Intentions
and Actions 5
In
earlier posts I put forth some different ideas about
interconnectedness. Today my thoughts are just as far into the ozone,
but in another area. When I reference everything I experience in
relation to myself, I am being self-centered. If I built an extreme
reality of egocentricity, then I maybe unable to empathize with or feel compassion for others. The actions that I take might be thought as being good, but I
will have an ulterior motive for doing them. The pain that I
intentionally create will be for my benefit and I will not care. For
me my whole universe is me. Nothing but me and what I want matters.
The above statements describe for me psychopathy and sociopathy.
I
first got interested in psychopathy and sociopathy when in a story on
television I was watching it was stated that one person was a
psychopath and another was a sociopath. The statement sounded as if
there was a difference and I wanted to know what that was. In my
research I found they could be used interchangeably. Also, I found
statements that said the population of the United States was one to
three percent psychopaths. That probably could be extended to the
whole world. If the Untied States population was three-hundred
million, then three to nine-million psychopaths are here now. Only a
very small portion of the psychopaths are violent.
Thinking about the
others who weren't violent, I realized that some would be smart
enough to make it into the higher echelons of business and politics.
They would be adroit in those environs. The largest portion by far of
the people with this reality would be in-between the ones that were
leaders of our society and the ones who were sadists. The in-betweens
would be the common man working, trying to get through life while
not caring what he did, the grifter and a many others creating pain.
Later
while perusing an issue of Scientific American, I read an article
that was based on Kevin Dutton's book “The Wisdom of Psychopaths”; it may have been a book review. The article referred to tests that were given where the results
showed stronger psychopathic traits in people who were not violent
than the violent ones in prison. It went on to say that it was
sometimes beneficial for corporate officials because they could create vast amounts of pain in the lives of thousands of people by firing them without feeling
remorse. Another profession that the psychopathic reality could
benefit would the cutting edge of medical surgery. The surgeon could
view the patient as a job instead of a person.
After
going through the thoughts about sociopaths and psychopaths I
realized that the more egocentric I was, the more like them I was.
Hopefully, I never came close to being a sociopath, but I have to
admit that there have been times in my life that I was very
self-centered.
All images from google images.
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