The word "sociopath" gets thrown around quite a bit and all too loosely.
It's commonplace to accuse a person of being a sociopath because of
dickish behavior, when the person in question was guilty more of
run-of-the-mill selfishness than of the character trait of sociopathy.
It's also very important not to assume that an enemy or disliked
individual is a "sociopath" because, once labeled falsely it's an almost
impossible for a person to disprove the accusation.
Still, there are some people who fit the profile of a sociopath so
perfectly that it's safe to assume the label is accurate. Most of us
won't have significant relations and encounters with more than a few of
these people in our lives, and it's possible that a certain degree of
sociopathy can lead to some needed iconoclastic leadership when societal
structures are too strict.
But for the most part, people should avoid involvement and contact with
sociopathic personalities at all costs. Involvement almost never leads
to anything but pain. I can say that from personal experience, having
lived for many, many years with a clinical sociopath of the cultic
variety who perfectly meets every criterion for diagnosing a sociopath.
If you suspect that someone you know may be a sociopath, use this handy determinative guide:
Read on...
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Showing posts with label sociopaths. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sociopaths. Show all posts
Ayn Rand, Hugely Popular Author and Inspiration to Right-Wing Leaders, Was a Big Admirer of Serial Killer
Her works treated as gospel by right-wing powerhouses like Alan Greenspan and Clarence Thomas, Ayn Rand found early inspiration 1920s murderer William Hickman.
Photo Credit: Creative Commons
here's something deeply unsettling about living in a country where millions of people froth at the mouth at the idea of giving health care to the tens of millions of Americans who don't have it, or who take pleasure at the thought of privatizing and slashing bedrock social programs like Social Security or Medicare. It might not be as hard to stomach if other Western countries also had a large, vocal chunk of the population who thought like this, but the US is seemingly the only place where right-wing elites can openly share their distaste for the working poor. Where do they find their philosophical justification for this kind of attitude?
It turns out, you can trace much of this thinking back to Ayn Rand, a popular cult-philosopher who exerts a huge influence over much of the right-wing and libertarian crowd, but whose influence is only starting to spread out of the US.
here's something deeply unsettling about living in a country where millions of people froth at the mouth at the idea of giving health care to the tens of millions of Americans who don't have it, or who take pleasure at the thought of privatizing and slashing bedrock social programs like Social Security or Medicare. It might not be as hard to stomach if other Western countries also had a large, vocal chunk of the population who thought like this, but the US is seemingly the only place where right-wing elites can openly share their distaste for the working poor. Where do they find their philosophical justification for this kind of attitude?
It turns out, you can trace much of this thinking back to Ayn Rand, a popular cult-philosopher who exerts a huge influence over much of the right-wing and libertarian crowd, but whose influence is only starting to spread out of the US.
One reason why most countries don't find the time to embrace her thinking is that Ayn Rand is a textbook sociopath. Literally a sociopath: Ayn Rand, in her notebooks, worshiped a notorious serial murderer-dismemberer, and used this killer as an early model for the type of "ideal man" that Rand promoted in her more famous books -- ideas which were later picked up on and put into play by major right-wing figures of the past half decade, including the key architects of America's most recent economic catastrophe -- former Fed Chair Alan Greenspan and SEC Commissioner Chris Cox -- along with other notable right-wing Republicans such as Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, Rush Limbaugh, and South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford.
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