath “after him” than I did, so I guess if he can keep his faith I should at least do the best I can.