Lovefraud recently received an e-mail from a reader telling us about discussion on another Internet forum called PsychForums. Here’s what he wrote:
Found an interesting set of postings. On PsychForums. “Craving for Antisocial Behavior.” With postings between four psychopaths. Arguing for various positions With general agreement that society has infringed on them. And so deserves the revenge. Sounding like people are viewed similarly to enemy combatants. And deserve what they get.
Alternate view is that people’s revulsion against psychopaths is understandable. That people don’t want bad things to happen to them. So don’t be a fool and don’t get caught or cry unfair. There are plenty of ways to enjoy life without having to risk jail to get it.
Seems to sum up the psychopath side of the story fairly well.
If you want to know how these psychopaths think, read their discussion:
PsychForums: “Craving for Antisocial Behavior”
Hello Wini,
I totally respect your right to differ. I agree that laughing and crying and the feeling of good and evil are absolutely beautiful manifestations of being a normal human being. I just don’t think that the idea of an intelligent creator is any explanation for them (though I understand that religion can offer people comfort and I respect that – it worked for my late mother).
However, I just want to put an alternative explanation of morality there for people who don’t believe in God, because I think it’s important for those who don’t feel religion answers any of their problems about the world (science’s job to apply a method of questioning our knowledge about the world). It’s important to have faith that ‘the good will out’ regardless of what your source is.
I think that’s part of what makes me worry – I *don’t* believe the sociopaths I have encountered could have been ‘saved’ and my ex-boyfriend *was* force-fed what his mother regarded as the ‘word of God’ from very early childhood. If I believed that he could be ‘saved’ rather than *lacking* something present in most individuals perhaps I’d still be clinging onto that pointless relationship now.
Quite often people represent Darwin and Einstein (for example) as believing in God, but both angrily refuted it. It’s not my intention to argue about the rightness or wrongness of my beliefs, but to offer an alternative opinion that might let people visiting this forum see that antisocial behaviour is *wrong* whether you believe it comes from the devil or not.
If anything I am someone who practises Zen, without being a Buddhist. So I believe it’s possible to ditch the ego without referring to a text (whoever it was written by).
Anyway – similarly, peace!
Dear Ennlondon,
“spirituality” doesn’t necessarily have to mean a belief in a “god” or a “creator” it is the ethics and the morality of doing good to others because that is the “right” thing to do. A person can be spiritual and still not believe in a “god” or “creator.”
I’ve been reading a book about early (2500 bc to 600 bc) Chinese history and the way the culture developed religion and morality was very interesting to me. Most cultures develop some sort of “god” or “gods” to “dictate” some sort of morality and ethics in the population. I think that most people WANT to be moral and ethical, not just because they don’t want immoral and unethical treatment themselves, but because cultures run better, are safer and “nicer” for all under a system which contains ethical precepts. Those ethical precepts I think are more or less “inborn” in most people or at least easily obtained at an early age along with empathy except for the psychopaths among us.
Force feeding any kind of “precepts” or “ethics” to anyone is and has always been a wasted effort. People cannot be forced to believe anything that they do NOT accept of their own free will. Ever totalitarian state in the world has attempted to force-feed thought, and to monitor and persecute “bad thought” but it has never worked, it only drives that thought underground, but it does NOT change it.
Persecution of just about any religion, political or other “thoughts” is futile and many times actually promotes it. Look at how the Catholic church persecuted people for “incorrect thoughts” during the Inquisition, how many people did they burn at the stake, hang-draw-and-quarter, trying to stamp out “heresy” to no avail?
Hello Oxy/Wini,
Oxy: Yes, well-put re spirituality. There’s so much we can’t explain. Particles change upon being observed! So much marvellous stuff. And persecution is always counter-productive.
Wini: I’m happy for everyone to believe what they want. The thing that switched me from being an agnostic though (leaning more towards believing in God) to my current feelings (that I don’t believe in a ‘Creator’) were a mixture of contact with the sociopath(s!) and dealing with the Jyllands-Posten cartoons controversy. I work for a broadcaster and *quite rightly* Christians were complaining that it was possible to parody Christ and not Muhammed. I couldn’t justify this inconsistency and above all I believe in our precious freedoms of speech. I don’t believe in extending censorship to all religions, so I feel that it should be removed from all.
I believe strongly that our guiding principles should be separate from religious dogma. The reason I worry about the idea of people being ‘saved’ is that it takes the responsibility away from them and puts it in the hands of a third party (God). People are generally inherently ‘good’ and the concept of ‘goodness’ is meaningful regardless of what religion you have (depending on what bit of the world you emerged in) I don’t like the idea that people must look to a third party for their morals.
Conversely (re God expecting unbelievers) geneticists have spoken of a ‘God-shaped hole’ in our brains – a need for religion/faith which might be said to *favour* us from an evolutionary point of view. Life’s full of paradoxes – monotheism, due to its emphasis on ‘laws of God’ drove the modern scientific revolution (whereas polytheism gave the Ancient Greeks a head start which was later lost).
(I haven’t read the book you suggest but I will. I’ve read the Bible and the Qu’ran. I’d also like to suggest you read ‘The Selfish Gene’ by Richard Dawkins though – it’s a beautiful book about the natural world).
Anyway I find it all interesting, thanks!
EnnLondon: My grandparents always told me to read as much as I could about God … all different versions of what our creator is all about … and that there are missing scriptures hidden in different Bibles (whatever other nations call their word from God) throughout the world … due to religious beliefs being prosecuted through the ages.
Reading about our creator is a choice. It is a life long decision to continue your education about your faith.
