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.
To wisernow,
I think the reason so many of disordered people are attracted to Religion is because in the Church community, there is a defined set of rules and ways to act that make one look good. It’s like following a formula.
If I do this and say that, I will look good and people will think I AM good…
and…
When I am not good, I can call it “sin” and pretend I am sorry and everyone will forgive me because I am their Christian brother and we are all full of sin. No one will call it what it is… becaue he who casst the first stone…
It’s the perfect cover.
The Bad Man was a former Minister for Assemblies of God. He told me that as a child he was prone to tantrums and outbursts. When he was 10, he went to a church based summer camp and he had some kind of revival or awakening there. I now believe that what happened there was he learned by watching the other children how to look good and be pleasing to adults by modeling their *religious* behavior. I don’t believe he actually had any kind of spiritual event as he described. I think he got a big fat acting lesson.
I also know of another person, a woman, that displayed disordered behavior to her partner… she is a Yoga teacher with a big following in San Francisco area. No one would believe their “guru” was an abusive psycho, now would they?
to all,
There is nothing I hate more than looking crazy… NOTHING.
If you are considering trying to out a Sociopath, think carefully. Sometimes you have to watch and wait and just put the *idea* in people’s minds that something might be wrong and then remind them to listen to their gut.
That might be all you can do without sacrificing your sanity.
I am not sure what your last post is saying OxD, sorry. My post had absolutely nothing to do with getting justice or feeding a hunger for it.
HolyWaterSalt said she felt she needed support after perhaps taking trying to make a point too far and HWS is also a fan of Kathy’s. Almost the entire post, if you notice the quotes, is Kathy’s, a good message that I happened to agree with, still do.
Kathy was showing just how deeply character assignation has been carried out down through history and how deeply it can affect us. Perhaps I wasn’t clear. No, not everyone feels a sense of justice or obviously neither Hamlet’s father or Jesus Christ would have been murdered.
The victim of a sociopath sometimes feels a need for justice even more intensely. Kathy’s simple message reprinted here for HWS was just to say, recognize your feelings but don’t beat yourself up for having them or for expressing them through actions you tried to take. There is nothing wrong with your heightened sense of feeling a need for justice.
I hope this helps you, HWS. I thought Kathy had a keen sense of understanding and acceptance, and I hope she’s found the peace she deserves.
And OxD, everyone does have their own interpretation of bible passages. Some also have their own interpretation of religion. It makes it personal, but it doesn’t necessarily make it right. Matthew 7:6 holds special meaning for me because I clung to it as an excuse. My relationship with a former church elder who may be a sociopath, caused me to learn many things and I’ll mention just two of them. From personal experience, one danger in reading scripture is misinterpretation, the other is knowing the “rules” (the Word) from a lifetime of religion but refusing to let the Messiah sit at the table and change your life. By misinterpretation, I hadn’t searched deeply enough and I missed some important things. Also I tried to make the Word fit into my life instead of making my life fit into the Word.
Now when I read the Bible, I read more than one translation and/or I use a reference. I don’t want to miss anything and it doesn’t hurt to know what the scholars think. Also, I learned that I needed to get out of my own way. Once I did, I listen better now or maybe it’s that I am better able to hear His voice. But not everyone really wants to hear that voice.
Benz
Thanks all. Good to hear from Kathy too. : )
I thought a lot about the talk I had yesterday. It was with a friend who is also clergy,he’s a good friend. Such a good guy, and believes in Good and Evil. So I pointed out the obvious- he’s seen it with his own eyes too-I don’t think what I said was outline with reality or truth…just so few people accept reality or truth. Heck, I didn’t even go into my suspicion that psycho tries to purposefully hit women (pedestrians) while driving. Actually he has, they lived though….a definate pattern and excited behavior afterwards. I could keep listing this stuff, all true…oh well.
Thanks guys…I know, you know and but for the grace of God there they go…
I just thought of this (again) after I wrote about NOT knowing that my SD was an SD. I should have looked back, just once when we were in detailed conversations … just to catch the psycho grin. I never thought that I had to look with him … that’s how normal he acted. Never once did I ever feel that something was wrong to even consider looking back at him. Now I will remember for the future … no matter who it is (male or female, young or old) I will purposely walk away from them … my back turned … quickly turn to face them again … just to see if they have “that grin”. The grin is the one that Susan Smith showed the world when she pleaded to the world “please, please, please … whoever has my babies …”. That’s the psycho grin. They can’t help but to show that grin … it’s there signature mark … and Susan was ensuring that her grin was in our faces.
Speaking about facing the devil and surviving…I will never forget I was in the office working at my desk. My senior boss was walking out of her office with another manager. They were walking towards me wringing their hands as the cryptically dropped their conversation in my direction. I remember the two of them staring at me, laughing and wringing their hands. (like witches at the boiling pot) then, without warning… a flash of something came whizzing from both of them towards me (like a lightening bolt). I immediately starting praying the Lord’s prayer … the bolt of whatever it was went right through me. I remember thinking at that very moment “funny, there is no substance to EVIL”. They both went from smiling to a stunned look, put their heads down and walked quickly past me. What did I just witness here? I knew I was silently talking with God and telling him “thank you”. A smile an to my mind.
