Science of the SpiritS


Bomb

Cunning practitioners of the 'pity play'

David Staples
The Edmonton Journal
Sun, 08 Jun 2008 20:28 UTC
Leading psychiatric researchers are convinced there exists a type of person known as the psychopath, unemotional and sinister men and women who are different from the rest of us right down to the basic workings of their brains.

"Completely lacking in conscience and in feelings for others, they selfishly take what they want and do as they please, violating social norms and expectations without the slightest sense of guilt or regret," Dr. Robert Hare, professor emeritus at the University of British Columbia, writes in Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of The Psychopaths Among Us.

"Their acts result not from a deranged mind but from a cold, calculating rationality combined with a chilling inability to treat others as thinking, feeling human beings."

Comment: How many people's lives have been ruined by characters like Tom Svekla? Charming on the outside, emotionless and dead on the inside?

But don't get lulled into thinking that psychopaths are always serial killers and repeat offenders. The most dangerous ones never get caught. They are too high in the social hierarchy for that, protected by others of their kind. They sit in judgement upon the rest of humanity in board rooms, court rooms, and legislatures.

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Eye 1

Best of the Web: Leaders With No Conscience

Rand Clifford
OpEd News
Mon, 09 Jun 2008 21:26 UTC
As Osama bin Laden lay dying, December of 2001, might he have imagined that seven years later he would be on bogeyman life-support, still officially issuing messages as ruling poster boy for America's mindless, force-fed terror obsession? The hammerlock on thoughts of Americans by psychopathic leadership still depends on the fairytale power of Osama to help fuel the pathological War On Terror - could he have foreseen this, Americans being so propagandized as to let the lifeblood of their nation drip through their fingers, for lies? Whatever Osama knew he'd accomplished surely pales in light of what he has done since dying; if he had any inkling of this he must have died smiling.

With characteristic deception our pathocracy implies that Osama has somehow gotten vital dialysis treatments all these years at his hideout in never-never (mind) land.

Definition: pathocracy (n). A system of government created by a small pathological minority that takes control over a society of normal people (from Political Ponerology: A Science on the Nature of Evil Adjusted for Political Purposes, by Andrew Lobaczewski).
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Eye 1

Psychopaths Rule the World - What to do?

Len Hart
The Existentialist Cowboy
Tue, 03 Jun 2008 21:13 UTC


Tiananmen Square and tank
©Unknown

The psychologist Carl Jung estimated that in every 'society' could be found a 'psychopathic' thirty percent. It's sobering to think that over 60 percent of every society --even those we think most cultured --may be largely 'ruled' by about thirty percent who are utterly lacking the restraints that most of us associate with personal maturity, social cohesion, civilization itself.

A recent article by Dr. Kevin Barrett explores the dysfunctional underbelly of civilization which he says is "... largely the creation of psychopaths: all civilizations, he claims, are built upon 'slavery and mass murder'.
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Heart - Black

Best of the Web: Authoritarianism and Psychopathy

Delany Dean, JD, PhD
DelanyDean.com
Tue, 03 Jun 2008 13:39 UTC
Authoritarianism
© Unknown
I recently re-discovered the blog called Orcinus, and within it a series of articles by Sara Robinson about authoritarianism. She begins the series (click here) with a summary and review of John Dean's book, Conservatives Without Conscience. I was very much intrigued by this re-discovery, for several reasons. First, I did not realize that John Dean (who was made (in)famous by Watergate, and who is not a relative of mine, so far as I know), wrote about authoritarianism; second, I have not read anything within the academic literature about authoritarianism (see Dr. Robert Altemeyer) for years, probably not since I was in grad school; and, third, I am struck, again, by the very significant overlap between the construct of authoritarianism and the construct of psychopathy (which is an area in which I am quite interested in, click here).
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Better Earth

Flashback Beware the Psychopath

Clinton Callahan
dissentmag.wordpress.com
Mon, 12 May 2008 00:00 UTC


cheney1
©N/A


The following is largely extracted from two articles:

Twilight of the Psychopaths, by Dr. Kevin Barrett and The Trick of the Psychopath's Trade by Silvia Cattori. Both articles are recommended. Both articles reference the book Political Ponerology: A science on the nature of evil adjusted for political purposes, by Andrzej Lobaczewski. Cattori's article is longer and includes an interview with the book's editors, Laura Knight-Jadczyk and Henry See.