Leaders of churches can only do so much with the time frame they are given down here …. to get people to attend church is a big deal to them, so most of them leave well enough alone and explain the gospel to their attendees. The faithful will ensure they read further the word of God on their own.
For me, I always knew, just knew in my soul that there was a creator before I even went to church. I just felt the connection since I was a youngster. I didn’t understand all of this when I inquired of my Dad, “why do you love going to church all the time, I just don’t get it”. My Dad’s answer was “that he got comfort knowing the Lord and he felt at ease when he was in church … that he didn’t know what anyone else got out of God and church, only that he got serenity and peace knowing he believed in God” … and of course, he hoped that I too, would some day.
I knew what he meant about God … we just differed about attending church services. I loved hearing the sermons and I loved community and I love the hymns … I was scared and confused about the hypocrites (I must have been seeing the anti-socials in their full glory … at a young age and was confused by them) who violated what they just heard in church that Sunday, just minutes ago … and did so while chatting with others on the church steps.
Anyway, I needed to get over this confusion about church versus God. When I made peace with it… I was able to study on my own and with the help of different spiritual advisers …
I know for me, being faithful in God works for me. If I follow the world of God my life is serene and peaceful. I am happy and content. If I focus on mankind … let’s just say I get disappointed and kicked in the butt every time. Wo/Man is just another human dealing with life the best they can … God is the way for me, he never disapoints me or lets me down. I may not understand everything as I read it the first time around, then I ask God to help me, and the rest falls into place. Anti-socials of the world have allowed me to see and understand different scriptures the way I never saw it before … so they can be useful in your life … if you look at it this way.
To each their own … whatever makes your boat float.
Peace.
Hello Wini,
I must say at this point that I don’t see ‘my’ sociopath as representative of religious people at all…perversely he was a bit too obsessed with fire and brimstone. He got his beliefs from his mother who terrified him with ideas of hell from a young age…sadly, as I’m sure we’ve all seen, it’s a trait easily passed on.
I’m glad your faith gives you those feelings. I know religion works for a lot of people (it provided a lot of comfort for my mother when she was very ill) and I respect anyone who sees the world as a beautiful place with ‘goodness’ in it.
And peace of course! Inner and external. That’s the main thing.
EnnLondon: In the end, it is about how you keep your waters calm as you go through life.
I find reading as many Bibles as I can to be fascinating. Absolutely, fascinating.
Like I said, to each our own. It’s all about one’s perception of life… and that too, changes as we experience life.
Peace.
Having a “moral compass” and a conscience that tells you when you have violated that “moral compass” to my way of thinking is “spirituality.” Whether you believe in any god is beside the point. Belief in a religion is a way to develop a moral compass, but there are other ways as well.
The P’s don’t have a “moral compass” that is consistent with most “normal” people’s conception of “right and wrong.” To my way of thinking without that spiritual aspect, they are incommplete as humans. In our own healing I think we need to address the “spiritual” aspect of ourselves.
For whatever reason, we allowed them to abuse us (which I have no doubt is against the “moral compass” of most, if not all, of us (victims). I had to address this spiritual blooper. If it is not okay for anyone to abuse anyone else, then WHY did I allow my own abuse? Examining my own spirituality, my own moral compass, and assessing why I allowed abuse–even my own helped me to refocus and reframe, and to heal.
I had a hard time with that too Oxy.. even now I often say to myself.. why do you let yourself be treated like this.. you wouldn’t be so harsh on one of your friends.
Yea, Kat, that’s the thing, if someone were abusing my friend etc I would fight for them, yet, I allowed them to abuse me. Heck, when I saw that they were abusing my mother, I fought like a banshee to get her out of their clutches–even against her will, cause she was drugged and not “with it” at that time, maybe at first she was okay mentally, but they had her babbling on drugs, she could hardly stand up. I fought hard to get her out of their cluthes. and when I left, when I went into hiding, I felt like I was deserting my mother and my son C and throwing them to the wolves, but it was stay and die, or leave and live, and I chose to live. I couldn’t do any good so why sacrifice myself as well.
Maybe that sounds cold hearted, but I couldn’t die just because they were not listening.
Why would I fight to “rescue” them from the Ps, not not to rescue myself until it was almost too late? Not only that, I look back at the entirety of my life, and I was attempting to rescue someone, usually some P, or fix some P, or fix some twisted abusive relationship. The only person it was okay to have suffer abuse was ME. Well, now, I will not tolerate abuse any more. I’ll set boundaries, and NO relationship is so “holy” that I can’t let it go. It may hurt, but I’m gonna “fight for myself” from now on.
This whole thing has changed the way I look at a lot of things. My relationship with God is much stronger, but my relationship with MYSELF is also stronger and better. I’m turning over the “People fixing” job to God, that’s His job, not mine. If He can’t do it, I don’t know what makes me think I can. LOL
I JUST WENT AND CHECKED OUT THAT BLOG. I COULD ONLY GET THROUGH THE FIRST ONE. TOO CREEPY? GAVE ME FLASH BACKS. LIFE HAS JUST STARTED TO GET BACK TO NORMAL FOR ME. IT’S BEEN A YEAR SINCE I THREW OUT MY BAD MAN. I’M FINALLY FEELING LIKE MYSLF AGAIN. I AM DOING MY BEST TO NOT MEET ANOTHER LIKE THAT. I THINK I WOULD RATHER BE SINGLE. EVEN MY PARROTS ARE HAPPIER. THEY HAVEN’T BEEN BITING OR SCREAMING SINCE HE LEFT. MY HOME IS SOME MUCH MORE PEACEFUL AND TRANQUIL.