Oh, and another thing … I wanted to walk around that office with a bucket of water … to throw … so I could hear “I’m melting … I’m melting … look what you’ve done to my beautiful wickedness ………. urghhhhhhhhh … pooofffffff”. The end. Sadly, I didn’t. But, I thought about it.
Dear Benz,
When I speak of JUSTICE, I am NOT speaking of revenge. My interpretation of “Justice” is the natural and legal consequences of illegal and immoral behavior. “Justice” is what you get when you see someone rob your house, call the cops and the police arrest them and they go to jail. You have NOT sought revenge, though the robber may feel that you “got your revenge” it was JUSTICE.
If a person is doing any immoral act, and others find out about it and he is sanctioned in the community, they may lose their job, have public scorn, etc. because of their behavior. The former Governor of New Yorkk is a good exammple. Here was a man who pretended to be against prostitution, secretly going to a prostitute. He got found out. That is JUSTICE, not revenge.
I do not even WANT to hunger or thirst after REVENGE, that in my mind would be me taking the law into my own hands, or planting evidence on them, or going and burning down their house for what they did to me. the Bible tells us “Vengence is mine saith the Lord.” I figure if He says it, He means it, and that vengence is not what I should desire. Sometimes the natural human impulse to do that might pop up in my head, but I control that impulse and do not act on it, or harbor it.
While I realize that interpretation of scripture is a very personal thing, I also believe that sometimes you can “get a new slant” on a well known story or passage in the Bible that you hadn’t seen before. To me the very beauty of the Bible’s stories and parables etc is that there are MULTIPLE lessons in each one. That each time we read them with a FRESH eye and an open mind that the Word can speak to us in so many situations as appropriate for THAT situation….if only we will see what it is trying to tell us….let the wisdom of it come through.
My mother taught me that the Biblical definition of “forgiveness” was that you had to “pretend it didn’t happen” and let the person go on and on repeating the same abusive behavior, or you would go to Hell because you didn’t “forgive” them (even if there was no repentence on their part or change in their behavior).
When I started studying the Bible with a more open mind and free of her “interpretation” I realized that “forgiveness” is indeed a MUST, but it does NOT include that you let them continue their behavior, that you trust them, or believe them. It means that you get the bitterness out of your heart. TRUST is another issue entirely unrelated to “forgiveness.”
It isn’t all that difficult to “forgive” someone if you realize (IMHO) that you don’t ALSO have to TRUST them again, or to “pretend it didn’t happen.” I can clear my heart of the Bitterness that is engendered by the abuse, but to be able to TRUST these people and keep them in my life, that would be impossible for me.
Sometimes, like Wini said, we fantasize about going around with a “bucket of water” and pouring it on them like the wicked witch and melting them, but that I think is more of a stress relief for us rather than genuinely “seeking revenge.”
I totally agree with Aloha about religion as being a “special cloak” or “costume” for the psychopath to hide behind. The rules are pretty simple, easily observable, “forgiveness” is almost guarenteed from others when you “sin” and “repent”—boy can my P-son pretend “repentence.” The Bible says “Judge not” and so many people interpret this to mean that you can’t in any way condemn someone’s behavior, so no matter how many times the psychopath “sins” these people withold their idea of “judgment” and “forgive” (pretend it didn’t happen even though it is STILL happening).
TAKEN OUT OF CONTEXT there is almost always some phrase in the Bible that can be used to “justify” just about any behavior, and the psychopaths are so GOOD at the “legalistic” finding of these passages, twisting them, taking them out of context and using them to “justify” their behavior.
My P-son almost knows the Bible by heart, but he doesn’t get the ‘MESSAGE’ that is there—I read a 12 page letter he wrote to a minister friend of ours saying how his family were hypocrits because we would not give him “unconditional love” and write to him, so he could “explain” his part in the plot to kill us. Of course he failed to mention the plot, just that for some reason unknown to him, we had stopped writing to him, and therefore withdrawn our “unconditional love” and he deserved “unconditional love” no matter what he had done, etc. If we were “real Christians” we would “love him unconditionally” ya da, ya da.
Comparing the letters he wrote TO us, and the one To our friend the minister, with the letters he wrote to his partners in crime is an interesting comparison. One filled with “love and light” and “humility” and frequent scripture quotes and the other filled with the F word, bragging, arrogance and venom against the very people he was “sucking up to” in the “sweetness and light” letters.
Yea, religion and scripture make a great Cloak for a psychopath, but most of the time their “feet of clay” stick out from the bottom if we will only LOOK. Jesus tells us to EXAMINE the FRUIT of a tree, if the FRUIT is bad, the tree is bad. (and yea, we’ll all produce a few bad apples in our fruit harvest, but if the majority of the crop is bad, cut the tree down). Peace and love and healing to us all is my prayer.
To OxDrover,
I like your take on the Scriptures. And as I was pondering the mutual dilemma we all have faced, the one common factor I’ve found is that through all this turmoil, we want to reach a higher plane of understanding. It’s pushing us, through our hurts and disillusionments, to strengthen our bond with God through Christ, and Christ said He came to bind up the broken hearted. So if through our brokenness, we find strength, and through that strength, we can pass onto others our findings, all really isn’t lost.