I make the effort to share this information because it gives me, at last, a plausible answer to a long-unanswered question: Why, no matter how much intelligent goodwill exists in the world, is there so much war, suffering and injustice? It doesn't seem to matter what creative plan, ideology, religion, or philosophy great minds come up with, nothing seems to improve our lot. Since the dawn of civilization, this pattern repeats itself over and over again.
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Bell

SOTT Focus: Voices in the Wilderness

Harrison Koehli
sott.net
Tue, 27 May 2008 19:50 UTC


fighting
©AP
This is American culture. And the world better like it...

When I look at the sorry history of this planet I can't help but come to the disturbing conclusion that our notions of human "progress" are grossly overstated. I cannot see how things are any different now than they were three thousand years ago. Sure, the outer forms of oppression have changed: we view ourselves as considerably more civilized than the empires of old; we publicly denounce slavery, genocide, and injustice. But we are the same animal. With only the illusion of freedom and a hypocritical facade of politically correct "humanitarianism", our world is still characterized by the same brutality, close-mindedness, and shameless egoism; people are still tortured in the most horrible ways imaginable; entire peoples are still butchered; and the mass of humanity is as blind and complacent as it ever was.
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Vader

Best of the Web: Textbook descriptions of George Bush reveal psychopathy, and much worse

Ed Martin
OpEdNews
Wed, 30 Apr 2008 06:59 UTC


Image
©Unknown
Ted Bundy and George Bush. Seperated at birth?

The research of Dr. Hervey Cleckley and Dr. Robert Hare exploring the personality and character traits of psychopaths, when applied to George Bush, shows that Bush fits exactly the profile they developed for the psychopath. Demographis show that Republicanism is much worse than psychopathy.

An excerpt from the book Blood Relations, by Eric Konigsberg, about his great-uncle Harold, a convicted murder:

Hervey Cleckley in his book, The Mask of Sanity, describes the psychopath as a certain type of cruel manipulator whose harmful actions are accompanied by an absence of delusion. The psychopath, he wrote, "does not hear voices. In theory, he can foresee the consequences of injudicious or antisocial acts." A psychopath is a person who knows full well the difference between right and wrong and yet, without compunction, chooses to do wrong. Checkley cited the protagonist of The Incredible Charlie Carewe, a novel by Mary Astor, as a quintessential psychopath. "Charlie is a genius in reverse with dangerous charm. Sisters lie for him, parents defend him, friends obey him. While calmly and casually, Charlie Carewe literally gets away with murder."
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Sherlock

SOTT Focus: The Pictures We See - Do You Get the Picture?

Grim and Jonny Radar
Sott.net
Sun, 11 May 2008 13:46 UTC
Let's try an experiment. Think of opinions you may have formed, beliefs that may have arisen due to one or a group of photographs that were distributed in the media. When you saw those images, did you feel anger, bitterness, or even hate? Were you elated, joyous, or perhaps confused? Were you compelled to somehow change the way you perceived the world based on the emotions that were triggered by an image?

Now imagine for a moment that a certain number of photographs in the media - let's say half, for the sake of this experiment - are forgeries. Would you be compelled to re-evaluate that position if you had learned said photograph was false?
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Heart - Black

Josef Fritzl - psychopath?


Frontier Psychiatrist
Thu, 08 May 2008 15:55 UTC


Josef Fritzl
©Unknown
Josef Fritzl: does he look like his acts?

There's news that Josef Fritzl, the man who imprisoned his daughter for 24 years in a dungeon of his own making, will plead insanity when his case goes to trial. I also saw Glenn Wilson, who works at the IoP on TV speculating that Mr Fritzl is a psychopath.
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Eye 1

SOTT Focus: Taking Responsibility

Henry See
SOTT
Fri, 25 Apr 2008 20:37 UTC


Responsibility
©Tooz

So, we've seen Obama being put on the ropes by Hillary over the question of Israel. The two are involved in a spitting match to see who can support Israel in the most rabid and mindless manner.

It seems some influential supporters of Israel had a little get-together back in March to challenge representatives from the three presidential candidates who have Israel's backing to make the most outrageously pro-Israel statements imaginable.
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