I was thinking of the scripture in Psalms 91:8, where it says “Only with our eyes shall you look, and see the reward of the wicked”. So that tells me that those who choose to do evil, will receive their own reward, unless they turn from their wicked ways. There is no final and complete justice like that of God. I see a lot of people who plan their own demise by the way they live.
I can’t help but think of the ones who really touched my life and me personally. What was it about them that drew me? I think as far as my husband goes, I was in love with love, but learned to love him, to only have that all turned against me. It broke me to the point where I was totally enamored by the man I met. Satan, as the Father of all lies, had me believing this man was of God and he would be my rescuer. And this man has the most melodious voice ever. I was as attracted to his voice as much as anything. I’ve learned since and have heard others voice it, that we have to be on our guard, always. Do we hear the message or do we focus on the messenger? Since my experiences, I’m so much more aware of my surroundings. I walked around for so long encased in my emotional prison and deep in the depths of despair, that I wasn’t aware of happenings. Physically, I was there. Emotionally and mentally, I was somewhere else. I was constantly nursing my hurts and trying to process what it all meant, and what I could do to make it all right. It took others to finally show me, that I wasn’t the only one to blame. And through that enormous let down, I found a newer and deeper understanding of my faith in God. It made me more aware of my obligation to obeying Him and not a man. I had to take responsibility for my actions too, and not do anything that might entice anyone to my way of thinking. I see all of these happenings as an awakening, spiritually as well as physically. I became more aware of myself as a woman and just what my worth really was.
I had been used for sex for so long, that I thought that was my only worth. I was constantly being propositioned and had it not been for my foundation, I probably would have caved, due to wanting to be loved. God has shown me I am loved, by Him and if I never know the love of a man, that is okay, too.
I’ve always tried to weigh what I do from an eternal standpoint. Will it stand the eternal test and if not, then I shouldn’t do it. Since I was acquainted with grief at such a young age, it has made me more aware of wanting to know what eternity really does hold for us. Death is inevitable, and I want to determine if what is happening is of an earthly value or eternal. So to some, that puts me on a much deeper realm and some shy away from me, because I don’t want the shallow way of life. I find I tend to intimidate some due to that, but the funny thing is, when they are hurting, I’m the one they turn to. So it proves to me, that somewhere along the way, we all have to find a deeper meaning to life. I want to do that before I’m on my death bed.
But I digress. Lots of thoughts and questions. Now that I have Google, I find answers! I do a lot of comparisons. And it’s so good to have all these different life stories to put my own life into perspective. Going through it was tough. Now I find I don’t hurt when I talk of it. It’s getting better every day and talking is a panacea, and if more people would communicate their needs, I don’t think we’d have so many problems with which to deal
Apt/Mgr,
I can’t remember where I read it, or if someone posted it on here but the gist of the quote (forgive my inaccurate memory) was that “when you can talk about it and NOT FEEL the pain, you are healed”
Your quote “Now I find I don’thurt when I talk of it”
WOW! GREAT!!!! I think that is where I am getting as well, of course there are still issues that I need to work on to “improve me” but the PAIN when I think about it is not there. I can tell it and not FEEL it, not feel the tightening in my throat, my stomach climbing up to my adams apple, etc.
So if that is the criteria for “healing” I think it is a good one. Untying the emotional strings and responses to the memory seems to be the hardest part, but I think when we are there we about “have it made.” If we use the experience as a clue that we need to work on some issues of our own, to resolve some past abuses or whatever that has not been resolved, great! If we can use it as a spur to our own emotional and spiritual growth, even better! Sometimes it takes a “swift kick” from the Universe to get us off our butts and moving on toward something better than what we had, so I am actually grateful that I was able to survive this, and use it as a motivation for me to change ME…because after all that is all we can do.
I am so grateful to God that my family survived this all alive, that the DIL is OUT of my son C’s life and that he is healing, and that I have a better and closer relationship to a LOVING GOD and am not in terror of the ANGRY vengeful God my mother taught me to fear. I have a spiritual peace now that I have not had before in my life. To me the Bible is filled with WISDOM for our day to day life, a guide book on how to live in a healthy and wise way, and this is totally independent of the “religious” aspect of it. The various Bible “stories” about people’s lives and how they lived them, good or bad, should speak to us in OUR daily lives about how to live a good life and avoid the bad. Good sense 101. Proverbs is a good example of such a book. Philosophy 101, Ecclesiastes, Love101, Song of Solomon; etc.
I also read the sacred texts of other religions, not because I embrace the religious part of it, but because of the wisdom in the writings. I read many writers, ancient and modern, for the wisdom in their writings to help me on a day to day basis to grow and learn.
For so long I focused on controlling the PAIN of the situation, now I am focusing on my own GROWTH emotionally and spiritually. So I have come a long ways from where I came in this journey. I started out “crazy” with pain, frustration, fear, anger etc. and I am getting to a place of peace and security again. It has been a long journey, andI hope the growth will go on and on and on, but the crazy and pain were only temporary.